Rationality can be life and death, but that applies to collective and institutional decisions just as much as for our individual ones. Arguably more so: the decisions made by governments, cultures and large institutions have far larger effects than any decision I’ll ever make. Investment into improving my individual rationality is more valuable purely due to self-interest—we may invest more to providing a 1% improvement to our own lives than we do to reducing collective decision making mistakes that costs thousands of lives a year. But survival isn’t the only goal we have! Even if it were, there are good reasons to put more emphasis on collective rational decision making—the decisions of others can also affect us.
Arguably more so: the decisions made by governments, cultures and large institutions have far larger effects than any decision I’ll ever make.
And you have far less impact on them. None, in most cases. When it comes to the transformation of effort applied to impact on your life, developing individual skills has vastly more effect—by orders of magnitude, I would say.
Rationality can be life and death, but that applies to collective and institutional decisions just as much as for our individual ones. Arguably more so: the decisions made by governments, cultures and large institutions have far larger effects than any decision I’ll ever make. Investment into improving my individual rationality is more valuable purely due to self-interest—we may invest more to providing a 1% improvement to our own lives than we do to reducing collective decision making mistakes that costs thousands of lives a year. But survival isn’t the only goal we have! Even if it were, there are good reasons to put more emphasis on collective rational decision making—the decisions of others can also affect us.
Arguably more so: the decisions made by governments, cultures and large institutions have far larger effects than any decision I’ll ever make.
And you have far less impact on them. None, in most cases. When it comes to the transformation of effort applied to impact on your life, developing individual skills has vastly more effect—by orders of magnitude, I would say.