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cousin_it comments on The Benefits of Rationality? - Less Wrong
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Funny. For the last several months I've been doing exactly what you enumerated: physical training, voice lessons and improving my fashion sense. Those were all rational decisions (caused in small part by Overcoming Bias) and they did already help me.
Hah! When I read the top post I immediately thought of my own everyday struggle with irrationality along the lines of, "I want to get fit and live longer. This requires rationally alloting a certain amount of time to exercise. It's hard to get motivated to exercise, due to akrasia (laziness). I want to solve the problem of akrasia, so I'll go to Less Wrong and see what others are saying about it."
The point is that rationality may have no direct benefits whatsoever, but it is still useful since it helps you choose between, and stick to, behaviours that do have direct benefits.
A classic controversial example: should rationalists go to church?
Rationality has its limits. We all know that daily exercise is good for us, and that it's something we should be doing. It's pretty clearly the "rational" choice. But can rationality actually get us to exercise every day? Is there some further bias we can eliminate that will enable us to drag our asses to the gym even when we're feeling completely exhausted? I doubt it -- there's just nothing much more that rationality can do for us in that department. A related (and rhetorical) question: are fat people fat because they're rationally deficient in some sense? We need to be careful not to downplay the extremely powerful and seemingly ineradicable influences of emotion and subjective experience (urges, fatigue, impulses, etc.) in our day-to-day decision-making.
Yes, several. Unfortunately, the exact list is usually different from one person to the next. Here are a few I've had to get rid of:
This is less than a third of the full list, it's just the ones that come to mind right off... and I'm not really done yet, either. I lost 27 pounds last year, and expect to do a similar amount this year, but my actual habit of exercising is still pretty erratic, due to another bias which I only just eliminated. (Still too soon to tell what impact it's going to have.)
Illuminating list, thanks. It suggests a beautiful analogy between overcoming biases and removing muscle tensions you didn't feel before - a quest that becomes second nature to actors and opera singers, for example.
Why should our emotions always rule our reason? There ought to be a rational way to deal with urges, fatigue and so on. I think the methods currently under discussion are Pjeby's motivation techniques, cognitive behavioural therapy and possibly meditation. If these lines of inquiry bear fruit, then that should make it possible for people here to muster the willpower to do whatever it is they want to do. At that point we'll be able to say that any Less Wrong reader who wants to lose weight or whatever and can't, is failing to be sufficiently rational.
My point was just that knowing what to do and actually doing it are two separate things. It's possible that someone could come to the objectively rational conclusion in every single circumstance, yet fail to act on those conclusions for a variety of other reasons. In that case, it would very tough to say their rationality is in any way at fault.
Anyone care to explain why this comment (and for that matter, the one below) was downvoted? Given that my karma score just dropped about 10 points in under an hour, I can only assume someone is going through my history and downvoting me for some reason. Great use of the karma system.
I've had some very weird karma behaviour recently too.
All karma systems are abused. On this one, I'd be curious to know what proportion of votes are coming from non-commenting accounts.
It seems increasingly likely that this bug needs to be prioritized, especially part 3.
Even if he comes to the objectively rational conclusion on how to get himself to do what is best/most rational?
(I don't think that in that case "forcing oneself with sheer willpower" is the best solution)
Motivation often comes from witnessing the positive results of your actions. A rationalist is especially attuned to this form of observation so it would seem that exercise is the perfect arena for the rationalist to succeed. I run and lift weights and I feel and perform better (disregard looks for now because it's too loaded). If I stop, then I feel and perform worse. Therefore, as a matter of rationalist discipline I will continue to exercise. Eventually, this should normalize into a sense of motivation. For the first timer, exercise might feel like hell but over time a positive and motivating association should develop.
I would illustrate that like this: exercise (don't like) = feel and perform better (like) => exercise (like) = feel and perform better (like)
And I don't think fat people are irrational, just undisciplined. Developing habits and mental associations takes time. Doing things you don't like over a period of time (which is the same as giving up something you like in the short term) in the interest of a deferred goal is the definition of discipline.