which reads to me not as a use of “rational” to just mean “good”, but a use of “rational” to describe (supposedly) instrumentally rational behaviour.
That’s what I meant by ‘good’. The articles I linked are about retaining a certain connotation for the word ‘rational’—an association with systematic and general cognitive algorithms that conduce to truth or winning, as opposed to a completely generic association with truth or winning in all its manifestations. The goal is to retain ‘rational’ as a technical term reserved for a specific subject matter, as opposed to letting it evolve into a community shibboleth for anything we like (i.e., prefer, find good, find instrumentally rational). This both makes our discussions easier to comprehend, and makes ‘rational’ more useful (because it signals a more specific topic).
This isn’t so much a point about how we define ‘rational’ as it is a point about tabooing fancy shibboleths away when their content is the same as a simpler synonym. If we just start saying ‘good job being rational!’ when we mean nothing more than ‘good job forming an accurate belief!’ or ‘good job doing something you and I wanted to have happen!’, we’ll send the wrong message and dilute useful jargon.
You lost me. I still have no idea why you think this isn’t an example of rational behavior. Goal: Get more men to become jihadists. What do young men want? Sex. Encourage young women to provide them with sex. There’s no cost to the authorities—there’s a “social cost”, but that’s the social cost as we compute it, not as a hardline mullah computes it. He doesn’t pay anything.
That’s what I meant by ‘good’. The articles I linked are about retaining a certain connotation for the word ‘rational’—an association with systematic and general cognitive algorithms that conduce to truth or winning, as opposed to a completely generic association with truth or winning in all its manifestations. The goal is to retain ‘rational’ as a technical term reserved for a specific subject matter, as opposed to letting it evolve into a community shibboleth for anything we like (i.e., prefer, find good, find instrumentally rational). This both makes our discussions easier to comprehend, and makes ‘rational’ more useful (because it signals a more specific topic).
This isn’t so much a point about how we define ‘rational’ as it is a point about tabooing fancy shibboleths away when their content is the same as a simpler synonym. If we just start saying ‘good job being rational!’ when we mean nothing more than ‘good job forming an accurate belief!’ or ‘good job doing something you and I wanted to have happen!’, we’ll send the wrong message and dilute useful jargon.
You lost me. I still have no idea why you think this isn’t an example of rational behavior. Goal: Get more men to become jihadists. What do young men want? Sex. Encourage young women to provide them with sex. There’s no cost to the authorities—there’s a “social cost”, but that’s the social cost as we compute it, not as a hardline mullah computes it. He doesn’t pay anything.