So a society is rational if the institutions are rational … and an institution is rational if its outputs seem rationally designed … which is judged by a rational individual … which is still hard to define.
I see your point and agree that there is room for improvement. Instead of “more rational” I would propose “less insane” which seems to fit the evidence as good as the other description.
Will one of these more insane societies become less insane by making sure everybody on the streets is less insane? The connection doesn’t seem obvious, except in extreme cases.
The connection between rational individuals and rational society is implied by use of the same word and only obvious in extreme cases.
What do you mean by “only obvious in extreme cases?”
I would definitely not agree that the connection between rational individuals and rational society is merely implied by the use of the same word, I would absolutely say that they’re inextricably linked. Having attempted cooperative projects with other people over a wide range of rationality levels, I’ve found that working with groups of more rational individuals really does eliminate a huge cohort of problems which attend the work of less rational individuals.
One member on this site, years ago, discussed how his boss had once remarked on how well a project he (the commenter) had handled had gone, and spoken of it as if it were simply a fortuitous chance. And the commenter explained to the boss that the project had gone well because he’d designed it to go well by addressing the possible points of failure. This was a possibility that had simply never occurred to his boss before.
Operating within rational versus irrational groups can spell the difference between everyone understanding concepts like this versus nobody understanding them.
What do you mean by “only obvious in extreme cases?”
Just, that there is no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.
Again I agree on the positive effects of rationality and do believe that more rationality will improve society. But there are many people that say the same about religion, obedience or other things that I don’t view as positive.
I don’t think it’s true at all that there’s no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.
If I’m working on a project with a group of irrational people, the other members will tend to make mistakes of judgment which I’m simply too many steps of inference removed from them to realistically explain. So I give up, and the project suffers.
If I’m working on a project with a group of highly rational people, those problems can be avoided without even needing to be discussed, saving energy for higher level problems.
Groups are made up of individuals. If every individual in a group recognizes the problems which will attend a course of action, that group is much more likely to avoid those problems than a group where nobody recognizes them.
A group project is far away from society as a whole, where discussion and explanation between all members is impossible due to scale.
Your project could benefit from increased obedience as you could just lead rationally and the others would follow. Disagreements between rational people can take a longer time to resolve, etc.
I still agree to all your examples. More anecdotes will not be helpful, as I already agree that increased rationality will improve society (and group projects and institutions for that matter).
What I’m missing is a clear mechanism that actually produces a more rational society just from increasing the rationality of people. Please explain the mechanism.
“Society” doesn’t make decisions, groups of people make decisions. If every individual in the group understands how to avoid natural pitfalls, how to coordinate decisionmaking processes, how to take on board information from viewpoints which conflict with their own and incorporate what’s useful rather than throwing it out wholecloth, etc, then the collective decisionmaking ability of the group is improved.
Your project could benefit from increased obedience as you could just lead rationally and the others would follow. Disagreements between rational people can take a longer time to resolve, etc
The projects I participated in could have benefited from increased group obedience, if everyone simply followed my lead, but if the members lacked the reasoning ability to distinguish between competent leaders, how would they know who to trust to lead them?
In my experience, disagreements between genuinely rational people overwhelmingly do not take a longer time to resolve. One of the basic components of rationality is knowing how to take new information on board and actually change your mind. Disagreements between irrational people tend to be far more intractable.
“Society” doesn’t make decisions, groups of people make decisions.
The way society forms mass-opinions and decides (i.e. by voting) on important issues is not easily split into groups of people making decisions.
Still I accept your mechanism because group decisions are a large part of society and improving that will improve society.
About the group project: If we can get everyone to be “genuinely rational” instead of just a bit more rational we will certainly live in a very different world. I don’t expect that anytime soon though.
Your project could benefit from increased obedience as you could just lead rationally and the others would follow.
This is a good point even for the society. To get a rational society, it is not necessary that literally everyone becomes rational. Just that the rational people make the most important decisions, and the others follow them.
Although there are dangers with this solution in a long term; specifically that some day the irrational people may decide to stop following the rational ones. In democracy it means someone else uses some simple tricks to get their attention, and wins the elecion. On the other hand, the non-democratic societies have another long-term risk, which is the leading group becoming irrational from the inside; either they lose their sanity gradually, or just a small subset goes insane and succeeds to remove the others from the inner circle.
So a society is rational if the institutions are rational … and an institution is rational if its outputs seem rationally designed … which is judged by a rational individual … which is still hard to define.
I see your point and agree that there is room for improvement. Instead of “more rational” I would propose “less insane” which seems to fit the evidence as good as the other description.
Will one of these more insane societies become less insane by making sure everybody on the streets is less insane? The connection doesn’t seem obvious, except in extreme cases.
The connection between rational individuals and rational society is implied by use of the same word and only obvious in extreme cases.
What do you mean by “only obvious in extreme cases?”
I would definitely not agree that the connection between rational individuals and rational society is merely implied by the use of the same word, I would absolutely say that they’re inextricably linked. Having attempted cooperative projects with other people over a wide range of rationality levels, I’ve found that working with groups of more rational individuals really does eliminate a huge cohort of problems which attend the work of less rational individuals.
One member on this site, years ago, discussed how his boss had once remarked on how well a project he (the commenter) had handled had gone, and spoken of it as if it were simply a fortuitous chance. And the commenter explained to the boss that the project had gone well because he’d designed it to go well by addressing the possible points of failure. This was a possibility that had simply never occurred to his boss before.
Operating within rational versus irrational groups can spell the difference between everyone understanding concepts like this versus nobody understanding them.
Just, that there is no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.
Again I agree on the positive effects of rationality and do believe that more rationality will improve society. But there are many people that say the same about religion, obedience or other things that I don’t view as positive.
I don’t think it’s true at all that there’s no obvious mechanism that produces a more rational society from more rational people.
If I’m working on a project with a group of irrational people, the other members will tend to make mistakes of judgment which I’m simply too many steps of inference removed from them to realistically explain. So I give up, and the project suffers.
If I’m working on a project with a group of highly rational people, those problems can be avoided without even needing to be discussed, saving energy for higher level problems.
Groups are made up of individuals. If every individual in a group recognizes the problems which will attend a course of action, that group is much more likely to avoid those problems than a group where nobody recognizes them.
A group project is far away from society as a whole, where discussion and explanation between all members is impossible due to scale.
Your project could benefit from increased obedience as you could just lead rationally and the others would follow. Disagreements between rational people can take a longer time to resolve, etc.
I still agree to all your examples. More anecdotes will not be helpful, as I already agree that increased rationality will improve society (and group projects and institutions for that matter).
What I’m missing is a clear mechanism that actually produces a more rational society just from increasing the rationality of people. Please explain the mechanism.
“Society” doesn’t make decisions, groups of people make decisions. If every individual in the group understands how to avoid natural pitfalls, how to coordinate decisionmaking processes, how to take on board information from viewpoints which conflict with their own and incorporate what’s useful rather than throwing it out wholecloth, etc, then the collective decisionmaking ability of the group is improved.
The projects I participated in could have benefited from increased group obedience, if everyone simply followed my lead, but if the members lacked the reasoning ability to distinguish between competent leaders, how would they know who to trust to lead them?
In my experience, disagreements between genuinely rational people overwhelmingly do not take a longer time to resolve. One of the basic components of rationality is knowing how to take new information on board and actually change your mind. Disagreements between irrational people tend to be far more intractable.
The way society forms mass-opinions and decides (i.e. by voting) on important issues is not easily split into groups of people making decisions.
Still I accept your mechanism because group decisions are a large part of society and improving that will improve society.
About the group project: If we can get everyone to be “genuinely rational” instead of just a bit more rational we will certainly live in a very different world. I don’t expect that anytime soon though.
This is a good point even for the society. To get a rational society, it is not necessary that literally everyone becomes rational. Just that the rational people make the most important decisions, and the others follow them.
Although there are dangers with this solution in a long term; specifically that some day the irrational people may decide to stop following the rational ones. In democracy it means someone else uses some simple tricks to get their attention, and wins the elecion. On the other hand, the non-democratic societies have another long-term risk, which is the leading group becoming irrational from the inside; either they lose their sanity gradually, or just a small subset goes insane and succeeds to remove the others from the inner circle.