It’s strange that it sounds like a rationalist is saying that he should have listened to his instincts. A true rationalist should be able to examine all the evidence without having to rely on feelings to make a judgment, or would be able to truly understand the source of his feelings, in which case it’s more than just a feeling. The unfortunate thing is that people are more likely to remember the cases when they didn’t listen to their feelings which ended up being correct in the end, than all the times when they were wrong.
The “quiet strain in the back of your mind” is what drives some people to always expect the worst to happen, and every so often they are right which reinforces their confidence in their intuitions more than their confidence diminishes each time they are wrong.
In some cases, it might be possible for someone to have a rational response to a stimulus only to think that it is intuition because they don’t quite understand or aren’t able to fully rationalize the source of the feeling. From my own experiences, it seems that some people don’t make a hard enough effort to search for the source… they either don’t seem to think that there is a rational source, or don’t care to take the effort.… as long as they are able to ascertain what their feelings suggest they do, they really don’t seem to care whether or not the source is rational or irrational.
A true rationalist would be able to determine the source and rationality of the feeling. The interesting question is if he fails to rationally explain the feeling, should he ignore the feeling, chalking it up to his weakness as a perfect rationalist.
Since we are all human and cannot be perfectly rational, shouldn’t a rationalist decide that a seemingly irrational feeling is just that, irrational. Is it not more rational to believe that a seemingly irrational feeling is the result of our own imperfection as a human?
Sorry, since when does “quiet strain in the back of your mind” automatically translate to “irrational”? This particular quiet voice is usually _right_; surely that makes it rational?
To my mind, this question relates to the accuracy of intuitions and the problems that arises while relying on it.
In the original post, my take is that the “quiet strain in the back of your mind” refers to the observation that people whom’s opinion you value in a chatroom are discarding your opinion which is based on a single “anec-data” ; which, for a rationalist in his right mind, taking a step back and on a good day, would automatically discard as the sole model through which reality ought to be interpreted.
While this answers your question, my broader take is that untrained intuition is just a mashup feeling of what feels right or wrong according to a situation, and feelings are not to be confounded with reality. Unless… in the rare occurrence that these feelings have been thoroughly trained to be right, and by that I mean conditioning of the mind through repetition to the point that, for example, a veteran mathematician would “feel” or “intuit” something is wrong with a mathematical proof with just a glance and without going through the details.
Yet there ought to be human limits about relying on such trained intuition and feeling, thus, by default, relying on them must be a last resort or a matter of physical survival—which is what intuition is better used for (to me) - rather than to be extrapolated as a proxy for rationality.
It’s strange that it sounds like a rationalist is saying that he should have listened to his instincts. A true rationalist should be able to examine all the evidence without having to rely on feelings to make a judgment, or would be able to truly understand the source of his feelings, in which case it’s more than just a feeling. The unfortunate thing is that people are more likely to remember the cases when they didn’t listen to their feelings which ended up being correct in the end, than all the times when they were wrong.
The “quiet strain in the back of your mind” is what drives some people to always expect the worst to happen, and every so often they are right which reinforces their confidence in their intuitions more than their confidence diminishes each time they are wrong.
In some cases, it might be possible for someone to have a rational response to a stimulus only to think that it is intuition because they don’t quite understand or aren’t able to fully rationalize the source of the feeling. From my own experiences, it seems that some people don’t make a hard enough effort to search for the source… they either don’t seem to think that there is a rational source, or don’t care to take the effort.… as long as they are able to ascertain what their feelings suggest they do, they really don’t seem to care whether or not the source is rational or irrational.
A true rationalist would be able to determine the source and rationality of the feeling. The interesting question is if he fails to rationally explain the feeling, should he ignore the feeling, chalking it up to his weakness as a perfect rationalist.
Since we are all human and cannot be perfectly rational, shouldn’t a rationalist decide that a seemingly irrational feeling is just that, irrational. Is it not more rational to believe that a seemingly irrational feeling is the result of our own imperfection as a human?
a rationalist should acknowledge their irrationality, to do otherwise would be to irrational.
Sorry, since when does “quiet strain in the back of your mind” automatically translate to “irrational”? This particular quiet voice is usually _right_; surely that makes it rational?
To my mind, this question relates to the accuracy of intuitions and the problems that arises while relying on it.
In the original post, my take is that the “quiet strain in the back of your mind” refers to the observation that people whom’s opinion you value in a chatroom are discarding your opinion which is based on a single “anec-data” ; which, for a rationalist in his right mind, taking a step back and on a good day, would automatically discard as the sole model through which reality ought to be interpreted.
While this answers your question, my broader take is that untrained intuition is just a mashup feeling of what feels right or wrong according to a situation, and feelings are not to be confounded with reality. Unless… in the rare occurrence that these feelings have been thoroughly trained to be right, and by that I mean conditioning of the mind through repetition to the point that, for example, a veteran mathematician would “feel” or “intuit” something is wrong with a mathematical proof with just a glance and without going through the details.
Yet there ought to be human limits about relying on such trained intuition and feeling, thus, by default, relying on them must be a last resort or a matter of physical survival—which is what intuition is better used for (to me) - rather than to be extrapolated as a proxy for rationality.