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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?

#301

Post by btilly »

garbagetime wrote: post #233
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?

The problem of induction is a problem of how we may create a prior out of raw experience.

And neither logic nor mathematics offers a solution. In practice, however, we do. But, as any parent should know, we don't do it through a rational process.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#302

Post by RonaldRaygun »

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…

No disagreement with the main thrust of your comment, it's a very good one and imo goes to the heart of the seemingly intractable divide between the logician's approach to truth and that of damn near everyone else - which tends to leave the logician reasoning into the void, doing not a bit of good for anyone.

However I myself would probably label the statement "Bob is an idiot" (or perhaps less abrasively, "Bob has often been wrong in the past in easily verifiable ways") not as evidence that he's wrong per se, but as a signal, possibly a rather strong signal, that he is likely also incorrect in the current matter.

A minor semantic quibble, but in my own experience I've found that conceiving of it as such helps frame the situation as a "sensor fusion of individually unreliable data sources" type of problem, as opposed to one of "collecting experimental results in a logbook and deriving conclusions from them."

The latter of which can lead pretty seamlessly to a towering edifice of belief built upon some ultimately pretty shaky foundations. Ask me how I know ;)

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#303

Post by lisper »

btilly wrote: post #300
lisper wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many worlds is indeed what QM predicts should happen. No. Many-worlds is what the SE predicts should happen. But the SE != QM. MW does not explain the Born rule, which is part of QM's predictions. MW is also violently at odds with subjective experience. So MW is not a good explanation of what is observed.

Let's weaken it slightly. Consider Schrödinger's cat. Let's assume the Copenhagen interpretation, and assume that collapse does not happen until the box is opened. Now let's modify the experiment to assume a hyper-intelligent cat, with access to a full physics laboratory inside of the box. QM predicts that there is no experiment that is possible for the cat to conduct that can tell whether collapse happened. The QM d…

> Now let's modify the experiment to assume a hyper-intelligent cat, with access to a full physics laboratory inside of the box.

A.k.a. Wigner's Friend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend

> QM describes the cat leads to MW being true for the cat no matter what is ultimately true.

You should read this:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8

And this:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.06451v4

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#305

Post by wyager »

RonaldRaygun wrote: post #302
wyager wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No disagreement with the main thrust of your comment, it's a very good one and imo goes to the heart of the seemingly intractable divide between the logician's approach to truth and that of damn near everyone else - which tends to leave the logician reasoning into the void, doing not a bit of good for anyone. However I myself would probably label the statement "Bob is an idiot" (or perhaps less abrasively, "Bob has o…

I just use the term “evidence” from probability theory. “Signal” feels pretty synonymous.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#306

Post by btilly »

lisper wrote: post #303
btilly wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's weaken it slightly. Consider Schrödinger's cat. Let's assume the Copenhagen interpretation, and assume that collapse does not happen until the box is opened. Now let's modify the experiment to assume a hyper-intelligent cat, with access to a full physics laboratory inside of the box. QM predicts that there is no experiment that is possible for the cat to conduct that can tell whether collapse happened. The QM d…

> Now let's modify the experiment to assume a hyper-intelligent cat, with access to a full physics laboratory inside of the box. A.k.a. Wigner's Friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend > QM describes the cat leads to MW being true for the cat no matter what is ultimately true. You should read this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8 And this: https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.06451v4

In return for you https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3975 for a fundamental flaw in the Nature paper.

As for the differences between Convivial Solipsism and Many Worlds, I am indifferent to them. It is immaterial to me whether I am a singular observer who can only be aware of part of the wave function, or I am one component of a superposition of observers, each of which is only aware of part of the wave function.

I personally lean away from solipsism because I do not think that I, or my observation of reality, are that important. But that is a preference. And I don't have any particular justification for it or reason to disagree with anyone with the opposite opinion.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#307

Post by therealdrag0 »

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…

Related https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#308

Post by jkmcf »

OnACoffeeBreak wrote: post #68
legrande wrote: post #2

I try to avoid mind viruses , or ideas that can hijack your decisions and thought process and take over. Think of a mind virus as a sort of dangerous meme that underpins everything you do. This is why first principles and making decisions based on sound foundations is better, absent of some sort of virulent dogma.

Sci-fi novel "Lexicon" by Max Barry explores the idea of words used for persuasion to the extent of actually hacking the brain via spoken word to take control of the subject's thoughts and actions.

This is what the Sophists were accused of by the Stoics and others.

Source: https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-032-trees...

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#309

Post by kirso »

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…

Does this mean then that all the mental models are basically useless because the outcome may be irrational?
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