Good topics for thinking about, but I think this misses a LOT of nuance about how and when to use each system, and how they interact. This is related to, or perhaps the same as what Kahnenman calls “system 2” (thinking, slower and careful) and “system 1″ (intuiting, fast and computationally cheap). It hasn’t done well in the replication crisis, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow remains a good high-level abstraction of these ideas.
Fundamentally, humans don’t have enough data and nowhere near enough compute capability to use reason for very much of our understanding and decisions. We can focus our attention on various things for some time, and that’s very useful for aligning with reality. It’s also one very good way to hone your intuitions—examining a topic logically absolutely changes the way you’ll react in the future. And the reverse is true as well—your intuitions are going to drive the topics you look into, and how deeply. These things are so deeply entwined that it’s perhaps better to think of them as simultaneous parallel modes of modeling, rather than strict alternatives.
Answers to your questions:
Q1. In fact, neither system is internally consistent. Reasoning is susceptible to partitioning errors, where you focus on some things in one domain, and other things in other domains, and come up with incompatible results. Intuition is even more so, as it’s difficult to even identify the partitioning or conflicts. Note that consistency does not imply correctness, but correctness does imply consistency. Assuming there IS a consistent objective reality, making any predictive system better at “truth” will make it more consistent.
Q2. I don’t think these are sides. They are complementary modeling systems in your brain. Use them together, and work to strengthen them both. On actual topics of belief, behavior, or policy, rationality and reason is FAR easier to communicate, and is really your primary channel. Of course, intuition is a stronger motivator for many people on some topics, so if you are willing to manipulate rather than cooperate in truth-seeking, that can be more effective.
H1-H3. I don’t know how to test any of that, and it doesn’t match my model that they’re both just part of human belief-formation and decision-making. I do suspect that fast/cheap processing is going to have a TON of evolutionary support for a long long time, and the domains where slow/detailed processing is worth the time and energy will be a minority.
Q3. They are each valuable for different things, and failing to use them together is strictly worse than having either one dominate. Intuition integrates far more data, and makes faster decisions. Reasoning only uses a tiny subset of available data (those parts that you can identify and focus on), and is extremely slow and often draining.
I agree with you, both reason and intuition are being used and very useful in the decision-making of day-to-day life, where in a lot of cases it simply is not efficient to ‘compute’, making intuition more efficient and interaction between the two modes necessary, which blurs the line between the two sides.
However, I was intending this post to consider the sides specifically when it comes to non-routine matters such as thinking about ontology, metaphysics, or fundamental ethical/moral questions. (I see how I should have made this context more explicit) I think in that context, the sides do become more apparent and distinct.
In that sense, when I talk about the consistency of a system, I mean ‘a system’s ability to fully justify its own use’, for which ‘self-justifying’ might actually be a better term than consistency.
I think this also implies that once you’re beyond the ‘event horizon’ and fully committed to one system (while talking about fundamental, non-routine topics), you will not have any reason to leave it for the other one, even if confronted with the best self-justifying reasons of the other system!
It applies even more strongly to those topics—intuition is the root of truth for these things, and is the guide to what’s worth exploring rationally. In fact, it’s not clear how they are tied to reality in the first place, without intuition.
Good topics for thinking about, but I think this misses a LOT of nuance about how and when to use each system, and how they interact. This is related to, or perhaps the same as what Kahnenman calls “system 2” (thinking, slower and careful) and “system 1″ (intuiting, fast and computationally cheap). It hasn’t done well in the replication crisis, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow remains a good high-level abstraction of these ideas.
Fundamentally, humans don’t have enough data and nowhere near enough compute capability to use reason for very much of our understanding and decisions. We can focus our attention on various things for some time, and that’s very useful for aligning with reality. It’s also one very good way to hone your intuitions—examining a topic logically absolutely changes the way you’ll react in the future. And the reverse is true as well—your intuitions are going to drive the topics you look into, and how deeply. These things are so deeply entwined that it’s perhaps better to think of them as simultaneous parallel modes of modeling, rather than strict alternatives.
Answers to your questions:
Q1. In fact, neither system is internally consistent. Reasoning is susceptible to partitioning errors, where you focus on some things in one domain, and other things in other domains, and come up with incompatible results. Intuition is even more so, as it’s difficult to even identify the partitioning or conflicts. Note that consistency does not imply correctness, but correctness does imply consistency. Assuming there IS a consistent objective reality, making any predictive system better at “truth” will make it more consistent.
Q2. I don’t think these are sides. They are complementary modeling systems in your brain. Use them together, and work to strengthen them both. On actual topics of belief, behavior, or policy, rationality and reason is FAR easier to communicate, and is really your primary channel. Of course, intuition is a stronger motivator for many people on some topics, so if you are willing to manipulate rather than cooperate in truth-seeking, that can be more effective.
H1-H3. I don’t know how to test any of that, and it doesn’t match my model that they’re both just part of human belief-formation and decision-making. I do suspect that fast/cheap processing is going to have a TON of evolutionary support for a long long time, and the domains where slow/detailed processing is worth the time and energy will be a minority.
Q3. They are each valuable for different things, and failing to use them together is strictly worse than having either one dominate. Intuition integrates far more data, and makes faster decisions. Reasoning only uses a tiny subset of available data (those parts that you can identify and focus on), and is extremely slow and often draining.
I agree with you, both reason and intuition are being used and very useful in the decision-making of day-to-day life, where in a lot of cases it simply is not efficient to ‘compute’, making intuition more efficient and interaction between the two modes necessary, which blurs the line between the two sides.
However, I was intending this post to consider the sides specifically when it comes to non-routine matters such as thinking about ontology, metaphysics, or fundamental ethical/moral questions. (I see how I should have made this context more explicit) I think in that context, the sides do become more apparent and distinct.
In that sense, when I talk about the consistency of a system, I mean ‘a system’s ability to fully justify its own use’, for which ‘self-justifying’ might actually be a better term than consistency.
I think this also implies that once you’re beyond the ‘event horizon’ and fully committed to one system (while talking about fundamental, non-routine topics), you will not have any reason to leave it for the other one, even if confronted with the best self-justifying reasons of the other system!
It applies even more strongly to those topics—intuition is the root of truth for these things, and is the guide to what’s worth exploring rationally. In fact, it’s not clear how they are tied to reality in the first place, without intuition.