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.
I would say rationality is welcome in those places, conditional on it not opposing their goals. It could be argued that opposing your own goals isn’t rational—if acting rationally means you lose, is it really rationality? I guess this is another case where rationality as truth-seeking and rationality as goal-following can conflict. In fact there are many places where truth can be enemy to varying degrees, places where incomplete truth, misleading truth, even outright lies can be advantageous to a goal.
For example, in chess it is disadvantageous to explain why you did a move or what you plan to do next, even if your opponent explicitly asked you (so that you either disadvantage yourself or refuse to tell the truth). In fact in almost any non-cooperative interaction you could be disadvantaged by your opponent knowing certain things. Even when mostly cooperating, there are also non-cooperative elements. Even when you are alone, knowing the truth about your chances of success can be discouraging, and you have to account for the fact that you’re not perfectly rational and so being discouraged from a course of action might mean you don’t take it even if it is the best option. This is probably why self-deception for overestimating one’s abilities is so rampant.
I would say rationality is welcome in those places, conditional on it not opposing their goals.
I suspect that Jack is commenting on the likelihood that the condition is satisfied. The interests of organizers and participants are likely to conflict in many of those places- casinos being perhaps the most obvious example- and thus it furthers organizer-goals to insist on or encourage irrationality in participants.
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.
I would say rationality is welcome in those places, conditional on it not opposing their goals. It could be argued that opposing your own goals isn’t rational—if acting rationally means you lose, is it really rationality? I guess this is another case where rationality as truth-seeking and rationality as goal-following can conflict. In fact there are many places where truth can be enemy to varying degrees, places where incomplete truth, misleading truth, even outright lies can be advantageous to a goal.
For example, in chess it is disadvantageous to explain why you did a move or what you plan to do next, even if your opponent explicitly asked you (so that you either disadvantage yourself or refuse to tell the truth). In fact in almost any non-cooperative interaction you could be disadvantaged by your opponent knowing certain things. Even when mostly cooperating, there are also non-cooperative elements. Even when you are alone, knowing the truth about your chances of success can be discouraging, and you have to account for the fact that you’re not perfectly rational and so being discouraged from a course of action might mean you don’t take it even if it is the best option. This is probably why self-deception for overestimating one’s abilities is so rampant.
I suspect that Jack is commenting on the likelihood that the condition is satisfied. The interests of organizers and participants are likely to conflict in many of those places- casinos being perhaps the most obvious example- and thus it furthers organizer-goals to insist on or encourage irrationality in participants.