Rational difficulties
September 5, 2021 6:02 PM Subscribe
Why is it so hard to be rational? "In everyday life, the biggest obstacle to metacognition is what psychologists call the “illusion of fluency.” As we perform increasingly familiar tasks, we monitor our performance less rigorously; this happens when we drive, or fold laundry, and also when we think thoughts we’ve thought many times before. Studying for a test by reviewing your notes, Fleming writes, is a bad idea, because it’s the mental equivalent of driving a familiar route. “Experiments have repeatedly shown that testing ourselves—forcing ourselves to practice exam questions, or writing out what we know—is more effective,” he writes. The trick is to break the illusion of fluency, and to encourage an “awareness of ignorance.”"
"Fleming notes that metacognition is a skill. Some people are better at it than others. Galef believes that, by “calibrating” our metacognitive minds, we can improve our performance and so become more rational. In a section of her book called “Calibration Practice,” she offers readers a collection of true-or-false statements (“Mammals and dinosaurs coexisted”; “Scurvy is caused by a deficit of Vitamin C”); your job is to weigh in on the veracity of each statement while also indicating whether you are fifty-five, sixty-five, seventy-five, eighty-five, or ninety-five per cent confident in your determination. A perfectly calibrated individual, Galef suggests, will be right seventy-five per cent of the time about the answers in which she is seventy-five per cent confident. With practice, I got fairly close to “perfect calibration”: I still answered some questions wrong, but I was right about how wrong I would be.
There are many calibration methods. In the “equivalent bet” technique, which Galef attributes to the decision-making expert Douglas Hubbard, you imagine that you’ve been offered two ways of winning ten thousand dollars: you can either bet on the truth of some statement (for instance, that self-driving cars will be on the road within a year) or reach blindly into a box full of balls in the hope of retrieving a marked ball. Suppose the box contains four balls. Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box? (I’d prefer the odds of the box.) Now suppose the box contains twenty-four balls—would your preference change? By imagining boxes with different numbers of balls, you can get a sense of how much you really believe in your assertions. For Galef, the box that’s “equivalent” to her belief in the imminence of self-driving cars contains nine balls, suggesting that she has eleven-per-cent confidence in that prediction. Such techniques may reveal that our knowledge is more fine-grained than we realize; we just need to look at it more closely. Of course, we could be making out detail that isn’t there." "
"Fleming notes that metacognition is a skill. Some people are better at it than others. Galef believes that, by “calibrating” our metacognitive minds, we can improve our performance and so become more rational. In a section of her book called “Calibration Practice,” she offers readers a collection of true-or-false statements (“Mammals and dinosaurs coexisted”; “Scurvy is caused by a deficit of Vitamin C”); your job is to weigh in on the veracity of each statement while also indicating whether you are fifty-five, sixty-five, seventy-five, eighty-five, or ninety-five per cent confident in your determination. A perfectly calibrated individual, Galef suggests, will be right seventy-five per cent of the time about the answers in which she is seventy-five per cent confident. With practice, I got fairly close to “perfect calibration”: I still answered some questions wrong, but I was right about how wrong I would be.
There are many calibration methods. In the “equivalent bet” technique, which Galef attributes to the decision-making expert Douglas Hubbard, you imagine that you’ve been offered two ways of winning ten thousand dollars: you can either bet on the truth of some statement (for instance, that self-driving cars will be on the road within a year) or reach blindly into a box full of balls in the hope of retrieving a marked ball. Suppose the box contains four balls. Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box? (I’d prefer the odds of the box.) Now suppose the box contains twenty-four balls—would your preference change? By imagining boxes with different numbers of balls, you can get a sense of how much you really believe in your assertions. For Galef, the box that’s “equivalent” to her belief in the imminence of self-driving cars contains nine balls, suggesting that she has eleven-per-cent confidence in that prediction. Such techniques may reveal that our knowledge is more fine-grained than we realize; we just need to look at it more closely. Of course, we could be making out detail that isn’t there." "
to encourage an “awareness of ignorance.”
I got this.
posted by jimfl at 6:27 PM on September 5, 2021 [10 favorites]
I was just talking about similar topics with a friend the other day, about the difference between mathematics and philosophy. I said mathematics (his field) had facts and certainties, but philosophy (mine) just had you having feelings and saying, "Huh, it's weird that I have feelings about this topic, I wonder where they came from and whether they are valid." I taught philosophy for five years at a community college, and I had a lot of students who were diesel mechanics or ex-cons and had no desire to be there, but they all loved it in the end, because everyone has feelings (/moral intuitions) about important questions, and you can show people how to interrogate those feelings and figure out whether their feelings are justified or unjustified (/rational or irrational).
I think I'm a pretty metacognitive person -- I am INCREDIBLY interested in why I'm thinking what I'm thinking, and I LOVE to analyze that.
But what's particularly interesting to me is that one of my kids is CRAZY metacognitive. He's not only interested in learning how to be right when he's wrong, but he's SO curious about WHY he's wrong and how he ended up somewhere wrong. He's constantly engaged in this metacognitive monitoring of his own thoughts, and so curious about how his own thought processes go awry. All of his teachers have mentioned it, since he was in kindergarten. And while he gets totally frustrated when he doesn't understand things, he doesn't get frustrated when he's wrong; he's just super-curious about how he ended up wrong, so he can fix the error for next time. And I get why his teachers comment on it all the time -- it is SO FASCINATING to watch a child who is constantly monitoring his own cognition and who is fascinated by where he went wrong. He's often very funny because he will comment on his own cognitive errors, but he's totally unbothered by them. (Best comment: "Does autocorrect change correct words to wrong words?" "YES ALL THE TIME" "Oh, I wouldn't know -- I never spell anything right." HE REALLY DOES NOT.)
We started watching The Good Place together when he was six, and at ten he is an ALARMINGLY sophisticated philosophical thinker. I have to explain things like "why are people racist, racism is stupid," but he 100% gets the trolley problem.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:48 PM on September 5, 2021 [32 favorites]
I think I'm a pretty metacognitive person -- I am INCREDIBLY interested in why I'm thinking what I'm thinking, and I LOVE to analyze that.
But what's particularly interesting to me is that one of my kids is CRAZY metacognitive. He's not only interested in learning how to be right when he's wrong, but he's SO curious about WHY he's wrong and how he ended up somewhere wrong. He's constantly engaged in this metacognitive monitoring of his own thoughts, and so curious about how his own thought processes go awry. All of his teachers have mentioned it, since he was in kindergarten. And while he gets totally frustrated when he doesn't understand things, he doesn't get frustrated when he's wrong; he's just super-curious about how he ended up wrong, so he can fix the error for next time. And I get why his teachers comment on it all the time -- it is SO FASCINATING to watch a child who is constantly monitoring his own cognition and who is fascinated by where he went wrong. He's often very funny because he will comment on his own cognitive errors, but he's totally unbothered by them. (Best comment: "Does autocorrect change correct words to wrong words?" "YES ALL THE TIME" "Oh, I wouldn't know -- I never spell anything right." HE REALLY DOES NOT.)
We started watching The Good Place together when he was six, and at ten he is an ALARMINGLY sophisticated philosophical thinker. I have to explain things like "why are people racist, racism is stupid," but he 100% gets the trolley problem.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:48 PM on September 5, 2021 [32 favorites]
"A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite enquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour, —the real labour of thinking." — Joshua Reynolds.
I don't think this is slam so much as it's a recognition of the prevailing human condition. Human cognition is imperfect, massively so, and doing your thinking so as to avoid the known traps can take a lot of work and a lot of time.
posted by Flexagon at 6:55 PM on September 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't think this is slam so much as it's a recognition of the prevailing human condition. Human cognition is imperfect, massively so, and doing your thinking so as to avoid the known traps can take a lot of work and a lot of time.
posted by Flexagon at 6:55 PM on September 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: metacognition is a skill.
posted by vrakatar at 7:05 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by vrakatar at 7:05 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
I sent this test to my partner and they sent back the question about mammals and dinosaurs coexisting with the caption, "I hate this. This question is complex and I don't know if the quiz author knows this. My answer would be 'no' because they weren't mammals by our definition yet, though they were incredibly mammal-like."
100% confidence that my partner is a nerd.
posted by brook horse at 7:22 PM on September 5, 2021 [33 favorites]
100% confidence that my partner is a nerd.
posted by brook horse at 7:22 PM on September 5, 2021 [33 favorites]
Back in the 90's, I took a bunch of. CS with a vague idea that maybe I'd go to grad school, which I never did. One of them was a computer architecture class, from a text that was based on the Motorola 68k chip.
So I had some difficulty with this material, and I needed a high grade on the final. I made a clean copy, in a new notebook, of all my course notes, slowly. When I didn't understand something in the original, I'd leave a blank space in the new copy, and return later.
This was very effective for me, although of course the magic of the clean handwritten copy may be mostly in that it is a device that forces you to review everything slowly and systematically, if you do it like I did it. OR maybe it lights up enough of the active learning juju to be a factor on its own? I'm sure it's hard to know.
I wish I had done this kind of thing when I was an undergrad - I could have been a contender! It was like I was possessed by rationality and a vision of order for a few days. My handwriting, normally a total mess, is neat and clear, in back letters, in the clean copy notebook (which I still have!).
posted by thelonius at 7:31 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
So I had some difficulty with this material, and I needed a high grade on the final. I made a clean copy, in a new notebook, of all my course notes, slowly. When I didn't understand something in the original, I'd leave a blank space in the new copy, and return later.
This was very effective for me, although of course the magic of the clean handwritten copy may be mostly in that it is a device that forces you to review everything slowly and systematically, if you do it like I did it. OR maybe it lights up enough of the active learning juju to be a factor on its own? I'm sure it's hard to know.
I wish I had done this kind of thing when I was an undergrad - I could have been a contender! It was like I was possessed by rationality and a vision of order for a few days. My handwriting, normally a total mess, is neat and clear, in back letters, in the clean copy notebook (which I still have!).
posted by thelonius at 7:31 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
Rationalism sounds pretty good on paper. But people that call themselves "rationalists"? Oh boy.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:51 PM on September 5, 2021 [28 favorites]
posted by simmering octagon at 7:51 PM on September 5, 2021 [28 favorites]
I totally agree that reviewing from notes is a bad idea, because I take terrible notes. I'm glad I was ahead of my time in doing that.
posted by zompist at 8:05 PM on September 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by zompist at 8:05 PM on September 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I said mathematics (his field) had facts and certainties, but philosophy (mine) just had you having feelings
I have extraordinarily bad news.
posted by mhoye at 8:09 PM on September 5, 2021 [35 favorites]
I have extraordinarily bad news.
posted by mhoye at 8:09 PM on September 5, 2021 [35 favorites]
the magic of the clean handwritten copy may be mostly in that it is a device that forces you to review everything slowly and systematically
The reason this worked for you also wasn't just the review, but the physical action (of writing) associated with your study -- an example of Kinesthetic Learning. Works for me, too - but not for everyone.
posted by Rash at 9:31 PM on September 5, 2021 [8 favorites]
The reason this worked for you also wasn't just the review, but the physical action (of writing) associated with your study -- an example of Kinesthetic Learning. Works for me, too - but not for everyone.
posted by Rash at 9:31 PM on September 5, 2021 [8 favorites]
There are areas where philosophy touches on mathematics, and areas where mathematics touches on philosophy. It seems striking, though, that these are mostly one-way contacts - a philosopher with new ideas about about utilitarian calculus or quantas of knowledge isn't going to extend the boundaries of mathematics; mathematicians pondering about the actual existence of mathematical objects aren't exactly pushing the limits of classical philosphy either.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:47 PM on September 5, 2021
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:47 PM on September 5, 2021
a C.I.A. analyst turned libertarian social thinker
::shudder::
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:53 PM on September 5, 2021 [18 favorites]
::shudder::
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:53 PM on September 5, 2021 [18 favorites]
The author’s use of “reader, they got engaged” was soo meta and delightful.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:53 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by iamkimiam at 11:53 PM on September 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
The joke I heard was that a "Mathematics department is the second-cheapest for a college to run, since all they require is a supply of paper, some pencils, and a wastebasket. The cheapest, of course, is Philosophy, since they don't need the wastebasket."
I recently started reading Keynes' Treatise on Probability which I'm finding ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING as an artifact of its time (back when Carnap and them were still looking for an inductive mechanism that allowed for a credible step to be taken from empirical observation to scientific certainty, before Quine and Popper put that whole project to bed). As I understand it, the mechanism that Keynes ends up proposing is quite similar to the 75% thing described above.
A section of the forward has also stuck with me: "[w]hen economists have ceased quarreling over his theories, logicians and historians may still find a great deal in Keynes' work which commands their respectful attention." Keynes in general is pretty out-of-vogue right now, and I'm too tired to run down the sources listed in the New Yorker article, but I find it very amusing the thought that these people are reinventing a framework that he laid out a hundred years ago, as it were pretty far outside the realm of his traditionally-regarded intellectual fame.
posted by 7segment at 12:00 AM on September 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
I recently started reading Keynes' Treatise on Probability which I'm finding ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING as an artifact of its time (back when Carnap and them were still looking for an inductive mechanism that allowed for a credible step to be taken from empirical observation to scientific certainty, before Quine and Popper put that whole project to bed). As I understand it, the mechanism that Keynes ends up proposing is quite similar to the 75% thing described above.
A section of the forward has also stuck with me: "[w]hen economists have ceased quarreling over his theories, logicians and historians may still find a great deal in Keynes' work which commands their respectful attention." Keynes in general is pretty out-of-vogue right now, and I'm too tired to run down the sources listed in the New Yorker article, but I find it very amusing the thought that these people are reinventing a framework that he laid out a hundred years ago, as it were pretty far outside the realm of his traditionally-regarded intellectual fame.
posted by 7segment at 12:00 AM on September 6, 2021 [9 favorites]
>Rationalism sounds pretty good on paper. But people that call themselves "rationalists"? Oh boy.
The "replay this logic for yourself" aspect of rational thought was co-opted by empire-builders using their base knowledge and assumptions to form some kind of empirical knowledge -- to which gave the badge of objectivity.
I thought we'd risen through a watershed that we don't share common knowledge or assumptions and we don't have complete information needed to be perfectly rational. That's to say: everyone has bias. (While rational thought helps identify those biases, rationality doesn't mean I'll fight for your cause.)
And I thought we'd passed a watershed further on where we listen to the lived experience of outsiders because our baseline knowledge and assumptions aren't universal and our situation isn't the exception which overrules theirs. That's to say that their lives embody that knowledge and we build trusting relationships with each person.
posted by k3ninho at 12:18 AM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
The "replay this logic for yourself" aspect of rational thought was co-opted by empire-builders using their base knowledge and assumptions to form some kind of empirical knowledge -- to which gave the badge of objectivity.
I thought we'd risen through a watershed that we don't share common knowledge or assumptions and we don't have complete information needed to be perfectly rational. That's to say: everyone has bias. (While rational thought helps identify those biases, rationality doesn't mean I'll fight for your cause.)
And I thought we'd passed a watershed further on where we listen to the lived experience of outsiders because our baseline knowledge and assumptions aren't universal and our situation isn't the exception which overrules theirs. That's to say that their lives embody that knowledge and we build trusting relationships with each person.
posted by k3ninho at 12:18 AM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
I try to be a rational person but, having worked in tech for a long time, I agree that rationalists are generally a deeply insufferable bunch. That said, more specifically, I do think "metacognition" is really important to learning things effectively.
> "In everyday life, the biggest obstacle to metacognition is what psychologists call the “illusion of fluency.” As we perform increasingly familiar tasks, we monitor our performance less rigorously; this happens when we drive, or fold laundry, and also when we think thoughts we’ve thought many times before. Studying for a test by reviewing your notes, Fleming writes, is a bad idea, because it’s the mental equivalent of driving a familiar route. “Experiments have repeatedly shown that testing ourselves—forcing ourselves to practice exam questions, or writing out what we know—is more effective,” he writes. The trick is to break the illusion of fluency, and to encourage an “awareness of ignorance.”"
It's interesting because I've spent a _lot_ of time as an adult studying languages, where this illusion is very, very apparent. Since language has a performance aspect, a lot of holes in knowledge that are easy to hide in other areas become painfully apparent in language. Of course, people will still try to trick themselves with excuses like "but I've been studying for X years" etc. But really, spending time on different methods (while sort of honing in on what works for me), seeing how people talk about language study, seeing what works for different people, and seeing the vast number of people who wash out of language study, the key imo is metacognition. It's the mindset of "I can't understand this -- why not? what can I do to understand it in the future? how can I leverage this knowledge about what I don't udnerstand to improve?" It's very effective, but also incredibly demoralizing, because you are constantly honing in on what you don't understand. A lot of people can't stomach it, so they instead prefer to sort of just...trust that if they go through X Y Z motions long enough, they will "become fluent" without much thought about what fluency really means (fluency really is a poorly defined concept that I generally try to avoid, but this is already enough of a diversion...) In my experience, the language learners I meet who apply "metacognition" to language learning effectively are literally 10x more effective than those who don't.
I just think about language learning because, while there are vagaries (like the definition of fluency), it's still infinitely more measurable than something like "is this person a good investor?" Also, people approach it in a ton of different ways (most extremely ineffective). As such, it's an interesting area to see, concretely, the difference that metacognition can make.
Of course, there are a lot of reasons for the above...time, money, privilege, education, etc etc etc. I'm not getting into why people tackle language learning in the way they do, just saying that most people do it extremely ineffectively and metacognition has been the key 90% of the time, in my experience (the exceptions are people whose lives ended up being constructed in such ways that tradition but ineffective techniques are still "good enough" to get where they want eventually. It's not impossible to get proficient without metacognition, it's just a lot less efficient, in my experience).
posted by wooh at 1:19 AM on September 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
> "In everyday life, the biggest obstacle to metacognition is what psychologists call the “illusion of fluency.” As we perform increasingly familiar tasks, we monitor our performance less rigorously; this happens when we drive, or fold laundry, and also when we think thoughts we’ve thought many times before. Studying for a test by reviewing your notes, Fleming writes, is a bad idea, because it’s the mental equivalent of driving a familiar route. “Experiments have repeatedly shown that testing ourselves—forcing ourselves to practice exam questions, or writing out what we know—is more effective,” he writes. The trick is to break the illusion of fluency, and to encourage an “awareness of ignorance.”"
It's interesting because I've spent a _lot_ of time as an adult studying languages, where this illusion is very, very apparent. Since language has a performance aspect, a lot of holes in knowledge that are easy to hide in other areas become painfully apparent in language. Of course, people will still try to trick themselves with excuses like "but I've been studying for X years" etc. But really, spending time on different methods (while sort of honing in on what works for me), seeing how people talk about language study, seeing what works for different people, and seeing the vast number of people who wash out of language study, the key imo is metacognition. It's the mindset of "I can't understand this -- why not? what can I do to understand it in the future? how can I leverage this knowledge about what I don't udnerstand to improve?" It's very effective, but also incredibly demoralizing, because you are constantly honing in on what you don't understand. A lot of people can't stomach it, so they instead prefer to sort of just...trust that if they go through X Y Z motions long enough, they will "become fluent" without much thought about what fluency really means (fluency really is a poorly defined concept that I generally try to avoid, but this is already enough of a diversion...) In my experience, the language learners I meet who apply "metacognition" to language learning effectively are literally 10x more effective than those who don't.
I just think about language learning because, while there are vagaries (like the definition of fluency), it's still infinitely more measurable than something like "is this person a good investor?" Also, people approach it in a ton of different ways (most extremely ineffective). As such, it's an interesting area to see, concretely, the difference that metacognition can make.
Of course, there are a lot of reasons for the above...time, money, privilege, education, etc etc etc. I'm not getting into why people tackle language learning in the way they do, just saying that most people do it extremely ineffectively and metacognition has been the key 90% of the time, in my experience (the exceptions are people whose lives ended up being constructed in such ways that tradition but ineffective techniques are still "good enough" to get where they want eventually. It's not impossible to get proficient without metacognition, it's just a lot less efficient, in my experience).
posted by wooh at 1:19 AM on September 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
Eyebrows, isn't it amazing when you discover that kids can be precocious at a thing like meta-cognition? I have a kid (now 20) who was precocious at literary criticism—like, understanding story grammar and having opinions about the writing in StarWars at four, for instance. I had no idea such a thing was possible. You think of prodigies as being musical or mathematical or chess-playing.
Kids are amazing. Brains are amazing.
posted by Orlop at 2:22 AM on September 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
Kids are amazing. Brains are amazing.
posted by Orlop at 2:22 AM on September 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
I keep trying to understand Bayesian reasoning but some percentage of me doesn't want to, I fear.
Favorite line of the article: "Beware the power of alarming news, and proceed by putting it in a broader, real-world context."
Second favorite: "Cowen—a superhuman reader whose blog, Marginal Revolution, is a daily destination for info-hungry rationalists—told Ezra Klein that the rationality movement has adopted an “extremely culturally specific way of viewing the world.” It’s the culture, more or less, of winning arguments in Web forums. "
posted by Peach at 4:05 AM on September 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
Favorite line of the article: "Beware the power of alarming news, and proceed by putting it in a broader, real-world context."
Second favorite: "Cowen—a superhuman reader whose blog, Marginal Revolution, is a daily destination for info-hungry rationalists—told Ezra Klein that the rationality movement has adopted an “extremely culturally specific way of viewing the world.” It’s the culture, more or less, of winning arguments in Web forums. "
posted by Peach at 4:05 AM on September 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
I will also say I think a lot about the "metarationality" it talks about. It's impossible to have a grip on everything--so how does one construct an information intake network that will surface (in the Bayesian sense of the article) high impact information? It's scary, you know...I mean I think anti-vaxxers are terrible and the horse paste stuff is extremely distressing, but it makes me wonder: on what topics am I eating horse paste?
A friend made this very good point...we are both professional programmers in an area that at least in the past got a lot of headline coverage. And he emphasized: look at how awful the coverage in this area is...now think about all the areas we don't know anything about, whose coverage we are trusting. It's a tough pickle. For certain topics, I feel like I have a network of blogs, twitter accounts, and news sources that sort of create a sense of the truth. But it's so hard to know when we are falling into that sort of...epistemic black hole.
I see this personally with Venezuela...I have a large amount of extended family in Venezuela, I've been many times (though not recently...), I've followed the news closely for over a decade...and as a lefty, it tears me in half constantly to see the absolutely awful takes on Venezuela that run rampant on the left. (not that the right is better, but I'm not in the right, and they're just sort of blanket wrong about everything so I'm not really invested in their "nuance" on this issue).
These experiences have made me realize the extreme importance of..."I don't know." It can feel terrible, you know, say...with Syria. All of these refugees, this horrible conflict, the US's involvement...there's this pressure to have a take, to have "cracked" the Syria problem and know how to minimize the suffering out there. But I just...don't know. I don't have the time to know everything. I don't know. I try to be really humble about this. Of course, this is whether metarationality is important -- if you want to understand Syria or some other really tragic, really complex event (Afghanistan definitely counts), then you have to think: how can I avoid the horse paste trap? How can I avoid the tankie trap? My current best practice is for things like this, I still follow the Beyesian approach but the uncertainy on new information is very large. I simply don't know enough to know if what I know is tainted or not. Of course, with experience, certain things "ring true" more than others and you can sort of interpolate that by looking at coverage among a lot of different news outlets...if the blogs, the twitter accounts, al jazeera, and the nyt are all presenting similar things...then the error bars narrow in a bit. But are still large!
It can feel terrible because like...there's just so much going on in the world, so much of it is terrible, but I don't really know of a better way. We have to pick our personal battles. We can't understand every conflict and that's ok, even if it feels overwhelming and sad.
I just wish I could make the tankies understand that about Venezuela...
posted by wooh at 4:27 AM on September 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
A friend made this very good point...we are both professional programmers in an area that at least in the past got a lot of headline coverage. And he emphasized: look at how awful the coverage in this area is...now think about all the areas we don't know anything about, whose coverage we are trusting. It's a tough pickle. For certain topics, I feel like I have a network of blogs, twitter accounts, and news sources that sort of create a sense of the truth. But it's so hard to know when we are falling into that sort of...epistemic black hole.
I see this personally with Venezuela...I have a large amount of extended family in Venezuela, I've been many times (though not recently...), I've followed the news closely for over a decade...and as a lefty, it tears me in half constantly to see the absolutely awful takes on Venezuela that run rampant on the left. (not that the right is better, but I'm not in the right, and they're just sort of blanket wrong about everything so I'm not really invested in their "nuance" on this issue).
These experiences have made me realize the extreme importance of..."I don't know." It can feel terrible, you know, say...with Syria. All of these refugees, this horrible conflict, the US's involvement...there's this pressure to have a take, to have "cracked" the Syria problem and know how to minimize the suffering out there. But I just...don't know. I don't have the time to know everything. I don't know. I try to be really humble about this. Of course, this is whether metarationality is important -- if you want to understand Syria or some other really tragic, really complex event (Afghanistan definitely counts), then you have to think: how can I avoid the horse paste trap? How can I avoid the tankie trap? My current best practice is for things like this, I still follow the Beyesian approach but the uncertainy on new information is very large. I simply don't know enough to know if what I know is tainted or not. Of course, with experience, certain things "ring true" more than others and you can sort of interpolate that by looking at coverage among a lot of different news outlets...if the blogs, the twitter accounts, al jazeera, and the nyt are all presenting similar things...then the error bars narrow in a bit. But are still large!
It can feel terrible because like...there's just so much going on in the world, so much of it is terrible, but I don't really know of a better way. We have to pick our personal battles. We can't understand every conflict and that's ok, even if it feels overwhelming and sad.
I just wish I could make the tankies understand that about Venezuela...
posted by wooh at 4:27 AM on September 6, 2021 [16 favorites]
mhoye: I think that as noble as this work is, I feel the same way about it that I do about the whole “building resilience” thing - that in a very real sense it boils down to victim blaming
Also reinventing the prosperity gospel sans deity, particularly evident in his discussion of his rationalist saint friend Greg:
I'd suspect the far more important priors in Greg's case would be things like parental wealth, gender, colour, and connections rather than a predisposition to rationality.
posted by Buntix at 4:32 AM on September 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
Also reinventing the prosperity gospel sans deity, particularly evident in his discussion of his rationalist saint friend Greg:
Greg swooned over his girlfriend’s rational mind, married her, and became a director at a hedge fund. His net worth is now several thousand times my own.(Admittedly he did walk the importance of Greg's individual rationality back a bit in the final paras.)
I'd suspect the far more important priors in Greg's case would be things like parental wealth, gender, colour, and connections rather than a predisposition to rationality.
posted by Buntix at 4:32 AM on September 6, 2021 [10 favorites]
I keep trying to understand Bayesian reasoning but some percentage of me doesn't want to, I fear.
When I learned about Bayes' theorem, I thought it was pretty cool, but it seems to have a much more profound effect on some, who see in it a universal solvent that explains everything. You are probably better off like you are now.....
I thought that the example they gave (chance of really having what a positive result indicates, in a test that is x% accurate, once you test positive) speaks to the divergence between people's intuitive notions of probability and the actual results that fall out from that theory, in general, and not so much to a specific lack of Bayseian enlightenment.
posted by thelonius at 5:34 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
When I learned about Bayes' theorem, I thought it was pretty cool, but it seems to have a much more profound effect on some, who see in it a universal solvent that explains everything. You are probably better off like you are now.....
I thought that the example they gave (chance of really having what a positive result indicates, in a test that is x% accurate, once you test positive) speaks to the divergence between people's intuitive notions of probability and the actual results that fall out from that theory, in general, and not so much to a specific lack of Bayseian enlightenment.
posted by thelonius at 5:34 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, while it sounds like the author's friend worked very hard at his maximizing project in life, and did understand well the tools of rationality that he was applying, I've noticed that many of the people making a big to-do about how rational they are haven't bothered to learn even elementary logic. Like they will argue: if p then q, not p, therefore not q, things like that, formal fallacies known for 2500 years, and that a bright child could figure out for themselves.
posted by thelonius at 5:43 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 5:43 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
The rationality community could make a fine setting for an Austen novel written in 2021.
Somebody please write this immediately.
posted by selfmedicating at 6:40 AM on September 6, 2021
Somebody please write this immediately.
posted by selfmedicating at 6:40 AM on September 6, 2021
I am hopeful the “believe in science” crowd is an incipient empiricist movement that will one day equal the rationalist movement in preening self regard and pseudointellectualism. Maybe they will fight to the death!
posted by Ptrin at 7:15 AM on September 6, 2021
posted by Ptrin at 7:15 AM on September 6, 2021
Somebody please write this immediately.
I thought that shoehorning a strained Austen reference into that article was weird, unless there’s a subtle jab being made there that there’s a lot more pride and a lot more prejudice in this area than people went to think.
posted by mhoye at 7:16 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I thought that shoehorning a strained Austen reference into that article was weird, unless there’s a subtle jab being made there that there’s a lot more pride and a lot more prejudice in this area than people went to think.
posted by mhoye at 7:16 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Rationalism sounds pretty good on paper.
Rationalism, in the history of philosophy sense (Descartes, Leibniz, etc) has a lot to answer for, like the idea that our knowledge is incomplete or defective compared to some imaginary better knowledge. Leibniz, for example, thought that God knows everything in the way that we know geometry, and he also seemed to think that sensory perception was a sort of degraded form of intellectual cognition. The idea that knowledge which is not "immediate" in this way is problematic, caused, I think, a lot of wandering lost in philosophy. Criticisms of Descartes are well-known, and they are all correct imho.
posted by thelonius at 7:35 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Rationalism, in the history of philosophy sense (Descartes, Leibniz, etc) has a lot to answer for, like the idea that our knowledge is incomplete or defective compared to some imaginary better knowledge. Leibniz, for example, thought that God knows everything in the way that we know geometry, and he also seemed to think that sensory perception was a sort of degraded form of intellectual cognition. The idea that knowledge which is not "immediate" in this way is problematic, caused, I think, a lot of wandering lost in philosophy. Criticisms of Descartes are well-known, and they are all correct imho.
posted by thelonius at 7:35 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'd suspect the far more important priors in Greg's case would be things like parental wealth, gender, colour, and connections rather than a predisposition to rationality.
Yeah. From what I’ve observed, there is no causal link nor significant correspondence (direct or inverse) between metacognitive skill and financial success. (I think metacognitive skills are really important! Just for different reasons, such as for being a more compassionate person, being a better democratic participant, etc.)
posted by eviemath at 7:39 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yeah. From what I’ve observed, there is no causal link nor significant correspondence (direct or inverse) between metacognitive skill and financial success. (I think metacognitive skills are really important! Just for different reasons, such as for being a more compassionate person, being a better democratic participant, etc.)
posted by eviemath at 7:39 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
he also seemed to think that sensory perception was a sort of degraded form of intellectual cognition.
And the broader idea that mind and body are distinct (with body inferior) goes way back, to Plato and early/proto Judeo-Christianity and probably even farther back. It has definitely caused a lot of prejudice and grief over the centuries.
posted by eviemath at 7:43 AM on September 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
And the broader idea that mind and body are distinct (with body inferior) goes way back, to Plato and early/proto Judeo-Christianity and probably even farther back. It has definitely caused a lot of prejudice and grief over the centuries.
posted by eviemath at 7:43 AM on September 6, 2021 [5 favorites]
you can either bet on the truth of some statement (for instance, that self-driving cars will be on the road within a year) or reach blindly into a box full of balls in the hope of retrieving a marked ball. Suppose the box contains four balls. Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box? (I’d prefer the odds of the box.)
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but if you think a 1/4 chance is more likely to pay off than your answer to the True/False question, shouldn't you change your answer? Or just flip a coin?
I'm having a hard time understanding the rationale for taking a 1/4 chance over a 1/2 chance.
posted by imelcapitan at 9:11 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but if you think a 1/4 chance is more likely to pay off than your answer to the True/False question, shouldn't you change your answer? Or just flip a coin?
I'm having a hard time understanding the rationale for taking a 1/4 chance over a 1/2 chance.
posted by imelcapitan at 9:11 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
“Illusion of fluency” = Dunning-Kruger?
posted by njohnson23 at 9:17 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 9:17 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
I thought that shoehorning a strained Austen reference into that article was weird, unless there’s a subtle jab being made there that there’s a lot more pride and a lot more prejudice in this area than people went to think
I think that was definitely the intended jab, since this is a huge theme in Jane Austen. Sense & Sensibility is explicitly about this - the word "sense" at the time meant something like "common sense," and it was contrasted with "sensibility" which was the more romantic, feeling approach to life. It was about 2 sisters who embodied these characteristics and each was able to learn from the other.
In Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth thinks Mr. Darcy is a judgmental dick, because he looks down on her family. Later events show that they're both partly right and both partly wrong - he is in fact a bit too uptight, but her family is in fact a train wreck, and many of the bad things that happened wouldn't have happened if her parents had parented a bit harder.
Jane Austen's books are full of people examining how they know what they know, and figuring out where they are wrong. Mr. Darcy represents the pride in Pride & Prejudice and he absolutely would have been an insufferable rationalist in 2021.
posted by selfmedicating at 9:26 AM on September 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
I think that was definitely the intended jab, since this is a huge theme in Jane Austen. Sense & Sensibility is explicitly about this - the word "sense" at the time meant something like "common sense," and it was contrasted with "sensibility" which was the more romantic, feeling approach to life. It was about 2 sisters who embodied these characteristics and each was able to learn from the other.
In Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth thinks Mr. Darcy is a judgmental dick, because he looks down on her family. Later events show that they're both partly right and both partly wrong - he is in fact a bit too uptight, but her family is in fact a train wreck, and many of the bad things that happened wouldn't have happened if her parents had parented a bit harder.
Jane Austen's books are full of people examining how they know what they know, and figuring out where they are wrong. Mr. Darcy represents the pride in Pride & Prejudice and he absolutely would have been an insufferable rationalist in 2021.
posted by selfmedicating at 9:26 AM on September 6, 2021 [14 favorites]
And the broader idea that mind and body are distinct (with body inferior) goes way back, to Plato and early/proto Judeo-Christianity and probably even farther back. It has definitely caused a lot of prejudice and grief over the centuries.
Judaism is monist. Early Christianity was contaminated by Greco-Roman dualism, with the dire consequences you mention. See The Clue to history by John Macmurray.
posted by No Robots at 11:05 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
Judaism is monist. Early Christianity was contaminated by Greco-Roman dualism, with the dire consequences you mention. See The Clue to history by John Macmurray.
posted by No Robots at 11:05 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
if you think a 1/4 chance is more likely to pay off than your answer to the True/False question, shouldn't you change your answer?
You are only allowed to bet that the statement is true, or to reach blindly into the box. The point is to put a number on the probability you assign to that statement being true.
I'm having a hard time understanding the rationale for taking a 1/4 chance over a 1/2 chance.
Your choices in this case are "1/4 chance" and "self-driving cars will be on the road within a year".
posted by martinrebas at 12:50 PM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
You are only allowed to bet that the statement is true, or to reach blindly into the box. The point is to put a number on the probability you assign to that statement being true.
I'm having a hard time understanding the rationale for taking a 1/4 chance over a 1/2 chance.
Your choices in this case are "1/4 chance" and "self-driving cars will be on the road within a year".
posted by martinrebas at 12:50 PM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
You are only allowed to bet that the statement is true, or to reach blindly into the box. The point is to put a number on the probability you assign to that statement being true.
That isn't how I read it, since it says "Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box?"
However, your explanation is the only way it makes sense, so that must be it. Thanks, martinrebas.
posted by imelcapitan at 1:43 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
That isn't how I read it, since it says "Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box?"
However, your explanation is the only way it makes sense, so that must be it. Thanks, martinrebas.
posted by imelcapitan at 1:43 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
I keep trying to understand Bayesian reasoning but some percentage of me doesn't want to, I fear.
If you notice that percentage changing, it's working!
posted by aws17576 at 1:53 PM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
If you notice that percentage changing, it's working!
posted by aws17576 at 1:53 PM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]
Oh, if anyone wants to try Galef's calibration quiz, it's online. I averaged 77.5% in my certainty ratings, but actually got 87.5%, so I guess I'm underconfident, though a majority of my misses were questions to which I assigned the lowest confidence.
(There's something counterintuitive about the percentages! You'll call a pure coin flip correctly half the time, so if your level of certainty is halfway between pure guessing and absolute certainty, you should call that 75%, even if that feels overconfident. I know this but I am not sure I can fully internalize it.)
posted by aws17576 at 1:58 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
(There's something counterintuitive about the percentages! You'll call a pure coin flip correctly half the time, so if your level of certainty is halfway between pure guessing and absolute certainty, you should call that 75%, even if that feels overconfident. I know this but I am not sure I can fully internalize it.)
posted by aws17576 at 1:58 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
From what I’ve observed, there is no causal link nor significant correspondence (direct or inverse) between metacognitive skill and financial success.
It’s a lot easier to inherit money than smart.
posted by mhoye at 2:22 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
It’s a lot easier to inherit money than smart.
posted by mhoye at 2:22 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
What's so bad about being rational? The off-putting feeling I get from the whole rationalist community world-view is like how those "1,000 Places You Must See Before You Die" books make me feel. There's a sadness in there, for me, a feeling that, in making a life based on maximizing, you risk losing contact with, well, real life. You don't need to see 1000 places before you die*, and you can't always find the course you need to take in life by gathering data and calculating better.
(*Many of us probably never even really see the place we live in, duuuude....)
posted by thelonius at 5:09 PM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
(*Many of us probably never even really see the place we live in, duuuude....)
posted by thelonius at 5:09 PM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]
storybored, I recognized your handle and looked in my favorites history - yep, you posted the MeFi FPP about Procrastination that gave me some self-compassion and understanding of my own habits. This FPP is also excellent. Thanks!
posted by rogerroger at 7:48 PM on September 6, 2021
posted by rogerroger at 7:48 PM on September 6, 2021
That isn't how I read it, since it says "Would you prefer to answer the question, or reach into the box?"
On reflection there's a real Bene Gesserit vibe to that whole thing.
posted by mhoye at 6:24 AM on September 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
On reflection there's a real Bene Gesserit vibe to that whole thing.
posted by mhoye at 6:24 AM on September 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
There's a sadness in there, for me, a feeling that, in making a life based on maximizing, you risk losing contact with, well, real life.
This makes me think of a friend I had. When stuck with a hard decision, particularly one he didn't want to make, he would flip a coin to determine the choice. To note, he was never consistent with this practice, nor in following the direction of the coin. :)
I get a similar feeling from folks who are deep into the rationalist community mindset/culture (particularly those that robed themselves in it at a younger age). They leave the decisions in life to rationality instead of being a human and owning the decisions we all make (and make up).
When things go well, it's because they were being rational. Things don't go well? Of course that's what was going to happen. I gave myself over to rationality and it's to blame.
I tend to overthink things and often find myself afoul of this thinking from time to time. Fearful of making a choice in worry of the possible negative outcomes, never then making a choice, and therefore making a choice anyway as future outcomes proceed. Edit: I'd rather be this way, a human, than to give into some external rationale for my life.
posted by ckoerner at 10:50 AM on September 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
This makes me think of a friend I had. When stuck with a hard decision, particularly one he didn't want to make, he would flip a coin to determine the choice. To note, he was never consistent with this practice, nor in following the direction of the coin. :)
I get a similar feeling from folks who are deep into the rationalist community mindset/culture (particularly those that robed themselves in it at a younger age). They leave the decisions in life to rationality instead of being a human and owning the decisions we all make (and make up).
When things go well, it's because they were being rational. Things don't go well? Of course that's what was going to happen. I gave myself over to rationality and it's to blame.
I tend to overthink things and often find myself afoul of this thinking from time to time. Fearful of making a choice in worry of the possible negative outcomes, never then making a choice, and therefore making a choice anyway as future outcomes proceed. Edit: I'd rather be this way, a human, than to give into some external rationale for my life.
posted by ckoerner at 10:50 AM on September 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
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