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Exploitation of irrationality is how rationality evolves in biological systems. In other words, if we get the government to play the role of a protective nanny,

Exploitation of irrationality is how rationality evolves in biological systems. In other words, if we get the government to play the role of a protective nanny, we the citizen will remain intellectual equivalent of infants.

mikeash 11y ago
Allowing rationality to evolve by allowing irrational actors to be exploited is going to take thousands of years at the least. I'd rather figure out some way to improve things sooner than that.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  It doesn't have to be biological evolution or take thousands of years. Most exploitation of irrationality works by playing off subconscious desires; once that leads to a very public and consequential failure, it is very quickly brought into consciousness, where future instances can be dealt with rationally. Someone who invested their life savings in dot-coms in 1999 is probably never again going to invest in "the next big thing". That brings its own form of irrationality - once everyone believes that it's foolish to invest in the next big thing, the next big thing becomes very underpriced - but they are at least not going to make the same mistake twice.
zzzeek 11y ago
last I checked, nannys don't let the kids they're taking care of democratically elect their behaviors.
- nunyabuizness 11y ago
  > nannys don't let the kids they're taking care of democratically elect their behaviors Considering they can sneak in CISA into a US budget bill after it was shot down by the public, apparently, neither does the government.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    Shot down by a segment of the public in which you and I spend a lot of time.
darkmighty 11y ago
There is a vast body of ways we can act irrationally. It doesn't make sense to let people make mistakes and slowly, individually learn each flaw through their own mistakes. It's much more efficient to teach them from an accumulated body of scientific knowledge and create a mechanism to "automatically" preventing the gravest mistakes.
- vixen99 11y ago
  What gobsmacking arrogance. Who do you suggest does the assessing of 'mistakes' and 'teaching' thereof? http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0465025226 http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Revised-Expanded...: as one review puts it - Thomas Sowell - gets right to the warped mindset of the elite intellectual. It should be a must read for every high school senior in the country.
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    You seem to be reading much more than I actually stated. I was contending with the overly broad criticism of the government (and other institutions) as protective figure through laws, rules and regulations. Letting the system evolve without rules by exploiting irrationality, letting individuals learn exclusively by mistake is a bad mechanism. His "evolutionary" argument could apply to most rule systems -- do you believe rules are inherently bad? That's nonsense imo. The assessing of mistakes and teaching is done by domain experts (rule makers or law makers), who know much better than new entrants the perils of a given system, in the case of a well functioning system. There is also evolution in those systems, but it's a more effective form: usually when a single actor finds an exception or flaw in the rules, the rule makers are warned and may rewrite, propagating this knowledge to everyone. If we had infinite capacity to learn, reason and absorb minutiae of the world around us, we wouldn't need rules. But if you go, for example, work in a dangerous factory environment, you don't want to study about all the systems and every way you could die, or even worse (per the 'naive evolutionary' suggestion), try yourself going everywhere. You want someone to tell you "You can't step outside those lines; when working at this machine, you can't put your hand in those places", because you trust the rule maker has gone through everything and you won't walk out missing a limb. Is this "babysitting"? Probably, it's still the best way to go about it. That's not to say every activity should have strict rules. Rules are good fit in general where the environmental conditions don't change very rapidly (in time or across the actors) and where the perils they protect against are sufficient to warrant learning and enforcing the rules in the first place. They remove flexibility for each actor to make it's own optimum choice (only relevant when this varies in time or across individuals) and take resources to formulate, teach and enforce.
erispoe 11y ago
Relying on evolution, a slow mechanism for humans, especially in a social context where a lot of selection pressure has been removed, sounds like really bad way to design policies. Beyond the fact that you would need a direct link between genes and rationality for selection pressure to apply, you're positing that rational people have more reproductive success. Is that really true you think?
patcon 11y ago
> evolves If you're being intellectually honest here, you need to go the full distance and acknowledge that your logic (if actually scientific) requires the "irrational" genes to NOT be passed on (at least not as much as the "rational" ones). So... eugenics or death.

mikeash 11y ago

Allowing rationality to evolve by allowing irrational actors to be exploited is going to take thousands of years at the least. I'd rather figure out some way to improve things sooner than that.

nostrademons 11y ago
It doesn't have to be biological evolution or take thousands of years. Most exploitation of irrationality works by playing off subconscious desires; once that leads to a very public and consequential failure, it is very quickly brought into consciousness, where future instances can be dealt with rationally. Someone who invested their life savings in dot-coms in 1999 is probably never again going to invest in "the next big thing". That brings its own form of irrationality - once everyone believes that it's foolish to invest in the next big thing, the next big thing becomes very underpriced - but they are at least not going to make the same mistake twice.

zzzeek 11y ago

last I checked, nannys don't let the kids they're taking care of democratically elect their behaviors.

nunyabuizness 11y ago
> nannys don't let the kids they're taking care of democratically elect their behaviors Considering they can sneak in CISA into a US budget bill after it was shot down by the public, apparently, neither does the government.
- afarrell 11y ago
  Shot down by a segment of the public in which you and I spend a lot of time.

darkmighty 11y ago

There is a vast body of ways we can act irrationally. It doesn't make sense to let people make mistakes and slowly, individually learn each flaw through their own mistakes. It's much more efficient to teach them from an accumulated body of scientific knowledge and create a mechanism to "automatically" preventing the gravest mistakes.

vixen99 11y ago
What gobsmacking arrogance. Who do you suggest does the assessing of 'mistakes' and 'teaching' thereof? http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0465025226 http://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Revised-Expanded...: as one review puts it - Thomas Sowell - gets right to the warped mindset of the elite intellectual. It should be a must read for every high school senior in the country.
- darkmighty 11y ago
  You seem to be reading much more than I actually stated. I was contending with the overly broad criticism of the government (and other institutions) as protective figure through laws, rules and regulations. Letting the system evolve without rules by exploiting irrationality, letting individuals learn exclusively by mistake is a bad mechanism. His "evolutionary" argument could apply to most rule systems -- do you believe rules are inherently bad? That's nonsense imo. The assessing of mistakes and teaching is done by domain experts (rule makers or law makers), who know much better than new entrants the perils of a given system, in the case of a well functioning system. There is also evolution in those systems, but it's a more effective form: usually when a single actor finds an exception or flaw in the rules, the rule makers are warned and may rewrite, propagating this knowledge to everyone. If we had infinite capacity to learn, reason and absorb minutiae of the world around us, we wouldn't need rules. But if you go, for example, work in a dangerous factory environment, you don't want to study about all the systems and every way you could die, or even worse (per the 'naive evolutionary' suggestion), try yourself going everywhere. You want someone to tell you "You can't step outside those lines; when working at this machine, you can't put your hand in those places", because you trust the rule maker has gone through everything and you won't walk out missing a limb. Is this "babysitting"? Probably, it's still the best way to go about it. That's not to say every activity should have strict rules. Rules are good fit in general where the environmental conditions don't change very rapidly (in time or across the actors) and where the perils they protect against are sufficient to warrant learning and enforcing the rules in the first place. They remove flexibility for each actor to make it's own optimum choice (only relevant when this varies in time or across individuals) and take resources to formulate, teach and enforce.

erispoe 11y ago

Relying on evolution, a slow mechanism for humans, especially in a social context where a lot of selection pressure has been removed, sounds like really bad way to design policies. Beyond the fact that you would need a direct link between genes and rationality for selection pressure to apply, you're positing that rational people have more reproductive success. Is that really true you think?

patcon 11y ago

> evolves If you're being intellectually honest here, you need to go the full distance and acknowledge that your logic (if actually scientific) requires the "irrational" genes to NOT be passed on (at least not as much as the "rational" ones). So... eugenics or death.