Rationality: From AI to zombies

Abstract

In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes. These accounts of how the mind works are put to the test through genuinely difficult puzzles: computer scientists’ debates about the future of artificial intelligence, physicists’ debates about the relationship between the quantum and classical worlds, philosophers’ debates about the metaphysics of zombies and the nature of morality, and many more. The goal of this book is to lay the groundwork for creating rationality ``expertise’’—acquiring a deep understanding of the structure of a very general problem: human bias, self-deception, and the thousand paths by which sophisticated thought can defeat itself.