From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 13:12:28 MDT
On 6/17/2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>A general argument for "Just Be Rational" must acknowledge general costs,
>>as well as general benefits. It takes a lot of work to try to be
>>rational, and it takes work to lie about what you believe, and there are
>>social costs when you fail to successfully lie about your
>>rationality. Without some reason to believe your evolutionary heritage
>>will substantially mislead you, "Just be Natural" seems a better strategy. ...
>
>... I think you're overlooking the incremental nature of striving for
>rationality. Someone who says, "I'm going to try and be rational" does
>not instantly acquire the realization that certain actions are
>self-deceptive in nature. It takes time to build to that level of
>self-awareness. You seem to be thinking of some ordinary bloke who, in
>espousing rationality, is instantly emptied of all self-deceptive content
>(if only this were true!) but goes on living an ordinary life, without
>acquiring any of the higher sorceries. This sounds to me like an
>anachronistic picture. To the extent that you can even identify
>self-deceptions in order to give them up, you are wielding rationality on
>a very high level, at least relative to current norms. By the time
>someone is capable of giving up all the self-deceptions that Robin Hanson
>knows how to identify, he or she will no longer be "most people". ...
>I'd bet that most people would end up saying: "For most people the
>possible benefits of avoiding snack bars just do not outweigh the many
>costs of being rational... but me, I'm different." So are they being
>self-deceptive? Or are you overestimating the extent to which your own
>circumstances and motives are special?
I agree our actual choices tend to be piecemeal, but unfortunately this
mostly raises the costs of being rational. Our natural habits of thought
include our each believing that while most people are biased in many ways,
we are more rational than others. This is part of our general
over-estimation of our ability and moral value. Most people actually know
about most of the standard biases that people fall for. Literature has
for many hundreds of years relied on this fact when making fun of such
biases. Most people pay sincere lip service to rationality, and we nod
knowingly when someone mentions one of the standard biases. But while we
might admit in general that we are subject to the same biases, we each
usually manage to avoid believing that a particular bias applies to us in a
particular situation. If it appears otherwise, we can point to particular
factors that make this an exception.
This means that in order to actually be rational, rather than just thinking
that we are rational, we have to work rather hard to overcome our evolved
habits of self-deception about our rationality. As Feynman said, "The
first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest
person to fool."
This all must apply to me too. I must be less rational and value
truth-seeking less than I'm inclined to believe. I think I try, but
whether I really try very hard is very hard for me to judge with any accuracy.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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