From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 06:41:26 MDT
On Monday, August 26, 2002, at 03:49 AM, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Not *everything*. Just everything that *works* - including, but not
> limited to, everything that nonaccidentally accomplishes any kind of
> evolutionary, moral, or cognitive purpose. I don't know that the
> universe is constructed such that everything tends to contain more and
> more of the Force (rationality) as time goes on. John Smart might
> argue this; I'm not. I'm just saying that wherever something *does*
> work, nonaccidentally, it's because the Force (rationality) is at work.
I'm starting to think Eliezer has been replaced. This just keeps
getting crazier. And now we're debating what the definition of a word
is!
What you are describing is not rationality. Rationality is limited to
the ability to find the *right* workable solution. If something only
works but is not right, this thing is not imperfectly rational, the
process that created it is. As far as I can tell, all you are saying is:
All nonaccidental results of any process in the universe that
accomplishes something, no matter how trivial, can be modeled in terms
of the BPT.
Given this, I would then state that rationality is the ability of these
processes to make use of the BPT in an efficient, objective, and right
manner, which is to say rationality is the ability to get your priors
and U right.
-- Gordon Worley `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty http://www.rbisland.cx/ said, `it means just what I choose redbird@rbisland.cx it to mean--neither more nor less.' PGP: 0xBBD3B003 --Lewis Carroll
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