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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?

#231

Post by UnFleshedOne »

wyager wrote: post #166
danans wrote: post #104

I think there is a simpler explanation that draws from evolutionary theory: being excessively rational is not a good survival strategy, be it in the distant past or today. If our ancestors would have made the rational assessment that there is unlikely to be a predator hiding behind the bush, that would have worked only as long as it worked, until one day they got eaten. Irrationally overestimating threats and risks i…

This is also captured in the “midwit phenomenon”, where people who are just smart enough to start applying “rationality” make worse decisions than stupid people. This is because stupid people are operating off of hard-earned adaptations (encoded as traditions, folk wisdom, etc.). Midwits are smart enough to realize that the putative justifications for these adaptations are wrong, and therefore they toss out the adapt…

Midwits (which we all are to one degree or another) can be mostly fixed by applying Chesterton's Fence principle though. We just need a knock or two in both directions to better estimate a relative weight of that rule as a heuristic.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#232

Post by mrxd »

It's actually not hard.

Rationality is a form of communication. Its purpose to persuade other people and coordinate group activity, e.g. hunters deciding where they should hunt and making arguments about where the prey might be. In that setting, rationality works perfectly well because humans are quite good at detecting bad reasoning when they see it in others.

Because of the assumptions of psychological individualism, rationality is misunderstood as a type of cognition that guides an individual's actions. To a certain extent, this is a valid approach because incentives within organizations encourage people to act this way. We reward individual accomplishments more than collaboration.

But many cognitive biases disappear when you aren't working under the assumptions of psychological individualism. For example, in the artificial limitations of a lab, you can show that people are unduly influenced by irrelevant factors when making purchase decisions. But in reality, when a salesperson is influencing someone to spend too much on a car, people say things like "Let me talk it over with my wife."

We instinctively seek out an environment of social communication and collaboration where rationality can operate. Much of the advice about how to be individually rational comes down to simulating those conditions within your own mind, like scrutinizing your own thinking as if it was an argument being made by another person. That can work, but the vast majority of people adopt a more straightforward approach, which is to simply use rationality as it was designed to be used.

Rationality is hard, but only for a small number of "smart people" who live in an individualistic culture prevents them from using it in the optimal way.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#233

Post by garbagetime »

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…

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

Should we? What of the problem of induction?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#234

Post by UnFleshedOne »

FinanceAnon wrote: post #64

It's impossible to be absolutely rational. I feel like there is so many different levels and viewpoints that there is no right answer. Simple example: Let's say the same pair of shoes is available in two different shops, but in one shop it's more expensive. It seem more rational to buy it in the cheaper shop. However, what if you've heard that the cheaper shop is very unethical in how it conducts the business. Is it…

Deciding when to stop overthinking is also a rational process. Some choices truly don't matter, or not matter enough to spend time and energy on them.

If consumer ethics is important to you then it obviously warrants some deliberation, weighted by an upper bound of your potential impact. But identifying areas of meaningless choice and simply choosing randomly (and not even caring if the choice is sufficiently random) frees up a lot of mental energy.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#235

Post by raldi »

johnwheeler wrote: post #153
raldi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the second sentence makes sense of the first. A perfectly rational actor would not do nothing; they would carry out the most reasonable action given the information available.

But then you're not being perfectly rational. You're calculating the odds, which is what my second sentence says. Being perfectly rational is impossible. See: perfect rationality vs bounded rationality

Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "perfectly rational". I'm using the definition from the article: A perfectly calibrated individual will be right X% of the time about statements in which they are X% confident.

Are you using a different definition?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#236

Post by UnFleshedOne »

mrxd wrote: post #232

It's actually not hard. Rationality is a form of communication. Its purpose to persuade other people and coordinate group activity, e.g. hunters deciding where they should hunt and making arguments about where the prey might be. In that setting, rationality works perfectly well because humans are quite good at detecting bad reasoning when they see it in others. Because of the assumptions of psychological individualis…

I think you are confusing the original purpose of our thinking apparatus (social proof first, discovering true facts distant second, unless facts can eat you quickly) and rationality as a system for discovering facts as true as possible with given energy budget that is running on that faulty hardware.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#237

Post by s1artibartfast »

bluetomcat wrote: post #75
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…

You can only be rational within a greater framework defined by a set of beliefs. When society at large believes that market capitalism is the only way for promoting prosperity, the rational action for a single individual is to get a job, pay the bills and have a life. Other possible actions might have a stronger moral justification, but aren't as beneficial or rational for the individual.

The is no division between moral action and rationality. People just pick what they wish to optomize for. You can rationally pursue any moral cause just as easily as personal comfort.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#238

Post by JohnPrine »

johnwheeler wrote: post #153
raldi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the second sentence makes sense of the first. A perfectly rational actor would not do nothing; they would carry out the most reasonable action given the information available.

But then you're not being perfectly rational. You're calculating the odds, which is what my second sentence says. Being perfectly rational is impossible. See: perfect rationality vs bounded rationality

I think you may have a confused definition of what it means to be a rational actor. Being rational means making the optimal decision given the information available

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#239

Post by UnFleshedOne »

_moof wrote: post #185
flixic wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

A soulless and mathematically applied principles is a good was to actually reduce the number of people suffering. Assuming that's what your goal was from the start. If you only look at "lived experience" and then make a random change you feel might help, but don't actually check if it does, you can make things worse (see the outcomes of all the aid to Africa for example).

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#240

Post by ggm »

yann2 wrote: post #20
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.

I've made it a life rule to try to avoid conversations with people who use "correct" to respond to statements, unless they are in the role of a teacher.

Tell me, are you aware of the myriad of alternate words to express your agreement with somebody else aside from correct? You aren't here as judge of the right or wrong. Semantically, philosophically, you're expressing agreement not correctness.

Or .. am I incorrect...?

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