Your critique of “rationalism” as you currently understand it is, I think, valid. The goal of LessWrong, as I understand it (though I’m no authority, I just read here sometimes), is to help people become more rational themselves. As thomblake has already pointed out, we tend to believe with you in the general irrationality of humans. We also believe that this is a sort of problem to be fixed.
However, I also think you’re being unfair to people who use the Rationality Assumption in economics, biology or elsewhere. You say that:
Often the desirable outcome of an action or ‘strategy’ is taken to have been the goal that the actor deliberately attempted to attain.
That’s not an assumption that the theory requires. The Rationality Assumption only requires us to interpret the actions of an agent in terms of how well it appears to help it fulfill its goals. It needn’t be conscious of such “goals”. This type of goal is usually referred to as a revealed preference. Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias, a blog that’s quite related to LessWrong, also loves pointing out and discussing the particular problem that you’ve raised. He usually refers to it as the “Homo hypocritus hypothesis”. You might enjoy reading some related entries on his blog. The gist of the distinction I’m trying to point to is actually pretty well-summarized by Joe Biden:
My dad used to have an expression: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
It’s my own humble opinion that economists occasionally make the naive jump from talking about revealed preferences to talking about “actual” preferences (whatever those may be). In such cases, I agree with you that a disposition toward “rationalism” could be dangerous. But again, that’s not the accepted meaning of the word here. I also think it might be just as naive to take peoples’ stated preferences (whether stated to themselves or others) to be their “actual” preferences.
There have been attempts on LW to model the apparent conflict between the stated preferences and revealed preferences of agents, my favourite of which was “Conflicts Between Mental Subagents: Expanding Wei Dai’s Master-Slave Model”. If I were to taboo the word “rationality” in explaining the goal of this site, I’d say the goal is to help people bring these two mental sub-agents into agreement; to avoid being a Homo hypocritus; to help one better synchronize their stated preferences with their revealed preferences.
Clearly, the meanings of the word “rationality” that you have, and that this community has, are related. But they’re not the same. My goal in linking to the several articles in the above text, is to help you understand what is meant by that word here. Good luck and I hope you find the discourse you’re looking for!
I’m replying to you now before reading your suggestions, I’ve not had the time so far. They’re on my list but for now I’d like to adress what you reply either way.
The Joe Biden quote is very effective, and I agree with the general sentiment. But not with how that relates to questions of rationality. I tend to use rationality as any thinking at all. Illogical thinking is may be bad rationality, but it is still rationality.
My objection to assuming rationality isn’t that you shouldn’t look at how these or those actions may have some sort of function. My criticism is that, that when you do observe that a certain function is served, you shouldn’t impose rationality upon the people involved. In my experience, as a bachelor of sociology and as a human being with a habit of self-reflection, people don’t act upon their thoughts, but much more upon their knowledge of how to act in certain situations, on their social ‘programming’ and emotions, on their various loyalties.
We tend to define mankind as a being capable of thinking. I think we are wrong in this in the same way we would be wrong to define a scorpion as a being capable of making a venomous sting. The statement isn’t false, but most of the time the scorpion isn’t stinging anything. It’s just walking, sitting, eating, grabbing something with it’s claws. The stinging isn’t everything that’s going on, it’s not nearly even most of what’s going on.
Thanks again for the reply, I’ll be looking around and I’ll try to add something where I think it is fruitfull.
I’m having trouble figuring out whether we agree or disagree. So, you tell me this:
My criticism is that, that when you do observe that a certain function is served, you shouldn’t impose rationality upon the people involved.
and I agree that’s an excellent assumption for the goal of doing good sociology (and several other explanatory pursuits). I think (hope!) it will become clearer to you as your read the things I linked you to that this attitude is both (1) a very good one to take in many many instances, and (2) not in conflict with the goal of becoming more rational.
I snuck a key word by in that last sentence: assumption. When thinking about humans and societies, it’s become a very common and useful assumption to say that they don’t deliberate or make rational decisions; they’re products of their environments and they interact with those environments. At LessWrong, we usually call this the “outside view” because we’re viewing ourselves or others as though from the outside.
Note that while this is a good way to look at the world, we also have real, first-hand experiences. I don’t live my personal life as a bucket of atoms careening into other atoms, nor as an organism interacting with its environment; I live my day-to-day life as a person making decisions. These are three different non-wrong ways of conceptualizing myself. The last one, where I’m a person making decisions, is where the use of this notion of rationality that we’re interested in comes along and we sometimes call this the “inside view”. At those other levels of explanation, the concept of rationality truly doesn’t make sense.
I also can’t resist adding that you point out very rightly that most people don’t act on their thoughts and pursue their goals, opting instead to execute their social-biological programming. Many people here are genuinely interested in getting these two realms (goals and actions) to synch up and are doing some amazing theorizing as to how they can accomplish this goal.
Hi Kouran, and welcome.
Your critique of “rationalism” as you currently understand it is, I think, valid. The goal of LessWrong, as I understand it (though I’m no authority, I just read here sometimes), is to help people become more rational themselves. As thomblake has already pointed out, we tend to believe with you in the general irrationality of humans. We also believe that this is a sort of problem to be fixed.
However, I also think you’re being unfair to people who use the Rationality Assumption in economics, biology or elsewhere. You say that:
That’s not an assumption that the theory requires. The Rationality Assumption only requires us to interpret the actions of an agent in terms of how well it appears to help it fulfill its goals. It needn’t be conscious of such “goals”. This type of goal is usually referred to as a revealed preference. Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias, a blog that’s quite related to LessWrong, also loves pointing out and discussing the particular problem that you’ve raised. He usually refers to it as the “Homo hypocritus hypothesis”. You might enjoy reading some related entries on his blog. The gist of the distinction I’m trying to point to is actually pretty well-summarized by Joe Biden:
It’s my own humble opinion that economists occasionally make the naive jump from talking about revealed preferences to talking about “actual” preferences (whatever those may be). In such cases, I agree with you that a disposition toward “rationalism” could be dangerous. But again, that’s not the accepted meaning of the word here. I also think it might be just as naive to take peoples’ stated preferences (whether stated to themselves or others) to be their “actual” preferences.
There have been attempts on LW to model the apparent conflict between the stated preferences and revealed preferences of agents, my favourite of which was “Conflicts Between Mental Subagents: Expanding Wei Dai’s Master-Slave Model”. If I were to taboo the word “rationality” in explaining the goal of this site, I’d say the goal is to help people bring these two mental sub-agents into agreement; to avoid being a Homo hypocritus; to help one better synchronize their stated preferences with their revealed preferences.
Clearly, the meanings of the word “rationality” that you have, and that this community has, are related. But they’re not the same. My goal in linking to the several articles in the above text, is to help you understand what is meant by that word here. Good luck and I hope you find the discourse you’re looking for!
Fburnaby, thank you for the long reply.
I’m replying to you now before reading your suggestions, I’ve not had the time so far. They’re on my list but for now I’d like to adress what you reply either way.
The Joe Biden quote is very effective, and I agree with the general sentiment. But not with how that relates to questions of rationality. I tend to use rationality as any thinking at all. Illogical thinking is may be bad rationality, but it is still rationality. My objection to assuming rationality isn’t that you shouldn’t look at how these or those actions may have some sort of function. My criticism is that, that when you do observe that a certain function is served, you shouldn’t impose rationality upon the people involved. In my experience, as a bachelor of sociology and as a human being with a habit of self-reflection, people don’t act upon their thoughts, but much more upon their knowledge of how to act in certain situations, on their social ‘programming’ and emotions, on their various loyalties.
We tend to define mankind as a being capable of thinking. I think we are wrong in this in the same way we would be wrong to define a scorpion as a being capable of making a venomous sting. The statement isn’t false, but most of the time the scorpion isn’t stinging anything. It’s just walking, sitting, eating, grabbing something with it’s claws. The stinging isn’t everything that’s going on, it’s not nearly even most of what’s going on.
Thanks again for the reply, I’ll be looking around and I’ll try to add something where I think it is fruitfull.
-Kouran
Hey Kouran,
I’m having trouble figuring out whether we agree or disagree. So, you tell me this:
and I agree that’s an excellent assumption for the goal of doing good sociology (and several other explanatory pursuits). I think (hope!) it will become clearer to you as your read the things I linked you to that this attitude is both (1) a very good one to take in many many instances, and (2) not in conflict with the goal of becoming more rational.
I snuck a key word by in that last sentence: assumption. When thinking about humans and societies, it’s become a very common and useful assumption to say that they don’t deliberate or make rational decisions; they’re products of their environments and they interact with those environments. At LessWrong, we usually call this the “outside view” because we’re viewing ourselves or others as though from the outside.
Note that while this is a good way to look at the world, we also have real, first-hand experiences. I don’t live my personal life as a bucket of atoms careening into other atoms, nor as an organism interacting with its environment; I live my day-to-day life as a person making decisions. These are three different non-wrong ways of conceptualizing myself. The last one, where I’m a person making decisions, is where the use of this notion of rationality that we’re interested in comes along and we sometimes call this the “inside view”. At those other levels of explanation, the concept of rationality truly doesn’t make sense.
I also can’t resist adding that you point out very rightly that most people don’t act on their thoughts and pursue their goals, opting instead to execute their social-biological programming. Many people here are genuinely interested in getting these two realms (goals and actions) to synch up and are doing some amazing theorizing as to how they can accomplish this goal.