Rationality is the process of humans getting provably better at predicting the future. Evidence based medicine is rational. “traditional” and “spiritual” medicine are not rational when their practitioners and customers don’t really care whether their impression that they work stands up to any kind of statistical analysis. Physics is rational, its hypotheses are all tested and open to retesting against experiment, against reality.
When it comes to “winning,” it needs to be pointed out that rationality when consciously practiced allows humans to meet their consciously perceived and explicitly stated goals more reliably. You need to be rational to notice that this is true, but it isn’t a lot more of a leap than “I think therefore i am.”
One could analyze things and conclude that rationality does not enhance humanities prospects for surviving our own sun’s supernova, or does not materially enhance your own chances of immortality, both of which I imagine strong cases could be made for. While being rational, I continue to pursue pleasure and happiness and satisfaction in ways that don’t always make sense to other rationalists and to the extent that I find satisfaction and pleasure and happiness, i don’t much care that other rationalists do not think what I am doing makes sense. But ultimately, I look at the pieces of my life, and my decisions, through rational lenses whenever I am interested in understanding what is going on, which is not all the time.
Rationality is a great tool. It is something we can get better at, by understanding things like physics, chemistry, engineering, applied math, economics and so on, and by by understanding human mind biases and ways to avoid them. It is something that sets humans apart from other life on the planet and something that sets many of us apart from many other humans on the planet, being a strength many of us have over those other humans we compete with for status and mates and so on. Rationality is generally great fun, like learning to drive fast or to fly a plane.
And if you use it right, you can get laid, and then have more data available for determining if that’s what you REALLY want.
Rationality is the process of humans getting provably better at predicting the future. Evidence based medicine is rational. “traditional” and “spiritual” medicine are not rational when their practitioners and customers don’t really care whether their impression that they work stands up to any kind of statistical analysis. Physics is rational, its hypotheses are all tested and open to retesting against experiment, against reality.
When it comes to “winning,” it needs to be pointed out that rationality when consciously practiced allows humans to meet their consciously perceived and explicitly stated goals more reliably. You need to be rational to notice that this is true, but it isn’t a lot more of a leap than “I think therefore i am.”
One could analyze things and conclude that rationality does not enhance humanities prospects for surviving our own sun’s supernova, or does not materially enhance your own chances of immortality, both of which I imagine strong cases could be made for. While being rational, I continue to pursue pleasure and happiness and satisfaction in ways that don’t always make sense to other rationalists and to the extent that I find satisfaction and pleasure and happiness, i don’t much care that other rationalists do not think what I am doing makes sense. But ultimately, I look at the pieces of my life, and my decisions, through rational lenses whenever I am interested in understanding what is going on, which is not all the time.
Rationality is a great tool. It is something we can get better at, by understanding things like physics, chemistry, engineering, applied math, economics and so on, and by by understanding human mind biases and ways to avoid them. It is something that sets humans apart from other life on the planet and something that sets many of us apart from many other humans on the planet, being a strength many of us have over those other humans we compete with for status and mates and so on. Rationality is generally great fun, like learning to drive fast or to fly a plane.
And if you use it right, you can get laid, and then have more data available for determining if that’s what you REALLY want.