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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?

#181

Post by pessimizer »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #132
Retric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. No you really can’t understand a culture from a week of study the same way you can from being there for a week. The issue is the millions of unknown unknowns that you never really consider. How large is people’s personal space, where do they stand and look in an elevator, what’s traffic like, how loud are people, etc etc. Of course a week or three isn’t that long, but there are real diminishing ret…

>Of course a week or three isn’t that long, but there are real diminishing returns here. I suspect you have to live and work in a place to really understand it. If you are wealthy and visiting a poor country there is virtually zero chance, you will always be too insulated from the reality.

If you are wealthy and born and raised in a poor country, you will likely be quite ignorant of most of the lifestyle of most of its people.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#182

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

zepto wrote: post #154
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

> Once again I'm fairly lost by what you are trying to mean. You may want to look up the difference between formal models and informal models. Since both rationality and the paper showing that it is bounded are based on formal models, it is reasonable to assume this is what we are talking about.

Sorry, I don't understand your argument. Are you actually talking about rational choice theory?

> Since both rationality and the paper showing that it is bounded are based on formal models

There is no paper showing that "rationality" is bounded. Models use to consider actors making purely rational choices in the sense that they are always optimizing their utility functions using all available information. Bounded rationility is a different way of modeling actors choice function. It's just a different model. There is no model of models.

Still I don't see what any of that has to do with the difference between formal and informal models. Informal model is a term I have never heard used outside of policy discussion. It's basically dress up for "because the expert said so".

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#183

Post by pessimizer »

throwaway9690 wrote: post #30

I think part of the problem is that most people are conditioned into many beliefs from a young age I know a guy who hates foo (using a place holder). In fact he's downright foophobic. He is pretty convinced he has a natural unbiased hate of foo and is being rational when he expresses it. To me as an outsider it is pretty obvious that his hate of foo is the result of cultural conditioning. To him it is perfectly ratio…

> natural unbiased hate

...is a pretty silly phrase. If you don't have a reason for something, it can't (by definition) be reasonable.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#184

Post by oldsklgdfth »

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…

In an attempt to catch myself in the act of logical fallacies I have a flash card app on my phone. One of the sets I have is of logical fallacies. Educating myself has helped make me more aware of them and when I fall victim to them.

It's not an easy task. But 10 minutes a day can add up and reinforce that information.

A related idea is cognitive distortion. It's basically an irrational thought pattern that perpetuates negative emotions and a distorted view of reality. One example many here can relate to is imposter syndrome. But to feel like an imposter you have to overlook your achievements and assets and cherry-pick negative data points.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#185

Post by _moof »

flixic wrote: post #160
_moof wrote: post #145

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.

That's why I appreciate that a rationality website is called LessWrong. Of course you can't be perfectly rational, but you can be less wrong.

Thanks for the reply. I think what I was trying to say by implication is that I think folks fall so far short of the ideal that it's actually a regression. Related to this is what I see as an implicit belief that "rationality" means completely dismissing the lived experience of actual humans, i.e. lots of people are suffering but hey, at least we applied principles in a soulless and mathematical way, because that's what's important.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#186

Post by jhgb »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #12
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.

What is this "naive rationalism" and "post-rationalism"? And how is rationalism dead in the first place? Did science and logic suddenly stop working without us noticing?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#188

Post by antisthenes »

karmakaze wrote: post #67
XorNot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

People who gain knowledge by adding to a consistent/stable belief system are the ones who have the most difficulty adapting to new situations and processing new information that may upend volumes of settled knowledge. You can recognize them as the dogmatic types that remember the rules but forget how/why they adopted them and are at a loss to update them.

> People who gain knowledge by adding to a consistent/stable belief system are the ones who have the most difficulty adapting to new situations and processing new information that may upend volumes of settled knowledge.

That's such an incredibly rare occurrence, that having a stable belief system far outweighs its potential drawbacks. Not to mention that rationality itself encompasses the ability to make such a switch anyway if the new information actually does upend volumes of "settled" knowledge.

A much bigger problem, though, is people lacking critical thinking skills to adequately assign probabilities to the new information being valuable/useful/correct.

Hint: it's very low. (in the current stage of civilization, there are definitely periods where it was different).

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#189

Post by jhgb »

_moof wrote: post #145

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.

Why? Are you equating rationality with omniscience? Then why have the separate word "rationality" in the first place?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#190

Post by BurningFrog »

kerblang wrote: post #148

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-techni…

You won't make any engineers angry.

We know you're talking about other engineers, and we agree about those fools!

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