= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Kaj_Sotala comments on What Cost for Irrationality? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (113)
But this is just unfair. You're judging rationality according to rational arguments, and so OF COURSE you end up finding that rationality is sooo much better.
I, on the other hand, judge my irrationality on an irrational basis, and find that actually it's much better to be irrational.
What's the difference? Of course in response to this question you're bound to come up with even more rational arguments to be rational, but I don't see how this gets you any further forward.
I, on the other hand, being irrational, don't have to argue about this if I don't want to. What kind of sense would it make to argue rationally about the advantages of irrationality anyway? Surely this is a contradiction in terms? But the nice thing about being irrational is that I can irrationally use rationality from time to time anyway, and then just stop and go back to being irrational again when irrationality is clearly more inspired.
OK - so I'm messing about. But you can't prove rationality is more rational by rational argument. Well, you can, but it's irrational in a way as you're assuming the very thing you're trying to prove. It's as example of trying to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.
If a person were completely irrational, sure, this post wouldn't convince them. (Of course, they also wouldn't live for long.) But it never tried to convince completely irrational people, it tried to convince people who were kinda-rational already that investing effort in further improving their rationality would be worth it.
I guess in the context for which it's intended, it works OK. It's a book introduction, after all. Most irrational people don't really have much of a map of where and how they are being irrational - and in fact commonly consider themselves to be very rational persons, when it comes to it. (I strongly suspect this is like driving - most people considering themselves to be above average - where being incompetent also robs you of awareness of your lack of performance...) The common reaction would probably be to nod along, thinking how terrible it is that all these people are so irrational, and enjoy the read. For an introduction, that's good enough.