Wouldn’t rationality help people get things on the two bottom tiers? If so, shouldn’t your theory predict that people in more dire circumstances are more rational, when I believe the opposite tends to be the case?
A much, much simpler explanation is that rationality is hard and not-rationality is easy. Just as all good families are quite similar and bad families are often uniquely different, there’s basically one correct epistemology and a whole lot of incorrect ones. Because truly terrible, survival-inhibiting epistemologies have been eliminated through natural (and social) selection, we’re left with a bunch that, at the very least, do not inhibit reproduction. Extremely high-quality epistemology does not appear to be particularly conducive to Darwinian reproductive success, so it never exactly got selected for. Indeed, extremely high quality epistemology may be contingent on a certain level of scientific progress, and thus may have only been practicable in the past few centuries. Imagine trying to simply exist in the world 20,000 years ago, where the only answer you could give to nearly any question about nature or how the world worked was, “I haven’t a clue.”
Much like religion, one will generally end up with whatever epistemology one is raised with, with whatever particular modifications your mind makes intuitively. Since very few people have minds that gravitate towards a rational epistemology, and since society doesn’t particularly value epistemic hygiene, it’s little surprise that rationalists do not abound.
Furthermore, your hypothesis that rationality is not conducive to tiers three and four does not appear to be well-founded. I suspect a lot of people would be significantly benefit from greater marginal rationality. An old acquaintance of mine has a Facebook status that regularly oscillates between, “OMG so good to be in love!!!!!<3” and “Oh no my heart was broken again how could u do this to me?” I would anticipate that just a little bit more rationality would greatly benefit this person.
Just as all good families are quite similar and bad families are often uniquely different, there’s basically one correct epistemology and a whole lot of incorrect ones.
Originally, I used this mostly for literary effect, but now that I think about it, it seems quite appropriate.
There are numerous largely superficial factors to families—size, composition, socioeconomic status, and so forth. It seems to me there are criteria that really, systematically matter, that have to do with how people respect one another, the degree to which people accept conflict, the extent to which no family member is, for want of a better term, belligerently insane. Similarly, one can have a fairly rational epistemology and end up with many superficially different beliefs—both in the sense of values and likelihood estimates. One does need some systematic components, like a general avoidance of reliance on evidence-less faith, and a lack of major beliefs based on wishful thinking (among many other things). Similarly, one belligerently insane belief can destroy the rationality of a whole system, just as a sufficiently difficult family member can. On the other hand, one can have crazy family members and still have a generally functional family, just as one may have some irrational beliefs without it necessarily destroying their entire epistemology.
I certainly don’t mean to imply good families are inherently the same in terms of, say, gender composition, extended vs. nuclear, etc., and I did not intent to suggest they were. As it is though, I think the analogy holds up well.
“OMG so good to be in love!!!!!<3” and “Oh no my heart was broken again how could u do this to me?” I would anticipate that just a little bit more rationality would greatly benefit this person.
It’s not clear to me what assumption you’re making here. Should this person shun relationships? Look for longer-term ones? Something else? The OMG part should remind us that new love is a powerful source of happiness and it’s not available in a long-term relationship. Maybe the OMG and “Oh no” parts add up to more than zero.
In my experience, you don’t have to sacrifice the “OMG” to mitigate the “oh no”. Learning to direct one’s thoughts is a really powerful force in making oneself happy.
I’m always amazed by the number of people who don’t seem to realize that it is possible guide one’s thoughts to control or modify emotions. People seem to think that happiness or unhappiness just happen, and it can’t be controlled. These people are usually much less happy than others.
These seem to me to be very sound criticisms and to pretty much defeat the main argument. It’s pretty obvious that rationality helps to climb from 0 to 2 and that it helps a lot. I’m going to be waiting to see whether this is a good enough rationalist community to converge in the recognition of critical flaws in arguments by voting the comment above way up.
If rationality would help people in the very poor parts of the world, but they shun it, then we conclude that those people are not responding to incentives.
However, the evidence you cite doesn’t support the assertion that the worlds poor don’t respond to incentives. It simply says that poor African men like sex and alcohol more than their own kids.
Do poor people fail to respond to incentives? Is there an obvious option for these people to learn how to be more rational/analytic that they aren’t taking? I don’t know.
What about the rich people in developed countries that I was talking about? My suspicion is that they respond to incentives, especially in terms of the rational/irrational tradeoff, i.e. If there were utility premiums for being more rational, people would expend effort learning the techniques.
...then the problem of nations remains. You limit your discussion to industrialized nations. This point is not relevant unless other nations are different. Moreover, some other nations are not clearing the first two stages, and individually or collectively, they are not particularly inclined to irrationality. Therefore, the proposition that we aren’t rational because we don’t really need to be is absurd, because the place that do need to be still aren’t, so that can’t be the cause.
Wouldn’t rationality help people get things on the two bottom tiers? If so, shouldn’t your theory predict that people in more dire circumstances are more rational, when I believe the opposite tends to be the case?
A much, much simpler explanation is that rationality is hard and not-rationality is easy. Just as all good families are quite similar and bad families are often uniquely different, there’s basically one correct epistemology and a whole lot of incorrect ones. Because truly terrible, survival-inhibiting epistemologies have been eliminated through natural (and social) selection, we’re left with a bunch that, at the very least, do not inhibit reproduction. Extremely high-quality epistemology does not appear to be particularly conducive to Darwinian reproductive success, so it never exactly got selected for. Indeed, extremely high quality epistemology may be contingent on a certain level of scientific progress, and thus may have only been practicable in the past few centuries. Imagine trying to simply exist in the world 20,000 years ago, where the only answer you could give to nearly any question about nature or how the world worked was, “I haven’t a clue.”
Much like religion, one will generally end up with whatever epistemology one is raised with, with whatever particular modifications your mind makes intuitively. Since very few people have minds that gravitate towards a rational epistemology, and since society doesn’t particularly value epistemic hygiene, it’s little surprise that rationalists do not abound.
Furthermore, your hypothesis that rationality is not conducive to tiers three and four does not appear to be well-founded. I suspect a lot of people would be significantly benefit from greater marginal rationality. An old acquaintance of mine has a Facebook status that regularly oscillates between, “OMG so good to be in love!!!!!<3” and “Oh no my heart was broken again how could u do this to me?” I would anticipate that just a little bit more rationality would greatly benefit this person.
That’s a pretty risky analogy.
It’s the famous first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina:
Originally, I used this mostly for literary effect, but now that I think about it, it seems quite appropriate.
There are numerous largely superficial factors to families—size, composition, socioeconomic status, and so forth. It seems to me there are criteria that really, systematically matter, that have to do with how people respect one another, the degree to which people accept conflict, the extent to which no family member is, for want of a better term, belligerently insane. Similarly, one can have a fairly rational epistemology and end up with many superficially different beliefs—both in the sense of values and likelihood estimates. One does need some systematic components, like a general avoidance of reliance on evidence-less faith, and a lack of major beliefs based on wishful thinking (among many other things). Similarly, one belligerently insane belief can destroy the rationality of a whole system, just as a sufficiently difficult family member can. On the other hand, one can have crazy family members and still have a generally functional family, just as one may have some irrational beliefs without it necessarily destroying their entire epistemology.
I certainly don’t mean to imply good families are inherently the same in terms of, say, gender composition, extended vs. nuclear, etc., and I did not intent to suggest they were. As it is though, I think the analogy holds up well.
It’s not clear to me what assumption you’re making here. Should this person shun relationships? Look for longer-term ones? Something else? The OMG part should remind us that new love is a powerful source of happiness and it’s not available in a long-term relationship. Maybe the OMG and “Oh no” parts add up to more than zero.
In my experience, you don’t have to sacrifice the “OMG” to mitigate the “oh no”. Learning to direct one’s thoughts is a really powerful force in making oneself happy.
I’m always amazed by the number of people who don’t seem to realize that it is possible guide one’s thoughts to control or modify emotions. People seem to think that happiness or unhappiness just happen, and it can’t be controlled. These people are usually much less happy than others.
These seem to me to be very sound criticisms and to pretty much defeat the main argument. It’s pretty obvious that rationality helps to climb from 0 to 2 and that it helps a lot. I’m going to be waiting to see whether this is a good enough rationalist community to converge in the recognition of critical flaws in arguments by voting the comment above way up.
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/how-about-a-beer/ is topical
If rationality would help people in the very poor parts of the world, but they shun it, then we conclude that those people are not responding to incentives.
However, the evidence you cite doesn’t support the assertion that the worlds poor don’t respond to incentives. It simply says that poor African men like sex and alcohol more than their own kids.
Do poor people fail to respond to incentives? Is there an obvious option for these people to learn how to be more rational/analytic that they aren’t taking? I don’t know.
What about the rich people in developed countries that I was talking about? My suspicion is that they respond to incentives, especially in terms of the rational/irrational tradeoff, i.e. If there were utility premiums for being more rational, people would expend effort learning the techniques.
This is an assumption, not a proven fact. Since it’s basically the contested issue, your reasoning is circular.
I did not say that rationality rather than irrationality helps individuals climb from level 0 to level 2.
...then the problem of nations remains. You limit your discussion to industrialized nations. This point is not relevant unless other nations are different. Moreover, some other nations are not clearing the first two stages, and individually or collectively, they are not particularly inclined to irrationality. Therefore, the proposition that we aren’t rational because we don’t really need to be is absurd, because the place that do need to be still aren’t, so that can’t be the cause.