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Checklist of Rationality Habits

rationality.org

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Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#51

Post by andrewksl »

MeadowTheory wrote: post #47
themodelplumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker ( NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical…

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

Apologies for being off topic, but I, for one, was not aware. Which tests are considered more meaningful?

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#52

Post by duncanawoods »

fcanela wrote: post #41

What's the book that most influenced you on critical/rational thinking? The website promotes a list ( http://rationality.org/reading/ ). I have only read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and I am looking for HN users favorites.

Out of that list:

I found "Predictably Irrational" to repeat a lot of the content about biases from TFTS. Its well written and not a bad book by any means but I regretted the time investment after TFTS.

I found "Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work" to be very practical aiming to giving some real tools to use some of which I hadn't come across before.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#53

Post by themodelplumber »

MeadowTheory wrote: post #47
themodelplumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker ( NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical…

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

That comes off as a hand wave, especially considering that it's a model / typology (if you understand the role of a model vs. a theory) and is still used in research. See also Dr. Dario Nardi's neuroscience work at UCLA.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#54

Post by djokkataja »

andrewksl wrote: post #51
MeadowTheory wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

Apologies for being off topic, but I, for one, was not aware. Which tests are considered more meaningful?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#55

Post by tokenadult »

themodelplumber wrote: post #43
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #38

I used to think this checklist was misguided. My mental model of improving my rationality was something like acquiring lots and lots of impressive and clever tools and then training myself to apply them in context appropriate places. I've come around to a model much more in line with this checklist though. Something like: 1. Noticing behavioral patterns 2. Thinking hard and doing research on the pattern, whether it l…

Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker ( NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical…

I see another reply has pointed out that Myers-Briggs type model is a flawed model, and has long been known to be flawed. I'll supply some references here because another reader asked for references.

http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person...

"Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for."

http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...

http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie-Murphy/...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-b...

"Now, 50 years after the first time anyone paid money for the test, the Myers-Briggs legacy is reaching the end of the family line. The youngest heirs don’t want it. And it’s not clear whether organizations should, either.

. . . .

"Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community."

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#56

Post by Hasu »

pokpokpok wrote: post #8
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…

I think the key thing is that being a perfectly rational actor is a strange and twisting pursuit. Measuring your actions against another scale is more useful IMO. Being humane/considerate/farsighted (or any set of subjective values that you believe are important) make a better measuring stick than rationality

Why does one have to focus on being humane/considerate/farsighted instead of being rational, rather than focus on both? We don't have to pick one measuring stick.

I certainly hope you don't think that being irrational will help you to be more humane/considerate/farsighted, or that being humane/considerate/farsighted means that one can't be rational.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#57

Post by briandh »

themodelplumber wrote: post #53
MeadowTheory wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

That comes off as a hand wave, especially considering that it's a model / typology (if you understand the role of a model vs. a theory) and is still used in research. See also Dr. Dario Nardi's neuroscience work at UCLA.

A quick search of Dr. Nardi reveals that he has a financial interest in the MBTI, being the author and/or publisher of many "educational" works on type (see, e.g., here: http://www.radiancehouse.com/psych.htm ).

I did not see any peer reviewed journal articles by him on personality in a Google Scholar author search for his name, only books and a single conference paper.

Finally, looking at the most recent CV I saw -- http://www.darionardi.com/webcv.html -- only one of the papers in the "personality" section is actually from a journal, and it is, lo and behold, a Type-centric journal. And half of the conference papers are for the Association for Psychological Type International.

As appeals to authority go, he is a poor one.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#58

Post by ims »

MeadowTheory wrote: post #47
themodelplumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker ( NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical…

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

You're talking about whether the MBTI framework is correct, or verifiable, or scientific. That's interesting because the context for this whole discussion is around a rationality checklist which may not be correct, or verifiable, or scientific.

It seems like the more appropriate question when discussing these frameworks might be whether they are useful. Many people find the MBTI framework a useful way to think about themselves. Just like many people find GTD useful for being organized, or Paleo useful for choosing what to eat, or Agile useful for coordinating software development, or [system/lens/framework here] useful for [thing that people do], even though they are not demonstrably "correct" (or even superior to competing systems).

Correct and useful aren't necessarily the same thing, especially when we're discussing systems that are more of a descriptive worldview than an actual set of predictions.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#59

Post by cameldrv »

MeadowTheory wrote: post #47
themodelplumber wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of the Meyers-Briggs model's concepts of introverted thinking and extraverted thinking. The extraverted thinker ( NTJ) seeks out common, objective methodologies, while the introverted thinker ( NTP) finds it easier to become comfortable with a more subjective, philosophical approach. You might then expect an INTJ to learn and hold to rules that seem to have authority or at least some critical…

You do realize the Meyer-Briggs typology has been abandoned in favor of more meaningful tests? At this point it's basically a scientific-ish version of astrology.

It's mostly fine to talk about MBTI traits because they are for the most part just a different vocabulary for the same concepts as the current psychological standard.

The Big 5 is the current standard, and the four MBTI dimensions correlate to 4 of the Big 5. E/I is Extraversion in Big 5, N/S is Openness to Experience, and the other two are less orthogonal, but generally T/F is Agreeableness and J/P is Conscientiousness. Neuroticism in Big 5 is essentially not measured in MBTI and doesn't correlate well with any of the MBTI traits.

Re: Checklist of Rationality Habits

#60

Post by ajross »

Suryc011 wrote: post #24
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.

I, uh, rather think that you missed the point. "Rationality", when expressed in this kind of technicolor paint brush way, is a poorly-defined, fundamentally unscientific concept. Belief in it is itself irrational.

Basically: this is just self-help hippie nonsense to me. My irony detector is off the charts, and I was expecting to be more impressed.

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