ntroPi

• ntroPiFeb 14, 2014, 4:24 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: How to illus­trate that so­ciety is mostly ir­ra­tional, and how ra­tio­nal­ity would be beneficial

  What do you mean by “only obvious in extreme cases?”

  Just, that there is no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.

  Again I agree on the positive effects of rationality and do believe that more rationality will improve society. But there are many people that say the same about religion, obedience or other things that I don’t view as positive.

• ntroPiFeb 14, 2014, 4:03 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: How to illus­trate that so­ciety is mostly ir­ra­tional, and how ra­tio­nal­ity would be beneficial

  So a society is rational if the institutions are rational … and an institution is rational if its outputs seem rationally designed … which is judged by a rational individual … which is still hard to define.

  I see your point and agree that there is room for improvement. Instead of “more rational” I would propose “less insane” which seems to fit the evidence as good as the other description.

  Will one of these more insane societies become less insane by making sure everybody on the streets is less insane? The connection doesn’t seem obvious, except in extreme cases.

  The connection between rational individuals and rational society is implied by use of the same word and only obvious in extreme cases.

• ntroPiFeb 14, 2014, 3:46 PM

  −4 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: How to illus­trate that so­ciety is mostly ir­ra­tional, and how ra­tio­nal­ity would be beneficial

  I think you have a good point, but it would be easier to see if you had posted a short sentence explaining what your point is. Please don’t assume that every reader has read all the sequences or has the time to do so (edit: read this one) just to understand your comment.

• ntroPiFeb 14, 2014, 3:01 PM

  2 points

  on: How to illus­trate that so­ciety is mostly ir­ra­tional, and how ra­tio­nal­ity would be beneficial

  Assuming that rationality can be taught at school to everyone, is there even a connection between more rational individuals and a more rational society?

  The problem I see here is that rationality is already very weakly defined for individuals and I know of no definitions in the context of society. A society can’t even think (or can it?), how can it be rational?

  Many decision processes of society are not based on rationality at all and I see no reason why the tried ways of winning (i.e. corruption) should be replaced by others assuming as the only change slightly more rational agents. Elections produces an average of opinions, this average may not change at all given more rational voters.

  You will have to cover a lot of inference steps just to show that society as a whole will become more rational. Rationality isn’t the only attribute of a “good” society and there might be ugly trade-offs. Whether a more rational society will have any “huge benefits” is just the last question in a chain that will surely be too much for a single article or a few sentences.

• ntroPiFeb 10, 2014, 12:18 AM

  0 points

  on: How big of an im­pact would cleaner poli­ti­cal de­bates have on so­ciety?

  The positive effects would trickle down into many aspects of our society.

  I think the opposite way is more probable. We first need a better culture of debate in society. Only if debate is more accepted and expected by the general population this change may trickle up to the politicians and the mass media. It could be pushed back down by the powerful if they feel threatened.

  Mass debate is very difficult though.

• ntroPiJan 31, 2014, 12:42 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Mul­ti­verse-Wide Prefer­ence Utilitarianism

  This gave me an idea to make things even more complicated: Let’s assume a scientist manages to create a simulated civilization of the same size as his own. It turns out, that to keep the civilization running he will have to sacrifice a lot. All members of the simulated civilization prefer to continue existing while the “mother civilization” prefers to sacrifice as little as possible.

  How much should be sacrificed to keep the simulation running as long as possible? Should the simulated civilization create simulations itself to increase the preference of continued existence?

  Bonus questions: Does a simulated Civilization get to prefer anything? What are the moral implications of creating new beings that may hold preference (including having children in real life)? What if the scientist can manipulate the preferences of the simulated civilization, should he? And to what end? What about education and other preference changing techniques in real life?

  I have to say it’s fun to find the most extreme scenario to doom our civilization by critical mass of preference. Can you find a more extreme or more realistic one than my civilization simulating supercomputer or the aliens mentioned in the original post?