“The rationalist’s guide to rationally using “rational” in rational post titles”: People like to place the word “rational” in front of a title to cloak the fact that it isn’t actually relevant to Less Wrong’s topic.
But this post does say ‘use your System 2 even in a situation where most people rely on their System 1 alone and you’d be tempted to do the same’, so it wasn’t just an empty applause light in this case.
Posts that do this are usually guilty of inexcusable other-optimizing, and this is no exception. I shouldn’t have to point out the insane hubris of sitting down and writing that, “everyone is completely under-calibrated for sex.”
Huh. The advice in the post sounded fairly non-specific to me; most of the readers will probably find at least some of it that applies to them.
EDIT: the following is based on a misunderstanding of what knb meant, and maybe I should stop making several points in the same comment, even though it’d clutter Recent Comments, so that I can retract each of them individually.
Did you know there was a long drama about PUA stuff a couple years ago on Less Wrong? I see no reason to restart that pointless drama, especially since these topics are so far out of the comparative advantage of this den of autism.
Comparative advantage doesn’t apply to things you can’t trade; if I am good at (say) physics but mediocre at mating and you’re mediocre at physics but good at mating, there’s no way I can give you one unit of physics in exchange of one unit of mating. IOW, what ThrustVectoring said.
Comparative advantage doesn’t apply to things you can’t trade; if I am good at (say) physics but mediocre at mating and you’re mediocre at physics but good at mating, there’s no way I can give you one unit of physics in exchange of one unit of mating. IOW, what ThrustVectoring said.
I obviously am not saying you can trade “mating.” However, you can get relationship advice from other sources. I’m surprised that you don’t understand the distinction.
Less Wrong folks tend to be good at writing and thinking about some things, like Newcomb’s problem, epistemic rationality, and decision theories, and not terribly good at giving advice in other areas. Less Wrong is, if anything, a bit on the left side of the bell curve of social intelligence. It doesn’t make sense for Less Wrong to try to specialize in relationship advice any more than it makes sense for us to start writing posts about auto repair or body building. There are other places for those topics. Less Wrong isn’t the only place to try to talk about these things, and we aren’t the best people to advise or seek advice from on many topics.
But this post does say ‘use your System 2 even in a situation where most people rely on their System 1 alone and you’d be tempted to do the same’, so it wasn’t just an empty applause light in this case.
Huh. The advice in the post sounded fairly non-specific to me; most of the readers will probably find at least some of it that applies to them.
EDIT: the following is based on a misunderstanding of what knb meant, and maybe I should stop making several points in the same comment, even though it’d clutter Recent Comments, so that I can retract each of them individually.
Comparative advantage doesn’t apply to things you can’t trade; if I am good at (say) physics but mediocre at mating and you’re mediocre at physics but good at mating, there’s no way I can give you one unit of physics in exchange of one unit of mating. IOW, what ThrustVectoring said.
I obviously am not saying you can trade “mating.” However, you can get relationship advice from other sources. I’m surprised that you don’t understand the distinction.
Less Wrong folks tend to be good at writing and thinking about some things, like Newcomb’s problem, epistemic rationality, and decision theories, and not terribly good at giving advice in other areas. Less Wrong is, if anything, a bit on the left side of the bell curve of social intelligence. It doesn’t make sense for Less Wrong to try to specialize in relationship advice any more than it makes sense for us to start writing posts about auto repair or body building. There are other places for those topics. Less Wrong isn’t the only place to try to talk about these things, and we aren’t the best people to advise or seek advice from on many topics.
I had misunderstood you. Never mind.