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thomblake comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
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Whether a dietitian-parents could help you achieve all kinds of goals. Generally you'd be likely to have good health, you're less likely to be obese. Healthy, well-fed people tend to be taller, a dietician could use diet changes to reduce acne problems and whatnot. It is generally accepted that healthy, tall, good-looking people have better chances at achieving all sorts of goals. Also, dieticians are relatively wealthy highly-educated people. A child of a dietician is a child of privilege, upper middle class!
Anyway, my point is exactly that nobody can choose their parents.TimS said:
I would consider parenthood a process. But having a certain set of parents instead of another has little to do with rationality, despite most parents being 'usefull'. In the same way, I would not consider it rational to like singing, even though the acquired skills of breathing and voice manipulation might help you convey a higher status or help with public speaking. To decide to take singing lessons, if you want to become a public speaker, might be rational. But to simply enjoy singing shouldn't be considered so, even if it does help with your public speaking. Because no rational thought is involved.
Yes, at this point we're just disputing definitions. But I think we're in agreement with all the relevant empirical facts; if you were able to chose your parents, then it would be rational to choose good ones. Also, one is not usually able to choose one's parents.
Thanks for your quick replies. Yes we are agreed in those two points. I'm going to try something that may come off as a little crude, but here goes:
Point 1: If every act or process that helps me is to be called rational, then having a diëtician for a parent is rational. Point 2: The term rational implies involvement of the 'ratio', of thinking. Point 3: No rational thinking, or any thinking at all, is involved in acquiring one's parents. Even adaptive parents tend to acquire their child, not the other way around. Conclusion; Something is wrong with saying that everything that leads to the attainment of a goal is rational.
Perhaps another term should be used for things that help achieve goals but that do not involve thinking, let alone rational or logically sound thinking. This is important because thought is often overstated in the prevalence with which it occurs, and also in the causal weight that is attached to it. Thought is not omnipresent, and thought is often of minor importance in accurately explaining a social phenomenon.
"Rationality/irrationality" in the sense used on LW is a property of someone's decisions or actions (including the way one forms beliefs). The concept doesn't apply to the helpful/unhelpful things not of that person's devising.
I'd prefer to reject point 2. Arguments from etymology are not particularly strong. We're using the term in a way that has been standard here since the site's inception, and that is in accordance with the standard usage in economics, game theory, and artificial intelligence.
You may be right in that the argument comes more from a concern with how a broader public relates to the term of ´rational´ than how it is used in the mentioned disciplines.
On the other hand I feel that the broader public is relevant here. LessWrong isn´t that small a community and I suspect people have quite some emotional attachment to this place, as they use it as a guide to alter their thinking. By calling all things that are usefull in this way 'rational' I think you'd be confusing the term. It could lead to rationality turning into a generic substitute for 'good' or 'decent'. To me, that seems harmfull to an agenda of improving people's rational thinking.