Upvoted, it’s also correct to ask whether taking this route is ‘worth it’.
I am skeptical of “Moreover, it seems likely that for most people, during most of history, this strategy was the right choice.” Remember that half of all humans existed after 1309. In 1561 Francis Bacon was born, who invented the founding philosophy and infrastructure of science. So already it was incredibly valuable to restructure your mind to track reality and take directed global-scale long-term action.
And plausibly it was so before then as well. I remember being surprised reading Vaniver’s account of Xunzi’s in 300 BC, where Vaniver said:
By the end of it, I was asking myself, “if they had this much of rationality figured out back then, why didn’t they conquer the world?” Then I looked into the history a bit more and figured out that twoof Xunzi’s students were core figures in Qin Shi Huang’s unification of China to become the First Emperor.
Francis Bacon’s father was a successful politician and a knight. Bacon was born into an extremely privileged position in the world, and wasn’t typical by any margin. Moreover, ey were, quoting Wikipedia, a “devout Anglican”, so ey only went that far in eir rationality.
If I, a rationalist atheist, was in Francis Bacon’s shoes I would 100% live my life in such a way that history books would record me as being a “devout Anglican”.
Sure. But, in order to lie without the risk of being caught, you need to simulate the person who actually is a devout Anglican. And the easiest way to do that is, having your conscious self actually be a devout Anglican. Which can be a rational strategy, but which isn’t the thing we call “rationality” in this context.
Another thing is, we can speak of two levels of rationality: “individual” and “collective”. In individual rationality, our conscious beliefs are accurate but we keep them secret from others. In collective rationality, we have a community of people with accurate conscious beliefs who communicate them with each other. The social cost of collective rationality is greater, but the potential benefits are also greater, as they are compounded through collective truth-seeking and cooperation.
This isn’t much of an update to me. It’s like if you told me that a hacker broke out of the simulation, and I responded that it isn’t that surprising they did because they went to Harvard. The fact that someone did it all is the primary and massive update that it was feasible and that this level of win was attainable for humans at that time if they were smart and determined.
We’re discussing the question of whether for most people in the past, rationality was a strategy inferior to having a domain where conscious beliefs are socially expedient rather than accurate. You gave Francis Bacon as a counterexample. I pointed out that, first, Bacon was atypical along the very axes that I claim make rationality the superior choice today (having more opportunities and depending less on others). This weakens Bacon’s example as evidence against my overall thesis. Second, Bacon actually did maintain socially expedient beliefs (religion, although I’m sure it’s not the only one). There is a spectrum between average-Jane-strategy and “maximal” self-honesty, and Bacon certainly did not go all the way towards maximal self-honesty.
I think the thing I want here is a better analysis of the tradeoff and when to take it (according to one’s inside view), rather than something like an outside view account that says “probably don’t”.
(And you are indeed contributing to understanding that tradeoff, your first comment indeed gives two major reasons, but it still feels to me true to say about many people in history and not just people today.)
Suppose we plot “All people alive” on the x-axis, and “Probability you should do rationality on your inside view” on the y-axis. Here are two opinions one could have about people during the time of Bacon.
“Some people should do rationality, and most people shouldn’t.”
″Some people should not think about it, and some people should consider it regularly and sometimes do it.”
I want to express something more like the second one than the first.
Upvoted, it’s also correct to ask whether taking this route is ‘worth it’.
I am skeptical of “Moreover, it seems likely that for most people, during most of history, this strategy was the right choice.” Remember that half of all humans existed after 1309. In 1561 Francis Bacon was born, who invented the founding philosophy and infrastructure of science. So already it was incredibly valuable to restructure your mind to track reality and take directed global-scale long-term action.
And plausibly it was so before then as well. I remember being surprised reading Vaniver’s account of Xunzi’s in 300 BC, where Vaniver said:
Francis Bacon’s father was a successful politician and a knight. Bacon was born into an extremely privileged position in the world, and wasn’t typical by any margin. Moreover, ey were, quoting Wikipedia, a “devout Anglican”, so ey only went that far in eir rationality.
If I, a rationalist atheist, was in Francis Bacon’s shoes I would 100% live my life in such a way that history books would record me as being a “devout Anglican”.
Sure. But, in order to lie without the risk of being caught, you need to simulate the person who actually is a devout Anglican. And the easiest way to do that is, having your conscious self actually be a devout Anglican. Which can be a rational strategy, but which isn’t the thing we call “rationality” in this context.
Another thing is, we can speak of two levels of rationality: “individual” and “collective”. In individual rationality, our conscious beliefs are accurate but we keep them secret from others. In collective rationality, we have a community of people with accurate conscious beliefs who communicate them with each other. The social cost of collective rationality is greater, but the potential benefits are also greater, as they are compounded through collective truth-seeking and cooperation.
This isn’t much of an update to me. It’s like if you told me that a hacker broke out of the simulation, and I responded that it isn’t that surprising they did because they went to Harvard. The fact that someone did it all is the primary and massive update that it was feasible and that this level of win was attainable for humans at that time if they were smart and determined.
We’re discussing the question of whether for most people in the past, rationality was a strategy inferior to having a domain where conscious beliefs are socially expedient rather than accurate. You gave Francis Bacon as a counterexample. I pointed out that, first, Bacon was atypical along the very axes that I claim make rationality the superior choice today (having more opportunities and depending less on others). This weakens Bacon’s example as evidence against my overall thesis. Second, Bacon actually did maintain socially expedient beliefs (religion, although I’m sure it’s not the only one). There is a spectrum between average-Jane-strategy and “maximal” self-honesty, and Bacon certainly did not go all the way towards maximal self-honesty.
I think the thing I want here is a better analysis of the tradeoff and when to take it (according to one’s inside view), rather than something like an outside view account that says “probably don’t”.
(And you are indeed contributing to understanding that tradeoff, your first comment indeed gives two major reasons, but it still feels to me true to say about many people in history and not just people today.)
Suppose we plot “All people alive” on the x-axis, and “Probability you should do rationality on your inside view” on the y-axis. Here are two opinions one could have about people during the time of Bacon.
I want to express something more like the second one than the first.