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syllogism comments on What Cost for Irrationality? - Less Wrong
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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.
You're starting one premise back from where the post is jumping off from.
The post assumes as a premise that we have some goals, and there's an empirical question about what cognitive strategies will best achieve those goals.
One strategy is to use our intuitions. We have some built in software for doing quasi-Bayesian analysis, and our heuristics perform to an acceptable standard in many contexts.
The other strategy is to use more formal analysis. The post argues for this second strategy, pointing out predictable failure points for our intuition heuristics.
Which one maximises your chances of achieving your goals is an empirical question. It's possible that as bad as our heuristics are, we're just incapable of the metacognition to do it formally. Maybe all we end up doing is giving ourselves tools for rationalisation. Most of the people in this community don't believe that, but it's not a philosophical question.
You go one premise back, to the point where we're choosing a strategy. Sure, you can reject rationality altogether. Then it doesn't make sense to talk about deciding on a cognitive strategy. But if you accept as axiomatic that you have some goals, and you want to figure out how to further them, then we arrive at this interesting empirical question: what's the most effective methodology for human decision making? It's not a contradiction to say "I'm going to rationally decide that the best strategy is not to engage in this kind of metacognition, as all it does is lead me astray".
I agree with nearly all of what you're saying up here, about heuristics, metacognition, and whether our rational mind is actually powerful enough to beat our instinctive one in practical situations.
I think the original poster was assuming we have some goals, and then pointing out the many disadvantages of choosing an irrational strategy to get to them.
Why would one choose an irrational strategy? Is it because we're too stupid to know it was irrational? Sometimes. Perhaps we chose it knowing it was irrational? Sometimes that happens too.
In neither case is it that useful to hear that an irrational strategy isn't as rational as a rational strategy, and can be rationally expected to have a worse outcome. Either they picked that strategy thinking it was rational, in which case that point is irrelevant, or they picked it thinking it was irrational, in which case they clearly don't think that rationality is right when it says that rationality is always better.