instead of letting it function as a mental stop sign
I don’t know why you let it function as a stop sign in the first place. “Irrational” means neither “random” nor “inexplicable”—to me it certainly does not imply that “there are no further answers”. As I mentioned upthread, I can consider someone’s behaviour irrational and at the same time understand why that someone is doing this and see the levers to change him.
The difference that I see from “suboptimal” is that suboptimal implies that you’ll still get to your goal, but inefficiently, using more resources in the process. “Irrational”, on the other hand, implies that you just won’t reach your goal. But it can be a fuzzy distinction.
As I mentioned upthread, I can consider someone’s behaviour irrational and at the same time understand why that someone is doing this and see the levers to change him.
If “irrational” doesn’t feel like an explanation in itself, and you’re going to dig further and try to figure out why they’re being irrational, then why stop to declare it irrational in the first place? I don’t mean it in a rhetorical sense and I’m not saying “you shouldn’t”—I really don’t understand what could motivate you to do it, and don’t feel any reason to myself. What does the diagnosis “irrational” do for you? It kinda feels to me like saying “fire works because phlogistons!” and then getting to work on how phlogistons work. What’s the middle man doing for you here?
With regard to “suboptimal” vs “irrational”, I read it completely differently. If someone is beating their head against the door to open it instead of using the handle, I woudln’t call it any more “rational” if the door does eventually give way. Similarly, I like to use “suboptimal” to mean strictly “less than optimal” (including but not limited to the cases where the effectiveness is zero or negative) rather than using it to mean “less than optimal but better than nothing”
why stop to declare it irrational in the first place?
Because for me there are basically three ways to evaluate some course of action. You can say that it’s perfectly fine and that’s that (let’s call it “rational”). You can say that it’s crazy and you don’t have a clue why someone is doing this (let’s call it “inexplicable”). And finally, you can say that it’s a mistaken course of action: you see the goal, but the road chosen doesn’t lead there. I would call this “irrational”.
Within this framework, calling something “irrational” is the only way to “dig further and try to figure out why”.
With regard to “suboptimal” vs “irrational”, I read it completely differently.
So we have a difference in terminology. That’s not unheard of :-)
Interesting. I dig into plenty of things before concluding that I know what their goal is and that they will fail, and I don’t see what is supposed to be stopping me from doing this. I’m not sure why “I don’t [yet] have a clue why” gets rounded to “inexplicable”.
That isn’t the distinction I get between suboptimal and irrational. They’re focused on different things.
Irrational to me would mean that the process by which the strategy was chosen was not one that would reliably yield good strategies in varying circumstances.
Outcome? I was going to say that suboptimal could refer to a case where we don’t know if you’ll reach your goal, but we can show (by common assumptions, let’s say) that the action has lower expected value than some other. “Irrational” does not have such a precise technical meaning, though we often use it for more extreme suboptimality.
Yes, outcome. Look at what each word is actually describing. Irrationality is about process. Suboptimal is about outcome—if you inefficiently but reliably calculate good strategies for action, that’s being slow, not suboptimal in the way we’re talking about, so it’s not about process.
I don’t know why you let it function as a stop sign in the first place. “Irrational” means neither “random” nor “inexplicable”—to me it certainly does not imply that “there are no further answers”. As I mentioned upthread, I can consider someone’s behaviour irrational and at the same time understand why that someone is doing this and see the levers to change him.
The difference that I see from “suboptimal” is that suboptimal implies that you’ll still get to your goal, but inefficiently, using more resources in the process. “Irrational”, on the other hand, implies that you just won’t reach your goal. But it can be a fuzzy distinction.
If “irrational” doesn’t feel like an explanation in itself, and you’re going to dig further and try to figure out why they’re being irrational, then why stop to declare it irrational in the first place? I don’t mean it in a rhetorical sense and I’m not saying “you shouldn’t”—I really don’t understand what could motivate you to do it, and don’t feel any reason to myself. What does the diagnosis “irrational” do for you? It kinda feels to me like saying “fire works because phlogistons!” and then getting to work on how phlogistons work. What’s the middle man doing for you here?
With regard to “suboptimal” vs “irrational”, I read it completely differently. If someone is beating their head against the door to open it instead of using the handle, I woudln’t call it any more “rational” if the door does eventually give way. Similarly, I like to use “suboptimal” to mean strictly “less than optimal” (including but not limited to the cases where the effectiveness is zero or negative) rather than using it to mean “less than optimal but better than nothing”
Because for me there are basically three ways to evaluate some course of action. You can say that it’s perfectly fine and that’s that (let’s call it “rational”). You can say that it’s crazy and you don’t have a clue why someone is doing this (let’s call it “inexplicable”). And finally, you can say that it’s a mistaken course of action: you see the goal, but the road chosen doesn’t lead there. I would call this “irrational”.
Within this framework, calling something “irrational” is the only way to “dig further and try to figure out why”.
So we have a difference in terminology. That’s not unheard of :-)
Interesting. I dig into plenty of things before concluding that I know what their goal is and that they will fail, and I don’t see what is supposed to be stopping me from doing this. I’m not sure why “I don’t [yet] have a clue why” gets rounded to “inexplicable”.
That isn’t the distinction I get between suboptimal and irrational. They’re focused on different things.
Irrational to me would mean that the process by which the strategy was chosen was not one that would reliably yield good strategies in varying circumstances.
Suboptimal is just an outcome measurement.
Outcome? I was going to say that suboptimal could refer to a case where we don’t know if you’ll reach your goal, but we can show (by common assumptions, let’s say) that the action has lower expected value than some other. “Irrational” does not have such a precise technical meaning, though we often use it for more extreme suboptimality.
Yes, outcome. Look at what each word is actually describing. Irrationality is about process. Suboptimal is about outcome—if you inefficiently but reliably calculate good strategies for action, that’s being slow, not suboptimal in the way we’re talking about, so it’s not about process.