Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016

username2

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

On a meta level, I wonder how much of the missing rationality skills these people never had vs how much they had but lost later when they became politically mindkilled.

Can rationality be lost? Or do people just stop performing the rituals?

Can rationality be lost?

I don't see why not. It is, basically, a set of perspectives, mental habits, and certain heuristics. People lose skills, forget knowledge, just change -- why would rationality be exempt?

1Viliam10y

Heh, I immediately went: "What is rationality if not following (a specific kind of) rituals?" But I guess the key is the word "specific" here. Rationality could be defined as following a set of rules that happen to create maps better corresponding to the territory, and knowing why those rules achieve that, i.e. applying the rules reflectively to themselves. The reflective part is what would prevent a person from arbitrarily replacing one of the rules by e.g. "what my group/leader says is always right, even if the remaining rules say otherwise". I imagine that most people have at least some minimal level of reflection of their rules. For example, if they look at the blue sky, they conclude that the sky is blue; and if someone else would say that the sky is green, they would tell them "look there, you idiot". That is, not only they follow the rule, but they are aware that they have a rule, and can communicate it. But the rule is communicated only then someone obviously breaks it; that means, the reflection is only done in crisis. Which means they don't develop the full reflective model, and it leaves the option of inserting new rules, such as "however, that reasoning doesn't apply to God, because God is invisible", which take priority over reflection. I guess these rules have a strong "first mover advantage", so timing is critical. So yeah, I guess most people are not, uhm, reflectively rational. And unreflective rationality (I guess on LW we wouldn't call it "rationality", but outside of LW that is the standard meaning of the word) is susceptible to inserting new rules under emotional pressure.

-4Old_Gold10y

Can rationality be lost? Sure, when formerly rational people declare some topic of limits to rationality because they don't like the conclusions that are coming out. Of course, since all truths are entangled that means you have to invent other lies to protect the ones you've already made. Ultimately you have to lie about the process of arriving at truth itself, which is how we get to things like feminist anti-epistomology.