On 20 Jan 2014, at 23:40, Russell Standish wrote:
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 12:33:31PM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 Jan 2014, at 10:39, Russell Standish wrote:
The point about acting randomly is that clearly you are not
optimising
your utility. You a choosing something other than the optimum
action,
so are behaving irrationally by definition.
Would that not mean that Solovay algorithm to find prime factors is
irrational?
Adding random oracle (and sometimes even just pseudo-random like in
Solovay algorithm) can make a non tractable problem into a tractable
one, with a low price (the result can be false with a low
probability).
Strictly speaking, rationality applies to agents, not algorithms. But
just as stochastic algorithms can provide good enough tractable
solutions to NP-hard problems, irrational strategies can provide good
enough solutions to NP-hard environmental problems.
OK. That's my point.
Yet, it could be a
beneficial strategy to do so, for all the reasons raised (fooling
your
opponents, making a timely decision, and so on).
OK. But that shows that it was rational, after all. I think it is
just means that you might have used a too much contrived notion of
rationality.
It is the definition employed in economics, agent modelling, game
theory, cognitive science. It is at least precisely defined, as
opposed to the fuzzy notion you and others seem to be defending.
I have not given any notion of rationality in this thread.
Now that you mention this, I usually defined rational by B(p->q) ->
(Bp -> Bq).
It makes the belief in the propositions within G* minus G, irrational,
for a machine, and I explain the power and key role of those
irrational power. (the theological, in a large sense, beliefs).
In a sense rationality, with comp, makes rational (at the meta-level)
a lot of non rational propositions, at the lower level.
It
has, without doubt, some considerable problems too, in being
unrealistic, and perhaps even paradoxical, as has been highlighted in
this discussion, for example.
IMO, the obsession of optimization is what makes life very hard, and
non sensical. It might be part of the materialist delusion.
Eventually it is only a minority of people who optimizes only their
bank accounts, by *all* (dishonest) means. May be the economist
definition of rationality will be useful to define irrationalism ...
Maybe indeed! :)
:)
Bruno
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Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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