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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?

#71

Post by tines »

kirse wrote: post #42
lalaithion wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it's called "less wrong". The goal isn't to be perfect, the goal is to do better. To be less wrong.

Which is ironic because the pursuit of knowledge only continues to increase the landscape of unknowns towards infinity - the branches of the tree of undiscovered and unknown knowledge continues to grow exponentially. It's as-if today we thought the choices were A or B, yet tomorrow we discover there was a C, and the next day D and so forth. If anything we are only discovering we are "more wrong" every day.

Actually I think this is the same fallacy as one of Zeno's paradoxes, and has the same resolution. We are discovering more wrong, as you say, but the "infinity" of wrongs is in the direction of the infinitely small (or "infinitely detailed"), not the infinitely large. In other words, every time we fill in a gap in our knowledge, we create two more gaps, so to speak, but nevertheless we know more than we did before.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#72

Post by mindslight »

alecst wrote: post #15
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"?

It's an ambitious and admirable goal to be completely logically consistent, but I've given up on that. Sometimes there are two different but consistent stories for the same thing. I get that maybe it doesn't seem rational, but sometimes there's no way to pick between stories. And, also, sometimes you think you've settled on the right path, but then you later get a new piece of information and have to reevaluate. So t…

Your thinking is most certainly rational. The contraposition to Godel's incompleteness theorem tells us that any framework with sufficient explanatory power will necessarily contain contradictions. Since we attempt to reason about everything, our framework is necessarily large enough to be full of contradictions. Since we've got to deal with contradictions, they are not something to be avoided but rather acknowledged. If you're not acknowledging the contradictions and the "opposite side" for the implications you visit, then you will miss when that "other side" starts making more sense than the chain you're following. Not doing this means ending up at a nonsensical position while ignoring its contradictory obvious truth, a result we call cognitive dissonance.

This dual-thinking is related to the computer security mindset - you can't naively write code thinking your assertions will simply hold as you intend, but rather you need to be continually examining what every assertion "gives away" to a hostile counterparty.

There are alternative systems of logic that attempt to formalize reasoning in the presence of contradictions, to keep a single contradiction from being able to prove everything. For example, intuitionistic logic and paraconsistent logic. These feel much more in line with reasoning in an open world where a lack of a negative doesn't necessarily imply truth. The focus on a singular "logic" that asserts that everything has some single rational "answer" is a source of much of our modern strife.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#73

Post by teddyh »

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…

> to me it is totally irrational, especially since he can't give any concrete reason for it.

In my experience, people usually can give ‘concrete’ reasons for it, but what constitutes ‘concrete’ is a matter of opinion, and I don’t consider everybody’s reasons to be valid. But of course, they do.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#74

Post by kbelder »

polote wrote: post #58
not2b wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rationalist would recognize that we update our beliefs as new evidence is available and not attack people for having erroneous beliefs before that evidence was available. The "masks don't work" advice was active for a short time in March 2020 and almost immediately dumped. They thought at the time that only n95 masks would be good enough, these masks were in short supply and health care workers needed them, this wa…

There was no new evidence. I'm not sure we have even learned anything regarding the efficacy of masks trough the pandemic. All what we know was already known prior of it.

'We' as the scientific community may not have, but 'we' the unwashed public learned much.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#75

Post by bluetomcat »

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.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#76

Post by btilly »

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.

That Nobel was won in 1978, and is based on the fact that in practice we can't be rational.

The NP demonstrations that, in theory, updating a Bayesian is a computationally infeasible problem was G. F. Cooper in 1990 (for Bayesian Networks). The stronger result that approximating the update is also computationally infeasible was Dagum, P. & Luby, M., 1993.

So Simon's work relates to what I said, but isn't based on it.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#77

Post by lisper »

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…

Ironically, some of the most irrational people I know are the ones who profess to hew to rationality, to the point where, in certain circles, "rationality" has become a sort of cult. This is particularly evident in militant anti-theism (whose adherents insist that the only possible explanation for someone believing in God is that they are idiots or otherwise mentally deficient), hard-core libertarians (who, ironically, end up politically aligned with hard-core fundamentalist Christians, at least in the U.S.) and a particularly weird strain of this disease that causes people to subscribe to (and actively proselytize!) the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It's bizarre, and unendingly frustrating. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only rational creature in the universe because, of course, none of my beliefs are anything at all like theirs.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#78

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

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…

That’s true for arbitrary graphs, but I don’t believe it’s practically relevant here any more than the fact that I can’t compute the first 10000 digits of pi in my head is. We are much worse than our computational limits.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#79

Post by nostromo »

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…

The sunk cost fallacy is particularly important to learn about and teach your children about.

I see it everywhere, from my own decision making process to international politics. Just this morning I was thinking about it as I read the news about the US leaving Afghanistan, and last week talking with a friend who is staying at a bad job.

Re: Why is it so hard to be rational?

#80

Post by johnwheeler »

raldi wrote: post #56
johnwheeler wrote: post #29

Perfect rationality is impossible because in order to make correct decisions you need all the facts and a rational actor would do nothing at all given that all the facts can’t be had. The best you can do is to be an odds maker;therefore, an odds maker would spend their time looking for as many of the lowest effort ventures with the highest chances of success and biggest payoffs relative to effort and chance. In their…

Your opening sentence makes no sense. If you and I don’t know the results of a coin toss, and I offer you a two-for-one wager on the result, the rational choice for you would be to take that bet, even without knowing the most relevant fact.

ah, you should have read the second sentence
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