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Why is it so hard to be rational?

• legrande 5y ago
  I try to avoid mind viruses, or ideas that can hijack your decisions and thought process and take over. Think of a mind virus as a sort of dangerous meme that underpins everything you do. This is why first principles and making decisions based on sound foundations is better, absent of some sort of virulent dogma.
  • jjbinx007 5y ago
    Viruses. Virii isn't the plural of virus. There's a YouTube channel (1) called Street Epistemology which has a guy interview members of the public and ask them if they have a belief they hold to be true such as "the supernatural exists" or "climate change is real" or "x is better than y". He then asks them to estimate how certain they are that it's true. Then they talk. The interviewer asks a question and makes notes, then tries to summarise the reply. He questions how they know what they think they know and at the end he asks them to again say how confident they are that what they said is true. It's fascinating to see people actually talk about and discuss what are usually unsaid thoughts and it shows some glaring biases logical fallacies. (1) https://youtube.com/c/AnthonyMagnabosco210 https://youtube.com/c/AnthonyMagnabosco210
    • legrande 5y ago
      > Virii isn't the plural of virus. Thanks for correcting me. I will refrain from ever using virii again! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
      • digitalsushi 5y ago
        I knew what you meant. I feel like we almost have our own culture, sometimes. Weird.
    • WhompingWindows 5y ago
      I may be wrong, but "Mind Virii" could be using the genitive or possessive form of Virus, like "Mind of a Virus" or "Virus's Mind".
  • jklinger410 5y ago
    Glad to hear you aren't the only person thinking of the mind virus idea! Exactly what you said. Once you accept one toxic thought, it tends to branch out into other decisions. Unfortunately there are many, many memes out there ready to cause an infection. These things can be fatal.
  • OnACoffeeBreak 5y ago
    Sci-fi novel "Lexicon" by Max Barry explores the idea of words used for persuasion to the extent of actually hacking the brain via spoken word to take control of the subject's thoughts and actions.
    • jkmcf 5y ago
      This is what the Sophists were accused of by the Stoics and others. Source: https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-032-trees-bending-to-the-torrent https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-032-trees...
    • FinanceAnon 5y ago
      I thought about something similar in the context of "dangerous" AI. In a hypothetical scenario where super-smart AI got control of the internet and all the devices, would it be able to start controlling people?
• nathias 5y ago
  Ah yes, the modern rationalists, few things are as cringe as modern adaptation of classical intellectual currents. Like reddit atheism, it makes a great disservice to the concept from which they steal their name. They have no education beyond their narrow limits, no interest in what lies beyond their time or their common sense.
  • jgeada 5y ago
    And they are ever so full of themselves. They're a perfect embodiment of Dunning-Kruger.
  • MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
    Sure, naive rationalism is intellectually dead, but post-rationalism deserves a better endorsement, thus the downvotes. I suspect most people aren't yet familiar with the discourse. If I was more qualified I'd write it myself, but alas.
    • jhgb 5y ago
      What is this "naive rationalism" and "post-rationalism"? And how is rationalism dead in the first place? Did science and logic suddenly stop working without us noticing?
    • nathias 5y ago
      Yea, I consider myself a rationalist because I share a similar epistemological framework to the classical rationalism, I was very disappointed to find that a 'rationalist' movement exists and takes nothing but the name from rationalism.
  • TheGigaChad 5y ago
    Idiot dumbass, get cancer and die squealing like a lab rat.
• alecst 5y ago
  It's really hard (for me, and I imagine, for everyone else) to not put myself into my views and opinions. Like, when someone shows me that I'm wrong, it's natural for me to feel attacked, instead of just taking it as a learning moment. Noticing when this happens and working with it has been my main struggle in learning how to be more rational. Those views and opinions really don't need to be a part of what I consider "myself." Rationality, to me, is really about an open-minded approach to beliefs. Allowing multiple beliefs to overlap, to compete, to adapt, without interfering too much with the process.
  • XorNot 5y ago
    > Allowing multiple beliefs to overlap This doesn't seem very rational. If your beliefs are in conflict and you're content to not resolve that, then pretty much by definition you're accepting a logical inconsistency. If resolving the intersection doesn't lead to a new stable belief system, then aren't you basically going with "whatever I'm feeling that day"?
    • alecst 5y ago
      It's an ambitious and admirable goal to be completely logically consistent, but I've given up on that. Sometimes there are two different but consistent stories for the same thing. I get that maybe it doesn't seem rational, but sometimes there's no way to pick between stories. And, also, sometimes you think you've settled on the right path, but then you later get a new piece of information and have to reevaluate. So to me it's not so cut and dry.
      • mindslight 5y ago
        Your thinking is most certainly rational. The contraposition to Godel's incompleteness theorem tells us that any framework with sufficient explanatory power will necessarily contain contradictions. Since we attempt to reason about everything, our framework is necessarily large enough to be full of contradictions. Since we've got to deal with contradictions, they are not something to be avoided but rather acknowledged. If you're not acknowledging the contradictions and the "opposite side" for the implications you visit, then you will miss when that "other side" starts making more sense than the chain you're following. Not doing this means ending up at a nonsensical position while ignoring its contradictory obvious truth, a result we call cognitive dissonance. This dual-thinking is related to the computer security mindset - you can't naively write code thinking your assertions will simply hold as you intend, but rather you need to be continually examining what every assertion "gives away" to a hostile counterparty. There are alternative systems of logic that attempt to formalize reasoning in the presence of contradictions, to keep a single contradiction from being able to prove everything. For example, intuitionistic logic and paraconsistent logic. These feel much more in line with reasoning in an open world where a lack of a negative doesn't necessarily imply truth. The focus on a singular "logic" that asserts that everything has some single rational "answer" is a source of much of our modern strife.
• adrhead 5y ago
  It is quite hard to become rational as humans are emotional beings. Sometimes, emotions will take over rationality in making decisions. This is why people struggle to make wise decisions.
  • TuringTest 5y ago
    Conversely, it is impossible to be rational without emotions. Reason needs axioms (beliefs) to build a rational discourse, and without emotions, it is impossible to choose a limited set of starting axioms to begin making logical inferences from. I agree with the person above who said being rational is about making post-hoc rationalizations. We know by cognitive science that a majority of explanations are build that way: after observing facts, we intuitively develop a story that is consistent with our expectations about the fact, as well as with our preconceived beliefs. "Being rational" in this context would be limited to reviewing our beliefs when these ad-hoc rationalizations become inconsistent one with another.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Rationality is a game of checkers played outside in a meadow. So many distractions. Wind, rain, bees, rampant squirrels. And what makes that game more interesting than a squirrel anyway?
  • inkblotuniverse 5y ago
    The money. (And you're playing the game agaonst the squirrels anyway.)
• SMAAART 5y ago
  Nobody wants to deal with rational people. Big business want people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have to impress people they don't like Politicians want people who will drink the cool-aid and follow what they (the politicians) say (and not what they do) Religions... well, same. And so all messages from advertisement, to movies, TV, narrative is about hijacking people's feelings and suppressing rationality. Common sense is no longer common, and doesn't make much sense.
  • DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    I don't disagree but I have to say this absolute reads like a voice-over from an Adam Curtis documentary.
    • cortesoft 5y ago
      I think part of it is a quote from Fight Club
      • chromaton 5y ago
        Quote Investigator says it's from 1928 newspaper column: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/21/impress/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/21/impress/
    • zentropia 5y ago
      Fight Club, bus scene
  • athenot 5y ago
    This sounds cynical but yes, unfortunately, there are many incentives to not be rational.
    • Siira 5y ago
      I think you’re confusing group rationality with individual rationality. There is never an individual incentive not to be individually rational, by definition. Bad Nash equilibria, in game-theoretic terms.
• jsight 5y ago
  Isn't the answer obvious? Because doing otherwise involves a lot more work, and people choose the easier path.
  • esarbe 5y ago
    To quote evolution; why go for perfect when you can go for good enough?
  • MarioMan 5y ago
    Sometimes I go into deep-dives to try to find some truth to a contentious issue. I think it’s important not to take the easy path; certainly not if you want a well-learned opinion. Any sense of superiority this gives me is dashed when I realize: 1) It’s not reasonable to expect someone to dig so deeply, and there isn’t enough time to do it for every issue. 2) Someone, somewhere, has done an even deeper dive into the same issue. From their perspective, I’m the one that hasn’t done my research. When it’s “enough” is a fuzzy line.
• btilly 5y ago
  I maintain that it isn't just hard, it is computationally impossible. We should all know that given a belief about the world, and evidence, Bayes' Theorem describes how to update our beliefs. But what if we have a network of interrelated beliefs? That's called a Bayesian net, and it turns out that Bayes' Theorem also prescribes a unique answer. However, unfortunately, it turns out that working out that answer is NP-hard. OK, you say, we can come up with an approximate answer. Sorry, no, coming up with an approximate answer that gets within probability 0.5 - ε, for 0 < ε, is ALSO NP-hard. It is literally true that under the right circumstances a single data point logically should be able to flip our entire world view, and which data point does it is computationally intractible. Therefore our brains use a bunch of heuristics, with a bunch of known failure modes. You can read all the lesswrong you want. You can read Thinking, Fast and Slow and learn why we fail as we do. But the one thing that we cannot do, no matter how much work or effort we put into it, is have the sheer brainpower required to actually BE rational. The effort of doing better is still worthwhile. But the goal itself is unachievable.
  • kirso 5y ago
    Does this mean then that all the mental models are basically useless because the outcome may be irrational?
  • yann2 5y ago
    Correct. Rationality is Bounded. That fact won a Nobel Prize - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon The recommendation of the theory is if you cant be rational about a specific problem pick another problem, preferably a simpler problem. Unfortunately lots of chimps in the troupe are incapable of doing that and therefore we shall always have drama.
    • WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      > Correct. Rationality is Bounded. That fact won a Nobel Prize. It's a model not a fact. As a model, it can't really be correct only more or less accurate.
• deleted 5y ago
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• MrPowers 5y ago
  Studying logical fallacies and behavioral economics biases have been the best ways for me to become more rational. I'm constantly calling myself out for confirmation bias, home country bias, and the recency effect in my internal investment thought process. Learning about logical fallacies and identifying them in conversations is great. Don't tell the counterparty of their logical fallacies in conversations cause that's off putting. Just note them internally for a more rational inner dialogue. Learning other languages and cultures is another way to learn about how different societies interact with objective truth. Living other places taught me a lot about how denial works in different places. Thinking rationally is quite hard and I've learned how to abandon it in a lot of situations in favor of human emotions. How someone feels is more important than how they should feel.
  • nostromo 5y ago
    The sunk cost fallacy is particularly important to learn about and teach your children about. I see it everywhere, from my own decision making process to international politics. Just this morning I was thinking about it as I read the news about the US leaving Afghanistan, and last week talking with a friend who is staying at a bad job.
    • mcguire 5y ago
      Here's a question for you: what is the difference between the sunk cost fallacy and persistence? And here's the answer: Persistence is good when it is successful. If the activity us unsuccessful, it's an example of the irrational sunk cost fallacy. (Making decisions without knowledge of future events is quite hard.) And the important lesson: If you bail at the first sign of adversity, no one can ever accuse you of being irrational. Of course, as the old saying goes, all progress is made due to the irrational.
      • clairity 5y ago
        that's not irrationality, that's decision-making under uncertainty, which is the norm, not the exception. probabilities are dynamic, information is imperfect, and so decision-making must incorporate that uncertainty. the sunk cost fallacy is simply considering existing loss when deciding on continued investment (in time, money and other resources), when you should only consider future cost for future benefit. it's thinking erroneously that existing loss is not already locked in, that it's salvageable somehow. but no, it's already lost. in a project with continuously updating probabilities of success, and under imperfect information, the go-or-no-go decision should only be based on the likelihood of future gains exceeding future losses, not future+existing losses. in this framework, persistence would be having credible evidence (e.g., non-public information), not just belief, of the likelihood of future net gain relative to opportunity cost. it'd be irrational to be persistent simply on belief rather than credible information and probability estimation.
• achenatx 5y ago
  The ultimate issue is that underpinning every action is a value system. Value systems are opinions and are fundamentally not rational. Virtually every political disagreement is based on values, though most of the time people dont recognize it. Values determine priorities and priorities underpin action. For example some people feel that liberty (e.g. choice) is more important than saving lives when it comes to vaccines. Some people feel that economic efficiency is less important than reducing suffering. Some people feel that the life of an unborn child is worth less than the ability to choose whether to have that child Even in the article, is a stereo that sounds better actually better than a stereo that looks better? That is a value judgement and there is no right or wrong. No one is actually wrong since everything is value judgements. Many people believe in universal view of ethics/morality. There is almost no universal set of ethics/morality if you look across space and time. However some values allow a culture to out compete other cultures causing the "inferior" values to disappear. New mutations are constantly being created. Most are neutral and have no impact on societal survival. Some are negative and some are positive.
  • _greim_ 5y ago
    > is a stereo that sounds better actually better than a stereo that looks better? That is a value judgement and there is no right or wrong. Disagree; value systems are the inputs to rationality. The only constraint is that you do the introspection in order to know what it is that you value. In that sense buying a stereo based on appearance is the right decision if you seek status among peers or appreciate aesthetics. It's the wrong decision if you want sound quality or durability. I think the real issue is that people don't do the necessary introspection, and instead just glom onto catch-phrases or follow someone else's lead. That's why so many people hold political views that are contrary to their own interests.
  • mariodiana 5y ago
    Yes, and I think when people claim to be describing what a "rational actor" would do, what they often leave out are the normative assumptions inherent in their rational analysis. Moreover, I suspect the omission at times is not accidental.
  • derbOac 5y ago
• johnwheeler 5y ago
  Perfect rationality is impossible because in order to make correct decisions you need all the facts and a rational actor would do nothing at all given that all the facts can’t be had. The best you can do is to be an odds maker;therefore, an odds maker would spend their time looking for as many of the lowest effort ventures with the highest chances of success and biggest payoffs relative to effort and chance. In their free time (time when no reasonable opportunities were present), they would learn as much as possible to increase decision making power thus odds of success.
  • raldi 5y ago
    Your opening sentence makes no sense. If you and I don’t know the results of a coin toss, and I offer you a two-for-one wager on the result, the rational choice for you would be to take that bet, even without knowing the most relevant fact.
    • johnwheeler 5y ago
      ah, you should have read the second sentence
      • raldi 5y ago
        I don't see how the second sentence makes sense of the first. A perfectly rational actor would not do nothing; they would carry out the most reasonable action given the information available.
        • johnwheeler 5y ago
          But then you're not being perfectly rational. You're calculating the odds, which is what my second sentence says. Being perfectly rational is impossible. See: perfect rationality vs bounded rationality
          • raldi 5y ago
            Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "perfectly rational". I'm using the definition from the article: A perfectly calibrated individual will be right X% of the time about statements in which they are X% confident. Are you using a different definition?
• throwaway9690 5y ago
  I think part of the problem is that most people are conditioned into many beliefs from a young age I know a guy who hates foo (using a place holder). In fact he's downright foophobic. He is pretty convinced he has a natural unbiased hate of foo and is being rational when he expresses it. To me as an outsider it is pretty obvious that his hate of foo is the result of cultural conditioning. To him it is perfectly rational to hate foo and to me it is totally irrational, especially since he can't give any concrete reason for it. So who is right and who is being rational?
  • wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Preferences do not need to be rationally justified; without axiomic preferences, we have no preferences at all.
    • throwaway9690 5y ago
      I'm referring more to prejudices rather than preferences.
  • someguy321 5y ago
    Value judgements exist in a separate domain than pure rationality. I like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla ice cream, and you're not gonna convince me otherwise by debating the flavor with me. It entirely could be the case that my preference is from cultural conditioning, but it's not my concern. If your friend has a mindset of "to each his own" there's no problem.
  • dfxm12 5y ago
    It really depends what foo is. I don't think it's rational to waste time on unimportant things. If foo is eating red meat, then I don't think it's rational to really worry about it one way or another. I think part of the problem is that most people are conditioned into many beliefs from a young age I think it's irrational to not consider new information when processed. So, again, this depends on what foo is. If it is obeying speed limits even when no one else is on the road, and your friend learns the penalties for not obeying road signs when they get their license, they would probably find it irrational to not do the speed limit, even if they hate it. They wouldn't want to risk the fines, license suspension, etc. However, let's say your friend's brother has stronger beliefs and can afford any fines and legal action. He could think about it and still decide that it's rational to not obey the speed limit. This doesn't make it right; I think right and rational are mutually exclusive.
• wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > In a recent interview, Cowen—a superhuman reader whose blog, Marginal Revolution, is a daily destination for info-hungry rationalists—told Ezra Klein that the rationality movement has adopted an “extremely culturally specific way of viewing the world.” It’s the culture, more or less, of winning arguments in Web forums. This matches my observations, too. > Cowen suggested that to understand reality you must not just read about it but see it firsthand; he has grounded his priors in visits to about a hundred countries, once getting caught in a shoot-out between a Brazilian drug gang and the police.
  • kubb 5y ago
    One of my many pet peeves are people who travel to more than a 100 countries to get "experiences". It feels misguided, wasteful, excessive and done to impress others, as a sort of a status symbol. I bet he wouldn't be able to name all those countries and cities that he's been to. A deep and meaningful experience requires way more than a superficial visit.
    • someguy321 5y ago
      I read that fellow's blog (marginalrevolution.com) and he goes out of the way to get the best authentic local food he can get, he's well read about the history of many different countries and the economic implications of the recent history (he's an academic economist). He often does a brief blog writeup about the particularly culturally unique bits of places after he visits. Part of his job as an academic/ popular econ culture writer is to understand cultures and economies around the world. I don't mind if part of his motivation is to impress others, or if it's wasteful, etc. Why would his motivations have to be pure for it to be meaningful for him?
      • kubb 5y ago
        Don't get me wrong, gorging yourself on a variety of foods from around the world can be pleasurable. It also gives you zero insight into how people in that country are different than elsewhere. You could understand more about a country by studying it from home than by visiting it for a week. I don't like that it's presented as a lifestyle that people should strive to pursue. I know certain people here will vehemently oppose this opinion, because in effect it's a critique of them or that which they admire.
• andi999 5y ago
  I believe it is also an evolutionary advantage. Let's assume with all information available it looks like the rational best decision to do something. Then unexpectedly that thing kills you. There is only a species left if not everybody did it.
• mncharity 5y ago
  Jim Keller (famous cpu designer; Lex Fridman interview)[1]: "Really? To get out of all your assumptions, you think that's not going to be unbelievably painful?" "Imagine 99% of your thought process is protecting your self conception, and 98% of that's wrong". "For a long time I've suspected you could get better [...] think more clearly, take things apart [...] there are lots of examples of that, people who do that". "I would say my brain has this idea that you can question first [sic] assumptions, and but I can go days at a time and forget that, and you have to kind of like circle back to that observation [...] it's hard to keep it front and center [...]". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=4962s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=4962s
• FinanceAnon 5y ago
  It's impossible to be absolutely rational. I feel like there is so many different levels and viewpoints that there is no right answer. Simple example: Let's say the same pair of shoes is available in two different shops, but in one shop it's more expensive. It seem more rational to buy it in the cheaper shop. However, what if you've heard that the cheaper shop is very unethical in how it conducts the business. Is it still more rational to buy the shoes there? And then you might also start considering this situation "in the grand scheme of things" - in the grand scheme of things does it make any difference if I buy it in shop A or B? And at which point does it become irrational to be overthinking simple things in order to try to be rational? What if trying to always be rational is stressing you out, and turns out to be worse in the long run?
  • MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Yeah, for example, let's say that I can buy from ShoeCo or big, evil Amazon. But big, evil Amazon allows me to donate a portion of their proceeds to a charity of my choice, and furthermore, I am also within my rights as an individual to take the difference between ShoeCo's price and Amazon's and donate it to another cause as well. Some will say that buying from Amazon simply perpetuates Amazon... but Amazon is so large at this point that it doesn't matter WHAT I do. So ultimately, is the world better off with my two donations from my Amazon purchase or giving my money away for the same product to ShoeCo?
    • SamBam 5y ago
      If Amazon is so big that your purchase is meaningless, then the problems of the world are also so big that your donations are probably meaningless. If your donations have some tiny bit of meaning to them, then removing a tiny bit of business from Amazon and paying your local shopkeeper probably also has meaning.
      • vdqtp3 5y ago
        > removing a tiny bit of business from Amazon and paying your local shopkeeper probably also has meaning. It might be fair to say that removing business from Amazon has no real impact but giving that business to a small business does.
• WhompingWindows 5y ago
  Can rationality exist outside of our minds? Is it just another mental heuristic? In meditation, a common teaching is to examine an object for a long period, really just stare at it and allow your mind to focus on it fully. I see a coffee mug, it has a handle and writing on it, it's off-white and has little coffee stains. This descriptive mind goes a mile-a-minute normally, but eventually you can break through that and realize, this is just a collection of atoms, this is something reflecting photons and pushing back electrically against my skins' atoms. Even deeper, it's just part of the environment, all the things I can notice, like everything else we care about. Such exercises can help reveal the nature of mind. There are many layers of this onion, and many separate onions vying for our attention at once. Rationality relies upon peeling back these superficial layers of the thought onion to get towards "the truth." That means peeling back biases, emotions, hunches, instincts, and all the little mental heuristics that are nice "shortcuts" for a biologically limited thinker. But outside our minds, how is there any rationality left? It feels like another program or heuristic we use to make decisions to help us survive and reproduce.
• karmakaze 5y ago
  Recognition of "motivated reasoning" can replace a whole lot of recognizing logical fallacies in your own or others' thought processes. Here's an 20m audio interview[0] with the author of "The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t" It very well summarizes the way I like to gather information in an area so that I can form an opinion and direction of movement on a problem. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1881404483658 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1881404483658
• okamiueru 5y ago
  It's going against entropy. There are few ways to be rational, and infinitely many ways to irrational.
• esarbe 5y ago
  Because we didn't evolve to be rational. We evolved to reproduce as often as possible, not to thing as precises as possible. We're not thinking machines, we're reproduction machines. That we are able to think somewhat rational-ish is only because we adapted by adopting extensive modeling simulations. The fundamental function of these simulations is to simulate other beings, primarily human. And in that our brainware is lazy as hell, because - to quote evolution; why do perfect, when you can do good enough? Saves a ton of energy. The wetware we employ was never expected to rationally solve differential equations or do proper statistical analysis. At best it was expected to guess the parabola of a thrown stone or spear, or empate the best way to mate without facing repercussions from the tribe. So, really. It's not that thinking is hard. It's just that we're just not equipped to do it.
• joelbondurant 5y ago
  USA members need the Fact-Check algorithm integrated into permanent surgically installed face masks.
• morpheos137 5y ago
  Because people have feelings. Because rationality is poorly defined. For example some times it may be rational to agree with something that is factually wrong if it is popular or serves one's self interest.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• newbamboo 5y ago
  My answer, in jeopardy format: What is Psychology? Every mind is different; a feature not a bug.
• danans 5y ago
  I think there is a simpler explanation that draws from evolutionary theory: being excessively rational is not a good survival strategy, be it in the distant past or today. If our ancestors would have made the rational assessment that there is unlikely to be a predator hiding behind the bush, that would have worked only as long as it worked, until one day they got eaten. Irrationally overestimating threats and risks is not an optimal approach, but as long as you can survive it can be a long-term optimal approach. Humans using irrational stories to enable group cohesion and coordination are similarly irrational but intrinsic ways of being that also provide an evolutionary advantage. Rationality, however is an incredible optimization tool when operating in domains that are well understood, like the example of stereo equipment that the author gave in the article. It can also help in the process of expanding knowledge by helping a systematically compare and contrast signals. But it doesn't prevent the lion from eating you or the religious or temporal authority from ostracizing you from the safety of the settlement, and it may even make both of those outcomes more likely.
  • lazide 5y ago
    Humans operate by doing, then rationalizing, and much of the attempts at rational thought here demonstrate how easy it is to fool ourselves into thinking we are being rational, when really we are acting on feelings and delusions and then constructing what feels like a rational argument that we originally had - but falls apart upon analysis. In the past, it is a rational concern to be worried about being jumped by a predator from behind a bush, and if you don’t know if or if not there is a predator, it is perfectly rational to be worried about such a concern! Same with diseases and causes when you don’t know what is causing them, etc. It’s a tendency to dismiss older concerns from a time when there was a severe lack of information as irrational, where when you know your limits and see the results, there is no other rational way to behave except to be concerned or avoid those things. While also not rational to believe clearly contradictory religious dogma that covers the topic, it is rational to follow or support it when it has clear alignment with visibly effective methods encoded in it for avoiding disease and other problems.
    • danans 5y ago
      > In the past, it is a rational concern to be worried about being jumped by a predator from behind a bush, and if you don’t know if or if not there is a predator, it is perfectly rational to be worried about such a concern! I think we agree, but I also think you are using "rational" here in the colloquial sense to mean the "smartest" thing to do. The article, and my comment in response, uses the traditional definition of "rational" as something derived from logic, and not from impulse or instinct. The two definitions are not the same (not that one is better than the other, they just mean different things).
• jscipione 5y ago
  It is hard to be rational in the way the New Yorker intends because we are constantly being lied to and having information hidden from us by institutions and so we have lost trust in them. President Dwight D. Eisenhower put it succinctly in his farewell address to the nation: "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
• tomgp 5y ago
  “Know things; want things; use what you know to get what you want” I think the hardest bit of this is in some ways the middle, wanting things. How do we know we really want what we want, and how do we know what will make us happy. That’s the bit I struggle with anyway.
• linuxhansl 5y ago
  I read somewhere (truly forgot where, sorry) that we humans are mostly just lazy, that we avoid thinking as best as we can and rather gravitate towards that (people, circle, or news) which confirms what we already believe so that we do not have to think. "Confirmation Bias" does not quite capture it. Really just laziness. :) The other part, being decisive... I can definitely relate to that. I noticed that I often have a hard time making decisions and realized it's because I tend look at the world in terms of what I can possibly lose instead of looking at something new in terms of excitement.
  • SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Critical thought is actually really, really hard. Pre-internet the problem was too little signal, post-internet the problem is too much noise. I would argue we've largely been anesthetized due to successful Gish Galloping. I have great admiration for people who put the effort in to sort out the issues, academics and journalists. But just now everyone eye-rolled when I said those two terms.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  Because certain degree of emotions have rational basis. Asking humans to know which parts of their emotion is rational turns into a multidimensional problem they can’t just solve in a heat of the moment
• _moof 5y ago
  It's impossible to be perfectly rational without perfect and complete information. Crucially, for questions that affect us personally, this includes perfect insight. I've yet to meet anyone who qualifies.
  • flixic 5y ago
    That's why I appreciate that a rationality website is called LessWrong. Of course you can't be perfectly rational, but you can be less wrong.
    • _moof 5y ago
      Thanks for the reply. I think what I was trying to say by implication is that I think folks fall so far short of the ideal that it's actually a regression. Related to this is what I see as an implicit belief that "rationality" means completely dismissing the lived experience of actual humans, i.e. lots of people are suffering but hey, at least we applied principles in a soulless and mathematical way, because that's what's important.
      • UnFleshedOne 5y ago
        A soulless and mathematically applied principles is a good was to actually reduce the number of people suffering. Assuming that's what your goal was from the start. If you only look at "lived experience" and then make a random change you feel might help, but don't actually check if it does, you can make things worse (see the outcomes of all the aid to Africa for example).
  • jhgb 5y ago
    Why? Are you equating rationality with omniscience? Then why have the separate word "rationality" in the first place?
  • rafaelero 5y ago
    What a ridiculous take. Rationality is not the same as omniscience. Being rational is optimizing predictability by using the best available evidence we have. No one is claiming to know the answer for some future event, but trying to reach the best way to aggregate the current information.
• kerblang 5y ago
  My problem in everyday work is so often I have to deal with so-called software engineers who fancy themselves quite the scientific thinkers but whose irrationality borders on delusional. In fact a lot of them believe "I'm very smart, so I am therefore the most rational" which is obviously not true at all. In fact this will probably make a lot of so-called software engineers angry but I tend to think of the non-technical folk as the rational ones and much easier to deal with as a result. Purely anecdotal though.
  • DamnYuppie 5y ago
    I have observed that behavior in many other professions where the participants view themselves as very smart. Physicians and lawyers are at the top of that list.
    • nescioquid 5y ago
      I was chatting with a couple of software engineers, one of whom had just come from working at a research hospital on a project involving some imaging devices. The other engineer asked him if the physicians were tough to deal with, and he responded that no, not especially. But the physicists! Oh, the doctors hated the physicists for thinking they knew everything!
    • _moof 5y ago
      Indeed. Academicians are some of the worst offenders in my experience. Also, you know how software engineers like to think that they're rocket scientists? Well, it brings me no pleasure to report that rocket scientists think they're software engineers.
  • BurningFrog 5y ago
    You won't make any engineers angry. We know you're talking about other engineers, and we agree about those fools!
    • kerblang 5y ago
      I appreciate the humor, but I'm not. There are bitter disagreements based on different interpretations of the facts, and there are bitter disagreements based on a complete disregard for the facts, a refusal to verify assumptions, a persistent use of arrogance as a substitute for competence, blaming the tools for failures of the person using them, and more. In fact there is nothing so maddening as dealing with a delusional person and being told, "I don't know why you're always getting in arguments with them!" as if it's just one of those "personality conflicts" - I would describe it as practically a personality disorder conflict.
• marsven_422 5y ago
  We are human, glorious humans.
• coldtea 5y ago
  For starters, who said it's better to be rational? Not being rational - and instead being based on guts - has an evolutionary advantage (it cuts through the noise, which, in the past could be a life or death situation).
  • dnissley 5y ago
    Intuition could be said to be the opposite of reason, but not rationality. There are whole parts of the rationalist diaspora that emphasize how important it is to be in touch with one's intuitions / feelings and to integrate them successfully into one's decision making process with an aim towards being more rational.
• eevilspock 5y ago
  "Useless" https://xkcd.com/55/ https://xkcd.com/55/
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  There are some good bits in here. I love the subtitle especially: "The real challenge isn’t being right but knowing how wrong you might be." Knowing when not to provide an answer is hard. A big part of my job is communicating statistical findings and giving a good non-answer is much harder than giving a good answer, both technically speaking and socially speaking. One thing I'll add that drives me nuts is the fetishization of bayesian reasoning I see some times here on HN. There are times that bayesian reasoning is helpful and times that it isn't. Specifically, when you don't trust your model, bayes rule can mislead you badly (frequently when it comes to missing/counterfactual data). It's just a tool. There are others. It makes me crazy when it's someone's only hammer, so everything starts to look like a nail. Sometimes, more appropriate tools leave you without an answer. Apparently that's not something we're willing to live with.
  • hinkley 5y ago
    Thinking Fast and Slow left me with a feeling of despair about the human inability to reason effectively about statistics. I like to tell people that charts work better for asking questions than answering them. Once people know you look for answers there, the data changes. More so than they do for question asking (people will try to smooth the data to avoid awkward questions).
    • belter 5y ago
      "Thinking Fast and Slow" left me with the same feeling but not because of "Thinking Fast and Slow" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27261501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27261501
  • belter 5y ago
    I am with you :-) https://xkcd.com/1132/ https://xkcd.com/1132/
    • tomjakubowski 5y ago
      Maybe I'm just missing the joke here, but "Bayesian reasoning" is hardly needed to realize that if the sun did explode, the $50 you'd lose in the bet is worthless anyway.
• rafaelero 5y ago
  I am seeing a lot of "institutions lied to us and are actively keeping information from ourselves" when people try to justify acting irrationaly. I don't agree with this premise at all. What do you mean they keep information from you? This assumes that information can be contained, which in most cases is impossible. There is always leakage. Now, to be more generous, I will assume that people are actually criticizing how "institutions impose a mainstream view that is difficult to replaced even when facts say it should". To that I say: fine. But even in this case, there should be enough resources to form a rational opinion over the matter (with probabilistic reasoning). Hell, I have a lot of non-orthodox opinions that are so out of Overton Window that I rarely can discuss them. And even in these cases, the internet and Google Scholar/Sci-hub were sources that helped me explore it. So, I have no sympathy for this "institutions lied to us, let me believe now whatever I want" bullshit.
• eevilspock 5y ago
  Rational thought is important, but not sufficient. For example, moral conscience is a far more important trait to me. Some people will argue that pure reason is enough to establish a sound moral system; I don't agree but that is a debate for another time. Looking at the end result, Greg is not someone I admire or would want to be: > Greg...became a director at a hedge fund. His net worth is now several thousand times my own.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/7dAh5 https://archive.is/7dAh5
• PicassoCTs 5y ago
  I find the distinction between emotions and logic to be quite synthetic. Emotions is nothing but logic, just hard coded, subconscious and hard to trace back from the inside. Alot of "rational" thought though, falls into a similar category as the emotional pre-chosen outcome is just decorated with "rational" arguments. The reason ultimately is the same as everywhere in life. Economics. In this case energy economics. Heuristics and early-outs, are more desirable then a long, energy-intensive search of a complex space, coming to a indecisive conclusion to wander between local maximums. The real interesting thing here, is the answer to why emotions, work as they do and what the patterns and bits are that trigger them. To turn over that particular rock is to go to some deeply disturbing places. And to loose the illusion that emotion make one more "human" - meanwhile, if ones reaction is more hard coded, shouldn't it be considered more machine-like?
• raman162 5y ago
  I particularly enjoyed the concepts presented in this article, from recognizing how confident you are in a certain idea to understanding the steps it takes for someone to be rational. Being self-aware I've only started learning post college and is something I wish I was taught more growing up. As a child I was always informed that I should do x and y because that's what you're supposed to do! Only now as an adult I'm taking the time to slowly ponder and analyze myself and be more strategic with my future goals. Side note. Really enjoyed the audio version of this long form article
• HPsquared 5y ago
  It's irrational to pretend as if we are rational.
  • esarbe 5y ago
    It's funny how many people take offense. We really aren't rational creatures, are we..
• paganel 5y ago
  The rational powers that be were saying out loud 3 days ago that in an optimistic scenario the Afghan government would hang on for another 90 days, in a pessimistic scenario only for 30 days. As we all know it collapsed completely in just 2-3 days. Early on during the pandemic (the first half of February 2020) the people writing on Twitter about covid in China were being labeled as conspiracy nuts, with some of them outright having their accounts suspended by Twitter. Covid/coronavirus was (I think purposefully) kept out of the trending charts on Twitter, the Oscars were seen as much more important. And these are only two recent examples that came to my mind where the "rational" parts of our society (the experts and the media) failed completely, as such it's only rational not to trust these pseudo-rational entities anymore. Imo I think in a way the post-modernists were right, (almost) everything is negotiable or a social construct, there's no true or false, apart from death, I would say.
• myfavoritedog 5y ago
  Human irrationality will only get worse on average. There's very little evolutionary disadvantage for humans to be irrational in our modern society. Not synching up with reality would likely cost you your ability to be in the genetic pool back in the day.
• mrxd 5y ago
  It's actually not hard. Rationality is a form of communication. Its purpose to persuade other people and coordinate group activity, e.g. hunters deciding where they should hunt and making arguments about where the prey might be. In that setting, rationality works perfectly well because humans are quite good at detecting bad reasoning when they see it in others. Because of the assumptions of psychological individualism, rationality is misunderstood as a type of cognition that guides an individual's actions. To a certain extent, this is a valid approach because incentives within organizations encourage people to act this way. We reward individual accomplishments more than collaboration. But many cognitive biases disappear when you aren't working under the assumptions of psychological individualism. For example, in the artificial limitations of a lab, you can show that people are unduly influenced by irrelevant factors when making purchase decisions. But in reality, when a salesperson is influencing someone to spend too much on a car, people say things like "Let me talk it over with my wife." We instinctively seek out an environment of social communication and collaboration where rationality can operate. Much of the advice about how to be individually rational comes down to simulating those conditions within your own mind, like scrutinizing your own thinking as if it was an argument being made by another person. That can work, but the vast majority of people adopt a more straightforward approach, which is to simply use rationality as it was designed to be used. Rationality is hard, but only for a small number of "smart people" who live in an individualistic culture prevents them from using it in the optimal way.
  • UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    I think you are confusing the original purpose of our thinking apparatus (social proof first, discovering true facts distant second, unless facts can eat you quickly) and rationality as a system for discovering facts as true as possible with given energy budget that is running on that faulty hardware.
• damoe 5y ago
  Because there is a good chance reality is not rational.
• heisenzombie 5y ago
  This is a bit similar to the book-in-progress “In the cells of the eggplant”. https://metarationality.com/ https://metarationality.com/ I highly recommend reading it. I found it extremely clarifying as a working scientist/engineer and someone who has been persistently nagged by the deification of rationality. The OP even uses the term “metarational” (though used to mean something different), which made me surprised when “The Eggplant” was not mentioned.
• elihu 5y ago
  I think the main problem with trying to be 100% rational is that even if you could predict the outcome of your decisions perfectly, the question of which outcome is "best" is inherently not a rational one. First you need to have some goal in mind, then (maybe) you can apply logic and reason to achieve that goal. I think a lot of political disagreements aren't really about logical arguments at all, but rather differences in opinion over relative priority of some ideals that are all important. There isn't always an objective right answer.
• paulpauper 5y ago
  How much do you think Greg is worth? Several thousand is a lot but if the author has debt then maybe not
• paulpauper 5y ago
  Greg has much more money but one of the perks of being a profesional writer or coljmnists is ppl care about your views and they have potentially some impact on society. The classics are immortalized but ray dalio a year ago wrote a book about his 'values'..it made a splash for a week and was soon forgotten, condemned to an early pulp-ing.
• natmaka 5y ago
  "hand over the thinking keys when someone else is better informed or better trained." implies rationality, as without it determining who is better informed/trained is difficult. Therefore we are back to square one. This approach even favors the most informed and trained (the "best" being preferable to the "better"), offering an even more difficult challenge. Indirect democracy replaces rationality with ill-formed trust.