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Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm

Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.

BurningFrog 5y ago
People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net? At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases. I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons). So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?
    - ben_w 5y ago
      I think you and I are agreeing here? That rationality is hard and not automatic.
      - rexreed 5y ago
        Yes we indeed are agreeing.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool. That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I mean, it depends how you're defining rational thought, but there are some very basic irrational ways of thinking that seem to be the default (particularly around probability and risk; the classic one is that something randomish having happened recently makes it less likely to happen again soon). People tend to misapply those even in their own domain.

BurningFrog 5y ago

People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.

ben_w 5y ago
Have we always needed this? Does it require more than the trivial rationality of a neural net? At some point in our evolutionary history, we had the same capacity for rationality as many other species. What made that change, the non-(proto-) human part of environment, or the society created by the proto-humans? When it did emerge, did it emerge as an automatic behaviour, or as the capacity to learn that skill? And here I’m assuming it’s one skill rather than many — we do have many apparently irrational cognitive biases. I suspect (but don’t know how to test the idea) that all our cognitive biases are necessary irrationalities to allow us to reach generally useful conclusions on far too little data.
- rexreed 5y ago
  When birds run into windows killing themselves, is that an expression of reflex or cognitive bias? Are birds capable of the rational thought to avoid running into windows or is their brain only wired for impulse? Clearly birds are smart enough (at least some species) to be able to mimic human voices and perform complex tasks (carrier pigeons). They learn where the food is and hang around boats or people (seagulls / pigeons). So maybe this is not a solely-human characteristic?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I think you and I are agreeing here? That rationality is hard and not automatic.
    - rexreed 5y ago
      Yes we indeed are agreeing.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  I think both spear hunting wild animals and farming with stone age tech are both real hard problems that will weed out the dimwitted from the gene pool. That said, the prevailing theory of how we evolved intelligence is that it was for handling the social dynamics of a 100+ people tribe.
rsynnott 5y ago
I mean, it depends how you're defining rational thought, but there are some very basic irrational ways of thinking that seem to be the default (particularly around probability and risk; the classic one is that something randomish having happened recently makes it less likely to happen again soon). People tend to misapply those even in their own domain.