Increasing the rationality of a population can lead to that population being worse off, even by the “rationality as systematized winning” definition, if the members are at odds with each other. You don’t necessarily want your adversaries to be more rational. But the reason that part made me cringe is that it carries so many caveats that it’s incredibly misleading. There are many contexts where defecting in a prisoner’s dilemma is a predictably bad idea, and rationality already has image problems as being rigid and unadaptable as well as antisocial without reinforcing them.
The video probably couldn’t really have gone into a proper discussion of what variations of the prisoner’s dilemma make defection appropriate without breaking the flow, but it really wasn’t helped by a message of “paradoxically, rationality can leave you worse off.”
I agree with your point that usage of rationality this way exacerbates the problem of straw-vulcanism. I’m not sure the criticism is aimed at the lowest hanging fruit in this case, but your point is well taken.
Your point about the dangerousness of rationality is not on point. I am almost strictly better off in a society in which the members are not at odds than in one where they are at odds. But whether one of the exceptions to that statement applies does not appear to depends on how dangerous individual members are. Unless individuals are so dangerous that mutually assured destruction is an important part of the analysis. And that is currently so unrealistic (at the individual level) that I don’t think it is worth talking about.
Your point about the dangerousness of rationality is not on point.
My point is not that rationality is dangerous. It’s possible to formulate situations in which increasing the rationality of a population leaves the population worse off, rather like it’s possible to formulate situations that reward agents for having priors that would normally be stupid. The fact that you can contrive such situations doesn’t constitute a compelling criticism of rationality, which is what makes the video problematic. If rationality really were that dangerous, the implicit criticism would be entirely valid.
Increasing the rationality of a population can lead to that population being worse off, even by the “rationality as systematized winning” definition, if the members are at odds with each other. You don’t necessarily want your adversaries to be more rational. But the reason that part made me cringe is that it carries so many caveats that it’s incredibly misleading. There are many contexts where defecting in a prisoner’s dilemma is a predictably bad idea, and rationality already has image problems as being rigid and unadaptable as well as antisocial without reinforcing them.
The video probably couldn’t really have gone into a proper discussion of what variations of the prisoner’s dilemma make defection appropriate without breaking the flow, but it really wasn’t helped by a message of “paradoxically, rationality can leave you worse off.”
I agree with your point that usage of rationality this way exacerbates the problem of straw-vulcanism. I’m not sure the criticism is aimed at the lowest hanging fruit in this case, but your point is well taken.
Your point about the dangerousness of rationality is not on point. I am almost strictly better off in a society in which the members are not at odds than in one where they are at odds. But whether one of the exceptions to that statement applies does not appear to depends on how dangerous individual members are. Unless individuals are so dangerous that mutually assured destruction is an important part of the analysis. And that is currently so unrealistic (at the individual level) that I don’t think it is worth talking about.
My point is not that rationality is dangerous. It’s possible to formulate situations in which increasing the rationality of a population leaves the population worse off, rather like it’s possible to formulate situations that reward agents for having priors that would normally be stupid. The fact that you can contrive such situations doesn’t constitute a compelling criticism of rationality, which is what makes the video problematic. If rationality really were that dangerous, the implicit criticism would be entirely valid.