The Costs of Rationality

This parallels a discussion I've had numerous times in the field of computer games. I've had any number of artists / scripters / managers say that what a computer game needs is not a realistic physics engine, but a cinematic physics engine. They don't want it to be right, they want it to be pretty.

But, you'll find that "cinematic style" isn't consistent, and if you start from that basis, you won't be able to make boring, every-day events look realistic, and you'll have to add special-case patch-upon-patch and you'll never get it right in the end. The cinematic stuff will look right, but nothing else will.

If you start with a rigidly-correct physics engine (or at least, within current state-of-the-art) you'll find it MUCH easier to layer cinematic effects on top when asked for. Its usually far simpler than the other way around.

In an analogous way, I find that rationality makes it far easier for one to achieve one's goals, EVEN WHEN SAID GOALS ARE NON-RATIONAL. Now, that may mean that the rational thing to do in some cases is to lie to people about your beliefs, or to present yourself in a non-natural way. If you end up being uncomfortable with that, then one needs to reassess what, exactly, one's goals are, and what you are willing to do to achieve them. This may not be easy, but its far simpler than going the route of ignorance and emotionally-driven actions and then trying to put your life back together when you don't end up where you thought you would.

I always made a distinction between rationality and truth-seeking. Rationality is only intelligible when in the context of a goal (whether that goal be rational or irrational). Now, if one acts rationally, given their information set, will chose the best plan-of-action towards succeeding their goal. Part of being rational is knowing which goals will maximize their utility function.

My definition of truth-seeking is basically Robin's definition of "rational." I find it hard to imagine a time where truth-seeking is incompatible with acting rationally (the way I defined it). Can anyone think of an example?

Willful stupidity is often easier and more profitable in the short run, but you just might be picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

I think it's best to go out of your way to believe the truth, even though you won't always succeed. I'm very suspicious when tempted to do otherwise, it's usually for most unwise or unhealthy reasons. There are exceptions, but they're much rarer than we'd like to think.

Learning many true facts that are not Fun and are morally irrelevant (e.g. learning as many digits of pi as you can by spending your whole life on the activity), because this way you can avoid thinking about facts that are much less certain, shouldn't be considered rational. Rationality intrinsically needs to serve a purpose, the necessity for this is implicit even in apparently goal-neutral definitions like the one Robin gave in the post.

Another problem, of course, is that you don't know the cost of irrationality if you are irrational.

Are commitment mechanisms rational?

A malicious genius is considering whether to dose the dashing protagonist with a toxin. The toxin is known to be invariably fatal unless counteracted, and the malicious genius has the only antidote. The antagonist knows that the protagonist will face a choice: Either open a specific locked box containing, among other things, the antidote - surviving, but furthering the antagonist's wicked plan, or refuse to open the box, dying, and foiling the plan.

We analyze this as an extensive form game: The antagonist has a choice to dose or not to dose. If dose, then protagonist gets a choice, to die or not to die.

If only the protagonist was not so very very rational! Because the protagonist is known to be very very rational, the antagonist knows that the protagonist will choose to live, and thereby further the antagonist's plan.

A commitment mechanism, then, is the protagonist (rationally) sabotaging their rationality before the antagonist has an opportunity to dose. The "irrational revenge circuit" will revenge harm at any cost, even an irrationally high cost. Even antagonists step carefully around people with revenge circuits installed. (Yes, evolution has already installed some of these.)

You seem to be taking the opposite tack as in this video, where rationality was best for everyone no matter their cause.

A rational belief isn't necessarily correct or true. Rational beliefs are justified, in that they logically follow from premises that are accepted as true. In the case of probabilistic statements, a rational strategy is one that maximizes the chance of being correct or otherwise reaching a defined goal state. It doesn't have to work or be correct in any ultimate sense to be rational.

If I play the lottery and win, playing the lottery turned out to be a way to get lots of money. It doesn't mean that playing the lottery was a rational strategy. If I make a reasonable investment and improbable misfortune strikes, losing the money, that doesn't mean that the investment wasn't rational.

Places where rationality* is not welcome:

Churches, political parties, Congress, family reunions, dates, cable news, bureaucracy, casinos... . *Of course rationality might dictate deception- but I take it lying confers some cost on the liar.

Please list the rest. Also, who here is involved with any of the things on the list? Am I wrong to include something and if not how do you deal with being rational in a place that discourages it.

Re: The word "rational" is overloaded with associations, so let me be clear: to me, more "rational" means better believing what is true, given one's limited info and analysis resources.

Ouch! A meta discussion, perhaps - but why define "rational" that way? Isn't the following much more standard?

"In economics, sociology, and political science, a decision or situation is often called rational if it is in some sense optimal, and individuals or organizations are often called rational if they tend to act somehow optimally in pursuit of their goals. [...] In this concept of "rationality", the individual's goals or motives are taken for granted and not made subject to criticism, ethical or otherwise. Thus rationality simply refers to the success of goal attainment, whatever those goals may be."

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality

The truth is not beautiful... it stands on cloven hooves... it is covered in coagulated blood... but it is the truth.

Query: Need the quest for the truth necessarily be quixotic? Tilting at windmills would be an example of delusional activity. Isn't the quixotic then the opposite of the rational?

As I see it, rationality is much more about choosing the right things to use one's success for than it is about achieving success (in the conventional sense). Hopefully it also helps with the latter, but it may well be that rationality is detrimental to people's pursuit of various myopic, egoist, and parochial goals that they have, but that they would reject or downgrade in importance if they were more rational.

It may be possible to have it both ways, to know rationality without having it interfere with achieving happiness and other goals.

For me, rationality is a topic of interest, but I don't make a religion out of it. I cultivate a sort of Zen attitude towards raaitonalit, trying not to grasp it too tightly. I am curious to know what the rational truth is, but I'm willing and, with the right frame of mind, able to ignore it.

I can be aware at some level that my emotional feelings are technically irrational and reflect untrue beliefs, but so what. They're true enough. They're as true as everyone else's. That's good enough for me. I can still embrace them wholeheartedly.

Now how about overconfidence. The truth is that I am either lucky or unlucky on this issue, depending on how you look at it. I am not very overconfident. Modesty comes naturally to me. Asserting my opinions makes me uncomfortable. When someone else says I'm wrong, I take it very much to heart. This is just my personality. When I was younger I was more assertive, but as I've gotten older I find that my uncertainties have grown. Probably learning the rational truth on these matters has contributed to the change, but it is one which has come naturally to me.

Most people are different, but they can still know that their overconfidence is irrational and mistaken, without particularly acting any less confident. After all, they know that the other guy's confidence is just as inflated, so they are equally as justified in flaunting their excellence as anyone else.

Can one really use rationality like this? Listen to Lewis Carroll: "The question is, which is to be the master - that's all."

I believe a 'simple' cost-benefit analysis is warranted on a case-by case basis. It is not some absolute, abstract decision. Clearly truth has a price. Sometimes the price is relatively high and other times it is lower. The reward will equally vary. Rationally speaking, truth will sometimes be worth the trouble, and sometimes not.

I endorse the thusly parsed: "rational" means better believing what is "true" (given one's limited info and analysis resources). This introduces the social dimension and the pragmatic dimension into rationality - which should never be about "paperclips" alone, as Tim Tyler seems to suggest.

Believing what is true is not rationality, but planning what is best, based on what is true, is.

The true cost of acting rational is the difference between acting truly rational versus acting purely rational in a situation.

First we have to make the distinction between what is factual truth or strategically optimal and what an agent believes is true or strategically optimal. For non-rational agents these are different, there is at least one instance where what they believe is not what is true or how they act is not optimal. For rationalists, what they believe has to be proven true and they must act optimally.

A situation with only rational agents, they would find the optimal cumulative payoff and distribute it optimally in-line with potentially different goals. This assumes rational agents can agree on an optimal distribution strategy, possibly based on incurred costs (time, resources spent) and goal priority, and have non-conflicting goals.

Non-rational agents may have conflicting goals, be greedy and not achieve optimal distribution, and may not find or implement the strategy to achieve the best cumulative payoff. Each of these areas identifies costs of non-rationality.

In a situation in which rationalist agents must work with non-rationalist agents there will be a cost of non-rationality no matter how the rationalist acts. In these situations a pure rationalist will act differently than a true rationalist. Truly rational agents take into account both factual truth and non-rational agents beliefs and strategies when deciding strategy. The true rationalists will pursue strategies that achieve a sub-optimal but minimum cost. Purely rational agents only take into account factual truth when deciding strategy and does not account for non-rational agents beliefs or strategies. Pure rationalists will incur costs above this sub-optimal minimum. Thus, the true cost of acting rational is the difference between the cost of acting purely rational and acting truly rational.

"There is also empirical evidence that high self-efficacy can be maladaptive in some circumstances. In a scenario-based study, Whyte et al. showed that participants in whom they had induced high self-efficacy were significantly more likely to escalate commitment to a failing course of action.[28] Knee and Zuckerman have challenged the definition of mental health used by Taylor and Brown and argue that lack of illusions is associated with a non-defensive personality oriented towards growth and learning and with low ego involvement in outcomes.[29] They present evidence that self-determined individuals are less prone to these illusions. In the late 1970s, Abramson and Alloy demonstrated that depressed individuals held a more accurate view than their non-depressed counterparts in a test which measured illusion of control.[30] This finding held true even when the depression was manipulated experimentally. However, when replicating the findings Msetfi et al. (2005, 2007) found that the overestimation of control in nondepressed people only showed up when the interval was long enough, implying that this is because they take more aspects of a situation into account than their depressed counterparts.[31][32] Also, Dykman et al. (1989) showed that depressed people believe they have no control in situations where they actually do, so their perception is not more accurate overall.[33] Allan et al. (2007) has proposed that the pessimistic bias of depressives resulted in “depressive realism” when asked about estimation of control, because depressed individuals are more likely to say no even if they have control.[34]

A number of studies have found a link between a sense of control and health, especially in older people.[35]

Fenton-O’Creevy et al.[7] argue, as do Gollwittzer and Kinney,[36] that while illusory beliefs about control may promote goal striving, they are not conducive to sound decision-making. Illusions of control may cause insensitivity to feedback, impede learning and predispose toward greater objective risk taking (since subjective risk will be reduced by illusion of control)."

I often wish I could have two brains - one which is fully, painfully aware of the truth and another which holds that set of beliefs which optimize happiness. I sometimes comfort myself with the thought that on a societal level, people like us function as that first, unhappy brain.

Altering the structure of the second brain to deal with the truth better should be a primary concern.