
Yes, You’re Irrational, and Yes, That’s OK - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/yes-youre-irrational-and-yes-thats-ok
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api
I often wonder if it's truly as irrational as we think, or if the fallacy is
assuming that all our behavior should be viewed exclusively as centered upon
the individual.

A lot of weirdness looks logical from the perspective of what I call "gene
logic." If you frame us as containers for selfish genes, a lot of weird things
might become "rational."

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crpatino
The fact that it ends up being beneficial to the species does not make the
behavior any more rational. Strictly speaking, the label rational implies a
cognitive phenomenon where some "thinking subject" represents a problem in an
abstract way and applies the rules of logic to solve it.

Informally speaking, of course, people use "rational" as synonym of "smart",
"cleaver" or even "good". In this case, I think the word you are looking for
is closer to "adaptive".

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api
I'm considering the idea that the thinking subject in this case is best
conceptualized as a vehicle for genes. In that case survival/prosperity has a
completely different and even alien meaning from what we typically imagine. To
give a trivial example: if I kill myself in order to save my children, I have
succeeded and this is rational from the genetic point of view. It's not
rational from a _purely_ individualistic / hedonic point of view.

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crpatino
This is precisely my point. You attribute the capacity to reason to chemical
molecules because their behavior seems purposeful. It does not occur to you
that living entities may have goals and achieve those goals by using
information processing means _other_ than Reason(TM).

By the same logic, you could argue that tables are indeed rational to fall
down, because otherwise they would fly into the sky.

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nicktal
Great article and totally stand by this in how I've designed my consumer
product. However, it is quite poorly written. If I had not spent a ton of time
reading academic papers there's no way I would have been able to follow this.

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convexfunction
Indeed, heuristics and biases have evolutionary origins and served their
purpose in the EEA (it really couldn't be any other way...), and indeed,
manipulating people into correcting for these heuristics and biases without
their knowledge may not necessarily be the best course of action.

I wonder how many people will take this to mean that the study of heuristics
and biases is for Misguided Robotic Bad People (economists) and we're Perfect
The Way We Are.

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rbrogan
Nice article. I expect that there will be more and more acceptance that we
cannot always be rational, and I expect there will be more and more products
that help us to leverage our finite willpower to better make rational
decisions. I think there is a relation between willpower and rational
decision-making. (Which may be a reason why it is good to sleep on something
before making a decision.)

