Your Rationality is My Business

I agree wholeheartedly with this post or blog entry. As one of my favorite authors once said, we are all pawns and players in the Game of Life.

If you (the reader) meet me, I will try to determine whether you are good or evil, that is, whether you're expected impact on the future is positive or negative --and if you care for nothing but pleasure, I'm probably going to decide that you are at least a little evil-- though the worst thing I will do to you is ignore you and refuse to cooperate with you. Moreover, I know how complex the human morality and rationality are, so I know that my judgement about people can always be in error.

EY : One of those interests is the human pursuit of truth, which has strengthened slowly over the generations (for there was not always Science).

You seem to say "Science is the pursuit of truth". Science is NOT the pursuit of truth, Science is the pursuit of intersubjective evidence. Science never proves anything, Science only disproves nonsensical hypotheses and builds plausibility of non disproved hypotheses. Truth "about reality" is a religious concept, a lethal Platonistic illusion. Truth has a defined meaning ONLY in analytical philosophy and formalised discourse. Even in mathematics truth depends on the premises, re the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis from ZF axioms. Therefore everytime people argue "in the defense of truth" one can be sure that there is an underlying political scam at work and that no consensus can be reached.

Kevembuangga,

If you take a Bayesian view of the scientific process as opposed to a Popperian one, then theories are never disproved either, just shown to be very unlikely.

But though science can never prove anything conclusively, it doesn't follow that science is not a pursuit of truth. There are no processes that produce certain truths. The ones that claim to are mainly fundamentalist religions. But something doesn't have to be certain to be a truth, if you're a Bayesian, and not a fundamentalist.

Some minor quibbles: Would a truly selfish person only be concerned with money? That would indicate that in a society without money, nobody could be selfish. Children behave in a selfish manner without money, so it does not seem plausible to me. A person selfish for attention might very well be prone to arguing with Eliezer.

It is true that absolute relativism cannot pass judgment on others passing judgment. So what reasons might someone have to use relativism to respond to someone passing judgment? It has been brought up on this blog that persistent disagreement is evidence of irrationality, so the relativist might be explaining why they themselves decline to pass judgment in a similar manner on the issue being discussed. They might also personally disapprove of just what the judger is decrying, but also feel compelled to remind everyone that their opinions are just that: opinions.

I suppose, to put it more clearly, one would say that truth does actually exist, but is only approximated with increasing degrees of accuracy by science. The output of science might not be truth, but it's the closest approximation anyone could ever have to truth.

Yudkowsky: You seem to be responding to a bias that studying economics tends to inculcate in people. The bias is to assume that if people follow their preferences then their action cannot be dismissed as stupid or as ultimately having negative effects. Philosophers often accuse economists of this same bias. (A while ago, a philosopher on this blog accused Robin Hanson of not considering deontological reasons for implementing certain health policies. Yudkowsky rebuked Hanson for failing to distinguish between actions beneficial relative to the self-interest of individuals and beneficial relative to humanity during the discussion of Kahneman's article about biases towards Hawkishness).

This suggests a possible general discussion: which biases do various academic disciplines promote? Knowing this would be useful for individuals trying to de-bias (e.g. if I'm an economist, then I should read some ethics from analytic philosophy). I don't know many academic disciplines well, but I'll make some uninformed speculations to show the sort of biases I mean:

Economics: assuming people are more rational than they are (though economists are getting better at this), assuming that markets can be efficient in practice.

Physics: assuming that everything that is not math or physics is (a) soft and easy and (b) not hard or precise enough to give serious epistemological value. Taking the philosophical view that there is nothing real apart from what is studied by physics (e.g. ethics must be BS because in doesn't involve physics, sociology can't be real because it can't be reduced to physics).

Analytical philosophy: Assuming that science will barely move forward in the future. For example, various analytical philosophers have said (following Chomsky) that understanding consciousness scientifically may be beyond are cognitive abilities (the same is also said of understanding ethics scientifically). Yet the same could have been said about 'life' (in the sense that animals and bacteria are alive) or about the origin of life and species. These problems seemed so mysterious as to be beyond the capability of science to explain (e.g. how does self-replication avoid infinite regress?).

W.K. Clifford gave a short, sweet argument for your position in his "The Ethics of Belief":

1. Our beliefs inform how we act.
2. Our actions affect other people.
3. Therefore. our beliefs affect other people. (And to the extent that how you treat me IS something I have a right to make judgments about, it IS my business what you believe or prefer...)

Bob,

Daniel Dennett, an analytic philosopher, makes a very similar point to one that you do in defending physicalist approaches to the philosophy of mind. He thinks that the idea that there's a special, hard problem associated with explaining consciousness is similar to the pre-20th century idea that there's a special, hard problem with explaining life, and that philosophers who posit irreducible mental substances or properties are no better than vitalists, who believed that appeal to irreducible vital forces was necessary to explain life.

Dennett is far from unusual among analytic philosophers in his physicalism. Some form of physicalism about the mental is almost certainly a plurality position among analytic philosophers, if not a majority one. While I'm sure there are other biases that analytic philosophers suffer from, I think the one you've suggested isn't a plausible candidate for a general problem with the profession.

Bob, how would we know if ethics or sociology were B.S or not? If physics were B.S we wouldn't have been able to put men on the moon. The fields disrespected by physicists tend to be less falsifiable.

You say you don't want to burn your opponent, but only argue against her view. Argument is a competitive pursuit. Public arguments about important subjects will likely get political. War and violence is but an extension of politics. If you have an intractable argument about a very important topic, you will have to deal with the possibility of violence.

This is rubbish. Your contention that cryonics be made mandatory involves coercion of those who do not agree - that's what "mandatory" means. Violence is at the base of all coercion, all regulation, all mandates. Therefore, everything you piously claim above is a lie.

My syllogism runs, "I think Susie said something wrong, therefore, I will argue against what she said, but I will not set her on fire, or try to stop her from talking by violence or regulation..."

Exactly how far does your modesty run, Eliezer? Do you disapprove of economic sanctions (e.g. fines, lost business opportunities) for Susie? Do you disapprove of social sanctions (e.g. shunning Susie not because she is useless or dangerous but specifically in order to induce her to change her mind)? Would you avoid such sanctions even if Susie were publicly and successfully tricking large numbers of people into supporting unwise policies based on logically incoherent arguments?

I sympathize with this conclusion. I may even agree with it.

That said, the argument rests heavily on the rhetorical equation of "daring to criticize others' decisions" with strengthening "the human pursuit of Truth," and ultimately seeks to justify the former by invoking the value of the latter. Along the way it tosses in "arguing against bad ideas" and "convincing people" and treats them all as roughly interchangeable.

I'm not sure that's justified. There are differences, and they matter.

To put it bluntly, I suspect you're rationalizing.

Criticizing people -- especially in public -- has a social cost; so does arguing against bad ideas. If the primary payoff is the chance of convincing them (or listeners) and thereby advancing the cause of Truth, it's worth looking for less expensive methods for buying that payoff.

I think most of us would do that more, except that argument is in certain contexts is also a very good social capital investment strategy.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, any more than there's anything intrinsically wrong with making money in the stock market. But to claim that one's primary reason for playing the markets is to advance the cause of Capitalism is disingenuous.

There are payoffs here besides Truth, and to pretend otherwise is itself a source of darkness.

The syllogism we desire to avoid runs: "I think Susie said a bad thing, therefore, Susie should be set on fire." [...]

My syllogism runs, "I think Susie said something wrong, therefore, I will argue against what she said, but I will not set her on fire, or try to stop her from talking by violence or regulation..."

Nitpick: These are enthymemes, not syllogisms.

If they were really selfish, they would get on with making money instead of arguing passionately with others.

This I do not understand. People are built of many different modules, and I don't see why someone can't be selfish in their life decisions, and at the same time, like so many humans, be prone to arguing about their views with other humans in spare time.

I'm clearly missing something, because I also can't see what that whole paragraph is doing in this article, what it contributes to the overall point. If anyone can be bothered to clarify, that'd be appreciated.

No one should judge anyone, ever; anyone who judges is committing a terrible sin, and should be publicly pilloried for it.

You mean, publicly judged for it ;)

If there are any true Relativists or Selfishes, we do not hear them—they remain silent, non-players.

A truly selfish person will still be concerned with PR. Concealing one's selfishness might prove impossible, or at the very least, inconvenient. Far better to convince society it's a virtue. Especially if one is already standing on a heap of utility and does not feel like sharing.