So a society is rational if the institutions are rational ... and an institution is rational if its outputs seem rationally designed ... which is judged by a rational individual ... which is still hard to define.
I see your point and agree that there is room for improvement. Instead of "more rational" I would propose "less insane" which seems to fit the evidence as good as the other description.
Will one of these more insane societies become less insane by making sure everybody on the streets is less insane? The connection doesn't seem obvious, except in extreme cases.
The connection between rational individuals and rational society is implied by use of the same word and only obvious in extreme cases.
What do you mean by "only obvious in extreme cases?"
I would definitely not agree that the connection between rational individuals and rational society is merely implied by the use of the same word, I would absolutely say that they're inextricably linked. Having attempted cooperative projects with other people over a wide range of rationality levels, I've found that working with groups of more rational individuals really does eliminate a huge cohort of problems which attend the work of less rational individuals.
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Does anyone know of a good article that illustrates how society is generally irrational, and how making society more rational would have huge benefits, because it'd be a very high level action?
I'm writing an essay about how to improve education, and one of my proposals is that a core part of the curriculum should be rationality. I believe that doing this would have huge benefits to society, and want to explain why I think this, but I'm having trouble. Any thoughts?
Edit: Part of Raising the Sanity Waterline talks about common ways in which people are irrational. However, they're all links to longer Less Wrong articles. Preferably, I'd like to illustrate it in a few sentences/paragraphs.