Thread by @Meaningness

.@slatestarcodex’s meta-rationality, 🧵 Part The Second:

Everything Wrong In The World Is Caused By Failing To Do Meta-Rationality Competently

https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1493681890569515008

@slatestarcodex The @slatestarcodex micro-grants program excites me because—at a guess—great things will come out of it, but most awardees would not have survived accountable, BUREAUCRATICALLY RATIONAL evaluation:

https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1475984501398335491?s=20&t=BvVxlgefu9chxI--ccVHxQ

@slatestarcodex 👨‍💼 When you can’t be rational in a way that meaningfully optimizes what actually matters, but you are accountable for being rational anyway,

you naturally fall back on using a mindless procedural checklist. That lets you avoid blame and makes your work look smooth and competent.

@slatestarcodex Two of Scott’s ten points are about the temptation to avoid the difficult, uncomfortable work of figuring out a nebulous (uncertain, ill-defined, boundaryless) domain by relying on bureaucratically rational procedures instead:

@slatestarcodex (6): Everyone is secretly relying on everyone else to do the hard work.

(7) If you can’t rely on other grantmakers, you’ll rely on credentials.

@slatestarcodex Any process distributing $, status, power, etc. comes under enormous pressure for bureaucratically accountability: to avoid nepotistic favoritism, demographic discrimination, or eccentric poor judgement.

Scott can make grants no institution can, because he’s NOT ACCOUNTABLE.

@slatestarcodex (Which does not mean he ignores professional ethics in practice)

@slatestarcodex Institutional accountability, often a well-meaning imperative, is choking everything in the world today. Where decisions cannot be made in a demonstrably meaningfully rational way, they get made in a CYA procedurally-rational way instead. And then the meaning gets forgotten.

@slatestarcodex Nebulosity always limits rationality. The tighter the demand that rationality provides justification, the more it must ignore nebulous but important factors.

Rationalization has reached the point where most institutions ignore most meaningful factors in favor of checklists.

@slatestarcodex The public is revolting against all institutions because it has become obvious that they no longer work. Nowadays, institutions aim for bureaucratic rationality, rather than accomplishing their supposed purposes effectively. Then they break down. metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-…

@slatestarcodex Accepting that nebulosity limits rationality is a prerequisite to meta-rationality. In the institutional context, that includes accepting that many important decisions can’t be bureaucratically rational.

That doesn’t mean that they must be arbitrary or irrational.

@slatestarcodex Evaluating people and projects (as in grant-making) always involves meta-rational judgement, like it or not, even when done by default (“check credentials”). This may seem unfair.

But our world trains everyone out of creativity and into narrow, pointless career paths.

@slatestarcodex Either we will reinvent institutions to deal effectively with nebulosity, deploying meta-rational competence,

or they will be torn down by rage-filled anti-rational mobs, and critical functions will cease altogether.