
Do Rational People Exist? - gwern
http://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/do-rationalists-exist/
======
jasode
>They behave more like ideal economic actors.

I believe the author is making the mistake of equating the " _rational_ " in "
_economics ' rational actors_" to be people who choose _wisely_. The type of
wise choices that most of society would agree to lead to positive outcomes.

My understanding is that formal economics is using "rational" as in "rational
choice theory"[1]. It's a specific _term-of-art_ that's different from the
everyday usage of "rational." It's not some positive measure to satisfy a
global optimum. A "rational actor" is simply someone who reliably arrives at
the same consistent choices given the knowledge and preferences he happens to
have. If a consumer chooses CocaCola over water even though soda's sugar
content causes obesity and teeth decay, the consumer is still classified as
"rational" even though it looks like a suboptimal choice within the bigger
picture of healthy living. Economics' rational choices satisfy a _local
optimum_ (consumer's imperfect preferences) and not a global one.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_actor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_actor)

~~~
pash
Yes, that's basically correct. To an economist, you're rational (modulo some
technicalities) if

    
    
        (a) when you have to, you can always decide which of two things
            you want more (yes, it's OK to want some things equally),
    
        (b) whenever you want A more than B and B more than C, then
            you want A more than C, and
    
        (c) whatever you say you want (or think you want) your behavior
            actually reflects (a) and (b).
    

If you're not rational in this sense, please stay indoors, or at least refrain
from trading with bearded men in tweed, because a perfectly scrupulous
economist will take you for everything you're worth by giving you exactly what
you want. :P

For details, see these lecture notes [0], particularly the axioms of choice
theory on slide 4. (Or take a micro theory course!)

0\. [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-03-microeconomic-
the...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-03-microeconomic-theory-and-
public-policy-fall-2010/lecture-notes/MIT14_03F10_lec03.pdf)

~~~
jamesaguilar
Problem is, few people are actually like this. Behavioral economics have
demonstrated that humans are vulnerable to hyperbolic discounting, which is
irrational. Because what I want for myself now is different from what I want
for myself next week. Telling people who are vulnerable to this to stay
indoors is roughly the same as telling everyone to stay indoors.

Personally, I think the initial question is ill formed. It would be like
asking, "do tall people exist?" Although now that I read the article, what the
author is really answering is the question of whether rationality along
different tests is correlated. That is, is there a common underlying variable.
How fascinating.

~~~
spacehome
I'm not sure hyperbolic discounting is all that irrational.

Example from Wikipedia illustrating hyperbolic discounting: "For instance:
"Would you prefer a dollar today or three dollars tomorrow?" or "Would you
prefer a dollar in one year or three dollars in one year and one day?" For
certain range of offerings, a significant fraction of subjects will take the
lesser amount today, but will gladly wait one extra day in a year in order to
receive the higher amount instead."

To me, the biggest risk is the counterparty risk that you'll never see the
other person again. I myself would take $1 today from someone I've never met
over $3 tomorrow, because I'm quite skeptical they'd even show up. Of course,
the chance a person shows back up 365 vs. 366 days from now is pretty much
identical, so I'd take the $3.

~~~
ansible
I agree with your thoughts on hyperbolic discounting.

Maybe I'll be dead next year. Maybe I just don't trust you.

Probabilistic reasoning is a tricky business. Also, I can reason about the
likelihood that the store is going to have a loaf of bread tomorrow because we
have experience dealing with that every day. The kind of scenarios concocted
by economists are quite odd. Rarely is a stranger just giving you money with
no strings attached.

------
stcredzero
From my personal experience: If one is able to dig deeply enough, for what I
guess to be something like 90% of the population, there is a level where
people just declare "I feel that way" and there is no logic, nor even the
barest respect for rationality. What's more, these feelings are very often
used to justify the arbitrary bad treatment of others who are deemed to be
"wrong" or "inferior."

All of these feelings have some "rationalization" as window dressing, but
ultimately, it comes down to irrational feelings of tribal affiliation. This
invariably comes out in politics and professional life.

We're goddamned grunting, screaming apes who have the ability to occasionally
surpass our primitive nature and are well suited to being organized into
groups. The vast majority of us do not have the intellectual integrity to hold
consistently to a set of rational principles to the nth degree. In the end,
our feelings hold sway, and our empathy often fails.

Prejudice is a part of our very nature, and it comes out all the time. There
is no need for it to be attached to race or gender, and our society doesn't
equip us with the intellectual tools to recognize it at the substrate level.
Rather, our present societies are organized _around_ it.

~~~
gdewilde
If you are on the receiving end of the abuse it does get easier to see it for
what it is. If the collective asserts your inferiority you don't have a lot of
options besides from thinking for yourself.

At the same time it is much harder for those most favored by the community to
reject the special treatment... if not impossible.

I like how you point out that race, gender and sexual preference are just
extreme examples. I was sort of stuck there but it indeed seems to extend to
the color of the nail polish, the brand of clothing, the choice of OS,
political preference..... and pretty much everything else.

I hope this topic doesn't change hn into reddit. (just kidding)

~~~
tormeh
Watch this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4Xe6Dlp0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4Xe6Dlp0Y)

~~~
gdewilde
lol, her whole life directed for her to the point she can point at her picture
and say "that isn't me".

Sam Berns would be the other extreme.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36m1o-tM05g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36m1o-tM05g)

------
natural219
Okay, so there's a lot to break down here and a lot of conflations taking
place.

At a base level we can understand, I know people in my life who seem more
"rational" in general than people I know who I would describe as more
"emotional". In this sense, you can think of "rational" thinking as any
thought-pattern that activates the cortex -- roughly speaking, the region of
the the brain associated with higher-order and abstract thinking.

On a more nuanced level, the author seems to be making a case about capital-R
"Rationalism", as espoused by communities like Less Wrong, Effective Altruism,
capital-L Libertarians, and the singularity wonks. In this, I feel like the
author is making a huge conflation that I feel is kind of misleading and
rather insulting to people who don't buy into one small communities ideas
about cognitive bias and logical fallacies.

Often times, "evidence" of "irrational" behaviors, as displayed for example in
the Linda problem and the Wason task, typically fail in that the askers don't
understand language or how it's typically used. There are loads of people that
have a rational bent that will get these problems wrong, simply because they
don't put too much thought into it, or they're trying to answer a question
linguistically, rather than purely "Rationally".

I have a lot of theories as to why LessWrong / Libertarian types develop this
inflated sense of self importance about their "Rational" outlook of the world,
but it's pedagogical, and probably insulting to those involved, so I'll leave
it for another day.

~~~
whybroke
Are Libertarians rational?

I see absolute primacy given to ownership from people who live on land seized
from Indians.

A belief in enforcement of contracts on people who didn't sign them, namely
people born after the agreements were made.

The claim that utilities such as sewage and water supply would be better
served if there were countless duplicate sewage systems in each city owned by
different companies.

The assertion that the current ISP throttling issue would be fixed by
eliminating the FCC.

The claim that the problem of the commons does not exist.

So, I humbly submit, that the claim to rationality is not the same as its
possession.

------
Liesmith
A much better question than "do rational people exist" would be "do people
generally behave in a rational way?" Who cares if I'm not 100% rational all
the time. As long as people in general tend towards rationality then it makes
sense to talk about 'rational people.'

------
onetimeusename
downvote me if you wish but honestly the rationality movement seems like it is
more interested in being elite than anything meaningful. If all the
rationality movement can provide as a measure of success is just higher
performance on some silly tests designed by psychologists to essentially trick
you with wording then I would want nothing to do with it.

~~~
vertex-four
Unfortunately, one of my social IRC channels - one which used to revolve
primarily around respect for emotions - got invaded by a certain well-known
rationalist Internet community. Immediately, where channel operators hadn't
been required for the past four years, they were left having to enforce simple
rules on the new people, which they inevitably argued against. Every other
week, there are serious issues involving violation of social etiquette.

Now, this isn't a problem with "aspies", as some might think. The channel,
before this, had a remarkably high concentration of people with aspergers, and
some with autism. This is a problem with people who honestly do not see
emotions as a thing that they should care about. That is the rationalist
movement at its core, for all they talk about, from my perspective.

~~~
dthunt
Please elaborate; I would like to know more about this incident.

------
skywhopper
I think the most important thing to consider here is that these logic
questions they use to test "rationality" are awkward word puzzles, and the
test reveals more about how well people can work out what's being asked than
their underlying rationality. The fact that most people would jump onto the
"bank teller and feminist" option in the conjunction fallacy test is because
the question as posed contains mainly feminist-related ideas, and so the
brain's natural tendency is to jump to the answer containing the word
feminism. That's less about rationality and more about how attuned are you to
the likelihood that the questions you're being asked are worded in a tricky
way.

~~~
gwern
> I think the most important thing to consider here is that these logic
> questions they use to test "rationality" are awkward word puzzles

They aren't. Have you looked at the CRT questions? There's nothing tricky
about them, the challenge is simply _actually checking your answer_. And if
it's 'just' a word puzzle, why is the correlation with IQ so low? And why does
this sort of rationality inversely correlate with screwing your life up in
various ways (see the research discussed in my comment in OP)? That's an odd
thing for an 'awkward word puzzle' to do.

> The fact that most people would jump onto the "bank teller and feminist"
> option in the conjunction fallacy test is because the question as posed
> contains mainly feminist-related ideas, and so the brain's natural tendency
> is to jump to the answer containing the word feminism.

You know that was the very first criticism leveled against Kahneman &
Tversky's conjunction fallacy results and they long ago showed that other
wordings gave the fallacy too?

------
gcanyon
It's unfortunate that, as a person interested in puzzles, I've seen almost all
of the common tests for rationality, lack of bias, etc., etc. So I have little
to no way to assess whether I would pass these tests, because, for example, I
first saw the "A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more
than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" puzzle when I was in grade
school.

Has anyone published research-level assessments that I _didn 't_ see decades
ago?

~~~
Liesmith
How is basic problem solving a test for rationality? Artists and serial
killers and the mentally ill can learn to count.

~~~
dthunt
Doing pretty well at basic reasoning skills has a lot to do with good
decisionmaking, in that it's required.

------
haberman
The article has an unstated assumption that being more rational is better.
While clearly there are benefits to less biased thinking, there are also
drawbacks that are supported by research.

Martin Seligman wrote a book called _Learned Optimism_ that deeply explores
the issue of optimistic vs. pessimistic explanatory styles. To oversimplify,
when something bad happens to a pessimist they tell themselves it is
permanent, personal, and universal, whereas optimists tell themselves it is
temporary, impersonal, and specific. When something good happens, the two
groups do the opposite.

Here is an excerpt from the book about the unfortunate evidence that depressed
people have fewer cognitive biases. Snipped/edited for length:

 _There is considerable evidence that depressed people, though sadder, are
wiser.

Ten years ago Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, then graduate students at the
University of Pennsylvania, did an experiment in which people were given
differing degrees of control over the lighting of a light. Some were able to
control the light perfectly: It went on every time they pressed a button, and
it never went on if they didn't press. The other people, however, had no
control at all: The light went on regardless of whether they pressed the
button.

The people in both groups were asked to judge, as accurately as they could,
how much control they had. Depressed people were very accurate, both when they
had control and when they didn't. The nondepressed people shocked us. They
were accurate when they had control, but when helpless they were undeterred:
they still judged that they had a great deal of control.

[...]

These have been consistent findings over the last decade. Depressed people --
most of whom turn out to be pessimists -- accurately judge how much control
they have. Nondepressed people -- optimists, for the most part -- believe they
have much more control over things than they actually do, particularly when
they are helpless and have no control at all.

Another kind of evidence for the thesis that depressed people, though sadder,
are wiser involves judgments of skill. Several years ago, Newsweek reported
that 80 percent of American men think they are in the top half of social
skills. They must have been nondepressed American men, if the results of Peter
Lewinsohn, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues are
valid. These investigators put depressed and non-depressed patients in a panel
discussions and later had the patients judge how well they did. To what extent
were they persuasive? Likable? As judged by a panel of observers, depressed
patients weren't very persuasive or likable; poor social skills are a symptom
of depression. Depressed patients judged their lack of skill accurately. The
surprising finding was from the nondepressed group. They markedly
overestimated their skills, judging themselves as much more persuasive and
appealing than the judges thought they were.

[...]

Overall, then, there is clear evidence that nondepressed people distort
reality in a self-serving direction and depressed people tend to see reality
accurately. How does this evidence, which is about depression, tie into
optimism and pessimism? Statistically, most depressed people score in the
pessimistic range of explanatory style, and most nondepressed people score
optimistically._

So basically the research is suggesting that unbiased thinkers tend to be more
pessimistic and depressed than people who irrationally distort the world into
being better than it actually is. What a bummer.

~~~
gwern
I don't see how depressive realism refutes the various correlations and
observations in OP...?

> So basically the research is suggesting that unbiased thinkers tend to be
> more pessimistic and depressed than people who irrationally distort the
> world into being better than it actually is. What a bummer.

How is that wrong? Suppose you looked at lottery winners and successful
entrepreneurs; no doubt they are optimistic and risk-seeking. Does that mean
optimism and risk-seeking and playing the lottery would make everyone better
off...?

~~~
haberman
> I don't see how depressive realism refutes the various correlations and
> observations in OP...?

The purpose of my message was not to refute any of the article's claims, but
rather to challenge the unstated assumption that people who avoid cognitive
biases are necessarily better off.

For example the article asks where there is a "hyper-rational elite." This is
implying that people who avoid cognitive bias are better than everyone else.
As I said before, I think that rationality has lots of obvious benefits, but
there are also benefits to irrational optimism.

~~~
gwern
> but rather to challenge the unstated assumption that people who avoid
> cognitive biases are necessarily better off.

But you haven't. Maybe depressive realism is better for getting things done -
if, you know, you can get the 'realism' without the 'major mental disorder'
part. (And why didn't you consider manic-depressive disorder? If being
optimistic is so great, surely being manic is even greater...) Pointing to a
literally diseased example doesn't raise much of a challenge at all.

~~~
haberman
I find it somewhat ironic that the people who are most staunchly advocating
the superiority of rationality in their replies to my post are displaying the
greatest cognitive bias by advancing a position that no one has offered any
empirical evidence for.

And just to clarify, I wasn't even arguing that optimism is _better_ than
rationality. I am only calling into question the assumption that it is
necessarily _worse._

In other words, the article (in my opinion) assumed that R > O always. I
wanted to challenge this assumption that argue that R <?> O. I am not arguing,
as some people seem to suppose, that O > R always.

> Maybe depressive realism is better for getting things done - if, you know,
> you can get the 'realism' without the 'major mental disorder' part.

Maybe, but that is pure speculation that has no support.

Seligman's book offers a fair amount of evidence that optimists out-perform
pessimists (the latter is not the same as being depressed, though they are
correlated) in many areas of life.

> And why didn't you consider manic-depressive disorder? If being optimistic
> is so great, surely being manic is even greater...

Again, pure speculation. "More of a good thing is always better" is not a
principle you can reasonably assume.

~~~
gwern
> In other words, the article (in my opinion) assumed that R > O always. I
> wanted to challenge this assumption that argue that R <?> O. I am not
> arguing, as some people seem to suppose, that O > R always.

So, you don't have evidence for it, you don't believe it, yet you're going to
argue aggressively for it and call me biased to boot. What distinguishes your
comments from garden-variety trolling?

~~~
haberman
> So, you don't have evidence for it

If by "it" you mean "O > R always", then no, I don't have evidence for it nor
do I believe it. What I do believe and have a whole book of evidence for is
"not (R > O always)". That is what I am arguing for, and have been from my
very first message.

My opinion of "not (R > O always)" would only be controversial if you believe
that "R > O always". But "R > O always" has no evidence supporting it (at
least none that anyone has presented or that I am aware of).

------
lilsunnybee
Really not a fan of the current gray font color trend. -_-

~~~
rejschaap
At least we managed to answer the question "do irrational people exist?"

------
skywhopper
"Rationality" is overrated. Our lives are not pure economics, thank goodness.
A purely rational person would likely not experience any joy or love. But if
they were capable of doing so, they wouldn't opt to pursue those things
because they would need to spend time doing research into each economic
decision they made.

~~~
endtime
This is commonly known as the Straw Vulcan Fallacy. If a course of action
leads to less total utility (including fun, happiness, etc.) then choosing
that course of action is irrational. This obviously includes overanalysis.

For one data point, I stopped attending the NYC Less Wrong meetup (through
which I happen to know the author) when I met my wife (through said meetup)
and decided I'd had enough of the sex, drugs, and roc^H^H^Hstrategy games
lifestyle.

------
dnautics
I suspect people with asperger's are often 'more rational'.

------
tehabe
No. Next.

