My true rejection is that them being wrong is too annoying for me to want to cooperate.
Yeah, that’s a big problem. Stupid ideas annoy me. Even when they don’t matter. Even when I would be better served in the immediate situation by being unconcerned about the foolishness in the other person’s head. The annoyance is not instrumentally rational. But there it is regardless. A bit of insanity of my own. I think I, and a lot of others here, really just have OCD of ideas. Surprisingly, it seems to be contagious, and you’ve caught it.
I find your whole post interesting. You used to have a wonderful instrumental rationality with respect to the ideas of other people—you could ignore epistemically irrational ideas in others when it served your interests. But after spending time here, you’ve ended up annoyed and unhappy, and worry that you’ll start thwarting your own interests because of this annoyance.
In a world of social conceptual communicating beings, it should not be surprising that instrumental rationality sometimes means assent, or at least lack of criticism, of the opinions of others even when they are wrong. But tune the preference for epistemic rationality too high, and it starts thwarting other interests.
What I value about a rationalist crowd is that I don’t have to choose between epistemic rationality and instrumental social rationality. In most places, I have to make the trade off, and having OCD of ideas, I find that very uncomfortable.
Yeah, that’s a big problem. Stupid ideas annoy me. Even when they don’t matter. Even when I would be better served in the immediate situation by being unconcerned about the foolishness in the other person’s head. The annoyance is not instrumentally rational. But there it is regardless. A bit of insanity of my own. I think I, and a lot of others here, really just have OCD of ideas. Surprisingly, it seems to be contagious, and you’ve caught it.
I find your whole post interesting. You used to have a wonderful instrumental rationality with respect to the ideas of other people—you could ignore epistemically irrational ideas in others when it served your interests. But after spending time here, you’ve ended up annoyed and unhappy, and worry that you’ll start thwarting your own interests because of this annoyance.
In a world of social conceptual communicating beings, it should not be surprising that instrumental rationality sometimes means assent, or at least lack of criticism, of the opinions of others even when they are wrong. But tune the preference for epistemic rationality too high, and it starts thwarting other interests.
What I value about a rationalist crowd is that I don’t have to choose between epistemic rationality and instrumental social rationality. In most places, I have to make the trade off, and having OCD of ideas, I find that very uncomfortable.