You are a bit too quick to allow the reader the presumption that they have more algorithmic faith than the other folks they talk to. Yes if you are super rational and they are not, you can ignore them. But how did you come to be confident in that description of the situation?
Everything I’m saying is definitely symmetric across persons, even if, as an author, I prefer to phrase it in the second person. (A previous post included a clarifying parenthetical to this effect at the end, but this one did not.)
That is, if someone who trusted your rationality noticed that you seemed visibly unmoved by their strongest arguments, they might think that the lack of agreement implies that they should update towards your position, but another possibility is that their trust has been misplaced! If they find themselves living a world of painted rocks where you are one of the rocks, then it may come to pass that protecting the sanctity of their map would require them to master the technique of lonely dissent.
You could argue that my author’s artistic preference to phrase things in the second person is misleading, but I’m not sure what to do about that while still accomplishing everything else I’m trying to do with my writing: my reply to Wei Dai and a Reddit user’s commentary on another previous post seem relevant.
Being able to parse philosophical arguments is evidence of being rational. When you make philosophical arguments, you should think of yourself as only conveying content to those who are rationally parsing things, and conveying only appearance/gloss/style to those who aren’t rationally parsing things.
I think being smart is only very small evidence for being rational (especially globally rational, as Zach is assuming here, rather than locally rational).
I think most of the evidence towards being rational of understanding philosophical evidence is screened off by being smart (which again, is a very very weak correlation already).
You are a bit too quick to allow the reader the presumption that they have more algorithmic faith than the other folks they talk to. Yes if you are super rational and they are not, you can ignore them. But how did you come to be confident in that description of the situation?
Everything I’m saying is definitely symmetric across persons, even if, as an author, I prefer to phrase it in the second person. (A previous post included a clarifying parenthetical to this effect at the end, but this one did not.)
That is, if someone who trusted your rationality noticed that you seemed visibly unmoved by their strongest arguments, they might think that the lack of agreement implies that they should update towards your position, but another possibility is that their trust has been misplaced! If they find themselves living a world of painted rocks where you are one of the rocks, then it may come to pass that protecting the sanctity of their map would require them to master the technique of lonely dissent.
You could argue that my author’s artistic preference to phrase things in the second person is misleading, but I’m not sure what to do about that while still accomplishing everything else I’m trying to do with my writing: my reply to Wei Dai and a Reddit user’s commentary on another previous post seem relevant.
Being able to parse philosophical arguments is evidence of being rational. When you make philosophical arguments, you should think of yourself as only conveying content to those who are rationally parsing things, and conveying only appearance/gloss/style to those who aren’t rationally parsing things.
Uh, we are talking about holding people to MUCH higher rationality standards than the ability to parse Phil arguments.
I think being smart is only very small evidence for being rational (especially globally rational, as Zach is assuming here, rather than locally rational).
I think most of the evidence towards being rational of understanding philosophical evidence is screened off by being smart (which again, is a very very weak correlation already).