it would appear to the average person that most rational types are only moderately successful while all the extremely wealthy people are irrational. due to not seeing the whole sample space (that larger proportion of rational people enjoy moderate success vs a tiny fraction of irrational people who enjoy major success) I don’t think a lot of our arguments gain traction with people. Most people infer from outliers as a matter of course.
Now combine this with the idea that signaling rationality is also signaling that we think we deserve more status and decision making capability than we have (remember in politics people act as if we live in bands of 100 and political ideas actually mean something) and it starts making sense why we make people nervous and they might reject us out of hand.
So am I just ragging on rationality, trotting out a flawed reason not to be rational? No. I’m saying that something we know a lot about applies to us as well: successful ideologies are the ones that allow people to signal palatable goals while pursuing their selfish top level goal (grab resources, have children) (and that applies even if they’re unaware of their top level goal vis-a-vis adaptation executor not fitness maximizer). We have to keep this in mind while proselytizing. A bare appeal to “achieving your goals more effectively” doesn’t work if the person knows on some level that their stated goals are not their actual goals. They don’t need a system for achieving their stated goals.
it would appear to the average person that most rational types are only moderately successful while all the extremely wealthy people are irrational.
This only makes sense if you consider “rational” to equal “geeky Spock-wannabe”, in which case the correlation is reasonable. Bill Gates comes close to that stereotype, though, except for being irrationally passionate about controlling everything and yelling profanity a lot.
I do know a few wealthy guys—some are more stereotypically rational, others are only moderately instrumentally rational in the context of “do what works, stop doing what doesn’t”, while being utterly wacko with respect to everything else.
Of course, these guys are only moderately wealthy—businesses with 8-figure annual sales, net worth below $100 mill, so they’re certainly not in BillG’s league.
Anyway… I can see normal people associating people who like to signal an ideal of rationality with a lack of success and wealth, as it seems to me there’s a correlation there. However, being rational—at least instrumentally—doesn’t require even a fraction of the sort of mathematical rationality promoted here.
See, all of the wealthy people I know, got that way because they don’t mind losing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars trying things that might not work, and which they have no guaranteed way to evaluate in advance, and no science to study. They don’t mind being wrong, because they understand that they’re in a business where the black swans are on the upside, not the downside.
it would appear to the average person that most rational types are only moderately
successful while all the extremely wealthy people are irrational.
This only makes sense if you consider “rational” to equal “geeky Spock-wannabe”,
We’re talking here about perception, not reality, and I’m sorry to say that “geeky Spock-wannabe” probably does equate to the average person’s perception of “most rational types” .
(Most people take a concept to mean whatever most uniquely distinguishes it from other concepts—so ‘rational’ means whatever, in the characteristics they associate with rationality, is most unique and different from the other concepts they have. i.e. Spock-like).
Not only that, often people’s goals require irrational thinking. If you’re hoping to find a mate in a religious community, or if you’re a businessman bringing the free market to the boonies there’s an obvious rational incentive to believe irrational things.
A few related hypotheses: Rationality is highly correlated intelligence. Intelligence is highly correlated to proneness to boredom (in the range IQ >= 90). Boredom is likely to make you fail at the task at hand. The most reliable ways to get rich are perceived as boring to intelligent people.
It seems to me that boredom occurs when the task at hand is perceived as not leading towards any highly valued goal. Rationality will gladly give you reasons why some of your goals should not be highly valued. For example, I would like to have millions of euros. I have recently seen evidence that people lead happy lives no matter what their circumstances are. I have discovered that nearly anything I think would be great fun costs less than a thousand euros. I am convinced money does not make one more attractive to women. If I was less analytical about these issues, I think I might perceive my goal as having higher value, and working towards it would be less boring.
According to research K.E. Stanovich, this is not the case:
Intelligence tests measure important things, but they do not assess the extent of rational thought. This might not be such a grave omission if intelligence were a strong predictor of rational thinking. But my research group found just the opposite: it is a mild predictor at best, and some rational thinking skills are totally dissociated from intelligence.
it would appear to the average person that most rational types are only moderately successful while all the extremely wealthy people are irrational. due to not seeing the whole sample space (that larger proportion of rational people enjoy moderate success vs a tiny fraction of irrational people who enjoy major success) I don’t think a lot of our arguments gain traction with people. Most people infer from outliers as a matter of course.
Now combine this with the idea that signaling rationality is also signaling that we think we deserve more status and decision making capability than we have (remember in politics people act as if we live in bands of 100 and political ideas actually mean something) and it starts making sense why we make people nervous and they might reject us out of hand.
So am I just ragging on rationality, trotting out a flawed reason not to be rational? No. I’m saying that something we know a lot about applies to us as well: successful ideologies are the ones that allow people to signal palatable goals while pursuing their selfish top level goal (grab resources, have children) (and that applies even if they’re unaware of their top level goal vis-a-vis adaptation executor not fitness maximizer). We have to keep this in mind while proselytizing. A bare appeal to “achieving your goals more effectively” doesn’t work if the person knows on some level that their stated goals are not their actual goals. They don’t need a system for achieving their stated goals.
This only makes sense if you consider “rational” to equal “geeky Spock-wannabe”, in which case the correlation is reasonable. Bill Gates comes close to that stereotype, though, except for being irrationally passionate about controlling everything and yelling profanity a lot.
I do know a few wealthy guys—some are more stereotypically rational, others are only moderately instrumentally rational in the context of “do what works, stop doing what doesn’t”, while being utterly wacko with respect to everything else.
Of course, these guys are only moderately wealthy—businesses with 8-figure annual sales, net worth below $100 mill, so they’re certainly not in BillG’s league.
Anyway… I can see normal people associating people who like to signal an ideal of rationality with a lack of success and wealth, as it seems to me there’s a correlation there. However, being rational—at least instrumentally—doesn’t require even a fraction of the sort of mathematical rationality promoted here.
See, all of the wealthy people I know, got that way because they don’t mind losing thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars trying things that might not work, and which they have no guaranteed way to evaluate in advance, and no science to study. They don’t mind being wrong, because they understand that they’re in a business where the black swans are on the upside, not the downside.
We’re talking here about perception, not reality, and I’m sorry to say that “geeky Spock-wannabe” probably does equate to the average person’s perception of “most rational types” .
(Most people take a concept to mean whatever most uniquely distinguishes it from other concepts—so ‘rational’ means whatever, in the characteristics they associate with rationality, is most unique and different from the other concepts they have. i.e. Spock-like).
Not only that, often people’s goals require irrational thinking. If you’re hoping to find a mate in a religious community, or if you’re a businessman bringing the free market to the boonies there’s an obvious rational incentive to believe irrational things.
A few related hypotheses: Rationality is highly correlated intelligence. Intelligence is highly correlated to proneness to boredom (in the range IQ >= 90). Boredom is likely to make you fail at the task at hand. The most reliable ways to get rich are perceived as boring to intelligent people.
It seems to me that boredom occurs when the task at hand is perceived as not leading towards any highly valued goal. Rationality will gladly give you reasons why some of your goals should not be highly valued. For example, I would like to have millions of euros. I have recently seen evidence that people lead happy lives no matter what their circumstances are. I have discovered that nearly anything I think would be great fun costs less than a thousand euros. I am convinced money does not make one more attractive to women. If I was less analytical about these issues, I think I might perceive my goal as having higher value, and working towards it would be less boring.
According to research K.E. Stanovich, this is not the case:
See http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1