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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let Them Eat Facts: Why Fact Checking Is Mostly Useless In Convincing Voters

Human beings are not rational creatures. We are apes, wrapped around monkeys, wrapped around rodents, wrapped around lizards, wrapped around amphibians. Somewhere in all that circuitry, we look at the stars and compose symphonies. Frustrating that you can't grab the logic circuits first, but that is the way we are.





kleinbl00  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This isn't entirely accurate.

Humans are rational creatures, it's just that the inputs and outputs we're reacting to are a Laplace transform of the inputs and outputs we're presented with. The trick is to couch the argument to both sets of I/O and recognize that while you're doing so, you're also coming from a place of id, not ego.

b_b  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Venkatesh Rao of Ribbon Farm likes to say that the goal of rationality isn't truth but order. That is, that we use rationality as a crutch to understand the world internally, no matter what the objective truth might be externally.

OftenBen  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Human beings are not rational creatures.

Every time I read this it makes me nauseous.

_refugee_  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have to wonder if that's because you're not a rational creature.

OftenBen  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Maybe you're onto something there

user-inactivated  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Every time I read this it makes me nauseous.

Eventually you get used to the dry heaves and the brain stops trying to vomit. Sort of like being sea sick. Embrace the suck, internalize it and use that data point to help you understand the things happening around you.

OftenBen  ·  2999 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Can there be understanding without rationality?

Trying to think like that makes me massively uneasy. I can't conceive of an irrational, pre-rational or what have you decision making process. I can't imagine applying such to any aspect of my life.

Deltron_0  ·  3000 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Which is why we're so big on technology when there's a clear-cut solution. We're all lizard people in a sense.