4 ms·

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.

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.
  - bakhy 11y ago
    well said. i just feel it is something people easily say, but hardly put into practice. i am being unfair, perhaps, as the other comment here states. i may be identifying some negative aspects in some people with a whole group that did not deserve it. but, OTOH, you two may be resorting to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
    - falcolas 11y ago
      > you two may be resorting to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. That may be a fair statement, since I do not believe there is a perfectly rational person in the real world - just those who are working to fight against their inherit irrationality. All we can ever rationally (oh, the irony) expect is that they do their best.
- convexfunction 11y ago
  The rationalists I know in real life tend to be acutely aware that they are still biased in many ways, and would probably laugh at the sentence fragment "successfully suppressed or outgrew [an] emotion". Maybe we know completely different people who affiliate with the word "rationality".
lmm 11y ago
So your rationality skills give you a lot of advantages in arguments, more or less independently of the actual merits of your position. Rather than compete in that zero-sum game, isn't the best thing for society then to distrust anyone with rationality skills and form social norms against then?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It's not a zero sum. If my opponent is also rational and unpersuaded by emotional pleas, then we converge to truth more rapidly. I recently got around to reading Scott Aaronson's Complexity of Agreement: http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/agree-econ.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/agree-econ.pdf One of the predictions of this paper is that rational Bayesians sharing information will a) rapidly converge to agreement and b) after making arguments, will often switch sides. An individual's position in an argument will look like a convergent random walk rather than a gradual concession in a negotiation. Of course, real life arguments rarely go this way [1]. But when reading this, I was struck by the fact that in some rare cases I have engaged in arguments that move this way. In every case I can think of, the other participant in the conversation was either a mathematician, a philosophers or a lesswrong reader. [1] One rare exception to this is real life arguments about what a stock price should be. Yay for market transmission of information!
  - bakhy 11y ago
    not to attack your position, but just to further illustrate where i'm going with all this. > ...rational Bayesians sharing information... setting aside the inherent humor of economics (which is sadly completely lost on economists), have you ever wondered - why would a purely rational actor even participate in the discussion, or, as a matter of fact, in anything? why would a purely logical machine get out of bed in the morning? would it not need to "want" something first? what would an emotionless logical machine "think" about, and why would it think about that and not something else? intellect without emotion is nothing. not figuratively, not poetically, but literally nothing. P.S. since when does the word "converge" apply to anything going on in a market? :P

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.
- bakhy 11y ago
  well said. i just feel it is something people easily say, but hardly put into practice. i am being unfair, perhaps, as the other comment here states. i may be identifying some negative aspects in some people with a whole group that did not deserve it. but, OTOH, you two may be resorting to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    > you two may be resorting to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. That may be a fair statement, since I do not believe there is a perfectly rational person in the real world - just those who are working to fight against their inherit irrationality. All we can ever rationally (oh, the irony) expect is that they do their best.
convexfunction 11y ago
The rationalists I know in real life tend to be acutely aware that they are still biased in many ways, and would probably laugh at the sentence fragment "successfully suppressed or outgrew [an] emotion". Maybe we know completely different people who affiliate with the word "rationality".

lmm 11y ago

So your rationality skills give you a lot of advantages in arguments, more or less independently of the actual merits of your position. Rather than compete in that zero-sum game, isn't the best thing for society then to distrust anyone with rationality skills and form social norms against then?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's not a zero sum. If my opponent is also rational and unpersuaded by emotional pleas, then we converge to truth more rapidly. I recently got around to reading Scott Aaronson's Complexity of Agreement: http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/agree-econ.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/agree-econ.pdf One of the predictions of this paper is that rational Bayesians sharing information will a) rapidly converge to agreement and b) after making arguments, will often switch sides. An individual's position in an argument will look like a convergent random walk rather than a gradual concession in a negotiation. Of course, real life arguments rarely go this way [1]. But when reading this, I was struck by the fact that in some rare cases I have engaged in arguments that move this way. In every case I can think of, the other participant in the conversation was either a mathematician, a philosophers or a lesswrong reader. [1] One rare exception to this is real life arguments about what a stock price should be. Yay for market transmission of information!
- bakhy 11y ago
  not to attack your position, but just to further illustrate where i'm going with all this. > ...rational Bayesians sharing information... setting aside the inherent humor of economics (which is sadly completely lost on economists), have you ever wondered - why would a purely rational actor even participate in the discussion, or, as a matter of fact, in anything? why would a purely logical machine get out of bed in the morning? would it not need to "want" something first? what would an emotionless logical machine "think" about, and why would it think about that and not something else? intellect without emotion is nothing. not figuratively, not poetically, but literally nothing. P.S. since when does the word "converge" apply to anything going on in a market? :P