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Why is it so hard to be rational?

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Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#141

Post by mariodiana »

achenatx wrote: post #27

The ultimate issue is that underpinning every action is a value system. Value systems are opinions and are fundamentally not rational. Virtually every political disagreement is based on values, though most of the time people dont recognize it. Values determine priorities and priorities underpin action. For example some people feel that liberty (e.g. choice) is more important than saving lives when it comes to vaccine…

Yes, and I think when people claim to be describing what a "rational actor" would do, what they often leave out are the normative assumptions inherent in their rational analysis. Moreover, I suspect the omission at times is not accidental.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#142

Post by Nav_Panel »

nitrogen wrote: post #135
Nav_Panel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yudkowsky and other prominent contributors set "the" goal as a sort of revealed wisdom regarding their speculations about what a super powerful AI will do. Pragmatically, the goals themselves appeal to individuals who want to maintain conventional (liberal) morality yet also position themselves as superior, typically as a form of compensation.

position themselves as superior This is why we can't have nice things. Any time someone tries to find more effective ways of making good decisions or accomplishing their goals, someone has to bring out the most tortured cynical interpretation to tear them down.

Have you hung out much with rationalists?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#143

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

zepto wrote: post #121
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Correct. Rationality is Bounded. That fact won a Nobel Prize. It's a model not a fact. As a model, it can't really be correct only more or less accurate.

> It's a model not a fact. As a model, it can't really be correct only more or less accurate. This is not true. Models of an external world may be only more or less accurate, but models of other models may be true or false. Mathematical proofs rely on this. Rationality itself is a model so models of rationality may be true or false.

Unless you have very peculiar and idiosyncratic definition of the world model, I am fairly confident that what you are saying doesn't make much sense.

In economy in a way that is not dissimilar to physics, model has a precise meaning. To quote Wikipedia, it is a simplified version of reality that allows us to observe, understand, and make predictions about economic behavior. You can't have a model of a model. That just doesn't really make sense.

> Mathematical proofs rely on this

I'm confused by what you want to say here. Mathematical proofs don't use models.

Every proved statements in mathematics can be built from axioms which are presupposed true applying logical rules which are themselves part of the axiomatic system. Saying that something is mathematically proved basically means that given this set of rules we can build up to that point.

> Rationality itself is a model

Once again I'm fairly lost by what you are trying to mean. I'm fairly certain that for most accepted meaning of the world model and the world rationality, rationality is in fact not a model in the same way that a dog is not a theory.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#144

Post by mensetmanusman »

whatshisface wrote: post #113
hanche wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that even being less wrong is NP-hard.

The saving grace of being able to survive in the universe is that it's possible to climb up NP hard problems far enough to get real results with hard work.

It also means that you might not know if the hard work is climbing up or down (towards or away) from the solution.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#145

Post by _moof »

It's impossible to be perfectly rational without perfect and complete information. Crucially, for questions that affect us personally, this includes perfect insight. I've yet to meet anyone who qualifies.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#146

Post by marcod »

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 maintain that the concept of "common sense" is also quite useless now :p

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#147

Post by Matticus_Rex »

newbamboo wrote: post #107
MrPowers wrote: post #19

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…

Some are grateful to have them pointed out, after a bit of initial discomfort and resistance. Didn’t work out so well for Socrates of course, but we’re more enlightened now.

> but we’re more enlightened now

We hope.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#148

Post by kerblang »

My problem in everyday work is so often I have to deal with so-called software engineers who fancy themselves quite the scientific thinkers but whose irrationality borders on delusional. In fact a lot of them believe "I'm very smart, so I am therefore the most rational" which is obviously not true at all. In fact this will probably make a lot of so-called software engineers angry but I tend to think of the non-technical folk as the rational ones and much easier to deal with as a result. Purely anecdotal though.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#150

Post by kazinator »

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…

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

I further maintain that it's definitionally impossible. Before we find it computationally impossible, we will find that we can't write the a complete, detailed requirements specification defining what rational is.

(Of course, we recognize egregious irrationality when we see it; that's not what I mean; you can't just define rationality as the opposite of that.)

People can behave rationally (or not) with respect to some stated values that they have. But those can be arbitrary. So the requirement specification for rationality has to refer to a "configuration space", so to speak, where we program these values. This means that the output is dependent on it; we can't write some absolute test case for rationality that doesn't include this.

Problem is, people with different values look at each other's values and point to them and say, "those values are irrational; those people should adopt my values instead".

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