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How rational are you?

How rational do you think you are?

  • As far as I know, all of my beliefs are rational and based on high quality evidence

  • The vast majority of my beliefs are rational and based on high quality evidence

  • Most of my beliefs are rational, but quite a lot are probably irrational too.

  • Some of my beliefs are rational, many are not

  • No idea/I don't really care about being rational

  • I am a tremendous pedant who finds that quibbling the choices makes the long, lonely nights fly by


Results are only viewable after voting.
Problem the first - post-Enlightenment cultural values put "rational" on an (ironically) irrationally high pedestal. So much so that it's the sort of thing that of course you are going to say you are, because to do otherwise is a faux pas.

I've posted this 900 times on RF (including 3 times in the last 2 days) but I like it so will subject other to it until the cows come home :cow::cow::cow::cow:

Bertie [Bertrand Russell] sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that human affairs are carried on in a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was carry them on rationally."

John Maynard Keynes
 

vulcanlogician

Well-Known Member
In general, I'm not really sure about whether it is a good thing to consider being rational important given we aren't ever going to be consistently rational.

Don't get me wrong. I think some of our primate behaviors are just as indispensable as our rational faculties. Our propensity to hug or kiss the ones we love is not a rational inclination. It's primate instinct. But it is nonetheless indispensable.

Chimpanzees and gorillas don't groom each other for reasons of public sanitation, but public sanitation is nonetheless achieved by this instinctual "irrational" activity." But when we use our rational faculties to maximize public sanitation, we achieve more than can be acheived by mere hair-picking.

A human is slightly more intelligent than your average ape... but an ape nonetheless.

Consistent rationality from the majority of us is unrealistic. But that doesn't mean that when we have a public school board meeting, we shouldn't emphasize logically sound arguments. That doesn't mean, when we have a public school board meeting, that we ought not prefer logical arguments over wailing, grunting, and chest-beating.

I suppose it doesn't matter a great deal, unless it leads people to think that the best solution to humanity's problems lie in making us a more rational animal, rather than trying to mitigate the problems while accepting our collective irrationality is insoluble.

We already ARE "the rational animal." We don't need to enforce the idea that humans ought to be rational. They naturally are... to some extent. I propose that we make the best of this situation (ie. harvest all the benefits, and allow that aspect of our nature to shine) rather than insist that every last ape among our ranks needs to be as rational as possible.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
The people would like to know - given "rational" is entirely an artifice box some humans made up because they felt like it, what makes something go in that box and not some other entirely artificed box humans made up because they felt like it? Or two boxes, three boxes, fifteen boxes simultaneously?
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Simple question: How rational do you think you are?

By beliefs I mean things that are at least contested/debatable to some degree: political beliefs, contested scientific beliefs, religious or irreligious beliefs, beliefs relating to culture, history, psychology, etc. rather than obvious fact like water freezes at 0c, or injecting creme de menthe into your testicles is likely to be painful.

Is being rational important to you? What are the limits of human rationality (or your rationality)?

I think most of our choices are based on feelings. Therefore not rational, however we do our best to come up with rational reasons for them after the fact.

Especially when lacking sufficient information which is a majority of the time.

So I picked the last option because going about trying to convince folks I am rational is mostly pointless.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Simple question: How rational do you think you are?

By beliefs I mean things that are at least contested/debatable to some degree: political beliefs, contested scientific beliefs, religious or irreligious beliefs, beliefs relating to culture, history, psychology, etc. rather than obvious fact like water freezes at 0c, or injecting creme de menthe into your testicles is likely to be painful.

Is being rational important to you? What are the limits of human rationality (or your rationality)?
I chose option 3. I have some believes I have thought long and hard about and discussed them with other, refining them in the process. I think I have rational positions on those.
Other believes are more ad hoc and I haven't had the time or opportunity to evaluate them thoroughly. Those are likely to change with more information.
 

MikeF

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Option 1 is incredibly unrealistic, even with the conditional "As far as I know,." We all have biases and emotional dispositions. Some of them may float under the radar, but even I must admit that these things influence my perceptions more than I'd like (and in a way I am able to catch myself in sometimes).

Ironically, it is pretty irrational to consider oneself so rational :confused:

Unless of course for that individual a position considered rational and based on high quality evidence defined belief, below which would be current working hypotheses, and below that would be uniformed guesses, and below that would be the category of don't know, don't care.

I would also say that emotionaly wanting or needing something to be true, or be the case, cripples reason. The stronger the emotional desire in the want or need, the greater the degree confirmation bias will interfere with reasoning ability. It is not only possitive emotions where this applies. Fear of a particular truth would also apply as it is simply wanting or needing the truth to not be the case.

Might those who downplay the value of reason have such emotional needs and wants?
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
My values stem from personal preferences.
They're neither-right-nor-wrong moral relativism.

They aren't rational....they just are the result of genes
& experience. But neither are they "irrational", which
connotes wrongful reasoning. Assuming the values
that I have, reason can then be applied to decide
how to act, & what politics I support. That's where
"rational" comes in, ie, logically reasoning from the
premises. The results certainly aren't "The Truth".
So it's a mix of rational & not.

Thus far, I'm the only one who selected...
<Some of my beliefs are rational, many are not>

Yes as long as you don't do claim something which is not true of the world as such. Example regardless of you, but just one example: Humans has individual rights. In some versions of that, that is not true of the world. :)
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Unless of course for that individual a position considered rational and based on high quality evidence defined belief, below which would be current working hypotheses, and below that would be uniformed guesses, and below that would be the category of don't know, don't care.

I would also say that emotionaly wanting or needing something to be true, or be the case, cripples reason. The stronger the emotional desire in the want or need, the greater the degree confirmation bias will interfere with reasoning ability. It is not only possitive emotions where this applies. Fear of a particular truth would also apply as it is simply wanting or needing the truth to not be the case.

Might those who downplay the value of reason have such emotional needs and wants?

I think you should start checking out the science of how brains works. Since we have brain scans now, it has been tested if humans are capable of being rational as you claim and the answer is no.
BTW the value of reason is an emotion.
 

MikeF

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I think you should start checking out the science of how brains works. Since we have brain scans now, it has been tested if humans are capable of being rational as you claim and the answer is no.
BTW the value of reason is an emotion.

So my post was emotionally irrational?
 

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
I chose the third option. I try my best to evaluate my beliefs using evidence, logic, and reason, and I think a lot of my beliefs are able to stand scrutiny against evidence and logic (especially the ones about which I have thought the longest and most extensively). However, being human, I'm also unavoidably going to have my own biases and lapses in reasoning at times, which may manifest more in some areas than others. I believe that these aspects of human nature will never change; we can only temper them with education, open-mindedness, and critical thinking, but they will never become absent from human nature.

As for whether rationality is important, if we define rationality as the "faculty of soundly employing logic and evaluating evidence," I think that's essential in a lot of contexts, but not always. If I'm reading about a major new scientific discovery or historical finding, rational analysis is crucial. If I'm talking to friends or trying to understand the emotional characters of different people, strict rationality may not be as important as intuition (tempered by other faculties as well), experience, knowledge about psychology, empathy, etc. Rationality may still be useful when assessing the input from these other domains, though.

In my opinion, by far the most significant expression of rationality is to identify our limits as humans and seek to temper them, especially by openness to learning and new evidence or arguments. On the other hand, if we shut that door of self-improvement and instrospection because we think we're already perfectly rational, we're going to be far more prone to all sorts of irrationality, bias, and lack of discipline, whether intellectually or emotionally.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
Simple question: How rational do you think you are?

By beliefs I mean things that are at least contested/debatable to some degree: political beliefs, contested scientific beliefs, religious or irreligious beliefs, beliefs relating to culture, history, psychology, etc. rather than obvious fact like water freezes at 0c, or injecting creme de menthe into your testicles is likely to be painful.

Is being rational important to you? What are the limits of human rationality (or your rationality)?
In any sort of absolute measure, I'm not particularly rational, I would hazard.
But compared to most humans, I'm amazeballs.
 
I don't understand the last option, can someone explain?

I wanna pick it

If you create a poll asking "Is the sun hot?" YES or NO.

Someone will turn up and say "hot is an arbitrary human construct to describe a kind of energy transformation that occurs...":D

So it was better than saying "this poll does not reflect my thinking" or some other option.
 
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