VAuroch comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong
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That's unfortunate, because this strikes me as a very important issue. Even being able to measure one's own rationality would be very helpful, let alone that of others.
I'm not sure I would put it in terms of "making decisions" so much as "making judgments," but basically yes. Also, P1 does make rational judgments in real life but the level of rationality depends on what is at stake.
Well one idea is to look more directly at what is going on in the brain with some kind of imaging technique. Perhaps self-deception or result-oriented reasoning have a tell tale signature.
Also, perhaps this kind of irrationality is more cognitively demanding. To illustrate, suppose you are having a Socratic dialogue with someone who holds irrational belief X. Instead of simply laying out your argument, you ask the person whether he agrees with Proposition Y, where Proposition Y seems pretty obvious and indisputable. Our rational person might quickly and easily agree or disagree with Y. Whereas our irrational person needs to think more carefully about Y; decide whether it might undermine his position; and if it does, construct a rationalization for rejecting Y. This difference in thinking might be measured in terms of reaction times.