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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: "rational"

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

[ ... ]
Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational
inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that
people actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even
so-called "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down,
rational. Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making
ability that has its own calculus.

Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term meaning "adherent of the status quo".)

But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence

of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,

highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a
profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it

unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

There's an article in today's Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-the-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and gun manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish the party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies.

Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation with the rationality of the explained.

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: "rational"

This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as myself, should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational – it’s just that most of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences, Peirce made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as “this bird is a raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black” (induction) and “this bird is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven”(abduction). But he regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak. But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, “This guy is wrong, all right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger” which is valid, but horribly weak.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

[ ... ]
Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational
inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that
people actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even
so-called "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down,
rational. Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making
ability that has its own calculus.

But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence
of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,
highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a
profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it
unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation with the rationality of the explained.

-- rec --

John Kennison

Re: "rational"

Concerning the statement:

>> My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational – it’s just that most of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises.

I think this is one of the issues to be explored. It seems to work for the person who believes that every statement in the bible is literally true. (And maybe has a further belief ambiguities and apparent contradictions can be resolved by contacting God through prayer.) My own tendency to believe what I see seems to require that I don't have hallucinations --or could distinguish them from true visual perceptions.

But what about the thinking done by an artist when creating a work of art. Is it rational but based on strange axioms, or it is a different type of thinking which is non-rational
And if the former, how does the artist come up with the strange hypotheses?
What about intuition, including the intuition that all thinking is rational but possibly with crazy hypotheses?

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 5:02 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as myself, should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational – it’s just that most of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences, Peirce made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as “this bird is a raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black” (induction) and “this bird is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven”(abduction). But he regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak. But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, “This guy is wrong, all right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger” which is valid, but horribly weak.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
[ ... ]
Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational
inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that
people actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even
so-called "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down,
rational. Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making
ability that has its own calculus.

Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term meaning "adherent of the status quo".)

But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence
of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,
highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a
profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it
unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

There's an article in today's Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-the-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and gun manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish the party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies.

Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation with the rationality of the explained.

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Arlo Barnes

Re: "rational"

We think of art as a special thing, separate from our normal activities in the world which could make it an attractive candidate for a place where [weak or strong] rational thinking does not apply...but such a 'true art' might never be recognized as such. With few exceptions, art is meant to be shared with others, to inspire some type of feeling, and sometimes/often to be commercially viable. Art has a technical aspect. For any of these things, the artist will be using rational thought to achieve the goals necessary to better the art, regardless of how acutely they are aware of the rationality. In addition, I think many artists rationally contrive ways to inspire creativity, by using rational methods of processing with incongruous (or congruous in a specific unexpected way to inspire a certain atmosphere) inputs. For example, using phosphenes.

Besides physiological inspiration, there is something to be said for the multifarious nature of life experience, even in a mechanistic world, just from the statistics of any given combination of events happening to a person. This can provide seemingly non-rational inspiration to a work, because we cannot see the input stimuli that is a person's full life, being limited to our own (although common experiences can give insight; taking psychedelics might help one better understand psychedelic art, for instance).

Lastly, the intuition: I tend to think that it is simply a more subtle, more obfuscated, and less often used logic engine; indeed, it may just be the name for the part of our logic engines that have not yet been made transparent to us. Obviously a lot of this speculation could be from intuition, or just making things up out of whole cloth, but we can look at cases where people's intuitions are more or less accurate and try to analyze, using what information was available to the person at the time, why their intuition arrived at that right/wrong conclusion, and there are real-life examples where interesting observations have been made about such (I just cannot think of any).

A favorite anecdote of local Nick Bennett is an experiment where one group of people was given a set of points and told to do the travelling salesman problem on them: find the shortest path that visits each point once and only once before returning to the start. To solve this, they would use their visual, mathematical, and logical sense. Another group was told to find the most appealing path that followed the same rules (a loop through all points only once). Guess which group had the shorter paths on average? [EDIT: I think this was the paper, let us see if my remembering has embellished] Was the second group using intuition? Not having read the paper yet, I am not sure what the control was.

If I missed the argument, excuse me - I have only been loosely following this thread.

-Arlo James Barnes

Nick Thompson

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by John Kennison

Good question, John,

It wouldn't surprise me if we could reconstruct artistic work as forms of
deduction, induction, and abduction. I know of at least one article that
tries to do that. But rational reconstruction is like that bubble in the
kingfisher's head that gives the formula for refraction by the surface of
the water. Lord knows how it is actually done.

I guess I have no idea what kinds of procedures one would have to do to
settle the matter. I wouldn't trust asking the artist because that would
almost demand a rationalization. I would have to watch a painting develop.
Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 4:49 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Concerning the statement:

>> My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most
of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises.

I think this is one of the issues to be explored. It seems to work for the
person who believes that every statement in the bible is literally true.
(And maybe has a further belief ambiguities and apparent contradictions can
be resolved by contacting God through prayer.) My own tendency to believe
what I see seems to require that I don't have hallucinations --or could
distinguish them from true visual perceptions.

But what about the thinking done by an artist when creating a work of art.
Is it rational but based on strange axioms, or it is a different type of
thinking which is non-rational And if the former, how does the artist come
up with the strange hypotheses?
What about intuition, including the intuition that all thinking is rational
but possibly with crazy hypotheses?

________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 5:02 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as myself,
should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My
intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most of it
is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences, Peirce
made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this
bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as "this bird is a
raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black" (induction) and "this bird
is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven"(abduction). But he
regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might
argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak.
But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, "This guy is wrong, all
right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger" which is valid, but
horribly weak.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen
<[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
[ ... ]
Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational
inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that people
actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even so-called
"irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down, rational.
Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making ability that
has its own calculus.

Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities --
pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring RWAs
suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them
immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term meaning
"adherent of the status quo".)

But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under
the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do,
exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double
standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to top
it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever
change their minds with evidence or logic.

There's an article in today's Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-th
e-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun
rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and gun
manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because
they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish the
party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies.

Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob
reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation with
the rationality of the explained.

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Prof David West

Re: "rational"

My own opinion is that not all thought is rational - specifically not
all thinking about design is rational. I am almost done with a book on
"Design Thinking" that is premised on this exact issue - designers think
differently and business and CS/SE types would benefit from learning how
they do what they do and thereby complement their rational thinking with
an equally powerful (in the realm of complexity and wicked problems -
superior) mode of thought.

In the realm of programming, Parnas suggested long ago that there is no
'rational programming process' but that there are benefits in
rationalizing one after the fact. I don't know if the list accepts
attachments, but I have put Parnas' paper on this email.

Nick - deduction, abduction, induction - like mathematics - are only
useful tools for the simplest of problems - which are, as von Neumann
pointed out, a small subset of reality.

davew

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014, at 09:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Good question, John,
>
> It wouldn't surprise me if we could reconstruct artistic work as forms of
> deduction, induction, and abduction. I know of at least one article that
> tries to do that. But rational reconstruction is like that bubble in
> the
> kingfisher's head that gives the formula for refraction by the surface of
> the water. Lord knows how it is actually done.
>
> I guess I have no idea what kinds of procedures one would have to do to
> settle the matter. I wouldn't trust asking the artist because that would
> almost demand a rationalization. I would have to watch a painting
> develop.
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 4:49 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"
>
> Concerning the statement:
>
> >> My intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most
> of it is weak or founded on truly crazy premises.
>
> I think this is one of the issues to be explored. It seems to work for
> the
> person who believes that every statement in the bible is literally true.
> (And maybe has a further belief ambiguities and apparent contradictions
> can
> be resolved by contacting God through prayer.) My own tendency to believe
> what I see seems to require that I don't have hallucinations --or could
> distinguish them from true visual perceptions.
>
> But what about the thinking done by an artist when creating a work of
> art.
> Is it rational but based on strange axioms, or it is a different type of
> thinking which is non-rational And if the former, how does the artist
> come
> up with the strange hypotheses?
> What about intuition, including the intuition that all thinking is
> rational
> but possibly with crazy hypotheses?
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
> [[hidden email]]
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 5:02 PM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"
>
> This is the kind of discussion that a Newly Minted Peircean, such as
> myself,
> should be all over, but I find myself oddly (thankfully?) reticient. My
> intuition tells me that all thinking is rational - it's just that most of
> it
> is weak or founded on truly crazy premises. Among valid inferences,
> Peirce
> made a distinction between strong inferences (All ravens are black, this
> bird is a raven, this bird is black) and weak ones such as "this bird is
> a
> raven, this bird is black, all ravens are black" (induction) and "this
> bird
> is black, all ravens are black, this bird is a raven"(abduction). But
> he
> regarded all three as valid forms of inference. In this spirit, I might
> argue that right wing thinking is not irrational, but exceedingly weak.
> But we should beware of falling for the syllogism, "This guy is wrong,
> all
> right-wingers are wrong, this guy is a right winger" which is valid, but
> horribly weak.
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger
> Critchlow
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 12:20 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:41 AM, glen
> <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
> [ ... ]
> Now, that carries us to how/whether/why humans would use irrational
> inference procedures. But I think we would _need_ some evidence that
> people
> actually use irrational reasoning procedures. I think even so-called
> "irrational" things like _emotions_ are, somewhere deep down, rational.
> Those emotions are an evolutionarily selected decision-making ability
> that
> has its own calculus.
>
> Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities
> --
> pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ -- finds that high scoring
> RWAs
> suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render them
> immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term
> meaning
> "adherent of the status quo".)
>
> But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life
> under
> the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do,
> exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double
> standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and--to
> top
> it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could
> ever
> change their minds with evidence or logic.
>
> There's an article in today's Times,
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/business/media/banished-for-questioning-th
> e-gospel-of-guns.html, which unintentionally makes the case that the gun
> rights lobby is essentially a coalition of right-wing authoritarians and
> gun
> manufacturers. They cannot tolerate any discussion of the dogma because
> they are incapable of reasoning on the subject, only able to distinguish
> the
> party line from apostasy so they can attack the enemies.
>
> Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob
> reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of explanation
> with
> the rationality of the explained.
>
> -- rec --
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

IEEE86_Parnas_Clement.pdf (902K) Download Attachment

Prof David West

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I sent this message with an attachment - which exceeded the word quota
for a post, so resending without the attachment - Steve may or may not
allow the other one to be posted in the future.

My own opinion is that not all thought is rational - specifically not
all thinking about design is rational. I am almost done with a book on
"Design Thinking" that is premised on this exact issue - designers think
differently and business and CS/SE types would benefit from learning how
they do what they do and thereby complement their rational thinking with
an equally powerful (in the realm of complexity and wicked problems -
superior) mode of thought.

In the realm of programming, Parnas suggested long ago that there is no
'rational programming process' but that there are benefits in
rationalizing one after the fact. I don't know if the list accepts
attachments, but I have put Parnas' paper on this email.

Nick - deduction, abduction, induction - like mathematics - are only
useful tools for the simplest of problems - which are, as von Neumann
pointed out, a small subset of reality.

davew

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014, at 09:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

glen ropella

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

On 01/05/2014 11:19 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

> Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities
> -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
> <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/> -- finds that high scoring
> RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render
> them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term
> meaning "adherent of the status quo".)
>
> But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life
> under the influence
> of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting
> sloppy reasoning,
> highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy,
> self-blindness, a
> profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious
> dogmatism that makes it
> unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

Excellent! This helps refine "reasoning about reasoning" in the way
that worries me. The idea being that a "brain in a vat" might still be
rational in some technical/strict sense of the word. But that's not
what normal people mean when they _use_ the word "rational." What
normal people mean is a combination of the ability to "think well" and
be open to multiple options. It seems like the "openness" is the
fulcrum of the concept.

One of the aspects that worries me most is the _surety_ with which most
people go about their daily thinking. But I find this in lots of people
who would normally be considered quite rational. To me, it doesn't much
matter how intelligent one is, or how many facts they may claim to have
at their fingertips. What matters is the confidence with which they
hold their own beliefs. The more confident you are, the _less_ rational
you are.

> Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch
> mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of
> explanation with the rationality of the explained.

I don't know what you mean, here, which probably means you're right
about my conflation. ;-) The use of "reason" to mean _cause_ seems like
an abuse of the word. So, I read what you write as "Just because there
is cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." And, I
fully agree with that rewriting. But I don't know that's what you meant.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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glen ropella

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Prof David West

On 01/06/2014 09:52 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> My own opinion is that not all thought is rational - specifically not
> all thinking about design is rational. I am almost done with a book on
> "Design Thinking" that is premised on this exact issue - designers think
> differently and business and CS/SE types would benefit from learning how
> they do what they do and thereby complement their rational thinking with
> an equally powerful (in the realm of complexity and wicked problems -
> superior) mode of thought.

Can you identify a method that you would call irrational? or
non-rational? Or, is it, perhaps that we're using "rational" to mean
known or observable, as Arlo suggests?

Personally, I would consider thinking without considering multiple
options as irrational. (E.g. pure deduction without inferential cycles
-- ambiguity -- is non-rational by my definition.) So, I would be able
to describe methods of irrational thought. In fact, I do it every day
when I program. Some of my simulations are rational (because their
outcome is decided by external interaction). But many of them are fully
determined, closed to external inputs, incapable of "changing their
minds", which makes them non-rational.

But I'm having trouble identifying non-rational thinking without using
my own definition (making me less rational than I'd like to be 8^).

--
⇒⇐ glen

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Steve Smith

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by glen ropella

Glen sed, responding to what REC sed about what Bob Altemeyer sed:

>> Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA) personalities
>> -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
>> <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/> -- finds that high scoring
>> RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially render
>> them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a technical term
>> meaning "adherent of the status quo".)
>>
>> But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life
>> under the influence
>> of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting
>> sloppy reasoning,
>> highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy,
>> self-blindness, a
>> profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious
>> dogmatism that makes it
>> unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.
> Excellent!

I do have a strong sympathy for this description, though I don't fully
defer it to "Right Wing" only... after a year in Berkeley, a bastion of
Left Wing thinking, I can say that both wings can fumble their way to
an extremism. For example, try to get anything done that requires
either city council or citizen referendum, and you will get a *real*
taste of "Authoritarianism". In Berkeley (to their credit) there was
an annual celebration/parade entitled "How Berkeley can you be?" which
allowed the populace to lampoon themselves (or actually, one another) in
a semi-self-aware way that I could only hope for the far Right. I have
to admit that I can't even imagine what that would look like.
> This helps refine "reasoning about reasoning" in the way
> that worries me. The idea being that a "brain in a vat" might still be
> rational in some technical/strict sense of the word. But that's not
> what normal people mean when they _use_ the word "rational." What
> normal people mean is a combination of the ability to "think well" and
> be open to multiple options. It seems like the "openness" is the
> fulcrum of the concept.
I think that people who I find familiar, comfortable, easy to converse
with do roughly hold that connotation of the term. And I'm thankful for
that.

That said, I present that *most* people (normal or not) mean "rational
thought" to be thought and descriptions of said thought which is
familiar and aligned with their own thinking. In that sense, I feel
most people conflate "rational thought" with the colloquial "common sense".
> One of the aspects that worries me most is the _surety_ with which most
> people go about their daily thinking. But I find this in lots of people
> who would normally be considered quite rational. To me, it doesn't much
> matter how intelligent one is, or how many facts they may claim to have
> at their fingertips. What matters is the confidence with which they
> hold their own beliefs. The more confident you are, the _less_ rational
> you are.
And I go about my daily activities with as much of this form of
_irrationality_ (confidence?) as possible. Not because I think it is
more defensible or will lead to a better outcome in the moment, than a
more open and thought through ("well thought") set of responses, but
because A) I can be hyper self-conscious which can lead to overthinking
and getting "stuck" and B) because I am aware that my _best self_, my
_best problem solver_ is my self (body/brain/sensorium + extended
phenotype (technology mostly) ) when it is highly trained as roughly a
"learning classifier system"... which requires lots of variation and
testing. My best self _satisfices_ for the immediate problem (good
enough for GubMent work) while _optimizing_ against the long haul. I
know that by being _confident_ in my actions, I reduce the noise in the
_execution_ of my intent and leave room for natural selection (making
and recognizing mistakes?) to do it's work.

I think this particular aspect of any extremist is what makes up for
their propensity for trying to conjure, enforce and often even *follow*
rules. In their (often misplaced) confidence... they have the
opportunity to make mistakes that a more _thoughtful_ and _open_
(_rational_?) person might be. Otherwise they would be more regular
winners of the Darwin Award than they seem to be.
>> Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch
>> mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of
>> explanation with the rationality of the explained.
I like this statement (REC)... this is one of my biggest battles with
my strongest "liberal" friends... that the idea that their
_righteousness_ when forming their lynch mob makes up for the
_wrongness_ of lynching in the first place. My _conservative_ friends
of course, don't bother with either question... they know they are
right, whether they are truly _righteous_ or not, and they have no doubt
that a lynch mob is the first/best solution for anything and everything
(stand your ground, hawk up mutherf*kker, etc.) as long as they lead it.
> I don't know what you mean, here, which probably means you're right
> about my conflation. ;-) The use of "reason" to mean _cause_ seems like
> an abuse of the word. So, I read what you write as "Just because there
> is cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." And, I
> fully agree with that rewriting. But I don't know that's what you meant.
I don't know what anyone means... but when I read your rewriting, I want
to rewrite it one unit of base-26 hamming distance away "Just because
there is *a* cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob
reasonable." Or in greater divergence lexicographically, "Just because,
your lynch mob was formed in response to one of your "causes", doesn't
make the fact of lynching reasonable."

I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen)
and I can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if
subtle point we are working over here.

- Steve

PS... Happy New Year to one and all (Left, Right, Centrist, Fascist,
Anarchist, Green, Progressive, Conservative, Whig, Tory, Rational, and
even Wankers and @ssh0l3s)!

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Nick Thompson

Re: "rational"

Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
false premises.

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 9:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Glen sed, responding to what REC sed about what Bob Altemeyer sed:

>> Bob Altemeyer's research on right-wing authoritarian (RWA)
>> personalities
>> -- pdf at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
>> <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/> -- finds that high scoring
>> RWAs suffer from severe cognitive disabilities which essentially
>> render them immune to reason. (Note that "right-wing" here is a
>> technical term meaning "adherent of the status quo".)
>>
>> But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life
>> under the influence
>> of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting
>> sloppy reasoning,
>> highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy,
>> self-blindness, a
>> profound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious
>> dogmatism that makes it
>> unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or

logic.
> Excellent!
I do have a strong sympathy for this description, though I don't fully defer
it to "Right Wing" only... after a year in Berkeley, a bastion of Left Wing
thinking, I can say that both wings can fumble their way to an extremism.
For example, try to get anything done that requires either city council or
citizen referendum, and you will get a *real*
taste of "Authoritarianism". In Berkeley (to their credit) there was
an annual celebration/parade entitled "How Berkeley can you be?" which
allowed the populace to lampoon themselves (or actually, one another) in
a semi-self-aware way that I could only hope for the far Right. I have
to admit that I can't even imagine what that would look like.
> This helps refine "reasoning about reasoning" in the way that
> worries me. The idea being that a "brain in a vat" might still be
> rational in some technical/strict sense of the word. But that's not
> what normal people mean when they _use_ the word "rational." What
> normal people mean is a combination of the ability to "think well" and
> be open to multiple options. It seems like the "openness" is the
> fulcrum of the concept.
I think that people who I find familiar, comfortable, easy to converse with
do roughly hold that connotation of the term. And I'm thankful for that.

That said, I present that *most* people (normal or not) mean "rational
thought" to be thought and descriptions of said thought which is familiar
and aligned with their own thinking. In that sense, I feel most people
conflate "rational thought" with the colloquial "common sense".
> One of the aspects that worries me most is the _surety_ with which
> most people go about their daily thinking. But I find this in lots of
> people who would normally be considered quite rational. To me, it
> doesn't much matter how intelligent one is, or how many facts they may
> claim to have at their fingertips. What matters is the confidence
> with which they hold their own beliefs. The more confident you are,
> the _less_ rational you are.
And I go about my daily activities with as much of this form of
_irrationality_ (confidence?) as possible. Not because I think it is more
defensible or will lead to a better outcome in the moment, than a more open
and thought through ("well thought") set of responses, but because A) I can
be hyper self-conscious which can lead to overthinking and getting "stuck"
and B) because I am aware that my _best self_, my _best problem solver_ is
my self (body/brain/sensorium + extended phenotype (technology mostly) )
when it is highly trained as roughly a "learning classifier system"... which
requires lots of variation and
testing. My best self _satisfices_ for the immediate problem (good
enough for GubMent work) while _optimizing_ against the long haul. I
know that by being _confident_ in my actions, I reduce the noise in the
_execution_ of my intent and leave room for natural selection (making and
recognizing mistakes?) to do it's work.

I think this particular aspect of any extremist is what makes up for their
propensity for trying to conjure, enforce and often even *follow* rules. In
their (often misplaced) confidence... they have the opportunity to make
mistakes that a more _thoughtful_ and _open_
(_rational_?) person might be. Otherwise they would be more regular
winners of the Darwin Award than they seem to be.
>> Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch
>> mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of
>> explanation with the rationality of the explained.
I like this statement (REC)... this is one of my biggest battles with my
strongest "liberal" friends... that the idea that their _righteousness_
when forming their lynch mob makes up for the _wrongness_ of lynching in the
first place. My _conservative_ friends of course, don't bother with either
question... they know they are right, whether they are truly _righteous_ or
not, and they have no doubt that a lynch mob is the first/best solution for
anything and everything (stand your ground, hawk up mutherf*kker, etc.) as
long as they lead it.
> I don't know what you mean, here, which probably means you're right
> about my conflation. ;-) The use of "reason" to mean _cause_ seems
> like an abuse of the word. So, I read what you write as "Just because
> there is cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable."
> And, I fully agree with that rewriting. But I don't know that's what you
meant.
I don't know what anyone means... but when I read your rewriting, I want to
rewrite it one unit of base-26 hamming distance away "Just because there is
*a* cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." Or in
greater divergence lexicographically, "Just because, your lynch mob was
formed in response to one of your "causes", doesn't make the fact of
lynching reasonable."

I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen) and I
can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if subtle
point we are working over here.

- Steve

PS... Happy New Year to one and all (Left, Right, Centrist, Fascist,
Anarchist, Green, Progressive, Conservative, Whig, Tory, Rational, and even
Wankers and @ssh0l3s)!

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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============================================================
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glen ropella

Re: "rational"

On 01/06/2014 09:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
> shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
> false premises.

I don't think libertarians really qualify as "right wing". But some
people call them that. And I think libertarians tend to employ shoddy
reasoning from mostly true premises. The shoddiness of their reasoning
lies in it's closedness. In particular, they tend to follow only the
_canalized_ core of the reasoning and tend to ignore all the
"unintended" side effects. The reasoning tends to be a linear chain
rather than an expanding tree.

I suppose you might say that they're still starting with false premises
in the sense that their premises are insufficiently detailed (only true
as over-simplifications). But that would be parsing it too deeply, I
think. We all do that because none of us are capable of fully
delineating a concrete premise (indeed, I would argue that reality can
never be completely represented as rhetoric).

But the primary gestalt I get from talking to libertarians is this
inability to think about the variety of other consequences that obtain,
the consequences they don't want to or can't consider. If you need
particular examples, we can pull them from some of the most rational
seeming founders, how about this?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2013/12/the-daily-show-interview-with-forbes-columnist-who-thinks-food-stamps-are-cruel/

Are his assumptions false? Or is his reasoning simply too simple?

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella

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glen ropella

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

On 01/06/2014 08:27 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> In Berkeley (to their credit) there was
> an annual celebration/parade entitled "How Berkeley can you be?" which
> allowed the populace to lampoon themselves (or actually, one another) in
> a semi-self-aware way that I could only hope for the far Right. I have
> to admit that I can't even imagine what that would look like.

There does seem to be a dearth of comedy skills on the right, though I
may be biased. Anecdotally, lefties seem to be better entertainers.
Perhaps this is related to the openness concept. Humor, like poetry,
seems to rely on ambiguity.

> That said, I present that *most* people (normal or not) mean "rational
> thought" to be thought and descriptions of said thought which is
> familiar and aligned with their own thinking. In that sense, I feel
> most people conflate "rational thought" with the colloquial "common sense".

Interesting. I agree that "rational" is used to mean "thinks like me".
But I'm not sure it's the same as "common sense". My initial
impression would be that even the most cliquish would see common sense
as something one did _not_ have to think about, almost instinctual.
Perhaps one is a superset of the other? E.g. "that person thinks like
me, but without a lick of common sense." (I got a lot of this as a kid
because I could reconstruct my teachers' logic, but continually
challenged them on their assumptions.)

> My best self _satisfices_ for the immediate problem (good
> enough for GubMent work) while _optimizing_ against the long haul. I
> know that by being _confident_ in my actions, I reduce the noise in the
> _execution_ of my intent and leave room for natural selection (making
> and recognizing mistakes?) to do it's work.

This would seem to answer John's question justifying the existence of
irrationality.

> I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen)
> and I can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if
> subtle point we are working over here.

I'd originally typed much more. But after reading this, I decided to
reduce it! ;-)

--
⇒⇐ glen

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John Kennison

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I think one example might be "I oppose gay marriage because it would undermine my own (straight) marriage".
One could interpret the reason given as a false premise (you could always do that whenever someone gives a reason for a belief) but here it looks more like a rationalization. Of course I can't be certain, but I suspect that the real reason is the false premise that homosexuality is a pervasion and a different premise is substituted because it was felt to be more effective politically.
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson [[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 12:53 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
false premises.

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 9:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Glen sed, responding to what REC sed about what Bob Altemeyer sed:

Steve Smith

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by glen ropella

Glen Sed:

> On 01/06/2014 09:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
>> shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
>> false premises.
> I don't think libertarians really qualify as "right wing". But some
> people call them that. And I think libertarians tend to employ shoddy
> reasoning from mostly true premises. The shoddiness of their reasoning
> lies in it's closedness. In particular, they tend to follow only the
> _canalized_ core of the reasoning and tend to ignore all the
> "unintended" side effects. The reasoning tends to be a linear chain
> rather than an expanding tree.

well articulated...
> I suppose you might say that they're still starting with false premises
> in the sense that their premises are insufficiently detailed (only true
> as over-simplifications). But that would be parsing it too deeply, I
> think. We all do that because none of us are capable of fully
> delineating a concrete premise (indeed, I would argue that reality can
> never be completely represented as rhetoric).
I certainly hope not (to your parenthetical), the map is not the
territory, the finger pointing skyward is not the moon, the model is
insufficient, by definition.

>
> But the primary gestalt I get from talking to libertarians is this
> inability to think about the variety of other consequences that obtain,
> the consequences they don't want to or can't consider. If you need
> particular examples, we can pull them from some of the most rational
> seeming founders, how about this?
>
> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wwjtd/2013/12/the-daily-show-interview-with-forbes-columnist-who-thinks-food-stamps-are-cruel/
>
> Are his assumptions false? Or is his reasoning simply too simple?

Politics make strange bedfellows. I do know that of recent years, many
LIbertarians have joined with Tea Partiers or vice-versa, probably over
"small government" or "states rights" or
"personal-liberty-as-long-as-it-involves-a-gun" kinds of topics.

But Nick's question about Right-Winghers is still somewhat open. I
*have* had the experience of RWs using LWs willingness to accept various
premises for a discussion as the opportunity to do precisely what Nick
is describing... to not just start with false premises but to introduce
them along the way as-needed.

Since I'm confident that we have more than one Right-leaning member
here, I want to add, that this behaviour, in my opinion is only in
evidence in *some* who choose that label... just as "knee jerk" and
"bleeding heart" does not describe every Liberal/Progressive I know...
just enough that those labels are not entirely unmotivated.

- Steve

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Steve Smith

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by glen ropella

>> I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen)
>> and I can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if
>> subtle point we are working over here.
> I'd originally typed much more. But after reading this, I decided to
> reduce it! ;-)
less than 10 pages
Mine was abnormally short
only haiku now on!

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glen ropella

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by John Kennison

On 01/07/2014 09:34 AM, John Kennison wrote:
>
> I think one example might be "I oppose gay marriage because it would undermine my own (straight) marriage".
> One could interpret the reason given as a false premise (you could always do that whenever someone gives a reason for a belief) but here it looks more like a rationalization.

I think that's a great example. Even _if_ we reformulate it to
something like this:

Making it _easier_ to marry (unrelated to gay marriage, e.g. prenups)
undermines the value of current marriages.

If we reformulate it to that, then it's fairly easy to argue for the
truth of the premise. (More of any given thing devalues the prior
instances of that thing.) But the problem with the argument comes from
leaving out externally imposing factors, for example, population
increase or decrease. If you _fail_ to make marriage easier, yet the
population increases, then you are artificially increasing the value of
extant marriages. And, while doing that may increase the value of your
own marriage, it will make it more difficult to spread your perspective
(memetically). E.g. your children will have a more difficult time
getting married. Your married friends will die or get divorced and you
will see your clique dwindle over time.

So, while the premise could be true, the reasoning is still flawed
because it's closed reasoning.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Nick Thompson

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by John Kennison

At last.
Ok, so to claim that this is irrational, we have to know the chain of
premises and conclusions that leads to this conclusion.
As you rightly point out, we can supply premises that make the reasoning
look crazy or we can supply premises that make it look reasonable. But
isn't it bad reasoning to claim that reasoning is bad without having done
that?

I assume that the reasoning behind bans on gay marriage goes something like
this:

Watching men neck in public makes me uncomfortable
Married people are allowed to neck in public.
Anything that makes me uncomfortable should be banned
Therefore Gay marriage should be banned.

Perfectly RATIONAL
N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of John Kennison
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 10:35 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

I think one example might be "I oppose gay marriage because it would
undermine my own (straight) marriage".
One could interpret the reason given as a false premise (you could always do
that whenever someone gives a reason for a belief) but here it looks more
like a rationalization. Of course I can't be certain, but I suspect that the
real reason is the false premise that homosexuality is a pervasion and a
different premise is substituted because it was felt to be more effective
politically.
________________________________________
From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Nick Thompson
[[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 12:53 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Speaking of shoddy reasoning, I wish somebody would give an example of
shoddy reasoning by a Right Winger that was NOT an example of reasoning from
false premises.

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 9:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

Glen sed, responding to what REC sed about what Bob Altemeyer sed:

logic.
> Excellent!
I do have a strong sympathy for this description, though I don't fully defer
it to "Right Wing" only... after a year in Berkeley, a bastion of Left Wing
thinking, I can say that both wings can fumble their way to an extremism.
For example, try to get anything done that requires either city council or
citizen referendum, and you will get a *real*
taste of "Authoritarianism". In Berkeley (to their credit) there was
an annual celebration/parade entitled "How Berkeley can you be?" which
allowed the populace to lampoon themselves (or actually, one another) in
a semi-self-aware way that I could only hope for the far Right. I have
to admit that I can't even imagine what that would look like.
> This helps refine "reasoning about reasoning" in the way that
> worries me. The idea being that a "brain in a vat" might still be
> rational in some technical/strict sense of the word. But that's not
> what normal people mean when they _use_ the word "rational." What
> normal people mean is a combination of the ability to "think well" and
> be open to multiple options. It seems like the "openness" is the
> fulcrum of the concept.
I think that people who I find familiar, comfortable, easy to converse with
do roughly hold that connotation of the term. And I'm thankful for that.

That said, I present that *most* people (normal or not) mean "rational
thought" to be thought and descriptions of said thought which is familiar
and aligned with their own thinking. In that sense, I feel most people
conflate "rational thought" with the colloquial "common sense".
> One of the aspects that worries me most is the _surety_ with which
> most people go about their daily thinking. But I find this in lots of
> people who would normally be considered quite rational. To me, it
> doesn't much matter how intelligent one is, or how many facts they may
> claim to have at their fingertips. What matters is the confidence
> with which they hold their own beliefs. The more confident you are,
> the _less_ rational you are.
And I go about my daily activities with as much of this form of
_irrationality_ (confidence?) as possible. Not because I think it is more
defensible or will lead to a better outcome in the moment, than a more open
and thought through ("well thought") set of responses, but because A) I can
be hyper self-conscious which can lead to overthinking and getting "stuck"
and B) because I am aware that my _best self_, my _best problem solver_ is
my self (body/brain/sensorium + extended phenotype (technology mostly) )
when it is highly trained as roughly a "learning classifier system"... which
requires lots of variation and
testing. My best self _satisfices_ for the immediate problem (good
enough for GubMent work) while _optimizing_ against the long haul. I
know that by being _confident_ in my actions, I reduce the noise in the
_execution_ of my intent and leave room for natural selection (making and
recognizing mistakes?) to do it's work.

I think this particular aspect of any extremist is what makes up for their
propensity for trying to conjure, enforce and often even *follow* rules. In
their (often misplaced) confidence... they have the opportunity to make
mistakes that a more _thoughtful_ and _open_
(_rational_?) person might be. Otherwise they would be more regular
winners of the Darwin Award than they seem to be.
>> Just because there is a reason to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch
>> mob reasonable. I think you're confounding the rationality of
>> explanation with the rationality of the explained.
I like this statement (REC)... this is one of my biggest battles with my
strongest "liberal" friends... that the idea that their _righteousness_
when forming their lynch mob makes up for the _wrongness_ of lynching in the
first place. My _conservative_ friends of course, don't bother with either
question... they know they are right, whether they are truly _righteous_ or
not, and they have no doubt that a lynch mob is the first/best solution for
anything and everything (stand your ground, hawk up mutherf*kker, etc.) as
long as they lead it.
> I don't know what you mean, here, which probably means you're right
> about my conflation. ;-) The use of "reason" to mean _cause_ seems
> like an abuse of the word. So, I read what you write as "Just because
> there is cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable."
> And, I fully agree with that rewriting. But I don't know that's what
> you
meant.
I don't know what anyone means... but when I read your rewriting, I want to
rewrite it one unit of base-26 hamming distance away "Just because there is
*a* cause to be a lynch mob doesn't make a lynch mob reasonable." Or in
greater divergence lexicographically, "Just because, your lynch mob was
formed in response to one of your "causes", doesn't make the fact of
lynching reasonable."

I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen) and I
can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important if subtle
point we are working over here.

- Steve

PS... Happy New Year to one and all (Left, Right, Centrist, Fascist,
Anarchist, Green, Progressive, Conservative, Whig, Tory, Rational, and even
Wankers and @ssh0l3s)!

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Roger Critchlow-2

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by glen ropella

There are two things reading Altemeyer would clear up.

1) He calls them Right Wing Authoritarians not because they're necessarily right wingers politically, but because they're invested in maintaining the status quo in their world. He believes the rank and file Stalinists were probably as authoritarian as the rank and file National Socialists. It's one of the many ways that Altemeyer undermines his own claims with carelessness.

2) When he says "their reasoning is sloppy", he means: they will accept fallacious logical arguments if they like the conclusion; they will reject sound logical arguments if they dislike the conclusion; they will invent empirical evidence if their arguments require it; and they will deny empirical evidence that contradicts their beliefs, even if it happens right in front of their noses.

And when I say that this kind of behavior is irrational, I mean that it defies all standards of rationality. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a rational basis -- if your beliefs are more important than behaving rationally, then it is rational to be as irrational as is necessary to destroy the opposition. If your beliefs are more important than objective reality, then denying objective reality is a rational thing for you to do. But don't expect me to describe your irrationality as rationality, just because you have a reason to behave batshit crazy doesn't make batshit crazy any less crazy.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 11:46 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 01/07/2014 09:34 AM, John Kennison wrote:
>
> I think one example might be "I oppose gay marriage because it would undermine my own (straight) marriage".
> One could interpret the reason given as a false premise (you could always do that whenever someone gives a reason for a belief) but here it looks more like a rationalization.

I think that's a great example. Even _if_ we reformulate it to
something like this:

Making it _easier_ to marry (unrelated to gay marriage, e.g. prenups)
undermines the value of current marriages.

If we reformulate it to that, then it's fairly easy to argue for the
truth of the premise. (More of any given thing devalues the prior
instances of that thing.) But the problem with the argument comes from
leaving out externally imposing factors, for example, population
increase or decrease. If you _fail_ to make marriage easier, yet the
population increases, then you are artificially increasing the value of
extant marriages. And, while doing that may increase the value of your
own marriage, it will make it more difficult to spread your perspective
(memetically). E.g. your children will have a more difficult time
getting married. Your married friends will die or get divorced and you
will see your clique dwindle over time.

So, while the premise could be true, the reasoning is still flawed
because it's closed reasoning.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Nick Thompson

Re: "rational"

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I am admittedly being trollish here, and as you all know who know me, I am no stranger to confused thought, but ....

He who criticizeth the reasoning of another without spelling out the reasoning thus criticized engageth in poor reasoning.

I say this not (just) to be a troll, but because I honestly feel we in this country have a terrible problem of communication. WE have lost any sense of why it is important to try to come of a shared view of our inevitably common future. And if people in FRIAM cannot talk to one another in a reasonable way, how are the people in washington ever to do so.

Now I know there are some right wingers on the FRIAM list. I talk to them every week. And I wager that they are just rolling their eyes and saying, “Wow! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.” And while I agree with your conclusions, mostly, I cannot find any tools to defend this conversation against that patently just accusation.

In short, “Who’s that crossing my bridge!”

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 10:42 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational"

>> I probably just caused a fork in the discussion which only you (Glen)

>> and I can fully enjoy... but... I think this is all a very important

>> if subtle point we are working over here.

> I'd originally typed much more. But after reading this, I decided to

> reduce it! ;-)

less than 10 pages

Mine was abnormally short

only haiku now on!

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