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passive_fist comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have this half-baked idea that trying to be rational by oneself is a slightly pathological condition. Humans are naturally social, and it would make sense to distribute cognition over several processors, so to speak. It would explain the tendencies I notice in relationships to polarize behavior - if my partner adopts the position that we should go on vacations as much as possible, I almost automatically tend to assume the role worrying about money, for example, and we then work out a balanced solution together. If each of us were to decide on our own, our opinions would be much less polarized.
I could totally see how it would make sense in groups that some members adopt some low probability beliefs, and that it would benefit the group overall.
Is there any merit to this idea? Considering the well known failures in group rationality, I wonder if this is something that has long been disproved.
That's a powerful idea and it actually goes deeper than you may think. We are divided even internally inside ourselves. There is reason to think that your internal rational decision-making processes consist of multiple sub-processes that combine and compare various points of view. Each sub-process has the same level of interaction with other sub-processes as you would have when speaking to another person. Your mental sub-processes may not even distinguish between thoughts and ideas coming from another part of your brain and coming from another person.