"Rational" Thinking Theory

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First, let me define what I mean by true rational thinking so you can latter understand "rational" thinking. Rational thinking is thinking deduces conclusions entirely from logic using other information. It's objective, given the same information rational thinking will always reach the same conclusion. It's goal oriented, certain information is given at the start and certain information is being searched for. It's perfect, given correct starting information the solution will always be correct, if it can be reached. It's limited, it can only deduce certain unknown information if a enough information if given at the start. Finally, it's unbiased, emotions or whatever aren't ignored, they are just more information that needs to be and can be worked with.

People do not think rationally. This doesn't mean people can't think rationally in certain situations, but no one is absolutely rational all the time. Decision making requires other factors as rational thinking cannot set a goal or collect starting information on it's own. Still, that's the extreme in rationality, and most of the time most people do not think rationally at all. There is some rationality in any decision as people have goals, they think they know things, and they try to accomplish these goals, but rationality is not the absolute. All decision making is somewhat rational, and somewhat irrational. Some decisions are based on thinking which is more rational, some which is less. Thus on the surface rational thinking can be thought of as thinking that is relatively more rational.

As rationality is more consistent and more beneficial than other forms of thinking, it is often convenient to just assume people think rationally. Thus various models often assume people think rationally, like many ones in economics. I'll call such models Rationalistic Models. Here is an example of using an Rationalistic Model in a problem.

The catch is the man can only rationally come to that solution if all the captives are rational and self preserving, and the man in the front knows as such. For example, the second man could have just been too stupid to be able to use the first man's information.

Here is an example of where these models fail: Giftcards. People certainly do this a lot, giving one another giftcards. Considering the limited ways a giftcard can be spent, it would seem irrational to give them a gift when they can just buy something for themselves with whatever money they get. Surely they should enjoy a gift of money more, as then they can choose exactly what they want to spend it on, not something at a specific store. However, here is the catch. If we were exchanging money we might as well not exchange anything at all as the net change would be more or less zero. But still appear to enjoy receiving giftcards. Why? Because they want what they can buy with it, and they wouldn't buy it unless they were given the giftcard. Those aspects seem to contradict each other, showing that people think irrationally. Rather they would spend money on something they don't want, but think they need, like paying off the mortgage. The gift would ultimately make them happier. This shows another important truth: rationality is not pragmatism, and pragmatism is not rational. The sentimental things are important facts to be weighed.

Now, here is the biggest catch, a seeming paradox. People think irrationally, even "rational people" who think more rationally than others. Because people think irrationally, they are often inclined to model people as being like them. This makes "rational people" tend to favor Rationalistic Models. This itself is irrational, as it's not accurate as people don't think rationally. Ultimately this makes it that people who think less rationally actually have a more accurate model of human behavior, making them paradoxically better at solving certain problems even though rational thinking is supposed to always be the best solutions as it's supposed to be perfect. Irrational people are now more rational with people than rational people are. That is the "Rational" Thinking Theory.

That is so true. Gift cards act as a form of permission to indulge in something, which is an emotional decision rather than a pragmatic one. Example: My sister often talked about an exquisite but expensive restaurant in her area. She wanted to go but couldn't justify the cost just for a single meal. So I sent her a gift card for the restaurant. Had I sent her the equivalent in money, she never would have spent it on the restaurant even though she wanted to. She wouldn't be able to pragmatically justify it. The gift card was emotional permission to indulge in an exquisite but not at all pragmatic dinner.




This is also observably true. If you want to accurately predict irrational behaviour, you have to be able to access the irrational frame of mind to- and it has to be the correct irrational frame of mind. It can't just be any old one. This has become a TV/movie trope. Rational character A needs to be able to predict the behaviour of irrational character B. So they contact irrational character C who is irrational in a very smilar way and ask them to do the behaviour prediction.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiIlJaSDPaA[/youtube]

The reason I consider myself more empiricist than rationalist is because rationalism has one very serious flaw: Its conclusions depend upon the assumptions we make. An example:

All Indonesians are green.
Ganondox is Indonesian.
Therefore, Ganondox is green.

The problem with this impeccably constructed Aristotelian syllogism is its assumption that Indonesians are green. But rationally speaking it is flawless.

The traditional Western view of man being a rational creature capable of irrationality has it backwards; the truth is that we are essentially irrational creatures capable of rationality.
Rationality is only an epistemological tool we possess, and not our essence.

Our essence is a conflict between our selfish drives that enable us to survive by competing for limited resources, and our need to cooperate to form societies capable of completing complex projects. Rationality is a tool used by both of our natures.

Last edited by Thelibrarian on 22 Oct 2013, 3:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Reason, meaning sheer logic, as wonderful and valuable as that is, is not exactly the same as utter comprehension. When something makes complete sense, especially in terms of social relation, and we are all in relationship together,whether it always feels good or not, the brain has factored material from many angles. A person can be interconnected to cutting edge reality and still understand very little.

Did you see this other thread on the board right now---something about the Valley? I would love to see here on this thread that concept being in some way connected with what is being said there, and in such a way as to help autistic people who are struggling, adjust better to whatever conditions they are faced with and so be more happy.

Great posts here.

I used to teach logic, and I always put it this way: Definition: "Man is a rational animal." However, as the above pointed out, rationality is a potency in human nature. It takes a long time to gain the habit of bringing that innate potency into actuality.

Since most people are lazy, stubborn, and dislike cognitive dissonance, they are only capable of logic of the most rudimentary kind, i.e. "if x then y." Or, "x : y :: x': y'." But then, all too often, the xs and ys aren't really related in the way people think they are, because let's face it, most people suck at analogies. That's why hot dogs and hot dog buns have never matched up in length.

Your last paragraph explains why we need to get away from radical egalitarianism and self-esteem training, and back to seeing ourselves all as unique beings with the need for healthy doses of humility. None of us are good at everything, and very few of us are good at more than several things.

Using as an example one school of Buddhism, called colloquially the Consequence School--they use reality as it seems conventionally (meaning named objects according to their contextual function, appearing to exist independently from the perceiver, or as they put it, on their own side) as the basis for transformation at the same time they are negating the ultimate reality of such relative perception. So there is a balance. The point is that in this way, for one thing, they can interconnect their approach with many people at all levels of understanding, and also with many different ways of understanding (physical, emotional, mental) within an individual person. The main point here is that they use sheer logic to negate the existence of an external deity and a primal cause, but they only present such a perspective to people interested in learning about or debating with them about their own approach. You will not find them trying to jam their understanding down the throats of other people or taking away the understanding of such people by logical arguments..It is also said that the Buddha sometimes lies, and this is probably what is meant in that for the same reason as given above there is a discrepancy factor between generalized teaching (sutra) and very specialized teaching relating to the human brain and body (tantra). So it can and does come down to framing and how material is presented, and with what aim is in mind by the giving of the presentation..

For instance, if you take Santa Claus away from a child or never give a child the experience of organic folk literature such as Grimms Fairy Tales or allow a lot of imaginative play,, it is questionable if that child will be able to develop certain aspects of comprehensive understanding, and yet an adult can see through it, and rightly should. This does not mean that a child necessarily has to be given religion or Santa Claus, but he does need to be given something that works with the functions in such a way as to touch also the feelings of the child, his natural altruistic motivation and also his physical experience of being interconnected with all of life and deep within his heart knowing it. The problem is that most ther people are saying something else to him. They are not speaking to him though their own comprehensive understanding, as their own understanding is not comprehensive. But once, they too, had the understanding of a child.

That's fascinating. It reminds me of Kant's epistemology.

Which valley? The uncanny one?

It's too complicated for me to take in.

Basically, no one is completely rational, which leads to rational people being irrational when modeling people's behavior.

Is this your own theory? Either way - excellent post! I've always hated gift cards - they are, in a way, the worst possible gift, but I think you have a valid point about them giving the recipient a "licence" to spend the money on something frivolous in addition to money itself.

I don't agree with your final conclusion, however:

It's a major logical leap to say that more rational people have a less accurate model of human behaviour overall. I'm not at all convinced of that.

I'm sure you'd agree that you're among the "more rational" people and yet you came up with this model, showing a high level of insight into human thinking and irrational behaviour. Don't you think that your model of human behaviour is more accurate than that of "irrational" people? Or do you think it is, but at the same time think that you must be wrong in thinking so, since you think you're rational?

I enjoyed the logic puzzle, too, though it took me a bit longer to solve it than I think it should have. Anyway, such puzzles usually specify that everyone involved thinks rationally and knows that everyone else does, too.

I agree with Ganondox despite the seeming paradox that you highlighted. Through careful and objective observation, rational people (such as Ganondox) can make accurate models of irrational behaviour. There are some professions that even require the ability to do that, such as marketing. But for fast and accurate in-the-field problem solving involving other people, the person who doesn't always default to "what is most rational?" as a tool will have a better chance of predicting somebody's irrational behaviour accurately. For example, if somebody usually has extremely emotional (rather than rational) reactions to things, that person will be much better able to gauge what emotional reaction something will likely cause in other similarly emotional people. The rational person might eventually come to the same result through brute force data analysis (as sociologists do) but the emotional person can figure it out in less than a second for real-time problem solving. That's neurodiversity in action.

Janissy wrote:

Yes, emotion is faster. People kill other people without thinking about it, and also, from the other end of the stick, sometimes a person will spontaneously and instantaneously risk his life to save a stranger who is in great danger, but most people do not know how to put thinking and feeling together in a way that is conscious, and their flirtation with various ideas is so limited that the thinking can never be transformational.