10 ms·

OK, but let's take again the political example - there is a confounding social factor there. i think it is common to regard a concession, in the eyes of the pub

by bakhy 11y ago

OK, but let's take again the political example - there is a confounding social factor there. i think it is common to regard a concession, in the eyes of the public, as defeat. this drives many people to shout their positions, and disregard rational counterarguments, resorting to personal attacks (like the "democrats are pro-crime" claim). even if those people are in fact perfectly reasonable otherwise... the political example is really insufficiently explained by bringing in just cognitive development. now, generally, from experience, i have the impression that higher mental skills often translate simply into a higher capability of producing more elaborate rationalizations of positions that a person would have held anyway, positions which are rooted in emotions. pointing out rational counterarguments can in many situations only go so far. in fact, i have many times had an easier time discussing with people one might call primitive, since you get to the truth of their motives very quickly, and with respectful approach to people's feelings, a lot can be achieved. with very rational people it's sometimes really difficult to break through the layers of rationalizations. i'm not saying that rationalism is bad, or that the author (or you) like to go around calling people retards :D i just feels that despite best intentions it can lead to disregard for emotion, even though in many cases emotion is the ultimate relevant "reality of the situation". we can and must make ourselves better, but we can never stop being people.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> now, generally, from experience, i have the impression that higher mental skills often translate simply into a higher capability of producing more elaborate rationalizations of positions that a person would have held anyway, positions which are rooted in emotions. pointing out rational counterarguments can in many situations only go so far. in fact, i have many times had an easier time discussing with people one might call primitive, since you get to the truth of their motives very quickly (...) with very rational people it's sometimes really difficult to break through the layers of rationalizations. I think that's a potential failure mode of getting too smart. Rationality is supposed to teach you to notice when you're building layers of rationalization instead of updating your opinion to account for new evidence. It's a hard habit to learn, so what you described often happens instead. But if you're aware of this trap I still think learning more is better than not learning :). > with respectful approach to people's feelings, a lot can be achieved That's probably the truth about dealing with people, of all kinds of skill, education, smartness, etc. I'd say most of interpersonal conflicts come from one or both sides not groking it.
- bakhy 11y ago
  i absolutely agree that learning more is still better! in fact, meeting a gray area like this one is to me a heuristic indicator that something really worth learning is lurking behind. i think i took it from Zen - path to enlightenment through doubt... my question is perhaps do we properly acknowledge the difficulty we face? you say, for example, "it's a hard habit to learn" - but can we ever even learn it fully? it should make us humble. we can easily add disclaimers to our speech, but in practice it shows that we don't really mean them. we say it is hard to shake the rationalizing habit, and yet we often ascribe a level of certainty and objectivity to our conclusions which makes it seem like we completely disregard the possibility of our own emotions being behind our thinking. and ultimately, can any thought ever be had without an emotion behind it? Minsky, i think, remarked that he does not believe AI without emotion is possible. i completely agree with that.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
The point of rationality is to detect your own cognitive failures and to recognize and exploit those of others. It's pretty explicitly NOT about ignoring them. So when I observe someone saying "that guy is racist, don't believe his arguments", I can recognize that this is an emotional claim. It's an attempt to demonize a person rather than refute the argument. I can then observe that no one is disputing the actual argument, evaluate that on merit, and have a true belief about the world unbiased by my desire not to affiliate with racists. I can also update my beliefs about the rationality/honesty of the person saying "hey that guy is racist". Conversely, I can also recognize that a desire not to be racist is strong in people, and exploit it when I want to manipulate the less rational. For example, if I'm arguing against economic protectionism with an emotionally driven person, I might use Jim Crow as an example of protectionism rather than occupational licensing.
- bakhy 11y ago
  i think you missed my point, which was that these so called "cognitive failures" are really integral to what we are. rationalism is not generally wrong. improving your cognitive abilities should be a goal for everyone. but it tends to lead people to a worldview where simple humanity is deemed inferior, wrong, and where a person actually starts believing that they outgrew themselves and their humanity, that they are superior, objective, free of bias. this is an illusion, nobody is free of bias. in fact, people who believe they successfully suppressed or outgrew any emotion are typically the ones most influenced by it, subconsciously.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    Much like the Zen ideologies, there is no end state to being a rational human being. You can't just stop at one point and say "That's it, I'm perfectly rational now, therefore..." Instead, it's more of an ongoing process. The process of identifying your biases and reasoning about them is on-going. You will always have biases, the trick is to make the subconscious influence conscious. To come back to the Zen comparison - the more rational you become, the more you realize you're not rational at all.
Double_Cast 11y ago
I don't know about you, but calling Democrats "pro-crime" sounds pretty immature to me. I'm embarrassed to belong to a society where the status quo is so uncharitable that you're willing to excuse this slander as "people just being people". You may cringe at the word "retard", but does it not unnerve you just as much that the journalist called half the U.S. literally malicious?
- bakhy 11y ago
  do you realize that you're now going for a very emotional attack on my comment? do you see the problem? :) you also seem to be putting words into my mouth. i was merely offering an additional explanation for that behavior, to indicate that simply putting it under "poor cognitive development" (i.e. calling people retards, but in bigger words) is insufficient. i never said that we should all accept absolutely anything, and skip across blooming meadows singing kumbaya lol.
  - Double_Cast 11y ago
    And I disagree with your explanation. The journalist isn't simply committing a fallacy or misinterpreting an argument. The journalist went out of their way to accuse a political demographic of malicious intent. Out-group dynamics like this is something people actively shape (as demonstrated by the Robber Caves Experiment). Maybe we ought to classify it under something other than immaturity. But we can't chalk it up to laziness, mental fatigue, or #justPeopleThings as if it were an accident. > do you realize that you're now going for a very emotional attack on my comment? Honestly, I don't know what you're trying to prove here. My comment is invalid because I expressed embarrassment? lol? Errata regarding your other threads. LW members call themselves "aspiring rationalists" to remind themselves that they have not yet "outgrown humanity" [0]. You also seem to confuse logic and rationality. When economists talk about rational agents, they're discussing an agent which employs a decision making algorithm consistent with the VonNeuman Morgenstern Utility Theorem [1]. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...

by bakhy 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> now, generally, from experience, i have the impression that higher mental skills often translate simply into a higher capability of producing more elaborate rationalizations of positions that a person would have held anyway, positions which are rooted in emotions. pointing out rational counterarguments can in many situations only go so far. in fact, i have many times had an easier time discussing with people one might call primitive, since you get to the truth of their motives very quickly (...) with very rational people it's sometimes really difficult to break through the layers of rationalizations. I think that's a potential failure mode of getting too smart. Rationality is supposed to teach you to notice when you're building layers of rationalization instead of updating your opinion to account for new evidence. It's a hard habit to learn, so what you described often happens instead. But if you're aware of this trap I still think learning more is better than not learning :). > with respectful approach to people's feelings, a lot can be achieved That's probably the truth about dealing with people, of all kinds of skill, education, smartness, etc. I'd say most of interpersonal conflicts come from one or both sides not groking it.

bakhy 11y ago
i absolutely agree that learning more is still better! in fact, meeting a gray area like this one is to me a heuristic indicator that something really worth learning is lurking behind. i think i took it from Zen - path to enlightenment through doubt... my question is perhaps do we properly acknowledge the difficulty we face? you say, for example, "it's a hard habit to learn" - but can we ever even learn it fully? it should make us humble. we can easily add disclaimers to our speech, but in practice it shows that we don't really mean them. we say it is hard to shake the rationalizing habit, and yet we often ascribe a level of certainty and objectivity to our conclusions which makes it seem like we completely disregard the possibility of our own emotions being behind our thinking. and ultimately, can any thought ever be had without an emotion behind it? Minsky, i think, remarked that he does not believe AI without emotion is possible. i completely agree with that.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

The point of rationality is to detect your own cognitive failures and to recognize and exploit those of others. It's pretty explicitly NOT about ignoring them. So when I observe someone saying "that guy is racist, don't believe his arguments", I can recognize that this is an emotional claim. It's an attempt to demonize a person rather than refute the argument. I can then observe that no one is disputing the actual argument, evaluate that on merit, and have a true belief about the world unbiased by my desire not to affiliate with racists. I can also update my beliefs about the rationality/honesty of the person saying "hey that guy is racist". Conversely, I can also recognize that a desire not to be racist is strong in people, and exploit it when I want to manipulate the less rational. For example, if I'm arguing against economic protectionism with an emotionally driven person, I might use Jim Crow as an example of protectionism rather than occupational licensing.

bakhy 11y ago
i think you missed my point, which was that these so called "cognitive failures" are really integral to what we are. rationalism is not generally wrong. improving your cognitive abilities should be a goal for everyone. but it tends to lead people to a worldview where simple humanity is deemed inferior, wrong, and where a person actually starts believing that they outgrew themselves and their humanity, that they are superior, objective, free of bias. this is an illusion, nobody is free of bias. in fact, people who believe they successfully suppressed or outgrew any emotion are typically the ones most influenced by it, subconsciously.
- falcolas 11y ago
  Much like the Zen ideologies, there is no end state to being a rational human being. You can't just stop at one point and say "That's it, I'm perfectly rational now, therefore..." Instead, it's more of an ongoing process. The process of identifying your biases and reasoning about them is on-going. You will always have biases, the trick is to make the subconscious influence conscious. To come back to the Zen comparison - the more rational you become, the more you realize you're not rational at all.

Double_Cast 11y ago

I don't know about you, but calling Democrats "pro-crime" sounds pretty immature to me. I'm embarrassed to belong to a society where the status quo is so uncharitable that you're willing to excuse this slander as "people just being people". You may cringe at the word "retard", but does it not unnerve you just as much that the journalist called half the U.S. literally malicious?

bakhy 11y ago
do you realize that you're now going for a very emotional attack on my comment? do you see the problem? :) you also seem to be putting words into my mouth. i was merely offering an additional explanation for that behavior, to indicate that simply putting it under "poor cognitive development" (i.e. calling people retards, but in bigger words) is insufficient. i never said that we should all accept absolutely anything, and skip across blooming meadows singing kumbaya lol.
- Double_Cast 11y ago
  And I disagree with your explanation. The journalist isn't simply committing a fallacy or misinterpreting an argument. The journalist went out of their way to accuse a political demographic of malicious intent. Out-group dynamics like this is something people actively shape (as demonstrated by the Robber Caves Experiment). Maybe we ought to classify it under something other than immaturity. But we can't chalk it up to laziness, mental fatigue, or #justPeopleThings as if it were an accident. > do you realize that you're now going for a very emotional attack on my comment? Honestly, I don't know what you're trying to prove here. My comment is invalid because I expressed embarrassment? lol? Errata regarding your other threads. LW members call themselves "aspiring rationalists" to remind themselves that they have not yet "outgrown humanity" [0]. You also seem to confuse logic and rationality. When economists talk about rational agents, they're discussing an agent which employs a decision making algorithm consistent with the VonNeuman Morgenstern Utility Theorem [1]. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_stronger/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h8/tsuyoku_naritai_i_want_to_become_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...