Rationality

"After reading The Better Angels of our Nature and Enlightenment now I was excited to read Pinkers latest book on being rational, especially today. But it was disappointing. There are several books on the subject like Nudge or Thinking Fast and Slow that do a much better job. Also, he does a poor job of being bipartisan when he chooses to be political. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did."

"A timely, intelligent, reminder that we are more rational than we believe we are. Some of it is next logical step progression which works out very rationally. Some of it is **** sapiens."

"Oh it's a good one."

"Full review and highlights at <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/rationality">https://books.max-nova.com/rationality</a><br/><br/>Internet celebrity Eliezer Yudkowsky drags us through an epic logical journey in his sprawling "Rationality". Drawing on mathematics, philosophy, history, made-up fables, and a deep obsession with science fiction, Yudkowsky lays out his case for the "Bayesian Conspiracy" and his view that real rationality is about "winning." This 1,000 page monster of a book tracks Yudkowsky's intellectual development as he struggles to build a "friendly" AI - a challenge which he believes is critical for our survival as a species. Of course, our self-appointed benefactor has a rather lofty assessment of his own intelligence and his frequent references to how smart he is really grated on me as I slogged through this behemoth. Yudkowsky halfway redeems himself with snappy lines like "Science has heroes, but no gods" and some dry humor:<blockquote>Back when the Greek philosophers were debating what this “real world” thingy might be made of, there were many positions. Heraclitus said, “All is fire.” Thales said, “All is water.” Pythagoras said, “All is number.” Score: Heraclitus: 0 Thales: 0 Pythagoras: 1</blockquote>Yudkowsky is really down on religion, school, and academia, and really big on Occam's Razor, atheism, and Bayesian inference. Indeed, Bayesianism is really the thread that ties the whole book together. And I've got to admit, Yudkowsky is pretty convincing. Combined with the last chapters of Godfrey-Smith's "Theory and Reality", Yudkowsky's exposition of Bayesian epistemology left me thinking that perhaps Bayesianism is the one true philosophy of science. It's a bit of a let-down because you can never be certain of anything in Bayes-land, but it does offer a clear framework for deciding between competing options and maybe that's good enough. Certainly it's a useful set of ideas for my 2017 reading theme on "The Integrity of Western Science". I do actually quite like Yudkowsky's idea about the public perception of science:<blockquote>I strongly suspect that a major part of science’s PR problem in the population at large is people who instinctively believe that if knowledge is given away for free, it cannot be important. If you had to undergo a fearsome initiation ritual to be told the truth about evolution, maybe people would be more satisfied with the answer.</blockquote>Of course, Yudkowsky himself owes a great (and acknowledged) debt to his intellectual forebears. He quotes Orwell, Hofstadter, Cialdini, Bostrom (see "Superintelligence"), Tegmark, and many others. I even caught echos of "Kindly Inquisitors" in his railing against postmodern epistemology.<br/><br/>And I would pay good money to see a Yudkowsky vs. Taleb smackdown (intellectual... or otherwise - does Yudkowsky even lift?!). Although they are similar in their contempt for academia and "experts," I suspect their belief systems actually diverge pretty sharply when we get into the specifics. For example, I recently finished Taleb's new "Skin in the Game" in which he talks about how the "intellectual yet idiot" class can't understand complex systems because they don't appreciate "emergent behavior." Yet Yudkowsky goes all-in against this dark magic:<blockquote>It is far better to say “magic,” than “complexity” or “emergence”; the latter words create an illusion of understanding.</blockquote>Well, one can hope. At least it'd be entertaining - Yudkowsky has the same flair for controversial statements as Taleb. I'm just waiting to slide this one in to conversation at a dinner party with the comparative literature crowd:<blockquote>I hold that everyone needs to learn at least one technical subject: physics, computer science, evolutionary biology, Bayesian probability theory, or something. Someone with no technical subjects under their belt has no referent for what it means to “explain” something.</blockquote>"