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The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

nytimes.com

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Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#71

Post by eli_gottlieb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #62
charlieflowers wrote: post #9

I have known many clearly intelligent people who held irrational opinions quite strongly. For example, huge believers in specific, concrete stock market predictions based on some fibonacci sequence nonsense, to the point of actively loosing six figures through multiple failed predictions over a decade+ and still believing. So clearly, they're distinct. But the question about the bank teller doesn't seem like the stro…

>For example, huge believers in specific, concrete stock market predictions based on some fibonacci sequence nonsense, to the point of actively loosing six figures through multiple failed predictions over a decade+ and still believing. And there's the problem. We don't know what rationality or intelligence really are, but there's an assumption that they have something to do with modelling our current and future envir…

Yep. Experiments in "rationality" and "irrationality" usually seem to rely on the experimenter rigging up an experimentally normative behavior (a "right answer") which differs, often dramatically, from the ecologically normative behavior (the correct way to act in the subjects' everyday lives). The experimenter then gets to publish an "interesting" paper showing that very clever people behave "wrongly" because they didn't leap to what were actually quite improbable interpretations of events (if you hadn't seen the experiment before).

It makes it sound a lot like the Hollow-Face Illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-Face_illusion), which we are subject to precisely because our expectations accurately reflect normal life.

We need more experiments on rationality in which the "irrational" behavior is guaranteed not to be Bayes-optimal when given a previous human life.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#72

Post by whybroke »

ordu wrote: post #57
whybroke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you go about showing that emotions, feelings and intuition produce good results without proving that very idea rationally? While intuition may be useful to get good results (perhaps it is the subconscious quickly applying some pattern that has worked in the past) there's no way to know a particular use of intuition worked unless you go back later and rationally analyze the results. And more importantly, the…

> And more importantly, there's no reason to believe intuition works... Yes, there is. Humans are alive, they survived the evolution and they used intuition much more frequently then rationality. Logic was invented by greeks less then 3k years ago and before there was no way for rationality to exist. Intuiton does works in most cases. It is the apparent fact.

Very sensible point.

But I would emphasize that in order to justify the value of intuition in this case, you had to resort to reason as well as anthropology and evolutionary biology. That last one in particular most especially is the product of rational empiricism.

So again it appears we can only trust intuition if we can rationally prove that trust is justified.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#73

Post by tbrownaw »

mehwoot wrote: post #61
tbrownaw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or alternatively, the existence of (b) means that (a) is generally understood to mean "Linda is a bank teller, and is NOT active in the feminist movement ", regardless of how literally the instructions say to take it. Either way, it's more a failure of communication between the experimenters and the subjects, rather than a failure of rationality on the part of the subjects. Which is still interesting (and perhaps mor…

is generally understood to mean Is it? I didn't interpret it that way, and that isn't what the question says. And why would it be "understood" that is what is being asked? Logically, the answers would be "she is a feminist" and "she is not a feminist", there would be no reason to construct the answers with the information that she is a bank teller if that is what was being asked. This seems like another detail that r…

The answers given don't make sense together, and don't fit the question. I am speculating that the usual way (for people who don't prefer interacting with machines to interacting with people, which would be most people) to read this is to assume someone was careless/sloppy, and to mentally "correct" the answers to the nearest thing that makes the most sense before answering.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#74

Post by paulddraper »

sinxoveretothex wrote: post #48
paulddraper wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there hardly exist any real valid renewable alternative Most people don't know that. Exaggerations like http://thesolutionsproject.org/ make them think that wind/solar/tidal could put more than a little dent in energy.

It is possible, at least in principle, to transition to only using solar for example. Musk gave the example, when unveiling the Powerwall, that to power the whole of the US would only require the whole Texas Panhandle to be covered in panels 25% efficient. I remember doing the calculation even with the current 15% efficiency and it came out that if each person has something like 9 m^2 of solar panels on their roof, t…

> the whole of the US would only require the whole Texas Panhandle to be covered in panels 25% efficient

Are we building Dyson spheres next?

I believe largish orders of mass-market solar panels (currently ~15% efficient, as you mentioned) are about $10/sq ft, but let's make that $5 for sake of argument. So $218k for one acre.

The Texas Panhandle is 16.6 million acres. So assuming solar becomes nearly twice as efficient for half the cost, the solar panels alone for this venture would be $3.6 trillion. I hesitate to guess what construction, installation, batteries, or infrastructure for 16 million acres would add.

---

So I concede that given best-case economics, impractical funding, and technology that doesn't exist, it could perhaps be done.

More of a XKCD "What If?" scenario than a serious solution.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#75

Post by eikenberry »

dmfdmf wrote: post #11

> people tend to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason. I think these types of article have a too-narrow definition of rationality. I think that emotions, feelings and intuition are subconscious processes but still part of the faculty of reason. The mistake is to think that rationality = conscious-logical-deduction but anyone who has solved some complex problem knows the experience of working on a prob…

I agree that thinking of these things in isolation is not that useful. That understanding how they interrelate is as important if not more important than understanding them in isolation. I also agree that rationality and intuition are not the opposites they are describing them as, the opposite of rational has always been emotional. Intuition plays a part both in rational and emotional decisions, it is orthogonal to that dualism.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#76

Post by eikenberry »

paulddraper wrote: post #12
dmfdmf wrote: post #11

> people tend to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason. I think these types of article have a too-narrow definition of rationality. I think that emotions, feelings and intuition are subconscious processes but still part of the faculty of reason. The mistake is to think that rationality = conscious-logical-deduction but anyone who has solved some complex problem knows the experience of working on a prob…

Are you suggesting that reason include intuition? I don't believe that would ever be a helpful definition of the word. --- Reason is conscious; intuition is subconscious. Of course, they're related: reason can train intuition, and intuition can catalyze reason. But I disagree that a conversational distinction is inappropriate.

Reason is mostly subconscious like all our mental facilities. That is not a good distinction. That it has good reasoning behind it is the only good distinction.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#77

Post by whybroke »

meric wrote: post #29
whybroke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you go about showing that emotions, feelings and intuition produce good results without proving that very idea rationally? While intuition may be useful to get good results (perhaps it is the subconscious quickly applying some pattern that has worked in the past) there's no way to know a particular use of intuition worked unless you go back later and rationally analyze the results. And more importantly, the…

Forget reason, rely only on intuition, and there will be no 'working' or 'not working'. Stop thinking and end your problems. (Tao Te Ching, chapter 20) Isn't that what we are all after, having no problems? Is there any point in time where in reality you are more than sensory signals entering your consciousness? Is everything not a mere an illusion of your mind? Letting intuition figuring everything out is effortless,…

Reason will give you the math to build the pyramids.

Irrationality will make you think it is a good idea.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#78

Post by csallen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #65
csallen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is the participants went with their intuitive feeling about how the question might be structured as opposed to applying deliberate and effortful analysis/reasoning to understand what was being asked.

Such reasoning would not allow reading the question-asker's mind, so no. You can rationally arrive at either interpretation of the question.

As you yourself pointed out, it the idea that A = !B is an assumption. It's not supported by anything on the page whatsoever. In fact, it's explicitly rejected by what's on the page. Simply reading and reasoning about the answers, which are completely unambiguous, would lead one to conclude that B is a subset of A. Therefore it must be false that A = !B.

There's no mind reading necessary, only rational thought.

Listening to internally-generated assumptions without bothering to fact-check them via explicit reasoning is intuition.

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#79

Post by bmh_ca »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #66
socmag wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "mylenic sheaths form around our neurons and abstracting concepts" Roll me one while you are at it

That is not how that "and" works. 'Mylenic sheaths form around our neurons. -and- Abstracting concepts becomes more challenging.'

Ty

Re: The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

csallen wrote: post #78
Dylan16807 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such reasoning would not allow reading the question-asker's mind, so no. You can rationally arrive at either interpretation of the question.

As you yourself pointed out, it the idea that A = !B is an assumption. It's not supported by anything on the page whatsoever. In fact, it's explicitly rejected by what's on the page. Simply reading and reasoning about the answers, which are completely unambiguous, would lead one to conclude that B is a subset of A. Therefore it must be false that A = !B. There's no mind reading necessary, only rational thought. Liste…

Language is naturally ambiguous and dependent on context. It's not lack of rationality that causes people to interpret questions in different ways. You can only show lack of rationality in a situation like this if they provide the wrong answer and understand the question.
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