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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?

#271

Post by btilly »

karpierz wrote: post #220
whatshisface wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're thinking of NP-hard yes-no problems. Many if not most NP-hard problems of practical importance, including the traveling salesman, involve integer rather than boolean scores.

NP-hardness by definition is only yes-no decision problems. The NP-hard formulation of Traveling Salesman is "given the weighted graph G and an integer X, is there a Hamiltonian cycle in G with total weight less than X?"

You are using a non-standard definition of NP-hard. Here are standard definitions.

A problem is in P if there is a polynomial time algorithm to solve it.

A problem is in NP if there is a polynomial time algorithm to check a purported solution.

A problem is in NP-hard if, if there was a polynomial time algorithm to solve it, every problem in NP could be solved in polynomial time.

A problem is NP-complete if it is both in NP and in NP-hard.

For Traveling Salesman, the NP-complete problem is, "...find a solution with total weight less than X." (Linear verification, check it is Hamiltonian, check its weight.) An NP-hard version is, "...find whether there is a solution with total weight less than X." (To verify, you have to search. Oops.) But ANOTHER NP-hard version is, "...find the solution with least total weight". (To verify, you have to search. Oops.)

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#272

Post by anyfoo »

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…

> 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.

This also had a rather frustrating effect. It is true that not just intensely traveling (not in the sight seeing way), but also actual living in several different countries and cultures, changed my horizon a lot. It definitely had the effect you talk about.

But then what? You cannot tell your partner in discussion "you would not think like that if you had traveled/lived outside of your culture", and it's also impossible to send everyone off to travel in order to experience the same. Much less in the US, where for most of the country you cannot just hop into a train for a few hours to encounter a completely different language and culture. (I grew up in Europe and moved to the US as an adult, but I've also lived in several different European countries before, and traveled to far away places like Asia.)

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#273

Post by _moof »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #158
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…

I have observed that behavior in many other professions where the participants view themselves as very smart. Physicians and lawyers are at the top of that list.

Indeed. Academicians are some of the worst offenders in my experience.

Also, you know how software engineers like to think that they're rocket scientists? Well, it brings me no pleasure to report that rocket scientists think they're software engineers.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#274

Post by inkblotuniverse »

swayvil wrote: post #10

Rationality is a game of checkers played outside in a meadow. So many distractions. Wind, rain, bees, rampant squirrels. And what makes that game more interesting than a squirrel anyway?

The money.

(And you're playing the game agaonst the squirrels anyway.)

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#275

Post by adam_arthur »

wyager wrote: post #230
jitter_ wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> under Bayesian reasoning a lot of “fallacies” like sunk cost, slippery slope, etc. are actually powerful heuristics for EV optimization. Can you elaborate on that? This really piqued my interest. I feel like logic is easy to apply retrospectively (especially so for spotting fallacies), but trying to catch myself in a fallacy in the present feels like excessive second quessing and overanalyzing. The sort that preven…

Sure. Fallacies, as usually stated, tell you when something that feels like a logical entailment isn’t actually a logical entailment. Intuitively, people find “bob is an idiot so he’s wrong” a reasonable statement. Technically, the implication does not hold (stupid people can be correct) and this is an ad hominem fallacy. However, if we analyze this statement from a Bayesian standpoint (which we should), the rules of…

Yes, 100% agreed! Your post reflects my feelings on this.

It's important to understand that something being a "logical fallacy" just implies that you can't unilaterally justify conclusion X by using reasoning Y.

But that does not mean that reasoning Y is not valid or helpful in understanding conclusion X.

Ultimately it's important to justify your views with sound reasoning, but life is full of heuristics, so often use of heuristics to reach a conclusion can be reasonable. It just means the conclusion is not definitive from a logical point of view.

Ideally you use a combination of logically sound and heuristic based statements to support an argument.

Following your Bob example... It's important that the person making the argument uses stronger reasoning than just calling Bob an idiot. But agreed that it's a totally valid point of supporting evidence.. assuming that Bob is an idiot is a fairly agreed upon statement.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#276

Post by skosch »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #142
nitrogen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Have you? Because the rationalists I know are genuinely well-adjusted people.

It's cheap and easy to make fun of the lesswrong community as a cringy cult of AI-obsessed neckbeards. And to be fair, the writing style on LW tends to support that impression. But I've found that most of the actual people within the rationality/AI safety/effective altruism communities actually don't fit that stereotype at all.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#277

Post by carrolldunham »

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.

* A Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, commonly but falsely referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#278

Post by RogerL »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #217
belter wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you :-) https://xkcd.com/1132/

Maybe I'm just missing the joke here, but "Bayesian reasoning" is hardly needed to realize that if the sun did explode, the $50 you'd lose in the bet is worthless anyway.

That's not the joke. The point is that the sun exploding is extremely rare, so you can essentially conclude that the trial is a false positive. If you just look at the p-value you ignore p(B| not A) (false positive), and conclude that the sun exploded (no actual statistician would make that claim in this example, but they sure do in more subtle situations).

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#279

Post by guskel »

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…

Can you provide an example?

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#280

Post by lmm »

skosch wrote: post #276
Nav_Panel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you hung out much with rationalists?

Have you? Because the rationalists I know are genuinely well-adjusted people. It's cheap and easy to make fun of the lesswrong community as a cringy cult of AI-obsessed neckbeards. And to be fair, the writing style on LW tends to support that impression. But I've found that most of the actual people within the rationality/AI safety/effective altruism communities actually don't fit that stereotype at all.

I went to a couple of meetups and found one cool dude surrounded by a group that exactly fit the stereotype, FWIW.
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