It's okay to be (at least a little) irrational

Huh. Well, this sort of competitive outcome is something I prefer not to emphasize but the general idiom here sounds like it could be important.

I confess that when I first read this paragraph:

Here I was, with a post that allowed me to stop rationalizing reasons for why spreading money was good, and instead spread them because I was honestly selfish and just buying a good feeling. Now, I didn't need to worry about being irrational in having diversified donations. So since it was okay, I logged in to PayPal

I actually sat up and said "What on Earth?" out loud.

But I can see the causality. Removal of pressure -> removal of counterpressure -> collapse of irrationality. If it's okay to be irrational then it's okay to acknowledge that behavior X is irrational and then you stop doing it.

Well. I shall remember this when dealing with theists.

I'm surprised nobody's yet connected this with Leave a Line of Retreat. It seems like a better example than the original one in the post...

I mostly agree with your practical conclusion, however I don't see purchasing fuzzies and utilons separately as an instance of irrationality per se. As a rationalist, you should model the inside of your brain accurately and admit that some things you would like to do might actually be beyond your control to carry out. Purchasing fuzzies would then be rational for agents with certain types of brains. "Oh well, nobody's perfect" is not the right reason to purchase fuzzies; rather, upon reflection, this appears to be the best way for you to maximize utilons long term. Maybe this is only a language difference (you tell me), but I think it might be more than that.

I don't feel that even superficially projecting the desirability of noticing a flaw on the desirability of that flaw is warranted or useful. It's not OK to be irrational, but it's a fact of human condition that we are all rather irrational, and many choices and beliefs have a nontrivial chance of being seriously wrong.

Striving to be rational by closing the eyes on your own mistakes is a fallacy of the bottom line; when applied to action, it becomes a confusion of rationalization with planning. This is a pervasive flaw, one to be wary of in all situations. If you are emotionally attached to a wrongly flattering self-image, it is a problem with that image, one to be systematically corrected by expecting more mistakes from yourself, but not at all because the mistakes are acceptable or desirable.

Re: if you're donating to a charity, it doesn't make sense to spread your donations across several charities [...]

Um, yes it does - that is why people do it. Charitable donations are a form of signalling what a fine, generous, rich fellow you are. They also allow you to affiliate with other fine, generous and rich types at benefits. The more organisations you are seen to donate to, the more fine, generous and rich you appear to be.

I wish I could up-vote this post multiple times.

Back when I was (alas) a Christian, I used to say: You should try reading the Bible, at least some of the time, as if you're a skeptic, so that your idea of what it says doesn't get distorted by your need to make it say things you find easy to believe.

(It turns out that that advice is good for other reasons, but that wasn't my point at the time.)

I think this is exactly parallel to Kaj's observation. I think the advice "Learn to love failure" for entrepreneurs is getting at something similar, though my brain's too fuzzy right now to be quite sure.

This technique seems to apply in a whole lot of places. What's its most general statement? Something like this, but I'm not convinced I've got it down to its essence:

When there's some thing X that you trust, so that you aim to make your beliefs match X, beware that doing so may tend instead to distort your estimate of X to match your pre-existing beliefs. One way around this is to allow your beliefs to diverge from X a little, at least temporarily, so that you can figure out what X says without worrying about whether that matches your beliefs.

... At which point it strikes me that allowing your beliefs to diverge from X, when you're sure that X is very reliable, is in fact deliberate irrationality (and, note, not the same deliberate irrationality as Kaj is talking about: they're at different levels of meta-ness, as it were), and that perhaps we have here an example of when deliberate self-deception, or something like it, might help you.

I think this touches on an important issue, especially in a community of rationalists. After a while, you run the risk of cargo-cult rationalism or, as Eliezer says in the Twelve Virtues, rationalization instead of rationalism. We have to be willing to recognize that reason isn't an object or a constant state or a property of being, but simply an intermittent amelioration of consciousness that we can encourage.

That said, the decision-making Kaj Sotala followed does seem to be, well, irrational. It might be prudent in a power system to resist an injunction simply for the sake of resisting an injunction, to assert independence and undermine the authority of the injunction-maker, but here in the happy field beyond power and weakness that is abstract or intrapersonal discussion, it seems silly to defy for the sake of defiance. We can recognize and erase irrationalities for ourselves by admitting their place in the human system, but that doesn't mean they're in any way "okay": sometimes it's... acceptable to be "not-okay".

One book that helped me in the direction Kaj suggests is Radical Honesty. Blanton describes his own and others’ motives in accurate detail, including the petty parts we tend to gloss over, without clean-up or judgment; and after reading it, it was easier for me to name to myself my own detailed motives. I’d recommend the book to anyone who suspects that moralism may be interfering with their self-awareness. (There’s a lot wrong with the book, and I’m not necessarily recommending the practices it advocates. Just its descriptions.)

If by believing the falsehood that it's OK to be irrational, we're more likely to believe the truth that we are irrational, then that is an argument in favor in believing that it's OK to be irrational, but it's not obvious to me that this effect often or even ever dominates the more obvious effect that believing that it's OK to be irrational causes one to be more irrational because one thinks that it's OK.

It seems to me that here you're trying to justify a belief by its (prima facie) consequences rather than by the evidence in favor of it, which is something I always find frightening.

"As most readers will know by now, if you're donating to a charity, it doesn't make sense to spread your donations across several charities. You'll want to pick the charity where your money does the most good, and then donate as much as possible to that one."

This is not necessarily true. For some charities, the marginal utility is very high up to, say, the first $10 million. After that point, returns on each dollar donated might start to rapidly decline.

Admittedly this is mainly a problem for larger donors, though.

I sense that I may not have understood the core point. Is it:

1) It's ok to admit that you are/were irrational, because admiting is what allows you to change it ("the first step is to admit you have a problem").

or

2) It's genuinely ok to be irrational.

I feel ~85% sure that it's 1). But, if it's 2), then what is meant by the word "ok"? That you're not a "bad person"?

I think the fuzzies vs rationality thing goes a way to explain why some people, even those who appreciate rationality, might want to turn down an unfavorable offer in the ultimatum game. The sour feeling from accepting that, may not be worth the money you didn't even loose. I am entirely fine with being irrational in that game. This makes me wonder how the general LW populace would play that game, if it was okay to not be rational

Maybe it's ok to admit irrationality when we lack the willpower to change. If you're going to be irrational, you should, at the least, admit it rather than pretend to be rational.

For next time, you can try to defend yourself from getting into a situation where you lack the willpower to be more rational. Or you can work on your willpower if you don't get a "next time."

How do we practically signal that to people ?

It may not be reassuring enough to just say it; if the person thinks, even erroneously, that she was shot down or ignored, because she was wrong, assurance that it's ok to be irrational, may not be enough to help her. So our actions should reflect that intention too.

Irrationality is ok because we can help people out of it. So the first way to signal it's ok, is to help someone whenever we think that person is wrong. To work together, to fix the issue.

/Edit : and another way would be to signal, and work on our own irrationality, publicly, so that people can see it's ok to talk about it. /edit

What would be other ways ?

That's interesting.

In my own case, it seems to, for me, work better to instead say something like "it's okay to admit to irrationality." or "I already know I'm irrational, so no big deal admitting to it. Though, when I can spot specific correctable things... well, correct them."

But YMMV, etc etc etc... But hey, maybe I'll try this too. :)

Isn't this cognitive dissonance?