Valley of Bad Rationality

Blog postsNon-post example:

• Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
• Incremental Progress and the Valley
• Reason as memetic immune disorder by Phil Goetz
• Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy by Anna Salamon
• This comment by YvainScott Alexander on Bayesians vs. Barbarians

• Value of Rationality
• Costs of rationality
• Dangerous knowledge
• Debiasing
• Information Hazards

• Value of Rationality
• Costs of rationality
• Dangerous knowledge
• Debiasing

Then I finally reply that my experience so far - even in this realm of merely human possibility - does seem to indicate that, once you sort yourself out a bit and you aren't doing quite so many other things wrong, striving for more rationality actually will make you better off. The long road leads out of the valley and higher than before, even in the human lands.

—Incremental Progress and the Valley

It has been observed that when someone is just starting to learn rationality, they sometimes appear to be worse off than they were before. OthersSomeone else may then sometimes allege that after they learnthis person learns even more about rationality, they will finally be better off than youthey were before youthey started. The period before this improvement is known as "the valley of bad rationality".

It has been observed that when someone is just starting to learn rationality, they sometimes appear to be worse off than they were before. Others, with more experience at rationality, claimOthers then sometimes allege that after youthey learn even more about rationality, youthey will be better off than you were before you started. The period before this improvement is known as "the valley of bad rationality".

• Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
• Incremental Progress and the Valley
• Reason as memetic immune disorder by Phil Goetz
• Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy by Anna Salamon
• This comment by Yvain on Bayesians vs. Barbarians

• Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
• Incremental Progress and the Valley
• Reason as memetic immune disorder by Phil Goetz
• Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy by Anna Salamon

• Incremental Progress and the Valley
• Reason as memetic immune disorder by Phil Goetz
• Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy by Anna Salamon