Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

Post by jamilton » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #43

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human beings are rational animals as such, but our exercise of that rationality can be quite weak and subject to character flaws and bad habits, and requires cultivation to refine, purify, and actualize. Of course, we also must be careful here because you're using your own faculties to judge the content of the psychology class (as were the psychologists who produces the content you were learning). Skepticism falls in…

I personally think of humans as some kind of rational machine. We get input from our thoughts, knowledge, and the world around us and generally get whatever the most rational outcome is. The problem with this is that our input is limited to what we know, our general thoughts, and the world around us

Post by weregiraffe » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 4:57 AM UTC

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #31

rauljara wrote: post #7

My intro to psychology classes was one of the most valuable classes I ever took, just with the way it systematically shattered my own notion of how much I could trust my own notions of perception and thought to be a rational and accurate reflection of reality. I definitely had a notion of how irrational “people” could be before that, but of course I somehow thought I was above all that.

Human beings are rational animals as such, but our exercise of that rationality can be quite weak and subject to character flaws and bad habits, and requires cultivation to refine, purify, and actualize. Of course, we also must be careful here because you're using your own faculties to judge the content of the psychology class (as were the psychologists who produces the content you were learning). Skepticism falls in…

Post by inquirerGeneral » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

Post by lazide » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 12:51 PM UTC

lstodd wrote: post #52

throwaway873527 wrote: post #17

Interestingly, Charles Mackay, the author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, was himself one of the most ardent cheerleaders for the Railway Mania [0] "urging people to put their money into the railways and pooh-poohing those who were concerned." and "He had become famous by mocking the bubbles of the past - but had rather less to say about the far more serious bubble that he himself had he…

Helping to inflate a bubble is a valid strategy as long as you undestand the mechanics enough to organize a favourable exit. I think we have lost a number of treatises on this exact subject since at least Egypt's old kingdom, 3000BC.

Post by mghackerlady » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

jamilton wrote: post #61

mghackerlady wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think of humans as some kind of rational machine. We get input from our thoughts, knowledge, and the world around us and generally get whatever the most rational outcome is. The problem with this is that our input is limited to what we know, our general thoughts, and the world around us

Hm, I think there’s more to it than that. It is often the case that someone will do something and regret it without having necessarily gained any new information, which is in a sense irrational, right? If you didn’t gain information, you could have known to just not done it to begin with. Something about experiences, perhaps?