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Rationality is overvalued for day to day life. It works for certain things like science, where you are lead by the evidence and you constantly adjust some model

Rationality is overvalued for day to day life. It works for certain things like science, where you are lead by the evidence and you constantly adjust some model of understanding of reality to more accurate standards, but it really don't seem to work well for everything in one's life. The reason is that we operate under deeply unscientific environments like partial-information, uncertainty and unpredictability. In these environments 'intuition' that might not be backed by rational thought is frequently more valuable. Technically you can try to be always rational in your life and play the 'risk minimization' game, but you will probably have a very mediocre life with limited success.

jstanley 6y ago
If you're trying to make rational choices, then risk minimisation is probably not what you want to do. You probably want to aim for utility maximisation within acceptable risk bounds.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
I think rationality is both overvalued and undervalued for day-to-day life. Being able to write out the Bayes formula or recite the list of logical fallacies on the spot isn't useful for much at all, and nobody has time to do proper Bayesian updates on anything. But I do think that internalizing rational thinking is useful for honing your intuition. Our modern world is more complicated than what our brains were used to. It's no longer just social issues and immediate survival in small communities. We aren't used to dealing with things too small to see with your eye, and distances too large to walk. We aren't used to a world when most rewards cannot be attributed to a particular person's work. We aren't used to a world, where the main threat to your well-being isn't bandits or wild animals, but the constant barrage of salesmen and advertisers, utilizing hundreds of years of research to trick you into doing something stupid. We aren't used to a world, where almost all relationships are transient. For the last point, consider this comment. I'm an Internet stranger. You've probably read my other comments in the past, you'll probably read some more in the future. But quite likely, you won't connect all of them together and attribute to a single person in your head; you'll see each as a piece written by a different Internet stranger, next to all other comments here. Every comment is thus a momentary interaction without prior context, and which doesn't give you any context for future interactions. The same is true for most news you read, and most social media comments you see. This is not exactly useful for our intuitions, which are optimized for processing actual relationships with people. So I think it may be helpful to study rational thought in order to calibrate your intuitions for these new times.
kiba 6y ago
If rationality is about accomplishing your goals, then it takes many forms, including intuition and habits. We are not trying to copy Spock. We are trying to make good sense of the world, and to make good decisions to achieve our goals. The reason is that we operate under deeply unscientific environments like partial-information, uncertainty and unpredictability. On the contrary, we developed tool of thoughts for working in environments of vast uncertainty. Consider the battlefield, for example, commanders must make decisions in the fog of war. They are certainly interested in trying to make the winning decisions to achieve their strategic or tactical goals. Technically you can try to be always rational in your life and play the 'risk minimization' game, but you will probably have a very mediocre life with limited success. If a mediocre life isn't what you're looking for, then it isn't very rational to make choices that result in a boring life.
wenc 6y ago
Exactly. I think there's a difference between "epistemic rationality" (avoiding cognitive biases, attempting to achieve accurate, rigorous beliefs) and "instrumental rationality" (holding beliefs that lead to a result, even if they are not strictly speaking, correct -- this would be heuristics, bias toward action and exploration). A focus on eliminating cognitive biases seems like it should lead us to the right solutions, but outside of certain academic fields, it often doesn't because the focus is more on not having incorrect thoughts instead of doing something, even if that something is wrong (at first). This means a mastery of all the material on "LessWrong" likely isn't going to make you better at innovating. I don't think rationality is overvalued so much as "epistemic rationality" is overvalued.
tgflynn 6y ago
I don't think rationality per se is overvalued but our capacity to achieve it consciously may be overestimated while the capacity of our brains to unconsciously generate reasonably accurate approximations to rational decisions may be underestimated. It's clear that there is far more information processing occurring in our brains than we are ever consciously aware of. We end up being conscious only of the final result and we tend to call this "intuition". It would be a mistake to dismiss using intuition as irrational just because we aren't conscious of the mental activities that generated it. Of course intuition isn't necessarily right, it needs to be consciously evaluated and we should also use our conscious minds to train our intuition to increase its accuracy.
- philipov 6y ago
  We don't trust intuition for the same reason we don't trust the output of neural networks, because the process that generated it is inscrutable. It is ironic that neural networks, an essentially irrational tool, have become so popular in a culture obsessed with rationality.
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    Yes, that analogy occurred to me as well. But I don't think a blanket policy of distrust is optimal for either of those "technologies". Both are useful in the right circumstances and trustworthy alternatives are often not available.
deleted 6y ago
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vannevar 6y ago
This. Human success is much more attributable to our social instincts than it is to our capacity for reason. As an individual, your survival chances were much greater if you were part of a group than on your own, even if that group was highly irrational. For the most part, it is better to believe in imaginary gods as part of a group, than to believe in science and be on your own.

jstanley 6y ago

If you're trying to make rational choices, then risk minimisation is probably not what you want to do. You probably want to aim for utility maximisation within acceptable risk bounds.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

I think rationality is both overvalued and undervalued for day-to-day life. Being able to write out the Bayes formula or recite the list of logical fallacies on the spot isn't useful for much at all, and nobody has time to do proper Bayesian updates on anything. But I do think that internalizing rational thinking is useful for honing your intuition. Our modern world is more complicated than what our brains were used to. It's no longer just social issues and immediate survival in small communities. We aren't used to dealing with things too small to see with your eye, and distances too large to walk. We aren't used to a world when most rewards cannot be attributed to a particular person's work. We aren't used to a world, where the main threat to your well-being isn't bandits or wild animals, but the constant barrage of salesmen and advertisers, utilizing hundreds of years of research to trick you into doing something stupid. We aren't used to a world, where almost all relationships are transient. For the last point, consider this comment. I'm an Internet stranger. You've probably read my other comments in the past, you'll probably read some more in the future. But quite likely, you won't connect all of them together and attribute to a single person in your head; you'll see each as a piece written by a different Internet stranger, next to all other comments here. Every comment is thus a momentary interaction without prior context, and which doesn't give you any context for future interactions. The same is true for most news you read, and most social media comments you see. This is not exactly useful for our intuitions, which are optimized for processing actual relationships with people. So I think it may be helpful to study rational thought in order to calibrate your intuitions for these new times.

kiba 6y ago

If rationality is about accomplishing your goals, then it takes many forms, including intuition and habits. We are not trying to copy Spock. We are trying to make good sense of the world, and to make good decisions to achieve our goals. The reason is that we operate under deeply unscientific environments like partial-information, uncertainty and unpredictability. On the contrary, we developed tool of thoughts for working in environments of vast uncertainty. Consider the battlefield, for example, commanders must make decisions in the fog of war. They are certainly interested in trying to make the winning decisions to achieve their strategic or tactical goals. Technically you can try to be always rational in your life and play the 'risk minimization' game, but you will probably have a very mediocre life with limited success. If a mediocre life isn't what you're looking for, then it isn't very rational to make choices that result in a boring life.

wenc 6y ago

Exactly. I think there's a difference between "epistemic rationality" (avoiding cognitive biases, attempting to achieve accurate, rigorous beliefs) and "instrumental rationality" (holding beliefs that lead to a result, even if they are not strictly speaking, correct -- this would be heuristics, bias toward action and exploration). A focus on eliminating cognitive biases seems like it should lead us to the right solutions, but outside of certain academic fields, it often doesn't because the focus is more on not having incorrect thoughts instead of doing something, even if that something is wrong (at first). This means a mastery of all the material on "LessWrong" likely isn't going to make you better at innovating. I don't think rationality is overvalued so much as "epistemic rationality" is overvalued.

tgflynn 6y ago

I don't think rationality per se is overvalued but our capacity to achieve it consciously may be overestimated while the capacity of our brains to unconsciously generate reasonably accurate approximations to rational decisions may be underestimated. It's clear that there is far more information processing occurring in our brains than we are ever consciously aware of. We end up being conscious only of the final result and we tend to call this "intuition". It would be a mistake to dismiss using intuition as irrational just because we aren't conscious of the mental activities that generated it. Of course intuition isn't necessarily right, it needs to be consciously evaluated and we should also use our conscious minds to train our intuition to increase its accuracy.

philipov 6y ago
We don't trust intuition for the same reason we don't trust the output of neural networks, because the process that generated it is inscrutable. It is ironic that neural networks, an essentially irrational tool, have become so popular in a culture obsessed with rationality.
- tgflynn 6y ago
  Yes, that analogy occurred to me as well. But I don't think a blanket policy of distrust is optimal for either of those "technologies". Both are useful in the right circumstances and trustworthy alternatives are often not available.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vannevar 6y ago

This. Human success is much more attributable to our social instincts than it is to our capacity for reason. As an individual, your survival chances were much greater if you were part of a group than on your own, even if that group was highly irrational. For the most part, it is better to believe in imaginary gods as part of a group, than to believe in science and be on your own.