[extropy-chat] Mature rationality

[Acy James Stapp]

--- Eliezer Yudkowsky <sentience at pobox.com> wrote:

> 
> 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.

Mike Lorrey:

> If everybody followed eliezers rules, nobody would ever bet against
the
> house... what a FUN world THAT would be, eh?

Not necessarily true. People have imperfect information and they asess
the probability of events happening differently. The classic example
of this is betting on an event you know will be thrown.
Additionally betting against long odds might be necessary to prepare
the odds for a situation later, for example, taking a fall yourself
in order to manipulate the opinions of other bettors.