[extropy-chat] singularity conference at stanford

[Jef Allbright]

On 5/15/06, "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org> wrote:
> I remember back when Hofstadter was doing his column for Scientific
> American, in the 1980s.  He had gotten fixated on the idea of
> super-rationality.  This is the principle that you should make your
> decisions on the basis of what would happen if everyone reasoned like you.
> In this way you would cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma, and behave
> "nicely" in a variety of social conflict situations.  It's supposed to
> be superior to rationality, and Hofstadter was convinced that it was
> how everyone should be.

Hal -

I've admired and respected your rationality for many years, and this
is the most intriguing statement from you I've ever seen.

When I first learned about Prisoners' Dilemma -- and it was from that
same Scientific American article -- it illustrated clearly for me that
there was something more to real-world rationality than what was being
dealt with in standard game theory.  This sensitivity to more
encompassing context which is always a factor in the real world needed
accounting for, and Hofstadter's superrationality, along with
Buckminster Fullers statements about synergy, and other thinking on
positive sum interactions seemed (to me) to make sense of this
important question.

I am extremely interested in knowing why you see Hofstadter's
superrationality as wrong.

- Jef