Eliezer Yudkowsky: belief

Transcript context

…I guess my question is, is contemplating probability theory at all in the first place something that tends to lead to more victory? I mean, who is the richest person in the world? How often does Elon Musk think in terms of probabilities when he’s deciding what to do? And here is somebody who is very successful. So I guess the bigger question is, in some sense, when you say — Rationality is systematized winning, it’s like a tautology. If the definition of rationality is whatever helps you in. If it’s the specific principles laid out in the sequences, then the question is, like, do the most successful people in the world practice them? I think you are trying to read something into this that is not meant to be there. The notion of “rationality is systematized winning” is meant to stand in contrast to a long philosophical tradition of notions of rationality that are not meant to be, about the mathematical structure not meant to be or about strangely wrong mathematical structures where you can clearly see how these mathematical productions structures will make predictable mistakes. It was meant to be saying something simple. There’s an episode of Star Trek wherein Kirk makes a 3D chess move against Spock and Spock loses, and Spock complains that Kirk’s move was irrational. Rational towards the goal.…

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