4 ms·

It doesn't mean that at all, its but that real world is not made for rationallity, and even if we have created special contexts where it is, it doesn't mean it

It doesn't mean that at all, its but that real world is not made for rationallity, and even if we have created special contexts where it is, it doesn't mean it can be generalized out of them.

kragen 5y ago
I would argue exactly the contrary: the real world, the seasons and stars and seeds, is pitilessly rational. It cannot be tricked, pleaded with, or emotionally manipulated. It is harsh, but equally so to everyone, and according to an inexorable logic that cannot be altered but can be exploited. It is the special contexts the humans have created, like churches, courts, and tribes, where the laws of rationality can be imperfectly and temporarily suspended, replaced by a "virtual reality" that is merely a social consensus.
- nathias 5y ago
  Ah yes, in the long run it's all rational, but in the long run we're also all dead. Even if that were the case, you are not a star, you are not near equilibrium, you are alive and don't have time to play long term rational games.
  - kragen 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you try to walk across the desert without drinking water you will be dead in two days. That's not "the long run." If you carry water and salt with you, you can make it a week or more, but not if you strategize poorly: walking during the day instead of at night will deplete your water much more rapidly, and if you treat your canteen carelessly you will lose the water. If you have the knowledge to navigate to places with drinkable water along the way, or the knowledge and materials to distill water from crushed plants, you can make it for months, longer if you brought food or can find it. (Me, I caught and ate raw grasshoppers.) You cannot emotionally manipulate the desert; you cannot trick it; it will not treat you more gently because you beg it for mercy. Rationality (knowledge, skill, heedfulness, and above all epistemic humility) is your only hope. It's no guarantee, because a rattlesnake or a hailstone may strike you at random, but it's your only hope. It's not just the desert. The same is true of the ocean, of mushroom hunting, of wasp's nests, and of the frozen North with its alpine sweetvetch. Nature's ways are subtle and merciless, but they are amenable to understanding, and rationality permits you to order your life in harmony with them and thus survive and prosper a little while; though not, as you say, in the long run. The whole world is like this, all except for tiny special contexts humans have created where the ruthless laws of Nature are suspended a little bit, where mercy and humanity and fellow-feeling hold sway.
    - nathias 5y ago
      That's not really the concept of rationality I or the article is talking about (consistency, non-bias etc.) knowledge or it's use isn't the same, it's more like the a priori knowledge where the concept is immediately applied by universal rules etc. This specific rationality is good in formal games where the rules are universal and the concept should be immediately applied, but doesn't work for empirical contexts (life, science, engineering, etc.).
      - kragen 5y ago
        They aren't really different concepts of rationality; consistency and non-bias are about not fooling yourself, so that you can come to the conclusions that the available evidence would justify. That's how people as a group can empirically acquire knowledge about the world. Of course, for individual people, social aspects are often even more important, since learning from someone else's experience can be much cheaper than learning from your own—as in the case of alpine sweetvetch; but even resisting deception and knowing whose opinion to listen to benefit from consistency and non-bias. Indeed, perhaps even more so, since the alpine sweetvetch isn't trying to emotionally manipulate you into believing it.
        nathias 5y ago
        You use bias as a dirty word, but it's really just a weight of the opinion, there is no knowledge without bias. As for consistency, it comes secondary to categorization, it's easily abused for 'foolish' consistencies that can also be created with framing effects.
        kragen 5y ago
        Sorry, I'm using "bias", "consistency", and "rationality" in the statistical, logical, and philosophical senses, respectively. So, I think, is the article. Your use of different definitions for those words probably explains why you reached conclusions that read as obvious nonsense to me. You might think about rereading the article with those definitions in mind. I can also recommend reading about alpine sweetvetch.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Humans and other primates are social animals, and pretty much all aspects of personal success and ability to influence the external world - survival and safety, access to nutrition, mates and other resources, and general power - are mostly determined by social factors, so "winning" at the social factors has been more important than what a single individual can achieve by exploiting the "real world" even since before homo sapiens existed. "Individual fitness" at the expense of social fitness is maladaptive in the environment where humans live and lived; Starving or not starving depends on social factors more than on individual hunting prowess, the same for procreation, the same for changing the world in various ways, most of which depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans. These "special contexts the humans have created" have dominated the human life as long as humans have existed and before that, as we can see in non-human primate communities where living or dying in a power struggle or inter-tribal war is largely a factor of social aspects and not the strength of some individual ape. There's no "merely" social consensus, quite on the contrary, the social consensus has always dominated all the things that matter; being exiled from the tribe was effectively a death sentence even if the tribe did not directly kill you, and a dominant position in the tribe gains larger benefits than dominating against the real world, both in a hunter-gatherer environment and in modern society.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Almost everything in your first paragraph is correct (though you accidentally capitalized "starving".) But everything in your second paragraph is incorrect. Even before the industrial revolution, it was commonplace for banished people to find a new place to live, either as hermits or as part of a new tribe; the outlawing and persecution of individual refugees and "stateless persons" is a Late Modern aberration. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, a subordinate position in a tribe like Japan that is very "dominant against the real world" gains larger benefits than a dominant position in a tribe like the Wola that is much less "dominant against the real world". For example, as a Japanese person, you live twice as long, you probably won't get raped, you are at no risk of being executed for witchcraft if you fall from favor, and if at some point the two tribes come into armed conflict, the Wola will be entirely at the mercy of the Japanese. Even in the first paragraph, though, there is a significant error. You say, "Starving or not starving... procreation... [and] changing the world in various ways [mostly] depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans." But in fact they do not. These things depend jointly on whether you get teamwork on plans, a social question, and on whether the plans are any good in the first place, a rational question. This is what sunk the Great Leap Forward: Mao was suffering from the delusion that you so clearly expressed here. He evidently motivated people to go along with his plans to an almost unprecedented degree, but many objective, non-social aspects of the plans (notably backyard smelting, the Four Pests campaign, deep plowing, and close planting) were destined to produce catastrophe, especially if they were executed thoroughly. The greatest famine in human history was the predictable consequence, killing some 40 million people. The industrial revolution was a consequence of Galileo's rebellion against this subjectivist view: he dared to look through his telescope at the real world and believe what he saw, despite its incompatibility with the socially constructed virtual reality of his time. It took some time, but Italy paid for its rejection of Galileo with centuries of penury and destitution. Ultimately Galileo influenced the external world, as you say, far more than the crabbed Inquisitors who persecuted him. I stand with Galileo and against Mao. Will you join me?

It doesn't mean that at all, its but that real world is not made for rationallity, and even if we have created special contexts where it is, it doesn't mean it can be generalized out of them.

kragen 5y ago

I would argue exactly the contrary: the real world, the seasons and stars and seeds, is pitilessly rational. It cannot be tricked, pleaded with, or emotionally manipulated. It is harsh, but equally so to everyone, and according to an inexorable logic that cannot be altered but can be exploited. It is the special contexts the humans have created, like churches, courts, and tribes, where the laws of rationality can be imperfectly and temporarily suspended, replaced by a "virtual reality" that is merely a social consensus.

nathias 5y ago
Ah yes, in the long run it's all rational, but in the long run we're also all dead. Even if that were the case, you are not a star, you are not near equilibrium, you are alive and don't have time to play long term rational games.
- kragen 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you try to walk across the desert without drinking water you will be dead in two days. That's not "the long run." If you carry water and salt with you, you can make it a week or more, but not if you strategize poorly: walking during the day instead of at night will deplete your water much more rapidly, and if you treat your canteen carelessly you will lose the water. If you have the knowledge to navigate to places with drinkable water along the way, or the knowledge and materials to distill water from crushed plants, you can make it for months, longer if you brought food or can find it. (Me, I caught and ate raw grasshoppers.) You cannot emotionally manipulate the desert; you cannot trick it; it will not treat you more gently because you beg it for mercy. Rationality (knowledge, skill, heedfulness, and above all epistemic humility) is your only hope. It's no guarantee, because a rattlesnake or a hailstone may strike you at random, but it's your only hope. It's not just the desert. The same is true of the ocean, of mushroom hunting, of wasp's nests, and of the frozen North with its alpine sweetvetch. Nature's ways are subtle and merciless, but they are amenable to understanding, and rationality permits you to order your life in harmony with them and thus survive and prosper a little while; though not, as you say, in the long run. The whole world is like this, all except for tiny special contexts humans have created where the ruthless laws of Nature are suspended a little bit, where mercy and humanity and fellow-feeling hold sway.
  - nathias 5y ago
    That's not really the concept of rationality I or the article is talking about (consistency, non-bias etc.) knowledge or it's use isn't the same, it's more like the a priori knowledge where the concept is immediately applied by universal rules etc. This specific rationality is good in formal games where the rules are universal and the concept should be immediately applied, but doesn't work for empirical contexts (life, science, engineering, etc.).
    - kragen 5y ago
      They aren't really different concepts of rationality; consistency and non-bias are about not fooling yourself, so that you can come to the conclusions that the available evidence would justify. That's how people as a group can empirically acquire knowledge about the world. Of course, for individual people, social aspects are often even more important, since learning from someone else's experience can be much cheaper than learning from your own—as in the case of alpine sweetvetch; but even resisting deception and knowing whose opinion to listen to benefit from consistency and non-bias. Indeed, perhaps even more so, since the alpine sweetvetch isn't trying to emotionally manipulate you into believing it.
      - nathias 5y ago
        You use bias as a dirty word, but it's really just a weight of the opinion, there is no knowledge without bias. As for consistency, it comes secondary to categorization, it's easily abused for 'foolish' consistencies that can also be created with framing effects.
        kragen 5y ago
        Sorry, I'm using "bias", "consistency", and "rationality" in the statistical, logical, and philosophical senses, respectively. So, I think, is the article. Your use of different definitions for those words probably explains why you reached conclusions that read as obvious nonsense to me. You might think about rereading the article with those definitions in mind. I can also recommend reading about alpine sweetvetch.
PeterisP 5y ago
Humans and other primates are social animals, and pretty much all aspects of personal success and ability to influence the external world - survival and safety, access to nutrition, mates and other resources, and general power - are mostly determined by social factors, so "winning" at the social factors has been more important than what a single individual can achieve by exploiting the "real world" even since before homo sapiens existed. "Individual fitness" at the expense of social fitness is maladaptive in the environment where humans live and lived; Starving or not starving depends on social factors more than on individual hunting prowess, the same for procreation, the same for changing the world in various ways, most of which depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans. These "special contexts the humans have created" have dominated the human life as long as humans have existed and before that, as we can see in non-human primate communities where living or dying in a power struggle or inter-tribal war is largely a factor of social aspects and not the strength of some individual ape. There's no "merely" social consensus, quite on the contrary, the social consensus has always dominated all the things that matter; being exiled from the tribe was effectively a death sentence even if the tribe did not directly kill you, and a dominant position in the tribe gains larger benefits than dominating against the real world, both in a hunter-gatherer environment and in modern society.
- kragen 5y ago
  Almost everything in your first paragraph is correct (though you accidentally capitalized "starving".) But everything in your second paragraph is incorrect. Even before the industrial revolution, it was commonplace for banished people to find a new place to live, either as hermits or as part of a new tribe; the outlawing and persecution of individual refugees and "stateless persons" is a Late Modern aberration. Since the advent of the industrial revolution, a subordinate position in a tribe like Japan that is very "dominant against the real world" gains larger benefits than a dominant position in a tribe like the Wola that is much less "dominant against the real world". For example, as a Japanese person, you live twice as long, you probably won't get raped, you are at no risk of being executed for witchcraft if you fall from favor, and if at some point the two tribes come into armed conflict, the Wola will be entirely at the mercy of the Japanese. Even in the first paragraph, though, there is a significant error. You say, "Starving or not starving... procreation... [and] changing the world in various ways [mostly] depend on how many other people you can motivate to go along with your plans." But in fact they do not. These things depend jointly on whether you get teamwork on plans, a social question, and on whether the plans are any good in the first place, a rational question. This is what sunk the Great Leap Forward: Mao was suffering from the delusion that you so clearly expressed here. He evidently motivated people to go along with his plans to an almost unprecedented degree, but many objective, non-social aspects of the plans (notably backyard smelting, the Four Pests campaign, deep plowing, and close planting) were destined to produce catastrophe, especially if they were executed thoroughly. The greatest famine in human history was the predictable consequence, killing some 40 million people. The industrial revolution was a consequence of Galileo's rebellion against this subjectivist view: he dared to look through his telescope at the real world and believe what he saw, despite its incompatibility with the socially constructed virtual reality of his time. It took some time, but Italy paid for its rejection of Galileo with centuries of penury and destitution. Ultimately Galileo influenced the external world, as you say, far more than the crabbed Inquisitors who persecuted him. I stand with Galileo and against Mao. Will you join me?