>I find it difficult to use logic when a) you don't really know all the premises that you're starting from and b) you have a material / emotional / ideological

>I find it difficult to use logic when a) you don't really know all the premises that you're starting from and b) you have a material / emotional / ideological / or identity-driven stake in the outcome. When you discover a non-logical way of making progress on one of those types of problems do you attempt to re-use that approach on other problems of that same type? Or perhaps change the approach slightly to account for the slightly different nature of the problem? If so then you're using rationality/logic. >I've seen other folks do that often. The observation you're making is that they're not being logical/rational, but rather merely pretending to be.