Can we, NOT being rational agents, reliably determine which each of these “situations” we should avoid?
I can understand why ‘medical care’ or ‘health’ might be one of those areas – I think. Do you have any other particular areas in mind?
I kinda feel like “more than usual” is a really low/weird bar. Do many people spend any considerable amount of time in situations in which it’s NOT the case that “irrationality rears its head more than usual”?
I think mostly people, including myself, are typically ‘sleepwalking’ and not reasoning irrationally or rationally at all.
Should ‘we’, and our doctors, just avoid these kinds of situations forever? Is there no positive expected value for any possible improvement in this kind of reasoning, in these situations?
These are all good questions. I guess one indicator is the situations where we would feel more emotional than usual? The proverbial “triggers” are a thing, and they are indicative of being less rational than usual.
I don’t disagree but I think I think (ha) of this kind of thing more along the lines of ‘needing to prepare for’ being “more emotional than usual” or preparing to handle “triggers” or other circumstances in which we’d expect our reasoning to less rational than usual/ideal.
The time to steel oneself to handle ‘difficult reasoning scenarios’ is before they occur, i.e. before we feel “more emotional than usual” or are ‘triggered’.
In my case, I’m long past being ‘over’ trusting doctors blindly. I’ve been practicing asking them about, e.g. base rates and the strength of research evidence. What I liked about this post is that it made me realize/recognize that I don’t need to also avoid medial diagnostics – I can just ‘ignore’ the doctor’s ‘default algorithm’ output instead!
As you pointed out in your original comment, it still might be sensible/reasonable/best to avoid some situations. I just find knowing of the option to just ‘not do something stupid’, or let someone make a stupid decision for me, to be a very helpful frame.
Can we, NOT being rational agents, reliably determine which each of these “situations” we should avoid?
I can understand why ‘medical care’ or ‘health’ might be one of those areas – I think. Do you have any other particular areas in mind?
I kinda feel like “more than usual” is a really low/weird bar. Do many people spend any considerable amount of time in situations in which it’s NOT the case that “irrationality rears its head more than usual”?
I think mostly people, including myself, are typically ‘sleepwalking’ and not reasoning irrationally or rationally at all.
Should ‘we’, and our doctors, just avoid these kinds of situations forever? Is there no positive expected value for any possible improvement in this kind of reasoning, in these situations?
These are all good questions. I guess one indicator is the situations where we would feel more emotional than usual? The proverbial “triggers” are a thing, and they are indicative of being less rational than usual.
I don’t disagree but I think I think (ha) of this kind of thing more along the lines of ‘needing to prepare for’ being “more emotional than usual” or preparing to handle “triggers” or other circumstances in which we’d expect our reasoning to less rational than usual/ideal.
The time to steel oneself to handle ‘difficult reasoning scenarios’ is before they occur, i.e. before we feel “more emotional than usual” or are ‘triggered’.
In my case, I’m long past being ‘over’ trusting doctors blindly. I’ve been practicing asking them about, e.g. base rates and the strength of research evidence. What I liked about this post is that it made me realize/recognize that I don’t need to also avoid medial diagnostics – I can just ‘ignore’ the doctor’s ‘default algorithm’ output instead!
As you pointed out in your original comment, it still might be sensible/reasonable/best to avoid some situations. I just find knowing of the option to just ‘not do something stupid’, or let someone make a stupid decision for me, to be a very helpful frame.