[extropy-chat] Mature rationality

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Chris Hibbert wrote:

> Eliezer wrote:
> 
>> Anyone who wishes to make a serious commitment to rationality, to 
>> learn it as an art the way that judo or fencing is an art, must
>> commit to being rational all the time, every time, twenty four hours
>> a day seven days a week, with not a single area of life reserved for
>> relaxing with some comfortable nonsense, not one place left where
>> that darned inconvenient rationality business can't stomp all over
>> the things you want to believe.
> 
> This seems like hyperbole to me.  Perhaps it is intended as hyperbole. 
> Certainly in the rest of his post, Eliezer focused on your beliefs on 
> which you take action.  But here, he seems to be saying that there is no 
> rationale for times when you are doing things other than thinking about 
> and acting on the truth.

Not at all.  I am saying that whatever your pursuit or enjoyment, you 
should never knowingly accept a falsehood, nor assign a confidence too high 
for the evidence, nor use rules other than rationality in deciding what to 
believe.  It is okay to read science fiction novels, so long as you assign 
accurate probabilities to all the events described therein.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence