[HN Gopher] Why is it so hard to be rational? ___________________________________________________________________ Why is it so hard to be rational? Author : ubuwaits Score : 261 points Date : 2021-08-16 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com) | jsight wrote: | Isn't the answer obvious? Because doing otherwise involves a lot | more work, and people choose the easier path. | MarioMan wrote: | 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. | esarbe wrote: | To quote evolution; why go for perfect when you can go for good | enough? | btilly wrote: | 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 - e, for 0 < e, 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. | snarf21 wrote: | Agreed. The world is too complicated. There is too much noise. | It might be possible to become _fairly_ knowledgeable about a | single issue but it would need to amount to an obsession. This | is why we are so keen to belong. We 've always tried to apply | the "wisdom of the crowds". It is why people latch onto one | viewpoint or the other, e.g. Red/Blue, FOX/CNN, etc., it takes | all the work out of it. Once you find a source that you agree | with on even _ONE_ issue, just blindly trust /agree with them | for everything. We'd rather spend our time streaming shows and | living life than investing into deep knowledge of any subject. | | Take a non political example: How safe are whole tomatoes to | eat? What did the grocery store spray on them? Is it safe? Will | it wash off? What about the warehouse were they were stored for | months, what did they put on them to keep them from spoiling? | What about the farmer, what did they spray on them to protect | against pests? What is in the water, is it safe? Now we're | ready to eat: Does anyone in my family have any kind of | intolerance to raw tomatoes? And this is a pretty simple toy | example.... In general, we've collectively decided to trust in | the good in people. We hope that if something is | bad/lie/harmful, then someone in the know will raise the alarm | for the group. | jdmichal wrote: | In addition to _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ , I'd recommend Annie | Duke's _Thinking in Bets_. It builds on literature such as | _Thinking, Fast and Slow_ to discuss the separation of | decisions and results. Specifically, thanks to luck, the | quality of the decision is not always represented by the | quality of the result. And in order to learn, one has to be | able to recognize good and bad decisions regardless of results. | | This seems to be a pretty good overview: | | https://www.athenarium.com/thinking-in-bets-annie-duke/ | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | That's true for arbitrary graphs, but I don't believe it's | practically relevant here any more than the fact that I can't | compute the first 10000 digits of pi in my head is. We are | _much_ worse than our computational limits. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | This nails it. | | I'd go further to say that there are real world issues that | compound the variables. Namely that individual actions | increasingly have global consequences eg. individual purchasing | behaviors have externalities that the market is not pricing in | and thus fall to the consumer to have to calculate. | | Further, given that these global issues these kinds of | calculations are game theoretic by their nature, making it even | more complicated. | kazinator wrote: | > _I maintain that it isn 't just hard, it is computationally | impossible._ | | I further maintain that it's definitionally impossible. Before | we find it computationally impossible, we will find that we | can't write the a complete, detailed requirements specification | defining what rational is. | | (Of course, we recognize egregious irrationality when we see | it; that's not what I mean; you can't just define rationality | as the opposite of that.) | | People can behave rationally (or not) with respect to some | stated values that they have. But those can be arbitrary. So | the requirement specification for rationality has to refer to a | "configuration space", so to speak, where we program these | values. This means that the output is dependent on it; we can't | write some absolute test case for rationality that doesn't | include this. | | Problem is, people with different values look at each other's | values and point to them and say, "those values are irrational; | those people should adopt my values instead". | UnFleshedOne wrote: | You can't say values are irrational -- they just are. If you | really like paperclips, no amount of logic can tell you | otherwise. What logic can tell you (and other people could), | is that your values conflict with each other and you have to | balance one against another. Turning whole universe into | paperclips is counterproductive if you also value pins. If | you literally have no value the other person is basing their | arguments on, then they can't convince you to have it. | | Luckily we get our values from bunch of heuristics developed | through millions of years of biological and social evolution, | so we mostly have the same ones, just with different relative | weights. | | Won't be true if we ever meet (or make) some other sentient | critters. | kazinator wrote: | > _You can 't say values are irrational_ | | People basically do say that, though. | | (Values can be contradictory/inconsistent. E.g. you say you | value self-preservation, but you also enjoy whacking your | head with a hammer. That would be a kind of irrational. | That's not what I'm referring to though.) | UnFleshedOne wrote: | I think they make a category mistake when they do then. | Values tell you where you want to be, rationality is a | most accurate process to get where you want to go and | maybe to check if you want to be there before actually | getting there and checking out personally. (I think we | basically agree btw btw, it is all those other people who | are wrong :)) | varjag wrote: | Thing is the common failures of rational thinking are not | approaching any computational limits. Witness the dumbassery of | the past two years. | irrational wrote: | Past 5-6 years you mean. | jaredhansen wrote: | All past years you mean. It's not exactly a recent | phenomenon. | mcguire wrote: | Life would be easier if we could agree on one rational | decisions in history and then just repeat it as | necessary. | irrational wrote: | It's both sides, right? Right.... | mistermann wrote: | Logically, "both" sides seems like the correct answer to | me. | Tenoke wrote: | Nobody is disputing this. You can, however, clearly be more or | less 'rational', adopt better or worse heuristics, etc. which | is what you attempt to get from reading LessWrong or Kahneman. | nicoburns wrote: | But what constitutes a better heuristic is context dependent. | In particular, if I must make a decision in a time- | constrained manner then any heuristic that blows the time | budget is going to be worse even if it would be better given | more time. And one can't really know in advance how much time | spent thinking is optimal. So one has to pick a strategy. The | fact that humans have evolved to use a variety of strategies | fast and slow (depending on the human) suggests that there is | no single optimal strategy. | | See also Gigerenzer's Ecological Rationality. | Tenoke wrote: | Sure, but I doubt you actually think that everyone is | already operating as well as they can within the contexts | they are placed. There's definitely room for improvement. | There are all sorts of scenarios where even knowing nearly | optimal techniques outcomes can be improved by going the | TimSort way due to the context you most often find yourself | in. | joe_the_user wrote: | Not mention we don't actually know with certain the probability | of even simple things. The average person is almost never | reasoning about simple, repeatable sequences of events. You | know there's a chance of your car breaking down each day but | you don't know the probability of that event and yet you still | deal with that possibility. | yann2 wrote: | Correct. Rationality is Bounded. That fact won a Nobel Prize - | 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. | ggm wrote: | I've made it a life rule to try to avoid conversations with | people who use "correct" to respond to statements, unless | they are in the role of a teacher. | | Tell me, are you aware of the myriad of alternate words to | express your agreement with somebody else aside from correct? | You aren't here as judge of the right or wrong. Semantically, | philosophically, you're expressing agreement not correctness. | | Or .. am I incorrect...? | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | > 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. | zepto wrote: | > It's a model not a fact. As a model, it can't really be | correct only more or less accurate. | | This is not true. Models of an external world may be only | more or less accurate, but models of other models may be | true or false. Mathematical proofs rely on this. | Rationality itself is a _model_ so models _of_ rationality | may be true or false. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | Unless you have very peculiar and idiosyncratic | definition of the world model, I am fairly confident that | what you are saying doesn't make much sense. | | In economy in a way that is not dissimilar to physics, | model has a precise meaning. To quote Wikipedia, it is a | simplified version of reality that allows us to observe, | understand, and make predictions about economic behavior. | You can't have a model of a model. That just doesn't | really make sense. | | > Mathematical proofs rely on this | | I'm confused by what you want to say here. Mathematical | proofs don't use models. | | Every proved statements in mathematics can be built from | axioms which are presupposed true applying logical rules | which are themselves part of the axiomatic system. Saying | that something is mathematically proved basically means | that given this set of rules we can build up to that | point. | | > Rationality itself is a model | | Once again I'm fairly lost by what you are trying to | mean. I'm fairly certain that for most accepted meaning | of the world model and the world rationality, rationality | is in fact not a model in the same way that a dog is not | a theory. | md224 wrote: | > Mathematical proofs don't use models. | | Maybe the person you replied to was taking a model | theoretic perspective? | | https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modeltheory-fo/ | zepto wrote: | > Once again I'm fairly lost by what you are trying to | mean. | | You may want to look up the difference between _formal_ | models and _informal_ models. | | Since both rationality and the paper showing that it is | bounded are based on _formal_ models, it is reasonable to | assume this is what we are talking about. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | Sorry, I don't understand your argument. Are you actually | talking about rational choice theory? | | > Since both rationality and the paper showing that it is | bounded are based on formal models | | There is no paper showing that "rationality" is bounded. | Models use to consider actors making purely rational | choices in the sense that they are always optimizing | their utility functions using all available information. | Bounded rationility is a different way of modeling actors | choice function. It's just a different model. There is no | model of models. | | Still I don't see what any of that has to do with the | difference between formal and informal models. Informal | model is a term I have never heard used outside of policy | discussion. It's basically dress up for "because the | expert said so". | zepto wrote: | > Sorry, I don't understand your argument. | | Understood. | | It's worth noting that the definition of a model that you | said you were using doesn't match with typical | definitions of a formal model. | | You aren't talking about formal models, and I accept that | you are only thinking in terms of economic models. | | Perhaps that explains where the difference in | understanding lies. | abc_lisper wrote: | any model better than naive intuition is better imo | loopz wrote: | It's a fact many people believe themselves rational and use | models expecting rational actors. Proof lacks that it | actually works that way. The opposite is often most | probable since you rarely have perfect knowledge in | practice. Exceptions can be games like tic-tac-toe and | chess. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | > Proof lacks that it actually works that way | | I mean everyone know it doesn't really work that way. | | The actual question is: does viewing the average actor as | trying to perfectly optimise their utility function using | all the information available constitute a good | estimation of how actors work in aggregate and does it | yield accurate and interesting predictions? | | The real insight of Simon in _Models of Man_ is not that | actors are not in fact perfectly rational. It 's that you | can actually model the limits of actors while keeping a | fairly rigorous and manageable formalization. | loopz wrote: | Sure, but such models are hackable / breakable, just by | breaking the rules or reinventing the game. | vendiddy wrote: | Could someone explain in laymen terms what "bounded" | rationality means? | glial wrote: | Rationality can be re-phrased as coming up with the optimal | solution to a problem. If you only have finite | compute/memory/time, your solution is 'bounded' by those | constraints - i.e. your job is now find the best solution | possible _given the constraints_. | btilly wrote: | That Nobel was won in 1978, and is based on the fact that in | practice we can't be rational. | | The NP demonstrations that, in theory, updating a Bayesian is | a computationally infeasible problem was G. F. Cooper in 1990 | (for Bayesian Networks). The stronger result that | approximating the update is also computationally infeasible | was Dagum, P. & Luby, M., 1993. | | So Simon's work relates to what I said, but isn't based on | it. | threatofrain wrote: | Daniel Kahneman has soured on his own System 1/2 theory, plus | his original theory discussed _bounded_ rationality and not the | kind of objective rationality which fell out of favor in econ | literature a long time ago. | [deleted] | heresie-dabord wrote: | > I maintain that it isn't just hard, it is computationally | impossible. [...] The effort of doing better is still | worthwhile. But the goal itself is unachievable. | | The goal of rational thinking is not some conceit of perfection | [1] but debugging the runtime for a better result. Humans are | in fact very good at communication and at debugging language | errors. They have evolved a rational capacity. It can evidently | be developed but it needs to be exercised. | | This is where hypothesis of an educational system often enters | the discussion. | | [1] Galef and others call the "Star Trek" Spock character a | Vulcan Strawman or Straw Vulcan. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Galef | didibus wrote: | That might be true given a single brain, but we as a species | have access to billions of brains. | | The question is, can we organize and educate ourselves so we | can leverage that parallel power and let each person become | experts in their areas with proper trusts and incentives? And | manage to pass along the previous generation computation to the | next, without corrupting the data? | | Edit: And I forgot all the tools we've designed to help us | compute all that, of which I'd count math as a tool to help us | compute, and computers as another. | Jensson wrote: | Being rational includes being rational about computation power | and heuristics used on a specific choice. Therefore irrational | is when people make completely stupid choices that aren't | computationally hard to make, not that people can't solve NP- | hard problems. | lalaithion wrote: | That's why it's called "less wrong". The goal isn't to be | perfect, the goal is to do better. To be less wrong. | wombatmobile wrote: | > the goal is to do better | | Why is that "the" goal? | | Who sets "the" goal? | Nav_Panel wrote: | Yudkowsky and other prominent contributors set "the" goal | as a sort of revealed wisdom regarding their speculations | about what a super powerful AI will do. | | Pragmatically, the goals themselves appeal to individuals | who want to maintain conventional (liberal) morality yet | also position themselves as superior, typically as a form | of compensation. | nitrogen wrote: | _position themselves as superior_ | | This is why we can't have nice things. Any time someone | tries to find more effective ways of making good | decisions or accomplishing their goals, someone has to | bring out the most tortured cynical interpretation to | tear them down. | Nav_Panel wrote: | Have you hung out much with rationalists? | JohnPrine wrote: | i consider myself a rationalist (or at least, an aspiring | rationalist), and people like hanging out with me. | learning about this stuff has changed my life and | relationships for the better. | voxic11 wrote: | Its the goal of the LessWrong/Rationalist community. | analog31 wrote: | Less Wrong seems to be a manifestation of a thing that | comes in cycles: Something triggers the rise of a | "rationalist" movement, including possibly a new | evangelist or a new medium. Eventually, rational _ism_ | and rational _people_ end up at a standoff. Then the | whole thing repeats itself after a period of time. | | I'm probably rational _enough_ but also can 't make sense | of much of the rationalist literature, so I simply follow | my own compass and hope for the best. | JohnPrine wrote: | The goal is to make decisions that are "better" as defined | by your own utility function given limited information. | This is also called "winning" | hanche wrote: | I wouldn't be surprised to learn that even being less wrong | is NP-hard. | whatshisface wrote: | The saving grace of being able to survive in the universe | is that it's possible to climb up NP hard problems far | enough to get real results with hard work. | mensetmanusman wrote: | It also means that you might not know if the hard work is | climbing up or down (towards or away) from the solution. | whatshisface wrote: | No, you know if you're getting better or worse in an NP | problem because checking answers is in P. | mensetmanusman wrote: | If you find a solution, yes | whatshisface wrote: | Oh, you're thinking of NP-hard yes-no problems. Many if | not most NP-hard problems of practical importance, | including the traveling salesman, involve integer rather | than boolean scores. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Thanks for the additional clarification :) | karpierz wrote: | NP-hardness by definition is only yes-no decision | problems. The NP-hard formulation of Traveling Salesman | is "given the weighted graph G and an integer X, is there | a Hamiltonian cycle in G with total weight less than X?" | hanche wrote: | Indeed. And thanks! I needed a little morale booster now, | for reasons unrelated to this topic. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | I think this misses the point. Even being "less" wrong | requires an amount of work that even the best/smartest etc... | cannot consistently apply. | | I do believe this is zero-sum in that improving on one set of | decisions means no applying the same rigor to others. | | This is often seen in the form of very smart people also | believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up | around other massive issues. As an example, the "Rationalist | crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate change mitigation in | favor of more abstract work on AI safety. | ret2plt wrote: | > This is often seen in the form of very smart people also | believing conspiracy theories or throwing their hands up | around other massive issues. As an example, the | "Rationalist crowd" has de-emphasized work on climate | change mitigation in favor of more abstract work on AI | safety. | | To be clear, the argument (in rationalist circles) is not | that climate change is no big deal, it's that there's | already a ton of people worrying about it, so it is better | to allocate some extra resources to underfunded problems. | kirse wrote: | Which is ironic because the pursuit of knowledge only | continues to increase the landscape of unknowns towards | infinity - the branches of the tree of undiscovered and | unknown knowledge continues to grow exponentially. It's as-if | today we thought the choices were A or B, yet tomorrow we | discover there was a C, and the next day D and so forth. If | anything we are only discovering we are "more wrong" every | day. | tines wrote: | Actually I think this is the same fallacy as one of Zeno's | paradoxes, and has the same resolution. We are discovering | more wrong, as you say, but the "infinity" of wrongs is in | the direction of the infinitely small (or "infinitely | detailed"), not the infinitely large. In other words, every | time we fill in a gap in our knowledge, we create two more | gaps, so to speak, but nevertheless we know more than we | did before. | nonameiguess wrote: | We should note the limitations of Bayes as well. I already | responded to another comment in this thread that giving an | update procedure based on seeing new evidence is necessarily | bounded in how quickly it can get you to beliefs more likely to | be true by your ability to actually gather that evidence or | possibly even to generate it if it doesn't already exist. We | don't have any perfect algorithms for doing that, and it is of | course not a purely computational problem anyway. Take general | relativity. It was proposed in 1915 and only confirmed in the | very strong gravitational field limit in 2016, because that was | our first opportunity to observe a black hole merger, which is | not something we have the ability to recreate in a lab. | | Even beyond the hard process bottleneck on creating or lucking | upon events that produce the evidence we need, however, there | is also the limitation that Bayes only gives you a probability. | It doesn't give you a decision theory or even a thresholding | function. For those, you need a whole lot of other things like | utility functions, discount rates, receiver operating | characteristics and an understanding of asymmetric costs of | false positives versus false negatives, that are often | different for each decision domain. | | And, of course, to get a utility function meaningful for | humans, you need values. There is no algorithm that can give | you values. They're just there as a basic primitive input to | all other decision making procedures, yet they often conflict | in ways that cannot be reconciled even within a single person, | let alone across a society of many people. | polote wrote: | Well, it depends on the topic. Choosing rationally between the | most green of two tomatoes is easy. You are limited by your | ability to distinguish colors but you can still decide | rationally. | | Not all questions have answers, if you want to be rational when | you are asked to answer those question, you can just say "I | dont know" | | At the beginning of the pandemic, when politics were saying | mask dont work. You could just say, well, if we transmit covid | by air, then putting something in front of my mouth is going to | decrease the spread. That's what is being rational. Of course | that's not going to be all the time the good answer, but you | have still thought rationally. | | I'm not really sure what you are trying to prove. Of curse | being rational is possible. All people are rational for most of | their decisions. | not2b wrote: | A rationalist would recognize that we update our beliefs as | new evidence is available and not attack people for having | erroneous beliefs before that evidence was available. The | "masks don't work" advice was active for a short time in | March 2020 and almost immediately dumped. They thought at the | time that only n95 masks would be good enough, these masks | were in short supply and health care workers needed them, | this was the "politics" of it. But by mid March 2020 people | were already being encouraged to make cloth masks and how to | do it. That is when my daughter got out the sewing machine | and made a bunch, based on instructions from nurses. | polote wrote: | There was no new evidence. I'm not sure we have even | learned anything regarding the efficacy of masks trough the | pandemic. All what we know was already known prior of it. | btilly wrote: | First, there is active research and we demonstrably have | learned something. See https://aricjournal.biomedcentral. | com/articles/10.1186/s1375..., | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72798-7, and | https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 for | several examples. | | Second, your simplistic analysis demonstrated that you, | personally, are ignorant of the real tradeoffs involved | in whether masks work. | | Wearing a mask reduces how much virus leaves your mouth. | But when you breathe out, most of the virus is in larger | droplets that quickly hit the ground. However breathing | out through a mask creates perfect conditions to create | an aerosol, which can allow more of the virus to stay in | the air for an indefinite period of time. So there is a | tradeoff, and there were reasons to question whether | cloth masks were better than simple social distancing. | | It turns out that what matters most is not that you get | exposed, but rather the initial viral load that you get. | You see, the virus will go on an exponential growth until | the relatively fixed time it takes the immune system to | figure things out and start shutting it down. If the | virus gets a solid head start, the odds of serious | illness go up. Therefore the lingering aerosol from a | mask is (except if it accumulates in poorly ventilated | indoor spaces) of less concern than an unmasked person | talking directly to you. | | So the result is that masks work. Even crappy cloth masks | work. | varjag wrote: | ...and as they mentioned, we knew that masks work | already. | btilly wrote: | The quality of our evidence is easy to misjudge in | retrospect. | | The last opportunity to study the effectiveness of | mandating low-quality masks in preventing community | spread during a pandemic was around a century old. | (Literally, the Spanish Flu epidemic.) In the meantime a | lot of new and untried modeling tools were in use, as | well as updated disease models, and lots of reasons to | question old data. | | See | https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if- | ppi... for an idea of what was reasonable for educated | specialists in public health to believe. Note phrases | like, _" There was agreement that although the evidence | base is poor, the use of masks in the community is likely | to be useful in reducing transmission from community | based infected persons, particularly those with | symptomatic illness."_ | | So it is accurate to say that we had reason to believe | that masks work. But it is easy to overstate how much we | "knew" it to be true at the time. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Most of all of your linked papers are summaries of | earlier experiments, going back to the 1940's in some | cases. | | Very little new knowledge was added. | | >So the result is that masks work. Even crappy cloth | masks work. | | I would agree if you change "results" to expert | conjecture and "work" to probably do something. | | But again, this was always known. | kbelder wrote: | 'We' as the scientific community may not have, but 'we' | the unwashed public learned much. | polote wrote: | Being rational doesn't prevent you to be wrong. If your | assumption is that the government tells the truth and you | conclude that mask don't work. Then you have reasoned | rationally. | | But if you dont trust the governement, and for this | specific case you followed them, then this is not | rational. | mcguire wrote: | Aside: As a general rule of thumb, conspiracy theories | are not rational. | UnFleshedOne wrote: | 2 years ago I would agree with you 100%. Lately though | conspiracy theories become conspiracy facts with alarming | frequency. And the speed with which media reaches "We've | always been at war with Eastasia" zeitgeist on each shift | does not inspire confidence. | tunesmith wrote: | What a lot of people have forgotten is that in March 2020, | they thought COVID was droplets, not aerosol - remember all | the emphasis on washing hands and hand sanitizer? - and as | such, masks would be overkill for most. Combine that with | the worry that people would hoard masks when PPE was in | short supply for people would be interacting directly with | patients, then the initial discouragement on masks seems | more understandable. | | As the science changed to suggest that COVID was aerosol, | scientific opinions on masks got updated as well. | | It also didn't help that some hyper-rational people got | hung up on ranting about how masks weren't perfect, and how | the virus could still get through if you wore a mask. It | was as if they imagined they heard someone said "masks are | 100% effective" and really really wanted to register their | counterpoints. So they said "they don't work!" when they | meant "they're not 100% effective!", and other people heard | "they don't work!" and took it to mean "they're 0% | effective!" That's one of those patterns you start to see | all over the place when you know to look for it - people | confusing "there exists" and "forall". | notsureaboutpg wrote: | >You are limited by your ability to distinguish colors but | you can still decide rationally. | | Rationally, the ability to distinguish colors varies between | human beings, so much so that with a sufficient number of | tomatoes (say 50), you will have different people have | different answers for which are the greenest. | | Knowing that your ability to distinguish these colors of | tomatoes might not be as strong as, say, a tomato farmer's | (since he likely works with these specific fruits and colors | all the time), you may be rationally inclined to follow his | logic in choosing which are the greenest. | | Do you follow your intuition or trust an expert? Your | contrived example is already difficult to actually make the | most rational decision for. | mcguire wrote: | > At the beginning of the pandemic, when _politics_ were | saying mask dont work. | | Are straw-man statements rational? | | " _Then there is the infamous mask issue. Epidemiologists | have taken a lot of heat on this question in particular. | Until well into March 2020, I was skeptical about the benefit | of everyone wearing face masks. That skepticism was based on | previous scientific research as well as hypotheses about how | covid was transmitted that turned out to be wrong. Mask- | wearing has been a common practice in Asia for decades, to | protect against air pollution and to prevent transmitting | infection to others when sick. Mask-wearing for protection | against catching an infection became widespread in Asia | following the 2003 SARS outbreak, but scientific evidence on | the effectiveness of this strategy was limited._ | | " _Before the coronavirus pandemic, most research on face | masks for respiratory diseases came from two types of | studies: clinical settings with very sick patients, and | community settings during normal flu seasons. In clinical | settings, it was clear that well-fitting, high-quality face | masks, such as the N95 variety, were important protective | equipment for doctors and nurses against viruses that can be | transmitted via droplets or smaller aerosol particles. But | these studies also suggested careful training was required to | ensure that masks didn't get contaminated when surface | transmission was possible, as is the case with SARS. | Community-level evidence about mask-wearing was much less | compelling. Most studies showed little to no benefit to mask- | wearing in the case of the flu, for instance. Studies that | have suggested a benefit of mask-wearing were generally those | in which people with symptoms wore masks -- so that was the | advice I embraced for the coronavirus, too._ | | " _I also, like many other epidemiologists, overestimated how | readily the novel coronavirus would spread on surfaces -- and | this affected our view of masks. Early data showed that, like | SARS, the coronavirus could persist on surfaces for hours to | days, and so I was initially concerned that face masks, | especially ill-fitting, homemade or carelessly worn coverings | could become contaminated with transmissible virus. In fact, | I worried that this might mean wearing face masks could be | worse than not wearing them. This was wrong. Surface | transmission, it emerged, is not that big a problem for | covid, but transmission through air via aerosols is a big | source of transmission. And so it turns out that face masks | do work in this case._ | | " _I changed my mind on masks in March 2020, as testing | capacity increased and it became clear how common | asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection were (since | aerosols were the likely vector). I wish that I and others | had caught on sooner -- and better testing early on might | have caused an earlier revision of views -- but there was no | bad faith involved._ " | | "I'm an epidemiologist. Here's what I got wrong about covid." | (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/04/20/epidemiolo | ...) | dahfizz wrote: | > You could just say, well, if we transmit covid by air, then | putting something in front of my mouth is going to decrease | the spread. That's what is being rational. | | If I squint at a statement like this, I guess it could be | called rational, but it is certainly not rigorous or | convincing. You brush over too much and are making lots of | assumptions. | | Are these statements rational? | | The sun is warm, so if I climb a ladder I will be closer to | the sun and therefore warmer. | | Masks impede airflow, so if I wear a mask I will suffocate. | | Bleach kills germs, so drinking bleach will make me | healthier. | | It is very easy to make an incorrect idea seem rational. You | should wear masks because rigorous science tells us that it | is effective. That is the only valid justification. "Common | sense" is used to justify a lot of junk science. | nonameiguess wrote: | I think yes, you can call those statements rational, but | that just gets at an additional level of difficulty here. | Bayes only gets you so far as holding a belief with maximum | probability it is true, _given_ some level of seen | evidence. To actually get maximally probably true beliefs | without the qualification, you need to actually gather more | evidence. In some cases, that may just mean accumulating | knowledge that other people already generated, but in some | cases, you may need to generate knowledge from scratch. The | ability to do that may be severely bounded by resource and | time constraints. One person can 't personally do all | science, so now you need division of labor and assignment | of workers to efforts, so you need optimal matching and | scheduling algorithms. These are theoretically not | computationally intractable, but the algorithms rely upon | pre-existing accurate ability and preference ranking, so | now you need to go back to information gathering and | suddenly you have a bootstrapping problem here that feeding | your algorithm the data it needs to tell you how to gather | data in the first place requires you to gather data first. | clairity wrote: | > "You should wear masks because rigorous science tells us | that it is effective." | | you've really just glossed over the hard part, which is | when and where masks work, which is in turn the difficult | political problem to solve. | | simplifying, covid spreads mouth-to-mouth with a brief | stint in the air, not mouth-to-air-then-(much)-later-to- | mouth, which is the mediopolitical narrative that's being | pushed vehemently but irrationally, and upon which masking | policies are erroneously based. | | what's always ignored in these narratives is that the virus | falls apart quickly all by itself outside the cozy confines | of the body, not to mention floats away to oblivion quickly | when outside. | | if we're really concerned about masks working, we'd have to | force people to wear them among friends and family in | private spaces like homes, not outside and in grocery | stores where they have basically no effect. | | "masks work" is a grossly overreaching blanket political | statement, not a summary of "the science". scientific | evidence suggests masks _reduce_ droplets (and aerosols, | with better masks) being ejected into the air. there 's | less clear evidence that it reduces airborne viral | particles being inhaled through the mask. but there's | almost no evidence that the way we've deployed masks is | doing much other than signalling our fears and concerns. | | i'd be open to supporting mask policies that are based on | actual evidence (e.g., wear them when socializing at home), | but not the mediopolitically fearmongering policies we | have. | tisthetruth wrote: | Not being jacked up on sugar and caffeine can help | tremendously. | | I would still like to see some studies which delve into whether | sugar and caffeine are catalysts for biasing us towards system | 1 and how they affect system 2, mindfulness, patience, etc... | ulucs wrote: | Why bother reasoning with NP-hardness when you can just invoke | incompleteness? No brain power limitations are needed. | drdeca wrote: | Because incompleteness isn't really relevant here? | | Are you just saying "people aren't logically omniscient, and | can't be because of incompleteness"? | yibg wrote: | Being NP-hard doesn't make it computationally impossible in all | cases though. So while it might be computationally impossible | to be rational in ALL cases, it could be computationally | possible to be rational in some (or even many) cases. I think | that's the goal to strive for. | garbagetime wrote: | > We should all know that given a belief about the world, and | evidence, Bayes' Theorem describes how to update our beliefs. | | Should we? What of the problem of induction? | dwd wrote: | Memory and learning is additive - we don't have a delete key, | except for where a model can be completely replaced with | something new, which is usually at that simple fact level - but | it's then assimilated into the rest of what we believe (like a | wave function collapse) but it allows for discordant ideas at a | distance - irrationality! | strulovich wrote: | NP hard problems get abused for justifying things they cannot. | | An NP hard problem, even if it cannot be approximated does not | mean the average input cannot be solved efficiently. | | Examples: | | - An NP hard problem is not sufficient for building crypto. | | - Type solving for many programming languages is EXP TIME | complete, yet those languages prosper and compile just fine. | | Beware the idea of taking a mathematical concept and proof and | inducing from it to the world outside the model. | nostrademons wrote: | And human beings make approximate solutions for the average | input all the time. That's what gut feelings, instincts, | heuristics, and motivated reasoning are, along with all the | other shortcuts we take to function in daily life. | | The article is asking why it's so hard to be _rational_ | though, i.e. follow a logically-valid set of inferences | forward to an unambiguous conclusion. Assuming one of your | premises is that correct rationality implies reasoning | statistically about a network of interrelated beliefs, the | uncomputability of a Bayesian net is relevant to that. | btilly wrote: | You are correct. For example the worst and average cases for | the Simplex Method are dramatically different. | | However, in practice, complex Bayesian nets do wind up being | computationally intractable. Therefore attempts to build real | world machine learning systems consistently find themselves | going to computationally tractable heuristic methods with | rather obvious failure modes. | strulovich wrote: | Also, adding on my previous comment, for an interesting take | on the limitations of NP hard applicability to real life | problems see Parameterized Complexity: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_complexity | User23 wrote: | Similarly even mediocre programmers do a pretty good job | writing programs that halt. | DiggyJohnson wrote: | First of all I do see that you called it an example; I don't | think you're straw-manning or anything: | | I think using chaos theory / Bayesian concepts is a | significantly better metaphor for "life as we experience it" | than it is for the examples you gave. | amelius wrote: | Ok, so what is the class of problems that is hard for any | input? | MichaelZuo wrote: | Reducing entropy. | lisper wrote: | Ironically, some of the most irrational people I know are the | ones who profess to hew to rationality, to the point where, in | certain circles, "rationality" has become a sort of cult. This | is particularly evident in militant anti-theism (whose | adherents insist that the only possible explanation for someone | believing in God is that they are idiots or otherwise mentally | deficient), hard-core libertarians (who, ironically, end up | politically aligned with hard-core fundamentalist Christians, | at least in the U.S.) and a particularly weird strain of this | disease that causes people to subscribe to (and actively | proselytize!) the many-worlds interpretation of quantum | mechanics. It's bizarre, and unendingly frustrating. Sometimes | I feel like I'm the only rational creature in the universe | because, of course, none of _my_ beliefs are anything at all | like theirs. | btilly wrote: | How do you know that they are the ones who are being | irrational here, and not you? | | This is a serious question. We should always challenge our | preconceptions. To take your examples: | | 1. Traditional Judeo-Christian religions all claim we should | believe because of claims made in holy books of questionable | provenance, held by primitive people who believed things like | (for example) disease being caused by demons. What rational | reason is there for believing these holy books to be | particularly truthful? (I was careful to not include | Buddhism, whose basis is in experiences that people have | while in altered states of consciousness from meditation.) | | 2. The shortcomings of libertarianism involve various | tragedies of the commons. (My favorite book on this being, | _The Logic of Collective Action_.) However the evidence in | favor of most government interventions is rather weak. And | the evidence is very strong that well-intended government | interventions predictably will, after regulatory capture, | wind creating severe problems of their own. How do you know | that the interventions which you like will actually lead to | good results? (Note, both major US parties are uneasy | coalitions of convenience kept together through the only | electoral realities of winner takes all. On the left, big | labor and environmentalism are also uncomfortable | bedfellows.) | | 3. To the extent that the observer is described by quantum | mechanics, many-worlds is provably a correct description of | the process of observation. In the absence of concrete | evidence that quantum mechanics breaks down for observers | like us, what rational reason is there to advocate for any | other interpretation? (The fact that it completely violates | our preconceptions about how the world should work is an | emotional argument, not a rational one.) | lisper wrote: | I kind of intended that comment to be ironic self- | deprecating humor because, of course, I have no way of | knowing whether or not I'm being irrational. Irrational | people think they're rational, and so the fact that I think | I'm rational does not mean that I am. But it's likewise for | everyone. The real point is that everyone ought to have a | little more humility about their own rationality | (especially all the idiots who are downvoting my original | comments. Now _they_ are being totally irrational!) | lisper wrote: | To late to edit the above comment, but just for the | record, this is my actual response to the many-worlders: | | http://blog.rongarret.info/2019/07/the-trouble-with-many- | wor... | breuleux wrote: | Thanks, that was interesting :) | | One thing I'm curious about: I haven't read the | literature all that well, but my personal understanding | of MWI, after trying to wrap my head around it, is that | there's probably no branching or peeling at all: every | possible configuration of the universe immutably exists | and is associated with a complex amplitude. What does | change are the amplitudes. When I make a choice at point | A and the universe "splits" into B and C, the only thing | that happens is that the amplitude in bucket A is split | into buckets B and C. But there's no reason to think A, B | and C were ever empty or will ever be empty: after all, | some other state Z might pour amplitude into A at the | same time A pours into B and C. We might even currently | be in a steady state where the universal wavefunction is | perfectly static, because every single "branch" is | perfectly compensated by a "join". If so, MWI would | challenge the very idea that existence is a binary | predicate (it's actually a continuous complex amplitude). | I'm honestly not sure how we're even supposed to reason | about that thing. | | Does that make any sense, or am I way off base? | btilly wrote: | I read it, but from it you seem to be making three | points. | | 1. Many worlds is indeed what QM predicts should happen. | | 2. Popular descriptions are oversimplified and the full | explanation is very complicated. | | 3. Even if many worlds is true, it doesn't change my | experience and should not rationally change how I act | when faced with quantum uncertainty. | | If I am correct, then I'm in violent agreement with all | three points. And am left with, "So until more data, I | will provisionally accept many worlds as the best | explanation." | | My impression is that you seem to be left with, "If it is | true, then it is irrelevant to my life, and so I don't | care about whether it might be true." | lisper wrote: | > Many worlds is indeed what QM predicts should happen. | | No. Many-worlds is what the SE predicts should happen. | But the SE != QM. MW does not explain the Born rule, | which is part of QM's predictions. MW is also violently | at odds with subjective experience. So MW is not a good | explanation of what is observed. | hindsightbias wrote: | Watching the SSC and NYTimes drama was pretty eye opening | about rationlists rational discourse. | | Even when SA himself eventually started questioning his | response/allegations, few of the mob (there really is no | other word for it) would not have it. All absolutist and | conspiracy laden. | | PG said keep your identity small. I've found few rationalist | or libertarians of any bent who meet that criteria. | legrande wrote: | 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. | OnACoffeeBreak wrote: | 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. | FinanceAnon wrote: | 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? | jjbinx007 wrote: | 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 | WhompingWindows wrote: | 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". | legrande wrote: | > 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 | digitalsushi wrote: | I knew what you meant. I feel like we almost have our own | culture, sometimes. Weird. | jklinger410 wrote: | 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. | _moof wrote: | 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. | jhgb wrote: | Why? Are you equating rationality with omniscience? Then why | have the separate word "rationality" in the first place? | rafaelero wrote: | 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. | flixic wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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). | rafaelero wrote: | 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. | HPsquared wrote: | It's irrational to pretend as if we are rational. | [deleted] | eevilspock wrote: | 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._ | nathias wrote: | 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 wrote: | And they are ever so full of themselves. They're a perfect | embodiment of Dunning-Kruger. | TheGigaChad wrote: | Idiot dumbass, get cancer and die squealing like a lab rat. | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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? | kerblang wrote: | 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. | BurningFrog wrote: | You won't make any engineers angry. | | We know you're talking about _other_ engineers, and we agree | about those fools! | kerblang wrote: | 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. | DamnYuppie wrote: | 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. | marsven_422 wrote: | We are human, glorious humans. | okamiueru wrote: | It's going against entropy. There are few ways to be rational, | and infinitely many ways to irrational. | alecst wrote: | 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. | sjg007 wrote: | If you demonstrate an open mind when someone says you're wrong | you are more likely to open their mind. That's a win. | | Focus on yourself and controlling your emotions. Be the calm. | polote wrote: | The basis of a rational decision, is to work with hypothesis. | When someone shows you that you are wrong. Just ask yourself, | my belief is based of which hypothesis ? Did his points showed | that the logic between my hypothesis and my opinion were | flawed? Did he show that my hypothesis were false ? | | If you want to be rational about an opinion, you have to think | first, "what are my hypothesis". Most people start with the | opinion and then go down to the hypothesis. That can't work | like that. That's the hypothesis + the logic that should create | an opinion. Not the other way around | XorNot wrote: | > 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"? | [deleted] | alecst wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | karmakaze wrote: | People who gain knowledge by adding to a consistent/stable | belief system are the ones who have the most difficulty | adapting to new situations and processing new information | that may upend volumes of settled knowledge. You can | recognize them as the dogmatic types that remember the rules | but forget how/why they adopted them and are at a loss to | update them. | antisthenes wrote: | > People who gain knowledge by adding to a | consistent/stable belief system are the ones who have the | most difficulty adapting to new situations and processing | new information that may upend volumes of settled | knowledge. | | That's such an incredibly rare occurrence, that having a | stable belief system far outweighs its potential drawbacks. | Not to mention that rationality itself encompasses the | ability to make such a switch anyway if the new information | actually does upend volumes of "settled" knowledge. | | A much bigger problem, though, is people lacking critical | thinking skills to adequately assign probabilities to the | new information being valuable/useful/correct. | | Hint: it's very low. (in the current stage of civilization, | there are definitely periods where it was different). | karmakaze wrote: | We may be in agreement and only categorizing 'stable' | differently. Of course you want a single-coherent world | view. What doesn't work well is if inferred or partial- | case knowledge is committed as rigid facts that are | incompatible with new information. | jcims wrote: | >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. | | This is just my perspective, but very few beliefs or values | map to the whole of reality...they tend to bind to certain | aspects of it with a variable priority along the spectrum of | that particular dimension, wither its personal agency, the | color red, public health, spiders, etc. | | However, reality rarely provides us with the ability take a | position purely on one factor...nearly every context in which | a decision is required operates at the nexus of an | uncountable number of these dimensions. Some you can feel | swelling to the fore as their slope in your mental 'values' | model increases, others stay dormant because you don't see | how they apply. This is how most of my decisions that might | look outwardly 'inconsistent' arise, there are confounding | factors that dominate the topology and steer me in a | different direction. | claudiawerner wrote: | I've personally come to see this as a more complicated issue. | Often, rational priorities contradict and overlap in scope - | for example, discrepancies between moral reasoning and | instrumental reasoning. Although I try to be reasonable about | these, it's not always possible or preferable to side with | one over the other. | | However, the drive for total and pure consistency is also | misguided in my judgement. One reason why we usually feel so | motivated and conflicted (to the point where it can lead to | depression) with inconsistency is the psychological effect of | cognitive dissonance. It's not clear to me that the only way | to quieten cognitive dissonance is to resolve the dissenting | thoughts. | | Another way is to accept that not everything needs to be | resolved. This can be great for mental health - again, just | in my experience. Don't let the (sometimes irrational) | effects of cognitive dissonance override your decision | making. Resolution can work, but so can acceptance. | nvilcins wrote: | We all operate with abstractions and simplifications - | because it's impractical (and actually impossible given the | complexity of the world) to process end evaluate every single | detail. | | Dealing with contradictions in our own beliefs (paradoxes) is | a part of life. The rational approach is to accept that and | "fuse" those beliefs carefully, not (a) accept one and reject | the others or (b) avoid the topic entirely. | lotsofpulp wrote: | The rational approach is to acknowledge that you do not | have sufficient information to proceed, or acknowledge the | various assumptions (better word than "belief) that you are | using. | | If you are using contradicting assumptions, then you should | probably check to see if you are doing so because you want | the conclusion that you are getting from the assumption. | amanaplanacanal wrote: | We make decisions based on imperfect information and | conflicting values every day. We generally can't wait | until we have sufficient information to proceed. | lotsofpulp wrote: | That does not require using conflicting assumptions | though. | bluetomcat wrote: | You can only be rational within a greater framework defined by | a set of beliefs. When society at large believes that market | capitalism is the only way for promoting prosperity, the | rational action for a single individual is to get a job, pay | the bills and have a life. Other possible actions might have a | stronger moral justification, but aren't as beneficial or | rational for the individual. | s1artibartfast wrote: | The is no division between moral action and rationality. | People just pick what they wish to optomize for. You can | rationally pursue any moral cause just as easily as personal | comfort. | MrPowers wrote: | 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. | newbamboo wrote: | Some are grateful to have them pointed out, after a bit of | initial discomfort and resistance. Didn't work out so well for | Socrates of course, but we're more enlightened now. | Matticus_Rex wrote: | > but we're more enlightened now | | We hope. | nostromo wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | aidenn0 wrote: | The difference between sunk-cost fallacy and persistence is | that of motivation. If you keep doing something because | "you've worked so hard already" then that's sunk-cost | fallacy. If you keep doing something because "success is | just around the corner" then that's persistence. | | You can't go back in time and not work hard on something, | so whether or not you should continue is purely a function | of whether or not you think you will succeed, not a | function of how much effort you've already put into it. | oldsklgdfth wrote: | In an attempt to catch myself in the act of logical fallacies I | have a flash card app on my phone. One of the sets I have is of | logical fallacies. Educating myself has helped make me more | aware of them and when I fall victim to them. | | It's not an easy task. But 10 minutes a day can add up and | reinforce that information. | | A related idea is cognitive distortion. It's basically an | irrational thought pattern that perpetuates negative emotions | and a distorted view of reality. One example many here can | relate to is imposter syndrome. But to feel like an imposter | you have to overlook your achievements and assets and cherry- | pick negative data points. | wyager wrote: | "Logical fallacies" are mostly Boolean/Aristotelian and | identifying them is completely useless and/or counterproductive | in 99% of real world scenarios. Most of your reasoning should | be Bayesian, not Boolean, and under Bayesian reasoning a lot of | "fallacies" like sunk cost, slippery slope, etc. are actually | powerful heuristics for EV optimization. | jitter_ wrote: | > under Bayesian reasoning a lot of "fallacies" like sunk | cost, slippery slope, etc. are actually powerful heuristics | for EV optimization. | | Can you elaborate on that? | | This really piqued my interest. I feel like logic is easy to | apply retrospectively (especially so for spotting fallacies), | but trying to catch myself in a fallacy in the present feels | like excessive second quessing and overanalyzing. The sort | that prevents forward momentum and learning. | | Would you by any change have any recommendations on reading | on the topic? | wyager wrote: | Sure. Fallacies, as usually stated, tell you when something | that feels like a logical entailment isn't actually a | logical entailment. | | Intuitively, people find "bob is an idiot so he's wrong" a | reasonable statement. | | Technically, the implication does not hold (stupid people | can be correct) and this is an ad hominem fallacy. | | However, if we analyze this statement from a Bayesian | standpoint (which we should), the rules of entailment are | different and actually bob being stupid is _evidence_ that | he's wrong. So maybe this is actually a pretty reasonable | thing to say! Certainly reasonable people should use | speakers' intelligence when deciding how much to trust | speakers' claims, even though this is narrowly "fallacious" | in an Aristotelian sense. | | I'm not aware of any reading on this topic. It seems under- | explored in my circles. However I know some other people | have been having similar thoughts recently. | PicassoCTs wrote: | 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? | joelbondurant wrote: | USA members need the Fact-Check algorithm integrated into | permanent surgically installed face masks. | mncharity wrote: | 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 | tomgp wrote: | "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. | andi999 wrote: | 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. | damoe wrote: | Because there is a good chance reality is not rational. | karmakaze wrote: | 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 | coldtea wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | linuxhansl wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | esarbe wrote: | 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. | raman162 wrote: | 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 | mrxd wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | m3kw9 wrote: | 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 | adrhead wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | [deleted] | eevilspock wrote: | "Useless" https://xkcd.com/55/ | [deleted] | achenatx wrote: | 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. | derbOac wrote: | I came to say something similar, that rational decision making | is really a poorly posed problem at some level. | | Take money for example. You can create a theoretical decision- | making dilemma involving certain sums of money, and work out | what the most rational strategy is, but in reality, the | differences between different sums of money is going to differ | between people depending on different value systems and | competing interests. So then you get into this scenario where 1 | unit of money means something different to different people | (the value you put on 1 EUR is going to be different from the | value I put on it; the exchange rates are sort of an average | over all these valuations), which might throw off the relevance | of the theoretical scenario for reality, or change the optimal | decision scenario. | | The other issue beside the one you're relating to -- the | subjectivity of the weights assigned to different outcomes, the | achille's heel of utility theory -- is uncertainty not just | about the values in the model, but whether the model is even | correct at all. That is, you can create some idea that some | course of action is more rational, but what happens when | there's some nontrivial probability that the whole framework is | incorrect? Your decision about A and B, then, shouldn't just be | modeled in terms of whatever is in your model, but all the | other things you're not accounting for. Maybe there are other | decisions, C and D, which you're not even aware of, or someone | else is, but you have to choose B to get to them. | | Just yesterday I read this very well-reasoned, elegant, | rational explanation by an epidemiologist about why boosters | aren't needed. But about 3/4 of the way through I realized it | was all based on an assumption that is very suspect, and which | throws everything out the window. There are still other things | their arguments were missing. So by the end of it I was | convinced of the opposite conclusion. | | Rationality as a framework is important, but it's limited and | often misleading. | _greim_ wrote: | > 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 wrote: | 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. | FinanceAnon wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | notahacker wrote: | Don't think that follows automatically. My dollar - in | isolation - can feed someone tomorrow, even if it doesn't | feed others and they're all hungry next week. Lack of my | dollar alone won't change the ethics of Amazon in the | slightest, and much as the more ethical shopkeeper won't | mind the extra number in his bank account it's unlikely to | allow him to displace ethical companies or do anything else | wonderful with it. The difference between direct, tangible | outcomes and perhaps more significant outcomes which depend | on a lot more other people acting in a particular way is | one of the thornier questions about what's rational to | prioritise. tbh when I do boycott stuff it's mostly an | emotional response | | (notwithstanding better objections to the original example: | in practice most donors' finances aren't so tight that | buying the $90 product rather than the $100 dollar one is | really necessary to free up the donor funds for a worthy | cause, as opposed to emotionally salve donor conscience for | buying from an unworthy vendor...) | vdqtp3 wrote: | > 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. | UnFleshedOne wrote: | Deciding when to stop overthinking is also a rational process. | Some choices truly don't matter, or not matter enough to spend | time and energy on them. | | If consumer ethics is important to you then it obviously | warrants some deliberation, weighted by an upper bound of your | potential impact. But identifying areas of meaningless choice | and simply choosing randomly (and not even caring if the choice | is sufficiently random) frees up a lot of mental energy. | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | "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 | belter wrote: | I am with you :-) https://xkcd.com/1132/ | tomjakubowski wrote: | 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. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/7dAh5 | swayvil wrote: | 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? | newbamboo wrote: | My answer, in jeopardy format: What is Psychology? Every mind is | different; a feature not a bug. | danans wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | > 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). | lazide wrote: | Nope, explicitly using logic. We didn't invent thinking | about things in the last hundred years after all. | | If you don't know what is behind x thing, and every y times | someone walks by a thing like x thing they get jumped by a | leopard, then only walk by x thing when the risk is worth | it. Which it rarely is. | | If you're referring to formal logic, then sure - but almost | no one in that thread seems to be using that definition | either. Formal logic is incredibly expensive (mentally), | and only a few percent of folks even now can afford to use | it with any regularity. | wyager wrote: | This is also captured in the "midwit phenomenon", where people | who are just smart enough to start applying "rationality" make | worse decisions than stupid people. This is because stupid | people are operating off of hard-earned adaptations (encoded as | traditions, folk wisdom, etc.). Midwits are smart enough to | realize that the putative justifications for these adaptations | are wrong, and therefore they toss out the adaptations. People | who think about it even harder realize that these adaptations | were mostly there for good reasons, and getting rid of them | isn't a good idea even if the relevant just-so stories | explaining them don't hold up to "rational" scrutiny. | UnFleshedOne wrote: | Midwits (which we all are to one degree or another) can be | mostly fixed by applying Chesterton's Fence principle though. | We just need a knock or two in both directions to better | estimate a relative weight of that rule as a heuristic. | SamBam wrote: | > 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. | | That wouldn't have been a rational assessment, because it | wouldn't have been an accurate assessment of the risks of being | wrong, and the behavior required to avoid them. | | If there's only a 1% chance that a predator is behind a bush, | and that predator might eat you, it's absolutely rational to | _act_ as though there is a predator. You 'll be seeing lots of | bushes in your life, and you can't escape from those 1% chances | for long. | | The same thinking is why it would have been rational to try and | avoid global warming 30 years ago. Even if the science was not | settled, in the worst-case scenario, you'd have "wasted" a | bunch of money making green energy production. In the best-case | scenario, you saved the planet. | fallous wrote: | It's not actually rational, let alone long-term optimal, to | act as though there is a predator behind every bush given a | 1% (in reality it's probably a couple of orders of magnitude | less likely, but we'll ignore that). If you need water and | head for the local watering hole, avoiding bushes will most | likely result in you not getting water since bushes tend to | grow where there is water. I may be 1% likely to get eaten by | something hiding behind the bush but I am 100% likely to die | if I don't drink water. | | Avoidance of all possible risk is a recipe for paralysis. | Part of being rational is evaluation of risks vs rewards as | well as recognizing the dangers of unintended consequences | and the fact that nearly all meaningful decisions are made | with incomplete information and time limits. | slingnow wrote: | Somehow you took their response to mean "the rational thing | to do is avoid all bushes, forever, no matter the | consequences". | | The OP merely stated you should adjust your behavior to the | 1% chance. That would include weighing it against the risk | of dying from dehydration, in your example. | johnwheeler wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | ah, you should have read the second sentence | raldi wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 | JohnPrine wrote: | I think you may have a confused definition of what it | means to be a rational actor. Being rational means making | the optimal decision given the information available | johnwheeler wrote: | No, you're confused. See | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality | raldi wrote: | 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? | johnwheeler wrote: | Perfectly rational means just what it sounds like. Making | the correct decision because you have all available data. | | Being perfectly rational is impossible. | raldi wrote: | Would a perfectly rational person duck if there were a | 50% chance they were about to be punched? Or would they | do nothing? | throwaway9690 wrote: | 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? | pessimizer wrote: | > natural unbiased hate | | ...is a pretty silly phrase. If you don't have a reason for | something, it can't (by definition) be reasonable. | carry_bit wrote: | It could be a case of implicit vs explicit knowledge. In the | context of evolved culture beliefs, the foophobia may serve | some real purpose, even if most/all of the enculturated | individuals can't explicitly state what the real purpose is. | | It could be that, like dietary restrictions to reduce the | spread of disease, the foophobia is no longer needed, but keep | Chesterton's fence in mind before you say it's unneeded. | someguy321 wrote: | 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. | teddyh wrote: | > _to me it is totally irrational, especially since he can 't | give any concrete reason for it._ | | In my experience, people usually _can_ give 'concrete' reasons | for it, but what constitutes 'concrete' is a matter of opinion, | and I don't consider everybody's reasons to be valid. But of | course, they do. | dfxm12 wrote: | 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. | throwaway9690 wrote: | When I mention conditioning, I mean from a very young age. | | For example: Throw salt over your shoulder if you spill some | -or- Green skinned people are bad and you should never trust | them or allow them in your neighborhood. | | Now the former is pretty harmless but not so the latter. In | both cases the only explanation is "that's how I was raised" | which I don't find compelling or rational. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Preferences do not need to be rationally justified; without | axiomic preferences, we have no preferences at all. | throwaway9690 wrote: | I'm referring more to prejudices rather than preferences. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | > _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._ | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | I agree that a culture of "winning arguments in Web forums" | often has bias in of itself that requires going out and | diversifying experiences. But I don't think it will always | require travel. Volunteering at a soup kitchen, fostering a | rescue animal, organizing a community event, and talking to the | elderly in care facilities will all expose you to experiences | outside of the internet and don't require travel. | skybrian wrote: | Sure, those are good for learning more about your own | community. | | But you're not going to learn the same things you would from | travel. For example, you're not likely to learn another | language if everyone you talk to speaks English. Similarly | for learning about other cultures that aren't near you. | | But I'm not sure how much brief travel to see the tourist | sites helps, and hanging out with expats might not help so | much. | kubb wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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 wrote: | 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. | Retric wrote: | It goes both ways. | | No you really can't understand a culture from a week of | study the same way you can from being there for a week. | The issue is the millions of unknown unknowns that you | never really consider. How large is people's personal | space, where do they stand and look in an elevator, | what's traffic like, how loud are people, etc etc. Of | course a week or three isn't that long, but there are | real diminishing returns here. | | On the other hand personal experience is very narrow in | scope. You're never going to find out country wide crime | rates by wondering around for a week. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | >Of course a week or three isn't that long, but there are | real diminishing returns here. | | I suspect you have to live and work in a place to really | understand it. If you are wealthy and visiting a poor | country there is virtually zero chance, you will always | be too insulated from the reality. | pessimizer wrote: | If you are wealthy _and born and raised_ in a poor | country, you will likely be quite ignorant of most of the | lifestyle of most of its people. | karmakaze wrote: | That actually sounds very resourceful than wasteful, as | readers can have vicarious experiences through his | writings. | zepto wrote: | The people you describe do seem to exist, but what makes you | think Cohen is one of them? | SMAAART wrote: | 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 wrote: | I don't disagree but I have to say this absolute reads like a | voice-over from an Adam Curtis documentary. | cortesoft wrote: | I think part of it is a quote from Fight Club | chromaton wrote: | Quote Investigator says it's from 1928 newspaper column: | https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/21/impress/ | zentropia wrote: | Fight Club, bus scene | marcod wrote: | I maintain that the concept of "common sense" is also quite | useless now :p | athenot wrote: | This sounds cynical but yes, unfortunately, there are many | incentives to _not_ be rational. | Siira wrote: | 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. | jimbokun wrote: | I think this is connected to another reason why so many seem to | reject "rationality" today. | | They are rejecting the authorities that in the past have tried | to associate themselves with "rationality". The political think | tanks. The seminaries. The universities. Government agencies. | Capitalist CEOs following the "invisible hand" of the market. | | All of these so-called elites have biases and agendas, so of | course none of them should be accepted at face value. | | I think what's missed, is rationality is not about trusting | people and organizations, but about trusting a process. | Trusting debates over lectures. Trusting well designed studies | over trusting scientists. Trusting free speech and examining a | broad range of ideas over speech codes and censorship. Trusting | empirical observation over ideological purity. | | This is the value system of the so called "classical liberals", | and they are an ever more lonely and isolated group. There is a | growing embrace for authoritarianism and defense of tribal | identity on both the "left" and the "right" taking its place. | pessimizer wrote: | "Classical liberalism" has little or no relationship to any | sentiment you've expressed here, as far as I know. | ret2plt wrote: | It's worse than that. The problem is that being truly rational | is hard, unpleasant work that few people want to do. If you | read an article that makes your political opponents look bad, | you can't just feel smugly superior, you have to take into | account that you are predisposed to believe convenient sounding | things, so you have to put extra effort into checking the truth | of that claim. If you follow the evidence instead of tribal | consensus, you will probably end up with some beliefs that your | friends and relatives wont like, etc. | toshk wrote: | When all experiences we have are based in meaning those | emotional experiences in some sense might be more "real" then a | logical thought. | WhompingWindows wrote: | 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. | paganel wrote: | 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. | morpheos137 wrote: | 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. | myfavoritedog wrote: | 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. | jscipione wrote: | 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." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-16 23:00 UTC)