“I know it’s really unfair because I didn’t know any better mere weeks ago, and years ago I was a good textbook example of an intelligent person who’d keep mainly using his intelligence to rationalize whatever questionable decisions he made, but I just can’t help it.”
If we approach this from an economists lens the situation seems to change slightly. To an economist, a rational actor is someone or something that acts in her own self interest. Acting in ones own self interest is to make decisions where the foreseen benefits outweigh the foreseen costs. This means that even someone who is addicted to a hard drug and continues to use that drug is acting rationally as long as the benefits of continuing to use said hard drug outweigh the costs for that particular person.
Societally the values may not align but that doesn’t mean that they are irrational. It just means that our foreseen benefits and costs are different from theirs. If you want to go down that rabbit whole, look into behavioral economics. They like to claim that people can act irrationally.
I understand what you mean, but, under these lens, I’d be using “irrational” to describe thought processes that negatively affect attempts to estimate the foreseen benefits and costs of a decision, or that cause people to connect their foreseen benefits with actions that have no real reason to lead to those.
Also, the way the word is used on this site, “rationality” is also the art of managing to not have your short term benefits get in the way of the real long term benefits you’d rather choose, and in choosing which foreseen benefits and costs should matter most to you.
So the addict would be irrational if in his decision he considered only: “pleasure from drug + 10 utility”, “temporary pain from stopping − 50 utility”, rather than also “likelihood of slow disintegration of my life, 20% of −1000 utility”, and “slowly decreasing effects from the drug and likelihood of having increasing future difficulties in obtaining drug, −80% of future “pleasure from drug +10 utility”, because a) he’s not considering at all the third factor because it’s not certain, or b) he’s considering only the first two because they are temporally closer, or d) he thinks what has seen for every drug addict he knows that’s further in the temporal curve won’t hold true for him without having a good reason to think so. (this is not a good model of drug addiction I think, I was just trying to describe what I mean).
Still, this is not the kind of irrationality I was getting mad at, I think I was getting mad mostly at irrational decisions and thoughts that didn’t had evident “strong causes”, addiction and social pressure are strong causes.
Going down that rabbit hole was in my plans, I’ll check out behavioural economics.
“I know it’s really unfair because I didn’t know any better mere weeks ago, and years ago I was a good textbook example of an intelligent person who’d keep mainly using his intelligence to rationalize whatever questionable decisions he made, but I just can’t help it.”
If we approach this from an economists lens the situation seems to change slightly. To an economist, a rational actor is someone or something that acts in her own self interest. Acting in ones own self interest is to make decisions where the foreseen benefits outweigh the foreseen costs. This means that even someone who is addicted to a hard drug and continues to use that drug is acting rationally as long as the benefits of continuing to use said hard drug outweigh the costs for that particular person.
Societally the values may not align but that doesn’t mean that they are irrational. It just means that our foreseen benefits and costs are different from theirs. If you want to go down that rabbit whole, look into behavioral economics. They like to claim that people can act irrationally.
I understand what you mean, but, under these lens, I’d be using “irrational” to describe thought processes that negatively affect attempts to estimate the foreseen benefits and costs of a decision, or that cause people to connect their foreseen benefits with actions that have no real reason to lead to those.
Also, the way the word is used on this site, “rationality” is also the art of managing to not have your short term benefits get in the way of the real long term benefits you’d rather choose, and in choosing which foreseen benefits and costs should matter most to you.
So the addict would be irrational if in his decision he considered only: “pleasure from drug + 10 utility”, “temporary pain from stopping − 50 utility”, rather than also “likelihood of slow disintegration of my life, 20% of −1000 utility”, and “slowly decreasing effects from the drug and likelihood of having increasing future difficulties in obtaining drug, −80% of future “pleasure from drug +10 utility”, because a) he’s not considering at all the third factor because it’s not certain, or b) he’s considering only the first two because they are temporally closer, or d) he thinks what has seen for every drug addict he knows that’s further in the temporal curve won’t hold true for him without having a good reason to think so. (this is not a good model of drug addiction I think, I was just trying to describe what I mean).
Still, this is not the kind of irrationality I was getting mad at, I think I was getting mad mostly at irrational decisions and thoughts that didn’t had evident “strong causes”, addiction and social pressure are strong causes.
Going down that rabbit hole was in my plans, I’ll check out behavioural economics.