This morning I found what I think is an interesting way to explain rationalizing to my son, and I thought I'd share it:
- Physical reality has rules that you can game to your advantage (natural laws).
- People have another set of rules that you can game to your advantage (preferences, biases, cultural norms).
- Rationalization is when you are trying to overcome an obstacle based in physical reality by trying to game human rules.
Two subsequent thoughts that ocurred to me:
- If you're rationalizing-- the magic excuse fairy might not be there to hear you, but your subconsciousness is. And you will often convince your subconsciousness... to believe that the problem you're trying to solve is impossible, that it won't do any good anyway, that people are out to get you, and any number of other non-factual things that are directly antagonistic to your goals. This is why rationalizing is a bad habit.
- By this definition, the opposite of rationalizing is using the constraints physical reality to convince people that you are right. This is something you _can_ use effectively and should always try to do. It's called presenting evidence.
You made me realize that maybe I'm lumping together two different self-defeating activities under the label of rationalization.
There is prior rationalization, for example to justify why the effort already expended is sufficient, or the course of action chosen is the best one (the mental effort put into choosing a course of action is sufficient).
Then there is posterior rationalization, for example to justify not re-thinking future strategy, not making future attempts, or not expending the effort to mitigate the consequences of an undesired/unexpected past outcome.