Desrtopa comments on Rationality Quotes February 2014 - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 02 February 2014 01:35PM

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Comment author: James_Miller 02 February 2014 11:40:04PM 7 points [-]

Test: find someone who just voted and ask the person to (a) justify their vote, and (b) justify the purchase of some large ticket item (cell phone, car, house) they made. I bet they make more intelligent arguments for (b) than (a).

Comment author: Desrtopa 03 February 2014 05:54:55AM 3 points [-]

Given an impartial arbitrator to judge the intelligence of the arguments, I think I would probably take that bet, at least for cell phone or laptop scale purchases, rather than something like a house or car, where the decisions are usually made over much longer timeframes.

However, regardless of which decisions people argue for more persuasively, it doesn't really prove much, because these types of explanations overwhelmingly tend to be justifications people create for themselves, rather than the true reasons underlying their decisions.