Perhaps a better analogy: why are you worried about how the boiler behaves if it gets overpressurized? Why not just focus on how well it runs the rest of the time?
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Replying to @drethelin @Meaningness
I don't really get this analogy. As I understand David, he's saying that rationalism focuses on how to maximize EV at explicit decision points, but ignores how to deal with facets of the system that don't show up as explicit choices
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It's not [rational = bugs] vs. [metarational = working smoothly], but rather [rational = choice points] vs. [metarational = total behavior of the system]
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FWIW, the main criticism of metarationalism that resonates with me is: anything that meta-R points out can then (by virtue of being pointed out) get folded neatly into R. Rationalists absolutely care about all the things metarationalists care about! So where's the meta??
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Replying to @KevinSimler @drethelin
I’m using “rational” to mean roughly “technical” or “formal” rationality specifically, and not jus “good thinking.” (This choice of usage may cause confusion although it’s reasonably standard and I stress the specificity frequently.)
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Replying to @Meaningness @drethelin
haha yeah I'll bet this causes a lot of problems, because Eliezer strongly branded "rationality" as "good/broad/holistic thinking" over at LW. I'm constantly (mis?)reading your stuff as, "This is what meta-rationalism tries to do _as opposed to_ LW-style rationalism."
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Replying to @KevinSimler @drethelin
Well, he and others of the Berkeley Rationalist community leaders have recently said they regret choosing the word “rationality” because it does have multiple senses and so causes confusion. I’d like to find another word myself, for the same reason, but can’t find one.
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Replying to @KevinSimler @drethelin
Long section of the book near the beginning defines all the terms (and then I repeat the definitions periodically for spaced repetition learning).
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This stuff really does need to be a book, because it’s profoundly unfamiliar for most people, there is a lot of detail, and the logic of it is quite intricate. That is why I am writing it as a book, not a collection of essays.
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But I don’t get much time to write, so I tweet random bits out of context, and some of them may be understandable, and others make no sense because there’s a lot of assumed background conceptual apparatus that I haven’t written up yet.
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Little if any of the story is original to me, and people who have read the stuff I’m drawing on often do understand the out-of-context bits, whereas those who haven’t find them opaque.
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