Although dual process theory has its issues, folks have talked about the failure mode of prioritizing System 2 over System 1. This is a thing that the type of person who’s likely to become a rationalists is already predisposed to do, and rationality writing gives them lots of advice to prioritize S2 over S1 even more. And while S2 is extremely valuable, especially for the art of rationality, it can’t function well unless it’s integrate with S1 and S2 is used to operate feedback loops to train S1 towards rationality, as without S1 being inline S2 will always be disembodied.
The archetypal example is in the category of what folks might call the Reddit Nerd: someone who lives on the computer, seems really smart, but has little to no success in life. They don’t actually get the things they want because they live in their head and don’t know how to take effective action, so they retreat to online forums and games (board games, MMOs, etc.) where they can be achieve some measure of success without having to deal with S1.
Although dual process theory has its issues, folks have talked about the failure mode of prioritizing System 2 over System 1. This is a thing that the type of person who’s likely to become a rationalists is already predisposed to do, and rationality writing gives them lots of advice to prioritize S2 over S1 even more. And while S2 is extremely valuable, especially for the art of rationality, it can’t function well unless it’s integrate with S1 and S2 is used to operate feedback loops to train S1 towards rationality, as without S1 being inline S2 will always be disembodied.
The archetypal example is in the category of what folks might call the Reddit Nerd: someone who lives on the computer, seems really smart, but has little to no success in life. They don’t actually get the things they want because they live in their head and don’t know how to take effective action, so they retreat to online forums and games (board games, MMOs, etc.) where they can be achieve some measure of success without having to deal with S1.