It seems unlikely that there are going to be very many examples of fiction containing characters using an interesting technique of rationality since—as far as I know—the idea of a real-life “rationality technique” analogous to a martial art technique is original to you, Eliezer. An author might write a story about some group or individual achieving great things and tell us that this group or person studies rationality, but they won’t be able to describe rationality techniques in detail because the concept of rationality techniques didn’t exist before the establishment of Overcoming Bias. All they’re going to be able to do is talk vaguely about monasteries and Grand Master Rationalists. We ought to be careful about interpreting stories to suit our agenda because it would be so easy to fall into the trap of generalising from fictional evidence. Perhaps learning rationality in a monastery under the tutelage of a Grand Master is a terrible way to learn to Think Better, but if we’ve spent all our time discussing books that contain this trope, we might have trouble rejecting it as a bad idea.
(Stiegler has another novel called Earthweb which is about using prediction markets to defend the Earth from invading aliens, which was my introduction to the concept of prediction markets.)
Would it be rational to use prediction markets to defend the Earth from aliens? Using Rationality Tools in an irrational way turns them into Irrationality Tools. The writer is just presenting an idea, he has no way of knowing if that technique would work in that scenario, it might even make the situation worse (does that make it Irrationalist Fiction?)
It seems unlikely that there are going to be very many examples of fiction containing characters using an interesting technique of rationality since—as far as I know—the idea of a real-life “rationality technique” analogous to a martial art technique is original to you, Eliezer.
It would seem that the existence of two distinct authors predating myself who wrote such fiction constitutes a counterexample to your reasoning.
It seems unlikely that there are going to be very many examples of fiction containing characters using an interesting technique of rationality since—as far as I know—the idea of a real-life “rationality technique” analogous to a martial art technique is original to you, Eliezer. An author might write a story about some group or individual achieving great things and tell us that this group or person studies rationality, but they won’t be able to describe rationality techniques in detail because the concept of rationality techniques didn’t exist before the establishment of Overcoming Bias. All they’re going to be able to do is talk vaguely about monasteries and Grand Master Rationalists. We ought to be careful about interpreting stories to suit our agenda because it would be so easy to fall into the trap of generalising from fictional evidence. Perhaps learning rationality in a monastery under the tutelage of a Grand Master is a terrible way to learn to Think Better, but if we’ve spent all our time discussing books that contain this trope, we might have trouble rejecting it as a bad idea.
(Stiegler has another novel called Earthweb which is about using prediction markets to defend the Earth from invading aliens, which was my introduction to the concept of prediction markets.)
Would it be rational to use prediction markets to defend the Earth from aliens? Using Rationality Tools in an irrational way turns them into Irrationality Tools. The writer is just presenting an idea, he has no way of knowing if that technique would work in that scenario, it might even make the situation worse (does that make it Irrationalist Fiction?)
It would seem that the existence of two distinct authors predating myself who wrote such fiction constitutes a counterexample to your reasoning.