For starters we de facto know he is less rational than A
Ignorance does not imply unintelligent, irrational, etc., much less make a de facto case for them. There’s nothing irrational about honestly believing the group-consensus if you don’t have the skill foundation to see how it could be wrong. Sure, one should be open about one’s ignorance, but you still have to have anticipations to function, and Bayesian evidence suggests “follow the leader” is better than “pick randomly”. Especially since, not having the background knowledge in the first place, one would be hard pressed to list choices to pick randomly amongst :)
There’s nothing irrational about honestly believing the group-consensus if you don’t have the skill foundation to see how it could be wrong.
If someone does not have the skill foundation to see how the group-consensus is wrong, he is ignorant or stupid. Such people are, quite inadvertently, dangerous and harmful. There is no con man worse or more dangerous than a con man who sincerely believes his own scam, and is therefore quite prepared to go down with his ship.
There is no con man worse or more dangerous than a con man who sincerely believes his own scam, and is therefore quite prepared to go down with his ship.
This is true in a big way that I haven’t mentioned before though. Type B seem to me more likley to cause trouble for anyone attempting to implement solutions that might avert tragedy of the commons situations caused by a false society wide belief, than type A.
There’s nothing irrational about honestly believing the group-consensus if you don’t have the skill foundation to see how it could be wrong.
Actually he is right. Just because you can’t find a flaw with common consensus dosen’t mean you are ignorant or stupid because its perfectly possible there is no flaw with common consensus on a particular subject or that the flaw is too difficult to detect by the means available to you. Perhaps its too difficult to detect the flaw with the means the entire society has available to it!
A rational agent is not an omniscient agent after all!
I think you may be letting yourself slightly adversarial in your thinking here because you perceive this as a fight over a specific thing you estimate society is delusional about. Its not, its really not. Chill man. :)
Edit: Considering the downvotes, I just want to ask what I missing in this comment? Thanks for any help!
Yes but the odds of A getting the right answer from picking randomly are even lower. ;)
Remember person A was defined in this example as having a better map on this little spot, though I suppose most of the analysis done by people so far works equally well for someone who thinks he has a better map and is hiding it.
So Person A believes in MWI because they read the Quantum Mechanics sequence, and Person B never thought about it beyond an article in Discover Magazine saying all the top scientists favor the Copenhagen interpretation. They’re both being entirely rational about the information they have, even if Person A has the right answer :)
I suppose they are in a sense, but what exactly are the rewards/lack of benefit for a layman, even an educated one, believing or not in MWI? .I think a major indicator is that I haven’t heard in recent years of anyone been outed as a MWIist and loosing their job as a consequence :P
Nitpick: The average person who has read QM sequence is likley above average in rationality.
but what exactly are the rewards/lack of benefit for a layman, even an educated one, believing or not in MWI?
Everyone is avoiding realistic examples, for fear that if they should disturb any of the several large elephants in the living room, they will immediately be trampled.
Substitute a relevant example as needed, I’m simply trying to make the point that ignorance != irrationality. Someone who simply has more information on a field is going to reach better conclusions, and will thus need to hide controversial opinions. Someone with less information is generally going to go with the “follow the herd” strategy, because in the absence of any other evidence, it’s their best bet. Thus, just based on knowledge (not rationality!) you’re going to see a split between A and B types.
There dosen’t have to be a correlation of 1 between ignorance and irrationally. There just has to be some positive correlation for us to judge in the absence of other information A probably more rational than B.
And if there isn’t a correlation greater than 0 between rationality and a proper map of reality, uhm what is this rationality thing anyway?
For starters we de facto know he is less rational than A
Ahhh, you’re meaning “we have Bayesian evidence that Person B is less likely to be rational than Person A”? I’d agree, but I still think it’s weak evidence if you’re only looking at a single situation, and
I’d still feel I therefore know more about Person A (how they handle these situations) than I do about Person B (merely that they are either ignorant or irrational). How someone handles a situation strikes me as a more consistent trait, whereas most people seem to have enough gaps in their knowledge that a single gap is very little evidence for other gaps.
Ahhh, you’re meaning “we have Bayesian evidence that Person B is less likely to be rational than Person A”?
Yeah I should have been more explicit on that, sorry for the miscommunication!
I’d agree, but I still think it’s weak evidence if you’re only looking at a single situation, and
I’d still feel I therefore know more about Person A (how they handle these situations) than I do about Person B (merely that they are either ignorant or irrational). How someone handles a situation strikes me as a more consistent trait, whereas most people seem to have enough gaps in their knowledge that a single gap is very little evidence for other gaps.
Perhaps for convenience we can add that person A and B are exposed to the same information? It dosen’t change the spirit of the thought experiment. I was originally implicitly operating with that as given but since we started discussing it I’ve noticed I never explicitly mentioned it.
Basically I wanted to compare what kinds of things person A/B would signal in a certain set of circumstances to others.
Ignorance does not imply unintelligent, irrational, etc., much less make a de facto case for them. There’s nothing irrational about honestly believing the group-consensus if you don’t have the skill foundation to see how it could be wrong. Sure, one should be open about one’s ignorance, but you still have to have anticipations to function, and Bayesian evidence suggests “follow the leader” is better than “pick randomly”. Especially since, not having the background knowledge in the first place, one would be hard pressed to list choices to pick randomly amongst :)
If someone does not have the skill foundation to see how the group-consensus is wrong, he is ignorant or stupid. Such people are, quite inadvertently, dangerous and harmful. There is no con man worse or more dangerous than a con man who sincerely believes his own scam, and is therefore quite prepared to go down with his ship.
This is true in a big way that I haven’t mentioned before though. Type B seem to me more likley to cause trouble for anyone attempting to implement solutions that might avert tragedy of the commons situations caused by a false society wide belief, than type A.
Actually he is right. Just because you can’t find a flaw with common consensus dosen’t mean you are ignorant or stupid because its perfectly possible there is no flaw with common consensus on a particular subject or that the flaw is too difficult to detect by the means available to you. Perhaps its too difficult to detect the flaw with the means the entire society has available to it!
A rational agent is not an omniscient agent after all!
I think you may be letting yourself slightly adversarial in your thinking here because you perceive this as a fight over a specific thing you estimate society is delusional about. Its not, its really not. Chill man. :)
Edit: Considering the downvotes, I just want to ask what I missing in this comment? Thanks for any help!
Yes but the odds of A getting the right answer from picking randomly are even lower. ;)
Remember person A was defined in this example as having a better map on this little spot, though I suppose most of the analysis done by people so far works equally well for someone who thinks he has a better map and is hiding it.
So Person A believes in MWI because they read the Quantum Mechanics sequence, and Person B never thought about it beyond an article in Discover Magazine saying all the top scientists favor the Copenhagen interpretation. They’re both being entirely rational about the information they have, even if Person A has the right answer :)
I suppose they are in a sense, but what exactly are the rewards/lack of benefit for a layman, even an educated one, believing or not in MWI? .I think a major indicator is that I haven’t heard in recent years of anyone been outed as a MWIist and loosing their job as a consequence :P
Nitpick: The average person who has read QM sequence is likley above average in rationality.
Everyone is avoiding realistic examples, for fear that if they should disturb any of the several large elephants in the living room, they will immediately be trampled.
Substitute a relevant example as needed, I’m simply trying to make the point that ignorance != irrationality. Someone who simply has more information on a field is going to reach better conclusions, and will thus need to hide controversial opinions. Someone with less information is generally going to go with the “follow the herd” strategy, because in the absence of any other evidence, it’s their best bet. Thus, just based on knowledge (not rationality!) you’re going to see a split between A and B types.
There dosen’t have to be a correlation of 1 between ignorance and irrationally. There just has to be some positive correlation for us to judge in the absence of other information A probably more rational than B.
And if there isn’t a correlation greater than 0 between rationality and a proper map of reality, uhm what is this rationality thing anyway?
Ahhh, you’re meaning “we have Bayesian evidence that Person B is less likely to be rational than Person A”? I’d agree, but I still think it’s weak evidence if you’re only looking at a single situation, and
I’d still feel I therefore know more about Person A (how they handle these situations) than I do about Person B (merely that they are either ignorant or irrational). How someone handles a situation strikes me as a more consistent trait, whereas most people seem to have enough gaps in their knowledge that a single gap is very little evidence for other gaps.
Yeah I should have been more explicit on that, sorry for the miscommunication!
Perhaps for convenience we can add that person A and B are exposed to the same information? It dosen’t change the spirit of the thought experiment. I was originally implicitly operating with that as given but since we started discussing it I’ve noticed I never explicitly mentioned it.
Basically I wanted to compare what kinds of things person A/B would signal in a certain set of circumstances to others.
No worries. I think part of it was on me as well :)