The only problem I have with Robin’s definition (more “rational” means better believing what is true, given one’s limited info and analysis resources. ) is that it doesn’t make a point to distinguish between irrationality and other forms of stupidity.
I wouldn’t call someone irrational if they dropped a sign in a calculation, or were simply not intelligent enough to understand how to calculate the answer, but if someone correctly calculates the the optimal trajectory, then takes a different route because “faith” tells him to, I would call that irrational.
My concept of rationality fits better to the idea of skillfully choosing which “Rituals Of Cognition” to trust. To put it another way, someone is rational to the extent that their preferred rituals of cognition “win” at the game of believing what is true (even if they manage to fail at implementing their “ROC”- that just makes them stupid/error prone).
The “given one’s limited analysis resources” clause seems to cover some of this, but only vaguely, and would seem to give someone “rationality points” for coming up with a better algorithm that requires less clock cycles, while I would just give them “cleverness points”. If one counts “non rationality intelligence” as a limited resource, then Robin’s definition seems to agree, but “intelligence” is not very well defined either so defining “rationality” in terms of “intelligence” won’t help us nail it down concretely.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on the difference between “irrational” and “other stupidity”?
I disagree… I think “limited analysis resources” accounts for the very difference you speak of. I think the “rituals of cognition” you mention are themselves subjection to rationality analysis: if I’m understanding you correctly, you are talking about someone who knows how to be rational in theory but cannot implement such theory in practice. I think you run into three possibilities there.
One, the person has insufficient analytical resources to translate their theory into action, which Robin accounts for. The person is still rational, given their budget constraint.
Two, the person could gain the ability to make the proper translation, but the costs of doing so are so high that the person is better off with the occasional translation error. The person rationally chooses not to learn better translation techniques.
Three, the person systematically makes mistakes in the translations. That, I think, we can fairly call a bias, which is what we’re trying to avoid here. The person is acting irrationally—if there is a predictable bias, it should have been corrected for.
On your last point: “[Robin would] give someone “rationality points” for coming up with a better algorithm that requires less clock cycles, while I would just give them “cleverness points”.”
I think I have to side with Robin here. On certain issues it might not matter how quickly or efficiently the rational result is arrived at, but I think in almost all situations coming up with a faster way to arrive at a rational result is more rational, since individuals face constraints of time and resources. While the faster algorithm isn’t more rational on a single, isolated issue [assuming they both lead to the same rational result], the person would be able to move on to a different issue faster and thus have more resources available to be more rational in a different setting.
The only problem I have with Robin’s definition (more “rational” means better believing what is true, given one’s limited info and analysis resources. ) is that it doesn’t make a point to distinguish between irrationality and other forms of stupidity.
I wouldn’t call someone irrational if they dropped a sign in a calculation, or were simply not intelligent enough to understand how to calculate the answer, but if someone correctly calculates the the optimal trajectory, then takes a different route because “faith” tells him to, I would call that irrational.
My concept of rationality fits better to the idea of skillfully choosing which “Rituals Of Cognition” to trust. To put it another way, someone is rational to the extent that their preferred rituals of cognition “win” at the game of believing what is true (even if they manage to fail at implementing their “ROC”- that just makes them stupid/error prone).
The “given one’s limited analysis resources” clause seems to cover some of this, but only vaguely, and would seem to give someone “rationality points” for coming up with a better algorithm that requires less clock cycles, while I would just give them “cleverness points”. If one counts “non rationality intelligence” as a limited resource, then Robin’s definition seems to agree, but “intelligence” is not very well defined either so defining “rationality” in terms of “intelligence” won’t help us nail it down concretely.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on the difference between “irrational” and “other stupidity”?
I disagree… I think “limited analysis resources” accounts for the very difference you speak of. I think the “rituals of cognition” you mention are themselves subjection to rationality analysis: if I’m understanding you correctly, you are talking about someone who knows how to be rational in theory but cannot implement such theory in practice. I think you run into three possibilities there.
One, the person has insufficient analytical resources to translate their theory into action, which Robin accounts for. The person is still rational, given their budget constraint.
Two, the person could gain the ability to make the proper translation, but the costs of doing so are so high that the person is better off with the occasional translation error. The person rationally chooses not to learn better translation techniques.
Three, the person systematically makes mistakes in the translations. That, I think, we can fairly call a bias, which is what we’re trying to avoid here. The person is acting irrationally—if there is a predictable bias, it should have been corrected for.
On your last point: “[Robin would] give someone “rationality points” for coming up with a better algorithm that requires less clock cycles, while I would just give them “cleverness points”.” I think I have to side with Robin here. On certain issues it might not matter how quickly or efficiently the rational result is arrived at, but I think in almost all situations coming up with a faster way to arrive at a rational result is more rational, since individuals face constraints of time and resources. While the faster algorithm isn’t more rational on a single, isolated issue [assuming they both lead to the same rational result], the person would be able to move on to a different issue faster and thus have more resources available to be more rational in a different setting.