The map is not the territory. Rationality is about making effective decisions.
I profess I entirely fail to see how your post refutes the quoted paragraph. Yes, using models is useful, but that is in no way the same as falling prey to wishful thinking. I keep trying to re-read that paragraph to see how it might be interpreted in a way that makes your reply seem natural, but my best guess is that you might have read “Do not let feelings overrule critical thinking or in any other way engage in wishful thinking” as “ignore your feelings”. And I still don’t see how saying models are useful flows from there.
Basically you are saying that Eliezer is wrong with Timeless decision theory.
As far as I know, that sequence is meant to detail ways in which your actions might have indirect/timeless/acausal consequences, and therefore supplements rather than contradicts consequentialism. If I’m wrong, please explain how and why.
Yes, using models is useful, but that is in no way the same as falling prey to wishful thinking.
Your paragraph doesn’t mention anything about wishful thinking. Wishful thinking might be the only thing that comes to mind for you if you think about allowing feelings override critical thinking, but it isn’t.
If a sudden feeling of fear triggers in myself and I can’t explain with rational thought why a given situation is dangerous or why I would feel fear, I still remove myself from the situation.
There are studies in nurses, that if a nurse get’s a feeling that a patient is in a critical situation but the nurse has no evidence that the patient is in a critical situation the patient should still get extra supervision.
There good evidence that the nurse should let her intuitive feelings overrule critical thinking if the cost of a false positive is low but the cost of a false negative is high.
In case you want to argue that you can make a rational decision by making an utility calcuation in your head, that might work in the case of the nurses but there are plenty of situation where the time to do that calculation isn’t available and it’s very useful to respond immediately.
If I dance intimitely with a woman who’s a stranger than it’s very important that I immediately act when I get the feeling that something isn’t right. When I started dancing I tried to get a rational model of what intimicy is or isn’t okay and act based on mental rules. It doesn’t work that way.
That requires that I can tell the feeling of “touching a woman feels good” apart from “this interaction doesn’t flow well, it’s better to reduce intimacy”. Understanding emotions and being able to tell different ones apart is useful. There are feelings that you should allow to override critical analysis in specific situations, there are other feelings that you shouldn’t allow to override critical analysis.
In biological modeling feelings of the person doing the modeling aren’t so central that they should override critical thought, but the model still get’s optimized for a certain use case and good models often trade some accuracy for simplicity. Simple models are more beautiful and simply beautiful models should be preferred over ugly complicated one if both models predict reality equally well.
As far as I know, that sequence is meant to detail ways in which your actions might have indirect/timeless/acausal consequences, and therefore supplements rather than contradicts consequentialism. If I’m wrong, please explain how and why.
It not about the indirect consequences of the action but about the consequences of being the kind of person that engages in specific actions.
I profess I entirely fail to see how your post refutes the quoted paragraph. Yes, using models is useful, but that is in no way the same as falling prey to wishful thinking. I keep trying to re-read that paragraph to see how it might be interpreted in a way that makes your reply seem natural, but my best guess is that you might have read “Do not let feelings overrule critical thinking or in any other way engage in wishful thinking” as “ignore your feelings”. And I still don’t see how saying models are useful flows from there.
As far as I know, that sequence is meant to detail ways in which your actions might have indirect/timeless/acausal consequences, and therefore supplements rather than contradicts consequentialism. If I’m wrong, please explain how and why.
Your paragraph doesn’t mention anything about wishful thinking. Wishful thinking might be the only thing that comes to mind for you if you think about allowing feelings override critical thinking, but it isn’t.
If a sudden feeling of fear triggers in myself and I can’t explain with rational thought why a given situation is dangerous or why I would feel fear, I still remove myself from the situation.
There are studies in nurses, that if a nurse get’s a feeling that a patient is in a critical situation but the nurse has no evidence that the patient is in a critical situation the patient should still get extra supervision. There good evidence that the nurse should let her intuitive feelings overrule critical thinking if the cost of a false positive is low but the cost of a false negative is high.
In case you want to argue that you can make a rational decision by making an utility calcuation in your head, that might work in the case of the nurses but there are plenty of situation where the time to do that calculation isn’t available and it’s very useful to respond immediately.
If I dance intimitely with a woman who’s a stranger than it’s very important that I immediately act when I get the feeling that something isn’t right. When I started dancing I tried to get a rational model of what intimicy is or isn’t okay and act based on mental rules. It doesn’t work that way.
That requires that I can tell the feeling of “touching a woman feels good” apart from “this interaction doesn’t flow well, it’s better to reduce intimacy”. Understanding emotions and being able to tell different ones apart is useful. There are feelings that you should allow to override critical analysis in specific situations, there are other feelings that you shouldn’t allow to override critical analysis.
In biological modeling feelings of the person doing the modeling aren’t so central that they should override critical thought, but the model still get’s optimized for a certain use case and good models often trade some accuracy for simplicity. Simple models are more beautiful and simply beautiful models should be preferred over ugly complicated one if both models predict reality equally well.
It not about the indirect consequences of the action but about the consequences of being the kind of person that engages in specific actions.