Comments on: Smart Sincere Syndrome

By: Overcoming Bias : Doubting My Far Mind

Overcoming Bias : Doubting My Far Mind — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 03:15:36 +0000

[...] count myself in this smart sincere syndrome. I’m often distracted by what I see as important neglected topics, which offer fewer academic [...]

By: Why improve nature when destroying it is so much easier? « Robert Wiblin

Why improve nature when destroying it is so much easier? « Robert Wiblin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:52:20 +0000

[...] worry more about consistency. I expect intelligent people would run themselves in circles trying to consistently implement all of their values and so would program themselves to also become more self serving, but [...]

By: Terrorism the fruit of sincerity, intelligence and a thirst for consistency « Robert Wiblin

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:04:31 +0000

[...] January 17, 2010 in 1 Robin Hanson explains idealistic outliers: [...]

By: Linkage is Good for You: New Years Throwback Edition | In Mala Fide

Linkage is Good for You: New Years Throwback Edition | In Mala Fide — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:35:55 +0000

[...] Hanson – “Smart Sincere Syndrome“, “Our World in Ape [...]

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:47:22 +0000

There was a similar LessWrong post titled Reason as memetic immune disorder.

By: Jef Allbright

Jef Allbright — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:29:29 +0000

It might be worth observing that “expedient” in the sense it is being used here, entails a transparent assumption of a point of view from outside the system such that one can assess the trade-off between the two approaches and choose whether to be expedient or not and how much.

This transparent assumption of objectivity is endemic to “rationalist” discussion, even those that profess a belief in Bayes.

Also, we’re talking about scenarios of sufficient complexity, both under-defined and subject to combinatorial explosion (just like in the real world) sufficient to interest and challenge our notions of effective heuristics.

For the *embedded* agent aiming for “success” as presently understood, but within a complex environment of uncertainty, I think the relative weighting between near-term pragmatic (less principled) actions and far-term highly principled actions, each with its associated uncertainty, combined to represent a single strategy, takes the form of a hierarchical Bayesian optimization problem.

By: Constant

Constant — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:10:23 +0000

Consider the Socratic dialogs. Socrates (the lowly) is the reasoner, the logician. The other Athenians (aristocrats) are the idealists. The clash between the two modes of thought is jarring. It is evident that Socrates represents a novelty, an unwelcome one, one for which the others are unprepared, in the realm to which he chooses to apply his mode of thinking.

By: nazgulnarsil

nazgulnarsil — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:50:01 +0000

are you making fun of us cryonics supporters robin?

By: Michael Turner

Michael Turner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:52:39 +0000

I’d understood them as orthogonal, mainly coming into conflict because a competitive grasp of one can impoverish one’s knowledge and understanding of the other. I hadn’t thought of them so much in terms of long- or short-term, more as engineering-oriented vs. customer-facing. There are right and wrong ways of being expedient, and there are right and wrong ways of working for long-term goals. Expediency is in conflict with “doing things right” only to the extent that working out what’s right, in some timeless sense, is taking precious time — i.e., the perfect being the enemy of the good.

By: Michael Turner

Michael Turner — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:45:51 +0000

You might add Al Qaeda to the list. And those Lojban wankers. Unless I completely misunderstood Robin.