

Rationality versus Intelligence - tokenadult
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1

======
Bleys
For those truly interested in improving their rationality,
<http://www.lesswrong.com> is in a similar format to Hacker News and is
dedicated to the subject.

More directly addressing this article, K.E. Stanovich has conducted some
excellent research showing relationships between cognitive abilities and
thinking styles. It is fully available online. General reasoning/rationality
works are available here:
[http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Research%20on%20Reas...](http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Research%20on%20Reasoning.html)

Here's a particularly relevant piece:
[http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Research%20on%20Reas...](http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Research%20on%20Reasoning_files/jexppsy98.pdf)
(Various cognitive bias tests are conducted to explore relations between
cognitive functions and challenge assumptions on normative models of
rationality. Really interesting exploration of competence-performance
dichotomy with focus on effects of thinking dispositions vs. algorithmic
limitations. The effect of thinking disposition in achieving normative
rationality is an important consideration that applies to considerations for
improving your own thought/action models)

------
grandalf
To the results oriented person, a physics class is not an intellectual
exploration of the properties of physics, it is a series of lectures,
concepts, exams, and a grade.

Someone who focuses too much on the learning/conceptual aspect might be
tremendously insightful about some of the concepts, but may omit others
because they seem less interesting, etc.

If tested on peak reasoning ability, the "learner" might do far better, yet
might do significantly worse academically.

Many people have a mix of both intellect and results orientation, but they are
independent characteristics. I've known some relatively non-bright people who
are very successful -- they find what works and run with it.

IQ alone is only good for doing well on IQ tests. That doesn't mean it's a
useless measure, but it's far more signicant as a measurement of potential
than of anything else.

This is why valedictorians get into lots of colleges -- they are proven
results getters and have proven that they are able to identify the prize and
win it. Someone may be brighter but not care about the prize or be too lazy to
do what it takes to win.

~~~
azanar
You seem to have this implicit conclusion that being results-oriented is the
better way to go. You highlight the non-bright people you know who are
successful, and declare that they are results-driven. You highlight bright
people who aren't successful, at least with the examples of prizes you pick
out, and declare that they are not results-driven

What about the other permutations?

I can see some of the valedictorians doing something that you don't account
for in your description, nor really in your description of the dumb but
successful: after identifying the prize, they determined if it was a prize
worth having at the cost it demanded. They became valedictorians in part
because there were many other prizes that they identified, but decided not to
pursue.

Not every prize is worth winning, and this is where a dumb, but results-driven
perspective can get people into trouble. It doesn't matter what they are
winning, so long as they have _won_. This strikes me as just as wrong headed
as not caring about results at all.

~~~
grandalf
I totally agree with you, actually. I was not meaning to make a value
judgment.

However I think that it would be nice if everyone thought about what they
really wanted,... such that they became more self-actualized, not necessarily
better able to pursue the various gold stars that society offers.

------
russell
The lead in is about Daniel Kahneman who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for his
study of non-rational thinking in economic decisions. It's amazing that the
noncognative aspects of economic decision making have been neglected for
nearly 250 years. Those of you who have taken an introductory economics course
have noticed the emphasis on "utils" and perfect markets. I guess this is
because economics always wanted to be a science, even if dismal.

The article goes on to discuss the non-correlation between IQ and non-rational
decision making and the lack of measures for rational/non-rational decisions.
Non-rational doesn't mean irrational, rather it encompasses emotions, gut
feelings, biases, and such in decision making.

Web developers and marketeers have some feel for this stuff. That's why we use
web analytics and tinkering with design to see what gets the best click
throughs.

~~~
tokenadult
Actually, in the terminology of the article, and in the terminology of
Kahneman, the issue investigated IS cognitive. For the authors who have done
this body of research, "cognition" is a broader term than "intelligence," and
what goes awry in the wrong decision-making that Kahneman observed is
cognition that is of poor quality, that is irrational.

The article claims that there ARE measures (tests) to distinguish rational
decisions from irrational decisions. Many forms of irrational cognition, as
the author of the submitted article acknowledges, are biased to go wrong in
one way rather than another because of emotional factors and the like, but the
error is still fundamentally a cognitive error.

It is a very good idea for web developers to test their assumptions with
carefully designed observations. Sometimes those observations can lead to
surprising, counterintuitive results that produce a significant business
advantage. The author of the submitted article says (in other writings) that
individuals developing strong skills of rationality is important in a world in
which businesses try to take advantage of irrational thinking to sell products
to consumers.

------
codeodor
This comment is not precisely "on topic," but when I took an AI class at
university, we used Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (AIMA), by
Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig.

I thought the book (website: <http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/>) contained a good
discussion of Rationality vs. Intelligence, which ended up coloring my views
on AI in general.

Worth the read if you're into that. (And for those who may not know: it's a
textbook, and very code intensive. Not for general consumption.)

------
rkts
So how is rationality defined and how is it measured? Does it correlate with
any important life outcomes such as income, academic performance or law-
abidingness? He says that irrationality can be "fixed." Does this fix result
in measurable changes in peoples' lives?

He says that IQ and rationality are "very imperfectly" correlated. What is the
number, exactly?

You seem pretty determined to persuade us that IQ is unimportant. I don't
claim to be an expert on the subject, but HN readers should know there's more
to the debate:

<http://www.sullivan-county.com/id5/murrey.htm>

~~~
jscn
Did you read the article?

According to the article, you are acting rationally if you are behaving in
ways that maximise achievment of your goal(s). So rationality does (tend to)
correlate with doing well in the fields you mentioned (excluding law-
abidingness, perhaps).

The article seems to be using people's susceptibility to the cognitive biases
identified by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky as a measure of rationality.

The author states that there are methods of "fixing" these errors, and that
they should be a priority in education, instead of focusing on "intelligence".

As mentioned elsewhere, the community blog <http://www.lesswrong.com> is
dedicated to the pursuit of instrumental rationality.

~~~
rkts
_behaving in ways that maximise achievment of your goal(s)_

But that's exactly what IQ tests measure, at least in the context of academic
and job performance. IQ tests are used because they are the most economical
predictor of achievement in certain areas.

Stanovich seems to be saying that he can predict some kind of achievement (or
"well-being," whatever that is) by examining people's susceptibility to
certain mental quirks like the sunk cost fallacy. Ok, it's a fine hypothesis,
but where's the data?

~~~
tokenadult
_behaving in ways that maximise achievment of your goal(s)_

 _But that's exactly what IQ tests measure, at least in the context of
academic and job performance._

The longer book, published only at the beginning of this year, by the same
author includes numerous examples of high-IQ individuals NOT achieving their
goals because of nimble but irrational thinking. The kind of tests developed
by Kahneman (and replicated in practice by many other investigators,
repeatedly) show that IQ scores are essentially devoid of predictive value in
showing who will make rational decisions most consistently. (Most human beings
don't make rational decisions particularly often, and having a higher IQ
doesn't lower the rate of irrational decisions on many kinds of tests of
rationality.)

The data can be found in the abundant citations to the primary research
literature in the book by the same author. I'm all too well aware that you
know how to find the book

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=622924>

so rather than repeat myself here, I'll simply mention that the book is well
evidenced, well written, interesting, and a good contribution to the popular
literature by scholars on cognitive psychology.

------
wallflower
After taking the Myers-Briggs test again several years ago as part of a team
bonding exercise, I remember reading the description of my subtype (ISTJ) and
it saying 'in times of stress, you may tend to act rashly and irrationally'.

I believe that even the most logical people will act emotionally under stress.

Isn't the meaning of the cliche that 'someone is human' that they make
mistakes/mess up/show weakness?

~~~
gnaritas
Logical people aren't just irrational emotional people underneath who use
logic when it's easy. I think really logical people fall back on that as their
core behavior, even under stress. That's their nature.

Logic isn't something we abandon under stress, it's something we cling too
even tighter because that's when you need it the most. I've had jobs where
lives literally hung in the balance; extreme stress. It only made me more
rational and less emotional, that's how you cope.

~~~
tokenadult
The author's response to both comments above would be that all human beings
reliably make many irrational ("illogical") decisions every day, and don't
even notice themselves doing so.

------
psranga
I've also observed this; I summarized it as: It's possible to be analytical
without being scientific.

Good to hear that I'm not alone.

------
tokenadult
"Ironically, the Nobel Prize was awarded for studies of cognitive
characteristics that are entirely missing from the most well-known mental
assessment device in the behavioral sciences: intelligence tests."

. . . .

"Nevertheless, recent progress in the cognitive science of rational thought
suggests that nothing--save for money--would stop us from constructing an 'RQ'
test."

~~~
Alex3917
"nothing--save for money--would stop us from constructing an 'RQ' test."

And politics / political correctness. Anyone who actually made and promoted
such a test would probably get shot.

~~~
tokenadult
The individual items for such tests have already been made, without any shots
having been fired. The money barrier is that a test publisher would have to
conduct a validation study of a battery of such items on a norming population,
and a publisher will only do that if it expects a market to develop for such
tests. If people don't want to know who is more rational and who is less
rational--perhaps because of what they would find out about themselves--it may
be difficult initially to establish a market for rationality tests.

~~~
Alex3917
Interesting. And now that I've read Measurement in Psychology I understand
what that means. (Thanks for the tip, btw.) My thinking though was more along
the lines that such a test would prove very controversial if it effectively
allowed employers to screen out, say, all religious people or something like
that. (Without actually asking any questions about whether they believed in
god or what religion they were.)

Incidentally, do you know if anyone has ever made a test of intellectual
curiosity?

~~~
tokenadult
_Incidentally, do you know if anyone has ever made a test of intellectual
curiosity?_

Google tells me that people have worked on the issue.

[http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...](http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED026610&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED026610)

<http://epublications.bond.edu.au/greg_boyle/9/>

[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a785038693~...](http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a785038693~db=all)

I'm not aware of any test battery related to curiosity in wide clinical use.

