As with jsalvati’s comment, upon reading this post I was convinced that either I was hallucinating, that almost the entirety of this post had appeared elsewhere before, or that I’ve read so much of Eliezer’s writing that I’m anticipating his arguments in detail before he makes them.
Fortunately, it turns out that the second (and least disturbing) option was correct, in that a substantial amount of this post already existed at: [link deleted]
Not that I’m complaining, but it was seriously bothering me that I knew I’d heard this stuff before, but Google said it hadn’t previously been posted on Overcoming Bias, and I was starting to doubt my sanity...
@Stuart Armstrong: First of all, the strongest influence on future success in society is whether or not one is already successful (most easily accomplished by having successful parents). One would also expect some percentage of non-rationalists to succeed anyways simply through chance. Assuming that non-rationalists substantially outnumber rationalists, it isn’t terribly surprising to see more of the former among successful people. Rather than looking at how many successful people are rationalists, it would be more informative to look at rational people and see how many become more successful over their lives compared to average. Or, you could try and estimate the likelihoods of being rational, being successful, and being rational given success, then apply Bayes’ law...
Also, if rationalists seem more skilled at avoiding failure than at winning, perhaps that merely suggests that failure is more predictable than success?