Checklist of Rationality Habits • Hacker News Board

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#21

Post by scarmig » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

evmar wrote: post #6

xpda wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I rationally realize that I am making an irrational decision, but I still prefer the "wrong" decision. For example, I may pick up a dirty penny in a street. The risk/reward is negative because the very slight possibility or disease or accident outweighs the very slight financial reward, but I prefer to pick up the penny anyway. Am I rational because of the analysis, or irrational because I make the wrong ch…

If it takes five seconds to pick up the penny (that's maybe high but it's including time to notice, bend, put it in your pocket), you're valuing your time at $7.20 an hour. (To be clear, there are other plausible rewards to picking up a penny, such as feeling lucky from the superstition. But you only mentioned a financial reward, and the financial impact is negative.)

The biggest reward is the emotion that you're maintaining your sense of order. Everything has a place, and the sidewalk is certainly no place for a penny.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#22

Post by bjourne » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #10

As a mathematician, rationality is very important to me. (It is sufficiently important that I believe in determining my own criteria for rationality, rather than using someone else's list.) In this spirit, I have an infuriating (to others) habit of reflexively arguing against someone else's position. (It was originally born out of the "search for counterexamples" mindset of a mathematician, but now it's an unconsciou…

When I look for bugs in code that is exactly the method I use. "This code postulates A, B and C. Can I prove that any of A, B and C can not be proven true?" If I can, there is a bug.

Applying the method to a verbal argument: "You never listen!" "That's not true, I'm listening now!" Yes, I think it is very annoying. :)

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#23

Post by analog31 » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

pokpokpok wrote: post #3

analog31 wrote: post #2

I tend to think of myself as rational, but the degree of introspection suggested by this checklist seems bizarre to me.

Just remember that the human brain is basically not set up for objectivity. Plenty of people who consider themselves rational are capable of making decisions that you would call unrational. Doesn't mean you need to live your life through a checklist, but it helps to be critical of thoughts like "I am a very rational person"

That's fair. While I called myself rational, I would never claim to make exclusively rational decisions. I would not want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to define rationality, or force myself into the Procrustean bed of a specific definition. If rationalism turns into some sort of utopian or self consistent ideology, then I'll remain aloof from it.

At the same time, while the human brain isn't set up for objectivity, it is set up for survival -- including survival in a social milieu. Some non-rational behaviors such as emotion and stubbornness may be valuable survival traits.

If I were to put anything on my own checklist, it would be: "Did I give myself enough time to think about this?" I can be persuaded by reason, but on my own timeline, and I'm a terrible debater, so I don't change my opinions based on debate.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#24

Post by Suryc011 » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #18

I'm distressed by how unscientific a lot of this stuff is. It's all good advice, but some of it seems to come from some pretty naive perceptions of how consciousness and the brain work. The example in 3.1, for example: > Recent example from Anna: Jumping off the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas in a wire-guided fall. I knew it was safe based on 40,000 data points of people doing it without significant injury, but to p…

I think you missed the point. It's not that the fear is itself intrinsically wrong, it's that the fear is leading to an irrational belief: that I will likely die if I do this wire-guided fall. That's just not a belief that comports with reality.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#25

Post by dschiptsov » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

Who told them that we have any kind of "parallel threads of consciousness" to run "chekers" for these "rational heuristics" or "pattern matchers" on an input stream? Another variety of "multitasking" nonsense.

On paper it is all logical and "rational". Now try to run this in your mind in so-called state of "flow". Don't have a flow? That means you don't have your attention focused.

All the classic attention experiments, like that one with gorilla, reveal limitations and "single-threadness" of our minds.

It seems that the only kind of parallel tasks a human mind could run is one "conscious" with many "subconscious" - 1:N threads, or 0:N ;)

Btw, pthreads (and, perhaps, lock-based sharing in general) is a flawed concept in the first place. Imagine a deadlock with breathing or race-condition with heart rate.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#26

Post by codingdave » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

Now I know this is not going to sound "rational", but...

I saw the example early on the page about evaluating whether or not to outsource their clothes shopping, and just stopped. Anyone for whom this is even a valid concept is so far removed from who I am that I just am not going to value their advice.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#27

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #18

I'm distressed by how unscientific a lot of this stuff is. It's all good advice, but some of it seems to come from some pretty naive perceptions of how consciousness and the brain work. The example in 3.1, for example: > Recent example from Anna: Jumping off the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas in a wire-guided fall. I knew it was safe based on 40,000 data points of people doing it without significant injury, but to p…

Fear of heights was developed without wire guided falls. It's irrational to be afraid of that vs say, being unafraid of taking a car ride.

It's exactly because we've got this corrupted evolved hardware that we must actively seek out all irrationality in our minds.

After all, things like availability bias were also developed for good reasons. No sense being afraid of tigers and not going into the forest for good if no one you know has ever seen a tiger. That's just as good heuristic as "be scared when going to high places".

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#28

Post by duncanawoods » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #10

As a mathematician, rationality is very important to me. (It is sufficiently important that I believe in determining my own criteria for rationality, rather than using someone else's list.) In this spirit, I have an infuriating (to others) habit of reflexively arguing against someone else's position. (It was originally born out of the "search for counterexamples" mindset of a mathematician, but now it's an unconsciou…

Please be aware you have interpreted contrarian behaviour, which can be very negative and disruptive when unchecked, as having a virtuous cause.

Other causes worth examining: ego (desire to prove one's intelligence), one-up-manship (desire to harm/contradict/take down arguments of others), deficiency (not observing feelings of others or not addressing the end-goal of the task in favour of hair splitting), hedonism (argument gives you pleasure no matter the consequences for the task or others) etc.

Contrarians can be intolerable team members so it requires care to harness and channel an analytical mind and not let it be driven by base and counter-productive motivations. Its very easy not to notice and stick with a seductive virtuous justification for bad behaviour.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#29

Post by analog31 » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

xpda wrote: post #4

pokpokpok wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember that the human brain is basically not set up for objectivity. Plenty of people who consider themselves rational are capable of making decisions that you would call unrational. Doesn't mean you need to live your life through a checklist, but it helps to be critical of thoughts like "I am a very rational person"

Sometimes I rationally realize that I am making an irrational decision, but I still prefer the "wrong" decision. For example, I may pick up a dirty penny in a street. The risk/reward is negative because the very slight possibility or disease or accident outweighs the very slight financial reward, but I prefer to pick up the penny anyway. Am I rational because of the analysis, or irrational because I make the wrong ch…

Maybe you get some nice pleasure chemicals in your brain, or recall a pleasant experience from your past, which may outweigh the possibility of disease and accident.

I sometimes take a stick with horse hair stretched over its length, and pull it along steel cables stretched along a large wooden box. The risks are many, including getting chased out of the house, blisters on my fingers, etc. Am I irrational because I made the wrong choice?

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#30

Post by Jach » Sat, Jan 03, 2015, 6:13 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #2

I tend to think of myself as rational, but the degree of introspection suggested by this checklist seems bizarre to me.

A lot of irrational behavior stems from simple biases in our brains' usually good-enough-for-daily-life heuristics. Attempts to avoid those biases seem to include training to turn off (or at least notice and interrupt) your heuristics altogether as much as possible, resulting in a much slower (and more introspective) way of going through the world.