“Acquiring the skills of rationality changes you. You will acquire new ways of assessing beliefs, and will forsake some old beliefs for new ones. This change may result in your fitting less well into the social niche that you occupied. This may be a disincentive to making such a change.”
Yes, this is a standard observation in all fields of personal development. The greatest resistance to change comes first from the person making that change, then from those around them, in order from the closest outwards. The only question to ask is, is it worth it? In the case of rationality, I think there is a very clear and simple answer: Yes.
I am minded to suggest some advice for rationality akin to Michael Pollan’s advice for diet. (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”)
“Be rational. All the time. About everything.”
The Sequences are mostly about how to be rational, but the basic concept here is ultra-simple. Anything more is over-thinking it.
Except in as much as it amounts to discarding both “all the time” and “about everything” in all but the most esoteric technical sense. Being rational all the time about everything is a terrible idea when running on human hardware.
I still see this as nothing but a trite nitpick. What examples would you give where it is irrational to be rational? Where it’s smart to take stupid pills?
Seems to me that Richard is roughly talking about instrumental rationality, while Konkvistador is roughly talking about epistemic rationality. Let’s not quibble over the word rationality.
Here is a summary of what I think you are saying:
“Acquiring the skills of rationality changes you. You will acquire new ways of assessing beliefs, and will forsake some old beliefs for new ones. This change may result in your fitting less well into the social niche that you occupied. This may be a disincentive to making such a change.”
Yes, this is a standard observation in all fields of personal development. The greatest resistance to change comes first from the person making that change, then from those around them, in order from the closest outwards. The only question to ask is, is it worth it? In the case of rationality, I think there is a very clear and simple answer: Yes.
I am minded to suggest some advice for rationality akin to Michael Pollan’s advice for diet. (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”)
“Be rational. All the time. About everything.”
The Sequences are mostly about how to be rational, but the basic concept here is ultra-simple. Anything more is over-thinking it.
Be rational about everything, including optimal allocation of cognitive resources.
That’s just a minor detail of the how-to.
Except in as much as it amounts to discarding both “all the time” and “about everything” in all but the most esoteric technical sense. Being rational all the time about everything is a terrible idea when running on human hardware.
I still see this as nothing but a trite nitpick. What examples would you give where it is irrational to be rational? Where it’s smart to take stupid pills?
Sometimes thinking about a problem in all its depth costs you more than you would loose by forgoing to optimize it.
Then the smart thing to do is to not sweat over it.
Speaking of which, this conversation has become a case in point.
Seems to me that Richard is roughly talking about instrumental rationality, while Konkvistador is roughly talking about epistemic rationality. Let’s not quibble over the word rationality.