(This comment is entirely about the meta-subject and your approach to this discussion, and doesn’t engage with your dialogue with TheOtherDave.)
I can’t respond anymore to threads! you guys win! crush dissent based on superficial factors that “automatically result in downvotes” and thus ignore criticism! fool proof!
This is, in local parlance, called a Fully General Counterargument. It does not engage with the arguments we present at all, does not present any evidence that its claim might be true, but applies optimized sophistry to convince an audience that its claim is true and the alternatives untrue.
The response blocker is an anti-troll functionality, and does more good than harm to the epistemic hygiene of the community (as far as I can tell).
Dissent is not crushed—if the community norms are respected, even very contrarian arguments can be massively upvoted. However, this usually requires more research, evidence and justification than non-contrarian arguments, because according to the knowledge we have an opinion that disagrees with us starts with a lower credibility prior, and this prior needs more evidence to be brought up to the same level of credibility as other arguments that the community is neutral or positive about.
We¹ understand that it can be frustrating to someone who really wants to discuss and is interested to be blocked off like this, but this also seems to double-time as a filter for new users. New users that cannot muster the patience to deal with this issue are very unlikely to be mature and respectful enough to participate productively on LessWrong, since many of the relevant behaviors do correlate.
The best way “around” the block that prevents you from responding to comments is to PM users directly, and if something you want to say is of public interest it is usually recommended to ask a more neutral participant of the discussion or someone you believe will represent and transmit your message well to post what you have to say for you. Some users have even experimented a bit with this in the past and shown that changing the username that posts something does change the way even LW users will read and interpret the content (there are many reasons why this is not always a bad thing).
Overall, when you want to criticize LW ideas, we expect you to have thought about it a reasonably large amount of time (proportionally to how much others on LW have already thought about it), we expect some evidence to be presented because if most LWers don’t believe the claim this is bayesian evidence that it is not worth believing, and we expect you to use terms and concepts that are close to the ones we use or present evidence that the words and concepts we use for something are not adequate and you have more appropriate suggestions.
However, as it is, your criticism doesn’t seem to offer any evidence-based claims, your questions seem poorly defined and tainted with confusion, your attitude is providing strong evidence that you are not willing to update to evidence or engage in any sort of rational and useful discourse, and I had great difficulty writing my previous response because I was attempting to meet you as close as possible to your concepts and terminology rather than start from the LessWrong common ground and local jargon, since it seemed unlikely that simply phrasing it in my own standard words would have fared any better than what I assume you’ve already read.
For as much of LessWrong as I can speak for, which is probably not much—I’m a relatively recent user and I have made no major contributions that I’m aware of. This applies to each time I use “we” in this comment.
DeFranker, thanks for the detailed note—I take your points, they are reasonable and fair, but want to share a different perspective.
The problem I’m having is that I’m not actually making any arguments as “correct” or saying any of you people are wrong. The observation/statement for the sake of discussion does not mean that there is a conclusory judgment attached to it. Now, to the extent that you say i need to have a better understanding to make dissenting points, fair, but all I want to know is what the weakest arguments against rationality are, and question what relevance those weaknesses, if any, on the determination about the amount of time and energy to be spent on rational choice theory, as opposed to another theory or no theory. This seems particularly appropriate with respect to THIS article—which asks that believers of a theory question the weakest positions of that theory—whether in application or whatever. This is an analysis for believers to perform. Again, I’m not saying you don’t have any strong arguments to weaker positions or that you even have weak positions—I’m asking how those that follow rationality have approached this question/issue and how they’ve disposed of it.
It would seem those that follow a theory have the greatest responsibility to consider the strongest arguments against that very theory (which is exactly why EY posted the article re: Judaism). Why is it so inappropriate to hold rationality to the same standard? I’m not presupposing an answer, I just want to know YOUR answer is so i better understand your point of view. Perhaps your answer is “its obvious this theory is correct,” without more. I would be fine with that simply because you’ve answered the question—you’ve given me your perspective. Sure, I may ask additional questions, but the goal is not to be right or win some online war, the goal is to learn (my effing name is “non-expert”—you dont’ have to worry about me telling you that you’re wrong, but i may question your logic/reason/etc.) I cannot learn unless I understand the perspectives of those that disagree with me.
And regarding the quoted text—yes, while i appreciate i did not follow the “culture” or norms of this site, I had looked at this site as a place for substantive answers/discussions. I’m not making a fully general counterargument—I’m simply pointing out that attacking my jokes/jabs allows you to avoid my question—again, to be clear, I didn’t ask the question to prove you’re wrong, I’m asking the question to hear your answer!
Now, I agree with most of what you said here. However, some of it doesn’t quite parse for me, so here’s my attempt at resolving what seems like communication issues.
(...) but all I want to know is what the weakest [strongest?] arguments against rationality are (...)
This doesn’t really tell me anything about what you want to know, even assuming you mean “strongest arguments against rationality” and/or “weakest arguments for rationality”.
Arguments for something are usually coupled with a claim—they are arguments for a claim. Which specific claim are you referring to when you use the word “rationality” in the claim above? I’m not asking a trick question, I just can’t tell what you mean out of several hundreds of thousands of possible things you could possibly be thinking about. Sometimes, it could also be for or against a specific technique, where it is implied that the claim is “you should use this technique”.
To me, the phrase “arguments for and against rationality” makes as much sense as the phrase “arguments for and against art” or the phrase “arguments for and against numbers”. There’s some missing element, some missing piece of context that isn’t obvious to me and that wasn’t mentioned explicitly.
Here are some attempts at guessing what you could mean, just as an exercise for me and as points of comparison for you:
“What are the strongest arguments against using bayesian updating to form accurate models of the world?” (i.e. The strongest arguments against the implied claim that you should use bayesian updating when you want to form accurate models of the world—this is the standard pattern.)
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that forming accurate models of the world is useful towards achieving your goals?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that forming accurate models of the world is useful to me?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the use of evidence to decide on which beliefs to believe?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the usefulness or accuracy of probabilities in general as opposed to human intuition?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that humans have anything resembling a utility function, desires, or values?”
“What are the strongest arguments that choosing the action with highest expected utility is not the best (most optimal) way to achieve human values?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that calculating expected utility is not (always) a waste of time?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that anything can even be truly known or understood by humans?”
“What are the strongest arguments that if nothing can be truly known, it is meaningless to attempt to be less wrong?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the best way to achieve a goal being the best way to achieve that goal?” (yes, I know exactly how this looks/sounds)
“On LW rationality is sometimes referred to as ‘winning’. What is the evidence against the claim that humans want to win in the first place?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the idea that human values make any sense and can ever be approximated, let alone known?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that taking actions will limit the possible future states of the world?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that limiting the possible future states of the world can help achieve your goals and fulfill your values?”
“What are the strongest arguments against humans being able to limit possible future states of the world to the right future possible states that will achieve their goals?”
Feel free to pick any of the above reductions (more than one if need be) as a starting point for further analysis and information exchange, or preferably form your own more precise question by comparing your internal question to the above. Hopefully this’ll help clarify exactly what you’re asking us.
DeFranker—many thanks for taking the time, very helpful.
I spent last night thinking about this, and now I understand your (LW’s) points better and my own. To start, I think the ideas of epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality are unassailable as ideas—there are few things that make as much sense as the ideas of what rationality is trying to do, in the abstract.
But, when we say “rationality” is a good idea, I want to understand two fundamental things: In what context does rationality apply, and where it applies, what methodologies, if any, apply to actually practice it. I don’t presuppose any answers to the above—at the same time I don’t want to “practice rationality” unless or before i understand how those two questions are answered or dealt with (I appreciate its not your responsibility to answer them, I’m just expressing them as things I’m considering).
“Weaknesses” of rationality is not an appropriate question—I now understand the visceral reaction—However, by putting rationality in context, one can better understand its usefulness from a practical perspective. Any lack of usefulness, or lack of applicability would be the “weakness/criticism” I was asking about, but upon reflection, I get to the same place by talking about context.
Let me step back a bit to explain why I think these questions are relevant. We all know the phrase “context matters” in the abstract—I would argue that epistemic rationality, in the abstract, is relevant for instrumental rationality because if our model of the world is incorrect, the manner in which we choose to reach our goals in that world will be affected. All I’m really saying here is that “context matters.” Now while most agree that context matters with respect to decision making, there’s an open question as to “what context actually matters. So, there is always a potential debate regarding whether the the world is understood well enough and to the extent necessary in order to successfully practice instrumental rationality—this is clearly a relative/subjective determination.
With that in mind, any attempt to apply instrumental rationality would require some thought about epistemic rationality, and whether my map is sufficient to make a decision. Does rationality, as it is currently practice, offer any guidance on this? Lets pretend the answer is no—that’s fine, but then that’s a potential “flaw” in rationality or hole where rationality alone does not help with an open issue/question that is relevant.
I’m not trying to knock rationality, but I’m not willing to coddle it and pretend its all there is to know if it comes at the cost of minimizing knowledge.
(This comment is entirely about the meta-subject and your approach to this discussion, and doesn’t engage with your dialogue with TheOtherDave.)
This is, in local parlance, called a Fully General Counterargument. It does not engage with the arguments we present at all, does not present any evidence that its claim might be true, but applies optimized sophistry to convince an audience that its claim is true and the alternatives untrue.
The response blocker is an anti-troll functionality, and does more good than harm to the epistemic hygiene of the community (as far as I can tell).
Dissent is not crushed—if the community norms are respected, even very contrarian arguments can be massively upvoted. However, this usually requires more research, evidence and justification than non-contrarian arguments, because according to the knowledge we have an opinion that disagrees with us starts with a lower credibility prior, and this prior needs more evidence to be brought up to the same level of credibility as other arguments that the community is neutral or positive about.
We¹ understand that it can be frustrating to someone who really wants to discuss and is interested to be blocked off like this, but this also seems to double-time as a filter for new users. New users that cannot muster the patience to deal with this issue are very unlikely to be mature and respectful enough to participate productively on LessWrong, since many of the relevant behaviors do correlate.
The best way “around” the block that prevents you from responding to comments is to PM users directly, and if something you want to say is of public interest it is usually recommended to ask a more neutral participant of the discussion or someone you believe will represent and transmit your message well to post what you have to say for you. Some users have even experimented a bit with this in the past and shown that changing the username that posts something does change the way even LW users will read and interpret the content (there are many reasons why this is not always a bad thing).
Overall, when you want to criticize LW ideas, we expect you to have thought about it a reasonably large amount of time (proportionally to how much others on LW have already thought about it), we expect some evidence to be presented because if most LWers don’t believe the claim this is bayesian evidence that it is not worth believing, and we expect you to use terms and concepts that are close to the ones we use or present evidence that the words and concepts we use for something are not adequate and you have more appropriate suggestions.
However, as it is, your criticism doesn’t seem to offer any evidence-based claims, your questions seem poorly defined and tainted with confusion, your attitude is providing strong evidence that you are not willing to update to evidence or engage in any sort of rational and useful discourse, and I had great difficulty writing my previous response because I was attempting to meet you as close as possible to your concepts and terminology rather than start from the LessWrong common ground and local jargon, since it seemed unlikely that simply phrasing it in my own standard words would have fared any better than what I assume you’ve already read.
For as much of LessWrong as I can speak for, which is probably not much—I’m a relatively recent user and I have made no major contributions that I’m aware of. This applies to each time I use “we” in this comment.
DeFranker, thanks for the detailed note—I take your points, they are reasonable and fair, but want to share a different perspective.
The problem I’m having is that I’m not actually making any arguments as “correct” or saying any of you people are wrong. The observation/statement for the sake of discussion does not mean that there is a conclusory judgment attached to it. Now, to the extent that you say i need to have a better understanding to make dissenting points, fair, but all I want to know is what the weakest arguments against rationality are, and question what relevance those weaknesses, if any, on the determination about the amount of time and energy to be spent on rational choice theory, as opposed to another theory or no theory. This seems particularly appropriate with respect to THIS article—which asks that believers of a theory question the weakest positions of that theory—whether in application or whatever. This is an analysis for believers to perform. Again, I’m not saying you don’t have any strong arguments to weaker positions or that you even have weak positions—I’m asking how those that follow rationality have approached this question/issue and how they’ve disposed of it.
It would seem those that follow a theory have the greatest responsibility to consider the strongest arguments against that very theory (which is exactly why EY posted the article re: Judaism). Why is it so inappropriate to hold rationality to the same standard? I’m not presupposing an answer, I just want to know YOUR answer is so i better understand your point of view. Perhaps your answer is “its obvious this theory is correct,” without more. I would be fine with that simply because you’ve answered the question—you’ve given me your perspective. Sure, I may ask additional questions, but the goal is not to be right or win some online war, the goal is to learn (my effing name is “non-expert”—you dont’ have to worry about me telling you that you’re wrong, but i may question your logic/reason/etc.) I cannot learn unless I understand the perspectives of those that disagree with me.
And regarding the quoted text—yes, while i appreciate i did not follow the “culture” or norms of this site, I had looked at this site as a place for substantive answers/discussions. I’m not making a fully general counterargument—I’m simply pointing out that attacking my jokes/jabs allows you to avoid my question—again, to be clear, I didn’t ask the question to prove you’re wrong, I’m asking the question to hear your answer!
Now, I agree with most of what you said here. However, some of it doesn’t quite parse for me, so here’s my attempt at resolving what seems like communication issues.
This doesn’t really tell me anything about what you want to know, even assuming you mean “strongest arguments against rationality” and/or “weakest arguments for rationality”.
Arguments for something are usually coupled with a claim—they are arguments for a claim. Which specific claim are you referring to when you use the word “rationality” in the claim above? I’m not asking a trick question, I just can’t tell what you mean out of several hundreds of thousands of possible things you could possibly be thinking about. Sometimes, it could also be for or against a specific technique, where it is implied that the claim is “you should use this technique”.
To me, the phrase “arguments for and against rationality” makes as much sense as the phrase “arguments for and against art” or the phrase “arguments for and against numbers”. There’s some missing element, some missing piece of context that isn’t obvious to me and that wasn’t mentioned explicitly.
Here are some attempts at guessing what you could mean, just as an exercise for me and as points of comparison for you:
“What are the strongest arguments against using bayesian updating to form accurate models of the world?” (i.e. The strongest arguments against the implied claim that you should use bayesian updating when you want to form accurate models of the world—this is the standard pattern.)
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that forming accurate models of the world is useful towards achieving your goals?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that forming accurate models of the world is useful to me?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the use of evidence to decide on which beliefs to believe?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the usefulness or accuracy of probabilities in general as opposed to human intuition?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that humans have anything resembling a utility function, desires, or values?”
“What are the strongest arguments that choosing the action with highest expected utility is not the best (most optimal) way to achieve human values?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that calculating expected utility is not (always) a waste of time?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that anything can even be truly known or understood by humans?”
“What are the strongest arguments that if nothing can be truly known, it is meaningless to attempt to be less wrong?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the best way to achieve a goal being the best way to achieve that goal?” (yes, I know exactly how this looks/sounds)
“On LW rationality is sometimes referred to as ‘winning’. What is the evidence against the claim that humans want to win in the first place?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the idea that human values make any sense and can ever be approximated, let alone known?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that taking actions will limit the possible future states of the world?”
“What are the strongest arguments against the claim that limiting the possible future states of the world can help achieve your goals and fulfill your values?”
“What are the strongest arguments against humans being able to limit possible future states of the world to the right future possible states that will achieve their goals?”
Feel free to pick any of the above reductions (more than one if need be) as a starting point for further analysis and information exchange, or preferably form your own more precise question by comparing your internal question to the above. Hopefully this’ll help clarify exactly what you’re asking us.
DeFranker—many thanks for taking the time, very helpful.
I spent last night thinking about this, and now I understand your (LW’s) points better and my own. To start, I think the ideas of epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality are unassailable as ideas—there are few things that make as much sense as the ideas of what rationality is trying to do, in the abstract.
But, when we say “rationality” is a good idea, I want to understand two fundamental things: In what context does rationality apply, and where it applies, what methodologies, if any, apply to actually practice it. I don’t presuppose any answers to the above—at the same time I don’t want to “practice rationality” unless or before i understand how those two questions are answered or dealt with (I appreciate its not your responsibility to answer them, I’m just expressing them as things I’m considering).
“Weaknesses” of rationality is not an appropriate question—I now understand the visceral reaction—However, by putting rationality in context, one can better understand its usefulness from a practical perspective. Any lack of usefulness, or lack of applicability would be the “weakness/criticism” I was asking about, but upon reflection, I get to the same place by talking about context.
Let me step back a bit to explain why I think these questions are relevant. We all know the phrase “context matters” in the abstract—I would argue that epistemic rationality, in the abstract, is relevant for instrumental rationality because if our model of the world is incorrect, the manner in which we choose to reach our goals in that world will be affected. All I’m really saying here is that “context matters.” Now while most agree that context matters with respect to decision making, there’s an open question as to “what context actually matters. So, there is always a potential debate regarding whether the the world is understood well enough and to the extent necessary in order to successfully practice instrumental rationality—this is clearly a relative/subjective determination.
With that in mind, any attempt to apply instrumental rationality would require some thought about epistemic rationality, and whether my map is sufficient to make a decision. Does rationality, as it is currently practice, offer any guidance on this? Lets pretend the answer is no—that’s fine, but then that’s a potential “flaw” in rationality or hole where rationality alone does not help with an open issue/question that is relevant.
I’m not trying to knock rationality, but I’m not willing to coddle it and pretend its all there is to know if it comes at the cost of minimizing knowledge.