6 ms·

That's why it's called "less wrong". The goal isn't to be perfect, the goal is to do better. To be less wrong.

by lalaithion 5y ago

wombatmobile 5y ago
> the goal is to do better Why is that "the" goal? Who sets "the" goal?
- voxic11 5y ago
  Its the goal of the LessWrong/Rationalist community.
  - analog31 5y ago
    Less Wrong seems to be a manifestation of a thing that comes in cycles: Something triggers the rise of a "rationalist" movement, including possibly a new evangelist or a new medium. Eventually, rationalism and rational people end up at a standoff. Then the whole thing repeats itself after a period of time. I'm probably rational enough but also can't make sense of much of the rationalist literature, so I simply follow my own compass and hope for the best. I'm skeptical of Bayes Theater.
- Nav_Panel 5y ago
  Yudkowsky and other prominent contributors set "the" goal as a sort of revealed wisdom regarding their speculations about what a super powerful AI will do. Pragmatically, the goals themselves appeal to individuals who want to maintain conventional (liberal) morality yet also position themselves as superior, typically as a form of compensation.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    position themselves as superior This is why we can't have nice things. Any time someone tries to find more effective ways of making good decisions or accomplishing their goals, someone has to bring out the most tortured cynical interpretation to tear them down.
    - Nav_Panel 5y ago
      Have you hung out much with rationalists?
      - JohnPrine 5y ago
        i consider myself a rationalist (or at least, an aspiring rationalist), and people like hanging out with me. learning about this stuff has changed my life and relationships for the better.
        klipt 5y ago
        Interesting, can you give a specific example of using rationalist techniques to solve a relationship problem?
        JohnPrine 5y ago
        Sure. In the past, I've been a person with a strong desire to be right in every situation. If I thought I was right I would be very willing to stubbornly argue my point, without any consideration of the counterpoints that were presented to me. Rationality is in part about understanding that every piece of knowledge I have is probabilistic - that there's a chance that each belief I have is wrong, and that I need to be able to let go of a belief if I encounter enough counter-evidence. I'm sure you've met people who can't be swayed from a belief no matter what you tell them, and you know how difficult it can be to get along with those people. Internalizing the methods of rationality have helped me transform from one of those sorts of people to a more reasonable one whom people have a more pleasant time interacting with. As a specific example, I made a comment to my roommate last winter about how I thought his girlfriend's hyper caution around COVID was limiting my personal freedom. I realized that I had been crass and apologized to him, but he told his girlfriend anyways and it caused a great deal of tension between the three of us. My own girlfriend told me I should apologize to her. I believed I had nothing to apologize for since I hadn't said anything to her directly, I didn't believe my roommate should have repeated the comment to her in the first place, and I had apologized to him for it already. My girlfriend gave me reasons why an apology was in order, though, and I assigned a lot of weight to her reasoning since I know her to be a more sensitive and emotionally intelligent person than myself. I was able to let go of the belief in my own righteousness and write a heartfelt apology which did wonderfully to mend the relationship. A previous version of me would have clung to the belief that I was in the right, and either not apologize or write a half-assed apology that would do nothing to fix the situation. The current version of me which strives to be rational was aware of my own biases, recognized that my internal map may not match the territory, and was willing to update based on the evidence from my girlfriend's greater authority on emotional matters.
- JohnPrine 5y ago
  The goal is to make decisions that are "better" as defined by your own utility function given limited information. This is also called "winning"
hanche 5y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that even being less wrong is NP-hard.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The saving grace of being able to survive in the universe is that it's possible to climb up NP hard problems far enough to get real results with hard work.
  - hanche 5y ago
    Indeed. And thanks! I needed a little morale booster now, for reasons unrelated to this topic.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    It also means that you might not know if the hard work is climbing up or down (towards or away) from the solution.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      No, you know if you're getting better or worse in an NP problem because checking answers is in P.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        If you find a solution, yes
        whatshisface 5y ago
        Oh, you're thinking of NP-hard yes-no problems. Many if not most NP-hard problems of practical importance, including the traveling salesman, involve integer rather than boolean scores.
        5y ago
kirse 5y ago
Which is ironic because the pursuit of knowledge only continues to increase the landscape of unknowns towards infinity - the branches of the tree of undiscovered and unknown knowledge continues to grow exponentially. It's as-if today we thought the choices were A or B, yet tomorrow we discover there was a C, and the next day D and so forth. If anything we are only discovering we are "more wrong" every day.
- tines 5y ago
  Actually I think this is the same fallacy as one of Zeno's paradoxes, and has the same resolution. We are discovering more wrong, as you say, but the "infinity" of wrongs is in the direction of the infinitely small (or "infinitely detailed"), not the infinitely large. In other words, every time we fill in a gap in our knowledge, we create two more gaps, so to speak, but nevertheless we know more than we did before.
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
I think this misses the point. Even being "less" wrong requires an amount of work that even the best/smartest etc... cannot consistently apply. I do believe this is zero-sum in that improving on one set of decisions means no applying the same rigor to others. This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety.
- ret2plt 5y ago
  > This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety. To be clear, the argument (in rationalist circles) is not that climate change is no big deal, it's that there's already a ton of people worrying about it, so it is better to allocate some extra resources to underfunded problems.

That's why it's called "less wrong". The goal isn't to be perfect, the goal is to do better. To be less wrong.

wombatmobile 5y ago

> the goal is to do better Why is that "the" goal? Who sets "the" goal?

voxic11 5y ago
Its the goal of the LessWrong/Rationalist community.
- analog31 5y ago
  Less Wrong seems to be a manifestation of a thing that comes in cycles: Something triggers the rise of a "rationalist" movement, including possibly a new evangelist or a new medium. Eventually, rationalism and rational people end up at a standoff. Then the whole thing repeats itself after a period of time. I'm probably rational enough but also can't make sense of much of the rationalist literature, so I simply follow my own compass and hope for the best. I'm skeptical of Bayes Theater.
Nav_Panel 5y ago
Yudkowsky and other prominent contributors set "the" goal as a sort of revealed wisdom regarding their speculations about what a super powerful AI will do. Pragmatically, the goals themselves appeal to individuals who want to maintain conventional (liberal) morality yet also position themselves as superior, typically as a form of compensation.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  position themselves as superior This is why we can't have nice things. Any time someone tries to find more effective ways of making good decisions or accomplishing their goals, someone has to bring out the most tortured cynical interpretation to tear them down.
  - Nav_Panel 5y ago
    Have you hung out much with rationalists?
    - JohnPrine 5y ago
      i consider myself a rationalist (or at least, an aspiring rationalist), and people like hanging out with me. learning about this stuff has changed my life and relationships for the better.
      - klipt 5y ago
        Interesting, can you give a specific example of using rationalist techniques to solve a relationship problem?
        JohnPrine 5y ago
        Sure. In the past, I've been a person with a strong desire to be right in every situation. If I thought I was right I would be very willing to stubbornly argue my point, without any consideration of the counterpoints that were presented to me. Rationality is in part about understanding that every piece of knowledge I have is probabilistic - that there's a chance that each belief I have is wrong, and that I need to be able to let go of a belief if I encounter enough counter-evidence. I'm sure you've met people who can't be swayed from a belief no matter what you tell them, and you know how difficult it can be to get along with those people. Internalizing the methods of rationality have helped me transform from one of those sorts of people to a more reasonable one whom people have a more pleasant time interacting with. As a specific example, I made a comment to my roommate last winter about how I thought his girlfriend's hyper caution around COVID was limiting my personal freedom. I realized that I had been crass and apologized to him, but he told his girlfriend anyways and it caused a great deal of tension between the three of us. My own girlfriend told me I should apologize to her. I believed I had nothing to apologize for since I hadn't said anything to her directly, I didn't believe my roommate should have repeated the comment to her in the first place, and I had apologized to him for it already. My girlfriend gave me reasons why an apology was in order, though, and I assigned a lot of weight to her reasoning since I know her to be a more sensitive and emotionally intelligent person than myself. I was able to let go of the belief in my own righteousness and write a heartfelt apology which did wonderfully to mend the relationship. A previous version of me would have clung to the belief that I was in the right, and either not apologize or write a half-assed apology that would do nothing to fix the situation. The current version of me which strives to be rational was aware of my own biases, recognized that my internal map may not match the territory, and was willing to update based on the evidence from my girlfriend's greater authority on emotional matters.
JohnPrine 5y ago
The goal is to make decisions that are "better" as defined by your own utility function given limited information. This is also called "winning"

hanche 5y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that even being less wrong is NP-hard.

whatshisface 5y ago
The saving grace of being able to survive in the universe is that it's possible to climb up NP hard problems far enough to get real results with hard work.
- hanche 5y ago
  Indeed. And thanks! I needed a little morale booster now, for reasons unrelated to this topic.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It also means that you might not know if the hard work is climbing up or down (towards or away) from the solution.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    No, you know if you're getting better or worse in an NP problem because checking answers is in P.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      If you find a solution, yes
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        Oh, you're thinking of NP-hard yes-no problems. Many if not most NP-hard problems of practical importance, including the traveling salesman, involve integer rather than boolean scores.
        5y ago

kirse 5y ago

Which is ironic because the pursuit of knowledge only continues to increase the landscape of unknowns towards infinity - the branches of the tree of undiscovered and unknown knowledge continues to grow exponentially. It's as-if today we thought the choices were A or B, yet tomorrow we discover there was a C, and the next day D and so forth. If anything we are only discovering we are "more wrong" every day.

tines 5y ago
Actually I think this is the same fallacy as one of Zeno's paradoxes, and has the same resolution. We are discovering more wrong, as you say, but the "infinity" of wrongs is in the direction of the infinitely small (or "infinitely detailed"), not the infinitely large. In other words, every time we fill in a gap in our knowledge, we create two more gaps, so to speak, but nevertheless we know more than we did before.

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

I think this misses the point. Even being "less" wrong requires an amount of work that even the best/smartest etc... cannot consistently apply. I do believe this is zero-sum in that improving on one set of decisions means no applying the same rigor to others. This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety.

ret2plt 5y ago
> This is often seen in the form of very smart people also believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI safety. To be clear, the argument (in rationalist circles) is not that climate change is no big deal, it's that there's already a ton of people worrying about it, so it is better to allocate some extra resources to underfunded problems.