3 ms·

Why are those superior attributes to rationality?

anoncoward111 8y ago
because "rationally" i should kill you and take your money and food but "empathetically" i don't want the same thing to happen to me, so i tolerate your existence in hopes that you tolerate mine
- roenxi 8y ago
  There isn't a moment in recorded history where one human acting alone has outperformed a group of humans working in tandem. It just doesn't happen. You sometimes get scenarios where one human has disproportionate social control over a group, but even then experiments with democracy have shown it overwhelmingly outperforms the competition. So far on both an absolute and a per capita basis. Many (most?) of our morals also happen to be game-theory optimums that you would raitionally see value in even as a true sociopath. What you describe isn't rational, it is some combination of desperation and short term thinking. The rational approach has always been to organise and cooperate. If you actually tried to behave that way you would discover that what you call 'behaving rationally' will involve you having no material goods, comfort or prospect for obtaining them.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    ok, i have a better one: "rationally", i shouldn't care about global warming because it's inconvenient to alter my lifestyle and because global warming will not affect me as much in my lifetime but "empathetically" i care about the future environment i'm leaving for future humans
    - shakna 8y ago
      You're using 'rational' as something devoid from worldview - which it can't be. Rationally I should have multiple children, as my only legacy is my name. Still rational, differing worldview. Part of the worldview your thoughts on rationallity betray is that only the 'here and now' matter. Which only fits a very small philosophy even within the subset of humanity that have no belief in anything supernatural. A worldview guides not just our view on our relationship to others, and ourselves, and not just moral conduct, but the end goals being targeted. Our rationallity cannot be divorced from our motivations. Some worldviews are just 'to live another day', others are more nuanced, measuring impact against criteria. For example, frugality is a worldview, where you don't have any rational compulsion to kill, steal and hoarde, as you don't need it anyway.
      - projektir 8y ago
        > Rationally I should have multiple children, as my only legacy is my name. I would say that any view that includes a concept such as "legacy" is already highly irrational... there's nothing rational about having a world view that you do not call into doubt. At the end of the day, you'll just gravitate towards a worldview that's the easiest to support. That's what tends to happen to people since cognitive dissonance hurts. There's nothing rational whatsoever in this entire process and it is the very start of the problem, you can't ignore it. The whole problem with "rational" is that it's a poor term that got appropriated to describe behaviors that are not actually rational. "Rational" is mostly a shorthand for "logically derived", which is only one rather shallow facet of processing, and, not all that surprisingly, can lead to rather irrational behaviors, like the ones the person you're responding to is referencing. It often leads to nihilism, amoral philosophies, and other things that play right into the worst parts of game theory. Because this is what we naturally do if we turn off other processing. We have all the other processing for a reason. Emotions, intuition, and experience are all very important. Pure logic cannot replace them, it is simply too slow, and there's simply not enough information. The reason a lot of us are really annoyed with rationalists is because they're walking around saying all those things don't matter.
        roenxi 8y ago
        It sounds like you've had a bad experience with rationalists. I can sympathise :P. Loudly claiming to be 'logical' and 'a rationalist' is rarely a logical or rational act, so the people who do it ironically tend not be either (the exception in my book is if they really enjoy arguing with or annoying other people). But rationalism isn't short-termism. Rationalists can execute long term plans, potentially even multi-generational beneficial schemes, just as well as everyone else. And just as badly. As the comment you replied to succinctly argues, there is no causation between rationalism and values. As an aside, logic isn't related to rationality any more deeply than logic is tied in to anything else. I suppose the opposite of a rationalist is a religious fundamentalist? Religious fundamentalists can be extremely logical too (as in, their actions can be completely consistent with their assumptions). Logic is just a technique to tell if some of your beliefs are inconsistent, it isn't monopolised by any given world view. And it certainly can't create new beliefs out of nothing, only evidence can do that.
  - projektir 8y ago
    > Many (most?) of our morals also happen to be game-theory optimums that you would raitionally see value in even as a true sociopath. Yet our sociopaths are all up running companies that destroy the environment. They seem to entirely gravitate towards the very behaviors the person you're replying to is afraid of (i.e., self-serving philosophies, domination and exploitation of others, etc.). The problem is that the only scale that matters to a logic-only person is the scale of their personal life. And you can build yourself a pretty nice life while walking all over other people and not care at all that this will only survive for one generation, because then you'll be gone. There are lots of other problems here, such as lack of the veil of ignorance. There's no mechanism to prevent the logic-focused mindset from gravitating towards castes if they think they and their children are safe from being in the bad castes. Game-theory optimums are available to people through emotions and intuition. They're not available through logic (immediate logical processing is self-focused and therefore plays right into the worst parts of game theory: it doesn't have enough time to arrive at your thinking here). That's why people without these things tend to... uhh... have trouble adjusting, and the people who have enough mental processing to simulate and adjust tend to do pretty awful things.
- taneq 8y ago
  Rationally, you're better off helping (or at least not actively harming) your fellow humans as part of a social covenant where they also help (or at least not actively harm) you. Empathy is a mechanism for implementing morality, and all morality is enlightened self-interest.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  No. What you describe as rational is, you might say, not well reasoned. If your reason only operates on the next several hours or days into the future, perhaps you have a point. I intend to live my entire life with as much happiness and joy as possible. Rationally, my thriving over years far outweighs any mere survival in a short-sighted sense. And importantly, your idea of what is rational doesn't lead there. It's simply foolish, momentary satiation. For anyone taking your proposed rational course, however, me and my more rationally self-interested cohorts will eventually get wind of that game (assuming they act "rationally" according to your proposition), we'll band together to defeat them: after all it's in our interest to do so. Not that we're somehow altruists, but that we're self-interested for the long term, over the course of our lives rather than the next meal. But even so, we don't need the threat of being pummeled by opponents to recognize the course of action you propose as "rational" is mere fools gold; we can see the benefits of the products of others as being far more enhancing than any one meal or some temporary bit of wealth. I gain tremendous benefit from the productivity of other people. Some of those people are artists, some are sanitation workers, some are engineers, and almost all I will have never known individually or even of their existence beyond the output of their minds and labor. It is in -my interest- that -they- thrive in a reasonable way, too. It's in my rational self-interest that they know they will reap the rewards of their efforts, rather than for me to simply steal it and undermine that trust. All of this I can derive from the rational pursuit of my own self-interest.

because "rationally" i should kill you and take your money and food but "empathetically" i don't want the same thing to happen to me, so i tolerate your existence in hopes that you tolerate mine

roenxi 8y ago
There isn't a moment in recorded history where one human acting alone has outperformed a group of humans working in tandem. It just doesn't happen. You sometimes get scenarios where one human has disproportionate social control over a group, but even then experiments with democracy have shown it overwhelmingly outperforms the competition. So far on both an absolute and a per capita basis. Many (most?) of our morals also happen to be game-theory optimums that you would raitionally see value in even as a true sociopath. What you describe isn't rational, it is some combination of desperation and short term thinking. The rational approach has always been to organise and cooperate. If you actually tried to behave that way you would discover that what you call 'behaving rationally' will involve you having no material goods, comfort or prospect for obtaining them.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  ok, i have a better one: "rationally", i shouldn't care about global warming because it's inconvenient to alter my lifestyle and because global warming will not affect me as much in my lifetime but "empathetically" i care about the future environment i'm leaving for future humans
  - shakna 8y ago
    You're using 'rational' as something devoid from worldview - which it can't be. Rationally I should have multiple children, as my only legacy is my name. Still rational, differing worldview. Part of the worldview your thoughts on rationallity betray is that only the 'here and now' matter. Which only fits a very small philosophy even within the subset of humanity that have no belief in anything supernatural. A worldview guides not just our view on our relationship to others, and ourselves, and not just moral conduct, but the end goals being targeted. Our rationallity cannot be divorced from our motivations. Some worldviews are just 'to live another day', others are more nuanced, measuring impact against criteria. For example, frugality is a worldview, where you don't have any rational compulsion to kill, steal and hoarde, as you don't need it anyway.
    - projektir 8y ago
      > Rationally I should have multiple children, as my only legacy is my name. I would say that any view that includes a concept such as "legacy" is already highly irrational... there's nothing rational about having a world view that you do not call into doubt. At the end of the day, you'll just gravitate towards a worldview that's the easiest to support. That's what tends to happen to people since cognitive dissonance hurts. There's nothing rational whatsoever in this entire process and it is the very start of the problem, you can't ignore it. The whole problem with "rational" is that it's a poor term that got appropriated to describe behaviors that are not actually rational. "Rational" is mostly a shorthand for "logically derived", which is only one rather shallow facet of processing, and, not all that surprisingly, can lead to rather irrational behaviors, like the ones the person you're responding to is referencing. It often leads to nihilism, amoral philosophies, and other things that play right into the worst parts of game theory. Because this is what we naturally do if we turn off other processing. We have all the other processing for a reason. Emotions, intuition, and experience are all very important. Pure logic cannot replace them, it is simply too slow, and there's simply not enough information. The reason a lot of us are really annoyed with rationalists is because they're walking around saying all those things don't matter.
      - roenxi 8y ago
        It sounds like you've had a bad experience with rationalists. I can sympathise :P. Loudly claiming to be 'logical' and 'a rationalist' is rarely a logical or rational act, so the people who do it ironically tend not be either (the exception in my book is if they really enjoy arguing with or annoying other people). But rationalism isn't short-termism. Rationalists can execute long term plans, potentially even multi-generational beneficial schemes, just as well as everyone else. And just as badly. As the comment you replied to succinctly argues, there is no causation between rationalism and values. As an aside, logic isn't related to rationality any more deeply than logic is tied in to anything else. I suppose the opposite of a rationalist is a religious fundamentalist? Religious fundamentalists can be extremely logical too (as in, their actions can be completely consistent with their assumptions). Logic is just a technique to tell if some of your beliefs are inconsistent, it isn't monopolised by any given world view. And it certainly can't create new beliefs out of nothing, only evidence can do that.
- projektir 8y ago
  > Many (most?) of our morals also happen to be game-theory optimums that you would raitionally see value in even as a true sociopath. Yet our sociopaths are all up running companies that destroy the environment. They seem to entirely gravitate towards the very behaviors the person you're replying to is afraid of (i.e., self-serving philosophies, domination and exploitation of others, etc.). The problem is that the only scale that matters to a logic-only person is the scale of their personal life. And you can build yourself a pretty nice life while walking all over other people and not care at all that this will only survive for one generation, because then you'll be gone. There are lots of other problems here, such as lack of the veil of ignorance. There's no mechanism to prevent the logic-focused mindset from gravitating towards castes if they think they and their children are safe from being in the bad castes. Game-theory optimums are available to people through emotions and intuition. They're not available through logic (immediate logical processing is self-focused and therefore plays right into the worst parts of game theory: it doesn't have enough time to arrive at your thinking here). That's why people without these things tend to... uhh... have trouble adjusting, and the people who have enough mental processing to simulate and adjust tend to do pretty awful things.
taneq 8y ago
Rationally, you're better off helping (or at least not actively harming) your fellow humans as part of a social covenant where they also help (or at least not actively harm) you. Empathy is a mechanism for implementing morality, and all morality is enlightened self-interest.
sbuttgereit 8y ago
No. What you describe as rational is, you might say, not well reasoned. If your reason only operates on the next several hours or days into the future, perhaps you have a point. I intend to live my entire life with as much happiness and joy as possible. Rationally, my thriving over years far outweighs any mere survival in a short-sighted sense. And importantly, your idea of what is rational doesn't lead there. It's simply foolish, momentary satiation. For anyone taking your proposed rational course, however, me and my more rationally self-interested cohorts will eventually get wind of that game (assuming they act "rationally" according to your proposition), we'll band together to defeat them: after all it's in our interest to do so. Not that we're somehow altruists, but that we're self-interested for the long term, over the course of our lives rather than the next meal. But even so, we don't need the threat of being pummeled by opponents to recognize the course of action you propose as "rational" is mere fools gold; we can see the benefits of the products of others as being far more enhancing than any one meal or some temporary bit of wealth. I gain tremendous benefit from the productivity of other people. Some of those people are artists, some are sanitation workers, some are engineers, and almost all I will have never known individually or even of their existence beyond the output of their minds and labor. It is in -my interest- that -they- thrive in a reasonable way, too. It's in my rational self-interest that they know they will reap the rewards of their efforts, rather than for me to simply steal it and undermine that trust. All of this I can derive from the rational pursuit of my own self-interest.