Comment author: agolubev 06 August 2009 11:41:19PM 1 point [-]

we lie with our clothes the same way we lie with our words. whether we're trying to conceal wisdom, confidence, wealth, strength, compatibility, etc... there's a distribution to the potential gain and chance of getting "called out". That's assuming we're making a concious choice. A big portion of it is effective marketing making us insecure about all those things we try to conceal first, whether we are missing in any of those deparments or not. I think it's much more subconsious that we'd like to admit, particulalry if we think we're so rational.

Comment author: dclayh 06 August 2009 05:16:39AM *  8 points [-]

Even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

(Self-promotion: this is the epigraph to the novella I'm working on, which is not really about rationality but is about what we're pleased to call "human nature", and which you may read the beginning of here if so inclined.)

Comment author: agolubev 06 August 2009 11:09:50PM *  -2 points [-]

exactly. and that's a man simply trying to gain his point. The bottleneck for the ideas on this blog finding reality are in f*d up economic incentives and feedback loops. I think it's asenine of us to stick to our ball to the wall INTJ-ness in light of the current economic and political events. it may not be that bad, but it's light years away from the optimum.

Comment author: agolubev 07 April 2009 03:43:12PM 1 point [-]

It may just be semantics and a look into the biological process of decision making. I think there've been studies to show that our body tends to react to the question of which card deck is better 2-3 times before our rational self declares so. It may just be the process of a body forming a "hypothesis" and then subjecting it to a scientific type test before creating and declaring a rational theory.

Comment author: agolubev 07 April 2009 02:55:56PM 0 points [-]

What is everyone's response to - "people aren't rational, they're rationalizers"? I'm very new to the blog, but figured this would be the perfect place to get some thoughts on this idea.

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