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we lie with our clothes the same way we lie with our words. whether we're trying to conceal wisdom, confidence, wealth, strength, compatibility, etc... there's a distribution to the potential gain and chance of getting "called out". That's assuming we're making a concious choice. A big portion of it is effective marketing making us insecure about all those things we try to conceal first, whether we are missing in any of those deparments or not. I think it's much more subconsious that we'd like to admit, particulalry if we think we're so rational.
exactly. and that's a man simply trying to gain his point. The bottleneck for the ideas on this blog finding reality are in f*d up economic incentives and feedback loops. I think it's asenine of us to stick to our ball to the wall INTJ-ness in light of the current economic and political events. it may not be that bad, but it's light years away from the optimum.
once again, there are two problems. 1 - we all have it. 2 - they all have it way worse. you guys focus on 1 and i'm sayign that in a world of blind one eye man is dead meat. Sure seems like you guys are quite emotional about the whole thing with negative ratings (didn't realize it was also a contest for worst quote), so you don't seem to be makign that much progress on 1.
longest quote EVER. hahah.
simply saying that you've talked about a weakness doesn't erradicate it. The weakness may be within you, but what affects you mroe is the extent of the problem with the REST of the society. If anything my point is that you should be spending all your effort working on the other 99% of the population, because they're going to affect your life a whole lot more by limiting your ability to live your life they way you think it oughta be lived. you know - bigger bang for the buck. Our (ANY country) education, medicine, politics, business, marriage are so full of BACKWARDS incentives that we will never come close at ALL to USING the intricacies of the problems this blog discusses. Maybe you think you can live a life disconnected from this, but if you have a job or are in a relationship or have kids, then you're not overcoming any bias. You may know that, but you're not living it. Paying tribute to that with my Anonymous quote.
I'm not saying, give up the fight, just acknowledging the problem. The quote is attributed to Anonymous, the greatest philospher that's ever lived, not me. And the only time i mentioned it was asking for everyone's opinion when i first stumbled onto this blog. That's hardly pushing my agenda. I still don't understand how you guys trust yourself to not rationalize. I can't remove myself out of the context of my existence (very similar to my issue with Ethics philosophy). I very quickly get to a point where survival and existance become more important than staying internally consistent.
"We are not rational, we're rationalizing". (hope this is still in the spirit of the blog...i think)
exactly. i guess the rationalist writing this post didn't do his research on US military. The landscape is changing. Now you can go to a cube in California and bomb targets all day long and then go have dinner with your wife and kids at 5pm, not that it is any less traumatic to the psyche, but a lot less traumatic than losing a war, right? enjoy: http://emergentfool.com/2009/04/03/military-industrial-complex-redux/
- not all costs are financial. 2. controlling habit patterns 3 and most importantly its a BAD example. If i wanna see a movie and i don't want to see it taht night, i know i'll want to see it in the future, so you go to see it to avoid a FUTURE cost. This blog reminds me of LTCM.
Check out Gladwell's new book - Outliers. Our success cannot be attributed to our individuality to the degree that most American's think it can. There are huge cultural influences, arbitrary society rules, birth year, etc... There's a chapter on why high IQ only matters to a certain point. Once you're "inteligent enough", practical wisdom takes over in determination of success. I don't think akrasia has that much to do with it. We live in a world of lower inteligence and have to play by those rules. It pays to be ONE step ahead of the mob, not 10! You cannot make money in the stock market by being 10 steps ahead. You'd be shorting stocks into oblivious in the 90's and 2006-2007, while the mob was getting more and mroe exuberant. By the same token i don't think success is a good measuring stick for rationality. Success depends on irrational subjects' interpretation and understanding of your actions, which cannot happen by definition. Unless in your endevours outside your brain you dumb it down to be one step ahead instead of ten, but then you gotta think like a dummy, which is not a skill of rationality.
It may just be semantics and a look into the biological process of decision making. I think there've been studies to show that our body tends to react to the question of which card deck is better 2-3 times before our rational self declares so. It may just be the process of a body forming a "hypothesis" and then subjecting it to a scientific type test before creating and declaring a rational theory.
What is everyone's response to - "people aren't rational, they're rationalizers"? I'm very new to the blog, but figured this would be the perfect place to get some thoughts on this idea.