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Robin comments on Rationality Quotes December 2014 - Less Wrong
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"As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown."
Ayn Rand
If the bolded pair of words were struck, I'd agree completely. Different people will have different balls and chains.
This quote was from a speech given to West Point cadets. By no means are they identical but it would be relatively hard to find a group of people more identical (from the perspective of being of the same gender, same age (within a few years) same nationality, and same general ideology).
A. False dichotomy - there are other choices. We might choose to compartmentalize our rationality, for example.
B. False dichotomy in a different sense - we actually don't have access to this choice. No matter how hard we work, our brains are going to be biased and our philosophies are going to be sloppy. It's a question of making one's brain marginally more organized or less disorganized, not of jumping from insanity onto reason. I'm suspicious that working with the insanity and trying to guide its flow is a better strategy than trying to destroy it.
C. Although not having a philosophy leaves us open to bias, having a philosophy can sometimes expose us to bias even further. It's about comparative advantage. Agnosticism has wiggle room that sometimes can be a place for bias to hide, but conversely ideology without self-doubt often serves to crush the truth.
A. How would you implement that choice?
B. We is a loaded term, speak for yourself. There's benefit to realizing that as a human you have bias. There's no benefit to declaring that you can't overcome some of this bias.
C Wouldn't that depend on your philosophy?
C. Yes.
B. Agreed that there's benefit to realizing we have bias, disagree that there's no benefit to declaring some biases aren't overcomeable. Trying to overcome biases takes effort. Wasted effort is bad. It's better to pursue mixed strategies that aim at instrumental rationality than to aim at the perfection described in the Rand quotation. Thoughts that seem complex or messy should not be something we shy away from, reality is complicated and our brains are imperfect.
A. I don't know how to describe how to do it, but I do it all the time. It's something humans have to fight against to avoid doing, as it's essentially automatic under normal conditions.
I think you are assuming hyperbolic discounting/short time preference. It requires a lot of effort to overcome bias, perhaps years. But there are times when it is worth it.
What perfection? Choosing philosophy? You can always update your philosophy.
There are also times when it's not worth it, in my opinion.
Rand contrasts "a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation" with "a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain".
I think it's possible to avoid becoming such a disgrace without scrupulously logical deliberation. Most people are severely biased but are not as unhappy or helpless as Rand's argument would imply. Trimming the excesses of our biases seems more reasonable than eliminating them, to me.
You lost me at "junk heap." There is no conscious choice available to a layperson ignorant of philosophy and logic, and such ways of life are perfectly copacetic with small-enough communities. If anything, it is the careful thinker who is more shackled by self-doubt, better understood as the Dunning-Kruger effect, but Ayn Rand has made it obvious she never picked up any primary literature on cognitive science so it's not surprising to see her confusion here.
Quote from 1971's The Romantic Manifesto.
Sorry you're so averse to negative descriptions of the average person's philosophy.
Yes there is, they can choose what music, TV, movies, videos etc to buy/view/play.
Do you mean communities where the leader knows about philosophy and can order people around?
It's reasonable to doubt certain things, but if learning increases your self doubt than you're doing it wrong.
She was associated with Nathaniel Branden, a well regarded psychologist. Cognitive Science is a relatively new field.
I don't think she's confused, she's saying something you disagree with. If you think you've refuted it, I think you're the confused one.