Rationality Is Not Systematized Winning

“Look, if I go to college and get my degree, and I go start a traditional family with 4 kids, and I make 120k a year and vote for my favorite political party, and the decades pass and I get old but I'm doing pretty damn well by historical human standards; just by doing everything society would like me to, what use do I have for your 'rationality'? Why should I change any of my actions from the societal default?”

You must have an answer for them. Saying rationality is systematized winning is ridiculous. It ignores that systematized winning is the default, you need to do more than that to be attractive. I think the strongest frame you can use to start really exploring the benefits of rationality is to ask yourself what advantage it has over societal defaults. When you give yourself permission to move away from the "systematized winning" definition, without the fear that you'll tie yourself in knots of paradox; it's then that you can really start to think about the subject concretely.

I mean, isn't the answer to that, as laid out in the Sequences, that Rationality really doesn't have anything to offer them? Tsuyoku Naritai, Something to Protect, etc. - Eliezer made the Sequences because he needed people to be considering the evidence that AI was dangerous and was gonna kill everyone by default, so short-term give money to MIRI and/or long-term join up as a researcher. "No one truly searches for the Way until their parents have failed them, their Gods are dead and their tools have shattered in their hands." I think it's fair that the majority of people don't have problems with that sort of magnitude of impact in their lives; and in any case, anyone who cared that much would already have gone off to join an EA project. I'm not sure that Eliezer-style rationality needs to struggle for some way to justify its existence when the explicit goal of its existence has already largely been fulfilled. Most people don't have one or two questions in their life that they absolutely, pass-or-die need to get right, and the answer is nontrivial. The societal default is a time-tested satisficing path.

When you are struggling to explain why something is true, make sure that it actually is true.

In one sense, "Rationality" is used to signify that something is part of the community that is associated with EA, Lesswrong, SSC, rationalist tumblr, secular solstice etc. If someone asked me "I have a successful life, what use is Rationality?" in this sense, I would probably reply there might not be any use at all. I happen to like rationalist tumblr and SSC and I like going to the SSC meetups at David Friedman's house, but you may or may not. Whatever floats your boat.

Now, if somebody ACTUALLY asked me "what use is rationality?" then I might say that I think education (not just schooling) is important because it helps us make better decisions, or I might say that scientific progress helps bring about new technologies that save lives and increase wealth. Or maybe, depending on context I may say something specific like "you're not going to solve your emotional issues with your ex by wishful thinking" or "if you don't understand your code how are supposed to debug it?" but only if I actually think they need to improve this region of their map in order to achieve their goals. If someone says, "No wait, what I really meant is, what use is instrumental rationality?" and actually means it, I would just facepalm because they're essentially asking why they should bother trying to get better at achieving their goals.

My point, is regarding what rationality actually is, I see no reason to exclude things that aren't part of Lesswrong et al. in trying to achieve my goals or in trying to learn. Should there be a community that is focused on giving people the cognitive skills to become more knowledgeable and more formidable? Yes, but we are not the only the only community focused on that, nor should we be. This is okay.

Saying rationality is systematized winning is ridiculous. It ignores that systematized winning is the default, you need to do more than that to be attractive. I think the strongest frame you can use to start really exploring the benefits of rationality is to ask yourself what advantage it has over societal defaults.

I don't think systematized winning is the default. Some people follow societal defaults and win systematically, but I think that more people follow societal defaults and just do pretty okay.

While writing the about page for the upcoming Whistling Lobsters 2.0 forum, I took a shot at giving a brief history of and definition of rationality. The following is the section providing a definition. I think I did an okay job:

The Rationalist Perspective

Rationality is related to but distinct from economics. While they share many ideas and goals, rationality is its own discipline with a different emphasis. It has two major components, instrumental and epistemic rationality. Instrumental means "in the service of", it's about greater insight in the service of other goals. Epistemic means "related to knowledge", and focuses on knowing the truth for its own sake. Instrumental rationality might be best described as "regret minimization". Certainly this phrase captures the key points of the rationalist perspective:

• Rationality cares about opportunity cost, which is the biggest shared trait with economics. Rationality is not skepticism, skeptics only care about not-losing. Rationalists care about winning, which means that the failure to realize full benefits is incorporated into the profit/loss evaluation.

• A rationalist should never envy someone else just for their choices. Consider Spock, the 'rational' first officer of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek. Often Spock will insist against helpful action because it would "be illogical". The natural question is "Illogical to whom?". No points are awarded for fetishism. If there are real outcomes to consider, perhaps you hold yourself back for some social benefit, that is all well and good. But there is nothing noble in doing things that make you or the world worse off because you've internalized fake rules.

• Long term thinking. Regret is generally something you start doing after you've had a bit of experience, it's something you need to think about early to avoid. You don't regret wasting your 20's until you're in your 30's. Regret is about your life path, which is utility vs. time. Most economics focuses on one shot utility maximization scenarios, or iterated games. But the real world has every kind of game imaginable just about, and your 'score' is how you perform on all of them.

I'm reading this, and it seems very reasonable, and then:

Changing our perspective might have significant benefits. Systematized winning is not an actionable definition. Most domains already have field specific knowledge on how to win, and in aggregate these organized practices are called society. The most powerful engine of systematized winning developed thus far is civilization.

So, assume civilization is a set of guidelines that dictate a course of actions. Just like rationality in fact. How can this beat rationality? If it dictates the correct course of actions, rationality will too. And often, rationality can suggest something more effective.

The possible counters c are: (a) rationality is hard work, and mostly sticking with civilization is fine. (b) Or you're not a good enough rationalist (or have enough good information) to beat civilizational guidelines.

But the article does not really suggest those. It says civilization is already winning. Well, it all hinges on the definition of winning. But it's quite clear you can achieve better outcomes through rationality if that's what you care about and are not put off by the extra work (counter (a)).

The counters are interesting but ultimately irrelevant. You can actually rationality arrive at (a): determining that the cost incurred by practicing rationality is more than the benefits accrued. That being said, it's so general a statement, I don't think anyone it can be true for anyone capable to think the thoughts. You can also rationally arrive at (b), and in fact, if it's true you should: civilization IS evidence, and it has to be valued accurately. If civilization guidelines keep trumping your best guesses, the weight of civilizational evidence should increase accordingly.