An understanding of ‘x-rationality’ has helped me find the world a little less depressing and a little less frustrating. Previously when observing world events, politics and some behaviours in social interactions that seemed incomprehensible without assuming depressing levels of stupidity, incompetence or malice I despaired at the state of humanity. An appreciation of human biases and evolutionary psychology (some of which stems from an interest in both going back well before I ever started reading OB) gives me a framework in which to understand events in the world which I find a lot more productive and optimistic.
An example from politics: it is hard to make any rational sense of drug prohibition when looking at the evidence of the costs and benefits. This would tend to lead to an inevitable conclusion that politicians and the voting public are either irredeemably stupid or actively seeking negative outcomes. Understanding how institutional incentives to maintain the status quo, confirmation bias and signaling effects (politicians and voters needing to be ‘seen to care’ and/or ‘seen to disapprove’) can lead to basically intelligent and well meaning people maintaining catastrophically wrong beliefs at worst allows for accepting the status quo without assuming the worst about one’s fellow man and at best maps out plausible paths for achieving political change by recognizing the true nature of the obstacles.
An example from social interactions: I suffered a fair amount of personal emotional stress reconciling what I had been led to believe ‘ought’ to work when interacting with others and the apparently much less pleasant realities of what seemed to be successful in reality. The only conclusion I could draw was that everyone deliberately lied about the way human interactions worked for their own mysterious and possibly malicious reasons. Coming to an understanding of evolutionary psychology and signaling explanations for many common patterns of human behaviour allows me to reconcile ‘doing what works’ with a belief that most people are not consciously misleading or malicious most of the time. Many people don’t appear to be aware of the contradictions inherent in social interactions but as someone who saw them but could not explain them without assuming the worst, discovering explanations that did not require imputing conscious malice to others allowed for a much more positive outlook on the world.
I could give a number of examples of how ‘regular’ rationality rigorously applied to areas of life where it is often absent have also directly helped me in my life but they seem slightly off topic for this thread.
An understanding of ‘x-rationality’ has helped me find the world a little less depressing and a little less frustrating. Previously when observing world events, politics and some behaviours in social interactions that seemed incomprehensible without assuming depressing levels of stupidity, incompetence or malice I despaired at the state of humanity. An appreciation of human biases and evolutionary psychology (some of which stems from an interest in both going back well before I ever started reading OB) gives me a framework in which to understand events in the world which I find a lot more productive and optimistic.
An example from politics: it is hard to make any rational sense of drug prohibition when looking at the evidence of the costs and benefits. This would tend to lead to an inevitable conclusion that politicians and the voting public are either irredeemably stupid or actively seeking negative outcomes. Understanding how institutional incentives to maintain the status quo, confirmation bias and signaling effects (politicians and voters needing to be ‘seen to care’ and/or ‘seen to disapprove’) can lead to basically intelligent and well meaning people maintaining catastrophically wrong beliefs at worst allows for accepting the status quo without assuming the worst about one’s fellow man and at best maps out plausible paths for achieving political change by recognizing the true nature of the obstacles.
An example from social interactions: I suffered a fair amount of personal emotional stress reconciling what I had been led to believe ‘ought’ to work when interacting with others and the apparently much less pleasant realities of what seemed to be successful in reality. The only conclusion I could draw was that everyone deliberately lied about the way human interactions worked for their own mysterious and possibly malicious reasons. Coming to an understanding of evolutionary psychology and signaling explanations for many common patterns of human behaviour allows me to reconcile ‘doing what works’ with a belief that most people are not consciously misleading or malicious most of the time. Many people don’t appear to be aware of the contradictions inherent in social interactions but as someone who saw them but could not explain them without assuming the worst, discovering explanations that did not require imputing conscious malice to others allowed for a much more positive outlook on the world.
I could give a number of examples of how ‘regular’ rationality rigorously applied to areas of life where it is often absent have also directly helped me in my life but they seem slightly off topic for this thread.