Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is it so hard to be rational?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 309 posts

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#11

Post by SMAAART »

Nobody wants to deal with rational people.

Big business want people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have to impress people they don't like

Politicians want people who will drink the cool-aid and follow what they (the politicians) say (and not what they do)

Religions... well, same.

And so all messages from advertisement, to movies, TV, narrative is about hijacking people's feelings and suppressing rationality. Common sense is no longer common, and doesn't make much sense.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#12

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

nathias wrote: post #3

Ah yes, the modern rationalists, few things are as cringe as modern adaptation of classical intellectual currents. Like reddit atheism, it makes a great disservice to the concept from which they steal their name. They have no education beyond their narrow limits, no interest in what lies beyond their time or their common sense.

Sure, naive rationalism is intellectually dead, but post-rationalism deserves a better endorsement, thus the downvotes. I suspect most people aren't yet familiar with the discourse. If I was more qualified I'd write it myself, but alas.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#14

Post by btilly »

I maintain that it isn't just hard, it is computationally impossible.

We should all know that given a belief about the world, and evidence, Bayes' Theorem describes how to update our beliefs.

But what if we have a network of interrelated beliefs? That's called a Bayesian net, and it turns out that Bayes' Theorem also prescribes a unique answer. However, unfortunately, it turns out that working out that answer is NP-hard.

OK, you say, we can come up with an approximate answer. Sorry, no, coming up with an approximate answer that gets within probability 0.5 - ε, for 0 Therefore our brains use a bunch of heuristics, with a bunch of known failure modes. You can read all the lesswrong you want. You can read Thinking, Fast and Slow and learn why we fail as we do. But the one thing that we cannot do, no matter how much work or effort we put into it, is have the sheer brainpower required to actually BE rational.

The effort of doing better is still worthwhile. But the goal itself is unachievable.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#15

Post by alecst »

XorNot wrote: post #7
alecst wrote: post #4

It's really hard (for me, and I imagine, for everyone else) to not put myself into my views and opinions. Like, when someone shows me that I'm wrong, it's natural for me to feel attacked, instead of just taking it as a learning moment. Noticing when this happens and working with it has been my main struggle in learning how to be more rational. Those views and opinions really don't need to be a part of what I consider…

> Allowing multiple beliefs to overlap This doesn't seem very rational. If your beliefs are in conflict and you're content to not resolve that, then pretty much by definition you're accepting a logical inconsistency. If resolving the intersection doesn't lead to a new stable belief system, then aren't you basically going with "whatever I'm feeling that day"?

It's an ambitious and admirable goal to be completely logically consistent, but I've given up on that. Sometimes there are two different but consistent stories for the same thing. I get that maybe it doesn't seem rational, but sometimes there's no way to pick between stories.

And, also, sometimes you think you've settled on the right path, but then you later get a new piece of information and have to reevaluate.

So to me it's not so cut and dry.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#16

Post by DoingIsLearning »

SMAAART wrote: post #11

Nobody wants to deal with rational people. Big business want people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have to impress people they don't like Politicians want people who will drink the cool-aid and follow what they (the politicians) say (and not what they do) Religions... well, same. And so all messages from advertisement, to movies, TV, narrative is about hijacking people's feelings and suppressing…

I don't disagree but I have to say this absolute reads like a voice-over from an Adam Curtis documentary.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#18

Post by athenot »

SMAAART wrote: post #11

Nobody wants to deal with rational people. Big business want people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have to impress people they don't like Politicians want people who will drink the cool-aid and follow what they (the politicians) say (and not what they do) Religions... well, same. And so all messages from advertisement, to movies, TV, narrative is about hijacking people's feelings and suppressing…

This sounds cynical but yes, unfortunately, there are many incentives to not be rational.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#19

Post by MrPowers »

Studying logical fallacies and behavioral economics biases have been the best ways for me to become more rational. I'm constantly calling myself out for confirmation bias, home country bias, and the recency effect in my internal investment thought process.

Learning about logical fallacies and identifying them in conversations is great. Don't tell the counterparty of their logical fallacies in conversations cause that's off putting. Just note them internally for a more rational inner dialogue.

Learning other languages and cultures is another way to learn about how different societies interact with objective truth. Living other places taught me a lot about how denial works in different places.

Thinking rationally is quite hard and I've learned how to abandon it in a lot of situations in favor of human emotions. How someone feels is more important than how they should feel.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#20

Post by yann2 »

btilly wrote: post #14

I maintain that it isn't just hard, it is computationally impossible. We should all know that given a belief about the world, and evidence, Bayes' Theorem describes how to update our beliefs. But what if we have a network of interrelated beliefs? That's called a Bayesian net, and it turns out that Bayes' Theorem also prescribes a unique answer. However, unfortunately, it turns out that working out that answer is NP-h…

Correct. Rationality is Bounded. That fact won a Nobel Prize - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon

The recommendation of the theory is if you cant be rational about a specific problem pick another problem, preferably a simpler problem.

Unfortunately lots of chimps in the troupe are incapable of doing that and therefore we shall always have drama.

Post reply on HN