Part of the problem is that rationality is a threat to many groups, and they have a tendency to consider rationality to be an ideology, equivocate between “ideology” and “religion”, and then pretend that teaching rationality in public school constitutes an establishment of religion. People define their identity in terms of irrational belief systems tend to not like the idea of the next generation being raised to be rational.
And of course, things like the Prisoner’s Dilemma show that individual rationality doesn’t necessarily translate to group rationality, while the Efficient Market Hypothesis posits that the aggregate can be treated as being rational in the absence of individual rationality.
I think that one idea that should be discussed in schools is making intuitive reasoning explicit. For instance, I think that everyone engages in a version of Bayesian reasoning, but most people just have a vague, intuitive sense of it that is very buggy and susceptible to manipulation, like affirming the consequent ( if ((A → B) and B), then that can be evidence for A, but is not proof). Unfortunately, in the cases where students do get lessons on rhetoric, the focus is often on constructing arguments that are persuasive, rather than on constructing arguments that are valid.
If you’re arguing on the basis of the benefit to society, one point to bring up is that people should be able to debate issues constructively. That means articulating their thinking (and this in turn means being conscious of what that thinking is, which is often not a trivial issue), understanding what the thinking behind the opposing point of view is, how to clarify issues and identify the main issue of contention, etc.
Part of the problem is that rationality is a threat to many groups, and they have a tendency to consider rationality to be an ideology, equivocate between “ideology” and “religion”, and then pretend that teaching rationality in public school constitutes an establishment of religion. People define their identity in terms of irrational belief systems tend to not like the idea of the next generation being raised to be rational.
Actually those people are probably right when they charge that pushing rationality often goes hand in hand with pushing an ideology.
It’s no accident that one of the examples that Eliezer uses is Robert Aumann “scary” Jewish belief in the link.
In the same way on can catch racists via implicit reasoning tests you can probably catch new atheists who push rationality as a means to push an ideology.
Actually those people are probably right when they charge that pushing rationality often goes hand in hand with pushing an ideology.
And ever worse, people pushing “rationality” often aren’t actually pushing rationality (defined as: making maps that better correspond to territory).
If a random person came and tried to teach (their definition of) rationality at schools, in absence of more specific information, I would probably be afraid.
From a slightly different angle—there are a lot of established groups (families, schools, religions, countries) which don’t want their members thinking about whether loyalty is worth the costs and whether obedience serves the purposes of the group. For example, one major reason to enlist in the military is to serve one’s country. People are not exactly encouraged to think about whether joining the military (whether for them personally or in general) is an effective means of doing so.
Teaching rationality in a way which implies that people should make a serious effort to make rational decisions could be up against a hard fight.
Now that I think about it, CFAR and the like haven’t run into that sort of resistance that I know of, and I’m assuming it’s because CFAR is still too small to be noticed.
Part of the problem is that rationality is a threat to many groups, and they have a tendency to consider rationality to be an ideology, equivocate between “ideology” and “religion”, and then pretend that teaching rationality in public school constitutes an establishment of religion. People define their identity in terms of irrational belief systems tend to not like the idea of the next generation being raised to be rational.
And of course, things like the Prisoner’s Dilemma show that individual rationality doesn’t necessarily translate to group rationality, while the Efficient Market Hypothesis posits that the aggregate can be treated as being rational in the absence of individual rationality.
I think that one idea that should be discussed in schools is making intuitive reasoning explicit. For instance, I think that everyone engages in a version of Bayesian reasoning, but most people just have a vague, intuitive sense of it that is very buggy and susceptible to manipulation, like affirming the consequent ( if ((A → B) and B), then that can be evidence for A, but is not proof). Unfortunately, in the cases where students do get lessons on rhetoric, the focus is often on constructing arguments that are persuasive, rather than on constructing arguments that are valid.
If you’re arguing on the basis of the benefit to society, one point to bring up is that people should be able to debate issues constructively. That means articulating their thinking (and this in turn means being conscious of what that thinking is, which is often not a trivial issue), understanding what the thinking behind the opposing point of view is, how to clarify issues and identify the main issue of contention, etc.
Actually those people are probably right when they charge that pushing rationality often goes hand in hand with pushing an ideology.
It’s no accident that one of the examples that Eliezer uses is Robert Aumann “scary” Jewish belief in the link.
In the same way on can catch racists via implicit reasoning tests you can probably catch new atheists who push rationality as a means to push an ideology.
And ever worse, people pushing “rationality” often aren’t actually pushing rationality (defined as: making maps that better correspond to territory).
If a random person came and tried to teach (their definition of) rationality at schools, in absence of more specific information, I would probably be afraid.
Yes, a lot of those people don’t think in terms of maps.
As far the definition goes I’m even more radical and would say: “Making maps that allow you to better navigate the territory.”
From a slightly different angle—there are a lot of established groups (families, schools, religions, countries) which don’t want their members thinking about whether loyalty is worth the costs and whether obedience serves the purposes of the group. For example, one major reason to enlist in the military is to serve one’s country. People are not exactly encouraged to think about whether joining the military (whether for them personally or in general) is an effective means of doing so.
Teaching rationality in a way which implies that people should make a serious effort to make rational decisions could be up against a hard fight.
Now that I think about it, CFAR and the like haven’t run into that sort of resistance that I know of, and I’m assuming it’s because CFAR is still too small to be noticed.