I look at it as an empowering concept, apologetic, or an explanation of how “rationality” can go awry. I think Mitchell Porter says it best:
But the really hard questions are characterized by the fact that we don’t know how to think rigorously about them—we don’t have a method, ready at hand, which allows us to mechanically compute the answer.
Rather, grasping at easily available ontologies and attempting to reason with them will not get you very far when you’re trying to do that with your life (at least at first). But some people, I think, don’t learn how to go below easily available ontologies to create new ontologies (or comfortably rest in uncomputable but navigable ambiguity) that are closer to “what’s actually going on,” to move forward in their lives and projects. Hence “rationality” doesn’t work for them.
My feeling is that the valley of bad rationality is mostly using it as a tool to identify poor reasoning in others instead of in oneself.
I look at it as an empowering concept, apologetic, or an explanation of how “rationality” can go awry. I think Mitchell Porter says it best:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/aq5/anyone_have_any_questions_for_david_chalmers/5zxw
Rather, grasping at easily available ontologies and attempting to reason with them will not get you very far when you’re trying to do that with your life (at least at first). But some people, I think, don’t learn how to go below easily available ontologies to create new ontologies (or comfortably rest in uncomputable but navigable ambiguity) that are closer to “what’s actually going on,” to move forward in their lives and projects. Hence “rationality” doesn’t work for them.