… of LW: a while ago, a former boss and friend of mine said that rationality is irrational because you never have sufficient computational power to evaluate everything rationally. I thought he was missing the point—but after two posts on LW, I am inclined to agree with him.
He’s techinically correct on the first part, but what really bothers me is that while that statement is resource-aware, it totally disregards time. What can you do in 1, 2, 5, 10 minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years (remind me to edit this to include decades/centuries/milleniums in some time) that will help you achieve your goals?
It’s kind of funny—every post gets broken down into its tiniest constituents, and these get overanalysed and then people go on tangents only marginally relevant to the intent of the original article.
Typical online discussions.. okay, no data to back it up..
This would be fine if the original questions of the post were answered; but when I asked for metrics to evaluate a presidency, few people actually provided any—most started debating the validity of metrics, and one subthread went off to discuss the appropriateness of the term “gender equality”.
You’ve just had a taste of why discussing politics can get difficult and annoying.
I am new here, and I don’t want to be overly critical of a culture I do not yet understand. But I just want to point out—rationality is a great tool to solve problems; if it becomes overly abstract, it kind of misses its point I think.
He’s techinically correct on the first part, but what really bothers me is that while that statement is resource-aware, it totally disregards time. What can you do in 1, 2, 5, 10 minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years (remind me to edit this to include decades/centuries/milleniums in some time) that will help you achieve your goals?
There is a definition of rationality implicit in that, which seems to be along the lines of “use system 2, use if for eveything, and it keep on using it till you get an answer”.
He’s techinically correct on the first part, but what really bothers me is that while that statement is resource-aware, it totally disregards time. What can you do in 1, 2, 5, 10 minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years (remind me to edit this to include decades/centuries/milleniums in some time) that will help you achieve your goals?
Typical online discussions.. okay, no data to back it up..
You’ve just had a taste of why discussing politics can get difficult and annoying.
Not the first to bring it up. Just so you won’t feel lonely: https://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/
There is a definition of rationality implicit in that, which seems to be along the lines of “use system 2, use if for eveything, and it keep on using it till you get an answer”.