Subskill: Analyze the underlying reasons why you’re trying to rationalize for or against something—why a conclusion feels required, or disallowed.
Important subskill: Notice when a candidate “the reason I’m trying to rationalize something” is a poor guess or itself a rationalization—when it’s a guess that sounds plausible about someone like you in your position, but doesn’t seem to ring true.
Exercise: Pretend you are your evil alter ego when analyzing the reasons for your rationalization. What would your alter ego say about your rationalization? Your alter ego will probably come up with some selfish, lazy or just plain silly reasons for your rationalization. Once you have this list see the section on how to accept the truth.
Subskill: Notice the process of selectively searching for support, and halt it. Chains into “Ask whether, not why”, or into trying to unbind the need to rationalize.
Level 1, notice the active process after performing a conscious check whether it’s running; Level 2, detect it perceptually and automatically; Level 3, never run this process.
Exercise material: List of suggested conclusions to rationalize. I’m not quite sure what the prerequisites here would be; one of my own childhood epiphanies was finding that I could argue reasons why there ought to be a teapot in the asteroid belt, and thinking to myself, “Well, I better not do that, then.” I suspect the primary desideratum would be more that the topic offers plenty of opportunity to come up with clever rationalizations, rather than that the topic offers motivation to come up with clever rationalizations.
Exercise A: Pick a conclusion from the list. Come up with a clever argument why it is true. Notice what it feels like to do this. Then don’t do it.
(This is distinct from noticing the feeling of being tempted to rationalize, a separate subskill.)
Exercise B: In the middle of coming up with clever arguments why something is true, stop and chain into the Litany of Tarski, or some other remedy. Variant: Say out loud “Ew!” or “Oops!” during the stop part.
Exercise C: For a conclusion on the list, argue that it is true. Then “Ask whether, not why”—try to figure out whether it is true. Notice the difference between these two processes. Requires a question whose answer is less than immediately obvious, but which someone can find info about by searching their memory and/or the Internet.
True, but the successful debaters in my experience are the ones who can construct both sides of an argument in order to pre-empt and account for possible responses.
This isn’t necessarily just a binary for/against disinction but considering better ways to acheive the same goal and possible unintended consequence.
[Speaking as an active participant of the UK universities competitive debating circuit, though I acknowledge that makes me prone to rationalise in its favour]
Exercise material (prerequisite for multiple exercises below): Have a hot-topic list such that incoming students at the expected level (e.g. level = typical LW reader) would be tempted to rationalize at least some of them. This requires both that someone care about the topic, and that the topic isn’t so cut-and-dry that there’s no temptation to distort anything. E.g., I care about atheism but I don’t have any emotional fear of that argument coming out “the wrong way”—on the other hand, putting me in an actual argument with, say, my parents, or someone who was a really clever theistic arguer in front of an audience, might generate the emotional temptation to cheat to ensure winning on every single point.
We can probably generate a good hot topic list from the past discussions on LW. Here’s some suggestions based on a very quick attempt at recalling past debates.
Subskill: Be able to identify the internal feeling of having a required conclusion, of an argument only having one allowed answer, and (a slightly different internal sensation) of other answers being disallowed.
Level one: After this skill is explicitly mentioned and invoked by some other process, be able to notice this internal sense of required-conclusion-ness (disallowed-ness) when you consciously focus on it.
Level two: Have a constant perceptual eye out for feelings like this, notice automatically without needing to be “on guard”, chain into applying other anti-rationalization skills (e.g. Litany of Tarski).
Exercise idea: For items on the hot-topic list, identify ones that you care about, and:
Exercise A: Try to identify directly, just from looking at the issue and imagining the potential answers to it, the emotional sense that there’s only one allowed answer to it, and the emotional sense that a different answer is not allowed.
Exercise B: Imagine being in the process of losing an argument about that issue. Identify the drive (desperation, need) to regain the lost territory and win. Then imagine being in the process of winning an argument about that issue. Identify the sense of triumph and the prior commitment which makes that particular conclusion “winning”.
Exercise C: Get into a simulated argument about the issue with someone taking the opposite side from the one you care about. Maintain awareness of your overall emotional state, try to be aware of the internal drive to produce a particular answer, be aware of the sense of revulsion or flinch-away that associates with other answers.
This is a similar list from Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising (there is a list of lists of such exercises through the book, 12 or 15 total but this may be the best one).
Exercises
1.) If you are a liberal, subscribe to the National Review, the country’s most intelligent (and witty) conservative magazine, for a year. Each month try to enter their reality tunnel for a few hours while reading their articles.
2.) If you are a conservative, subscribe to the New York Review of Books for a year and try to get into their head-space for a few hours a month.
3.) If you are a rationalist, subscribe to Fate magazine for a year.
4.) If you are an occultist, join the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and read their journal, The Skeptical Inquirer, for a year.
5.) Buy a copy of the Scientific American and read any article in it. Ask the following questions: Why do they sound so sure? Does the data support dogmatism at this point, or is dogma a primate habit (defending head-space)? Will these theories still be believed in 2011*? In 2593?
[* - my copy from 2001]
6.) Get into a discussion of philosophy with an educated Marxist, an intelligent Muslim, and a Japanese businessman at the first opportunity.
7.) Buy some ZOOM or LIFT (two names for the same caffeine-high stimulant) at a health food store. (This gives a close approximation of the effects of illegal cocaine). When you are zooming or lifting and your mind is racing, find a victim and explain the universe to them until they are able to escape you.
What you experience in this speed rap is what the head of the compulsive rationalist is always like. This is the verbal circuit gone wild and totally oblivious to information coming in on any other circuit. It explains why most people cannot stand rationalists. Speed drugs apparently trigger neurotransmitters characteristic of the verbal centers of the left cortex.
Get into a simulated argument about the issue with someone taking the opposite side from the one you care about.
I think it is important to integrate this with searching for a third alternative.
1) Establish, on paper and before doing anything else, what you think alternative positions are.
2) Have a third party who does not look at your list identify third alternatives.
3) Determine which good ideas you didn’t think of. This can only be an approximation, as you and the other person have used different words to describe alternatives. Notice the emotional urge to rationalize and conclude you didn’t leave out important third alternatives, and the urge to rationalize that the alternatives you didn’t think of aren’t compelling. (This is an artificial hot-button issue, but that is only a side-benefit of this step.)
4) The list that you have constructed probably avoids your belief’s real weak points. Alternatives identified by the other person, but not you, are best for pitting against your cherished idea, as in exercise C above.
5) Notice the relative strength of the best arguments not on your list as against the ones on your list. If they are strong, consider whether you have been failing to consider third alternatives for intellectual reasons, such as not holding off on proposing solutions, or avoiding your belief’s weak points for emotional reasons.
Skill: Anti-rationalization (1): Prevent your mind from selectively searching for support of only one side of an argument.
Subskill: Analyze the underlying reasons why you’re trying to rationalize for or against something—why a conclusion feels required, or disallowed.
Important subskill: Notice when a candidate “the reason I’m trying to rationalize something” is a poor guess or itself a rationalization—when it’s a guess that sounds plausible about someone like you in your position, but doesn’t seem to ring true.
Exercise: Pretend you are your evil alter ego when analyzing the reasons for your rationalization. What would your alter ego say about your rationalization? Your alter ego will probably come up with some selfish, lazy or just plain silly reasons for your rationalization. Once you have this list see the section on how to accept the truth.
Subskill: Notice the process of selectively searching for support, and halt it. Chains into “Ask whether, not why”, or into trying to unbind the need to rationalize.
Level 1, notice the active process after performing a conscious check whether it’s running; Level 2, detect it perceptually and automatically; Level 3, never run this process.
Exercise material: List of suggested conclusions to rationalize. I’m not quite sure what the prerequisites here would be; one of my own childhood epiphanies was finding that I could argue reasons why there ought to be a teapot in the asteroid belt, and thinking to myself, “Well, I better not do that, then.” I suspect the primary desideratum would be more that the topic offers plenty of opportunity to come up with clever rationalizations, rather than that the topic offers motivation to come up with clever rationalizations.
Exercise A: Pick a conclusion from the list. Come up with a clever argument why it is true. Notice what it feels like to do this. Then don’t do it.
(This is distinct from noticing the feeling of being tempted to rationalize, a separate subskill.)
Exercise B: In the middle of coming up with clever arguments why something is true, stop and chain into the Litany of Tarski, or some other remedy. Variant: Say out loud “Ew!” or “Oops!” during the stop part.
Exercise C: For a conclusion on the list, argue that it is true. Then “Ask whether, not why”—try to figure out whether it is true. Notice the difference between these two processes. Requires a question whose answer is less than immediately obvious, but which someone can find info about by searching their memory and/or the Internet.
Hmmm this just made me think that debate clubs deliberately teach the opposite of this skill.
True, but the successful debaters in my experience are the ones who can construct both sides of an argument in order to pre-empt and account for possible responses.
This isn’t necessarily just a binary for/against disinction but considering better ways to acheive the same goal and possible unintended consequence.
[Speaking as an active participant of the UK universities competitive debating circuit, though I acknowledge that makes me prone to rationalise in its favour]
And at least in Britain and Ireland they provide disproportionate numbers of future lawyers and politicians.
It’s not clear to me how this is different from fabricating evidence. Is it?
Exercise material (prerequisite for multiple exercises below): Have a hot-topic list such that incoming students at the expected level (e.g. level = typical LW reader) would be tempted to rationalize at least some of them. This requires both that someone care about the topic, and that the topic isn’t so cut-and-dry that there’s no temptation to distort anything. E.g., I care about atheism but I don’t have any emotional fear of that argument coming out “the wrong way”—on the other hand, putting me in an actual argument with, say, my parents, or someone who was a really clever theistic arguer in front of an audience, might generate the emotional temptation to cheat to ensure winning on every single point.
We can probably generate a good hot topic list from the past discussions on LW. Here’s some suggestions based on a very quick attempt at recalling past debates.
atheism
the benefits of rationality
the importance of researching friendly AI
is cryonics worthwhile
the morality of pick-up artistry
Subskill: Be able to identify the internal feeling of having a required conclusion, of an argument only having one allowed answer, and (a slightly different internal sensation) of other answers being disallowed.
Level one: After this skill is explicitly mentioned and invoked by some other process, be able to notice this internal sense of required-conclusion-ness (disallowed-ness) when you consciously focus on it.
Level two: Have a constant perceptual eye out for feelings like this, notice automatically without needing to be “on guard”, chain into applying other anti-rationalization skills (e.g. Litany of Tarski).
Exercise idea: For items on the hot-topic list, identify ones that you care about, and:
Exercise A: Try to identify directly, just from looking at the issue and imagining the potential answers to it, the emotional sense that there’s only one allowed answer to it, and the emotional sense that a different answer is not allowed.
Exercise B: Imagine being in the process of losing an argument about that issue. Identify the drive (desperation, need) to regain the lost territory and win. Then imagine being in the process of winning an argument about that issue. Identify the sense of triumph and the prior commitment which makes that particular conclusion “winning”.
Exercise C: Get into a simulated argument about the issue with someone taking the opposite side from the one you care about. Maintain awareness of your overall emotional state, try to be aware of the internal drive to produce a particular answer, be aware of the sense of revulsion or flinch-away that associates with other answers.
This is a similar list from Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising (there is a list of lists of such exercises through the book, 12 or 15 total but this may be the best one).
Exercises
1.) If you are a liberal, subscribe to the National Review, the country’s most intelligent (and witty) conservative magazine, for a year. Each month try to enter their reality tunnel for a few hours while reading their articles.
2.) If you are a conservative, subscribe to the New York Review of Books for a year and try to get into their head-space for a few hours a month.
3.) If you are a rationalist, subscribe to Fate magazine for a year.
4.) If you are an occultist, join the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and read their journal, The Skeptical Inquirer, for a year.
5.) Buy a copy of the Scientific American and read any article in it. Ask the following questions: Why do they sound so sure? Does the data support dogmatism at this point, or is dogma a primate habit (defending head-space)? Will these theories still be believed in 2011*? In 2593?
[* - my copy from 2001]
6.) Get into a discussion of philosophy with an educated Marxist, an intelligent Muslim, and a Japanese businessman at the first opportunity.
7.) Buy some ZOOM or LIFT (two names for the same caffeine-high stimulant) at a health food store. (This gives a close approximation of the effects of illegal cocaine). When you are zooming or lifting and your mind is racing, find a victim and explain the universe to them until they are able to escape you. What you experience in this speed rap is what the head of the compulsive rationalist is always like. This is the verbal circuit gone wild and totally oblivious to information coming in on any other circuit. It explains why most people cannot stand rationalists. Speed drugs apparently trigger neurotransmitters characteristic of the verbal centers of the left cortex.
I think it is important to integrate this with searching for a third alternative.
1) Establish, on paper and before doing anything else, what you think alternative positions are.
2) Have a third party who does not look at your list identify third alternatives.
3) Determine which good ideas you didn’t think of. This can only be an approximation, as you and the other person have used different words to describe alternatives. Notice the emotional urge to rationalize and conclude you didn’t leave out important third alternatives, and the urge to rationalize that the alternatives you didn’t think of aren’t compelling. (This is an artificial hot-button issue, but that is only a side-benefit of this step.)
4) The list that you have constructed probably avoids your belief’s real weak points. Alternatives identified by the other person, but not you, are best for pitting against your cherished idea, as in exercise C above.
5) Notice the relative strength of the best arguments not on your list as against the ones on your list. If they are strong, consider whether you have been failing to consider third alternatives for intellectual reasons, such as not holding off on proposing solutions, or avoiding your belief’s weak points for emotional reasons.
The “hot-topic list” goes to what appears to be one of your drafts, which we normal people can’t read. [EDIT: It doesn’t any more.]
What do you do instead, once you’ve stopped the process?