Art, rationality, and the “feeling” for rightness
TL;DR: I wish to posit a tweak to rationalism that respects the importance of reason while relieving some of the massive individual burden of information processing and probabilistic risk management. This tweak is “rationality permeated with a feeling for rightness” (this “feeling for rightness” will be explained). The feeling for rightness is an aesthetic intuition that adds a new dimension to each thought, so thinking then happens in two dimensions: “is this thought rational in the current context” and “how does this thought feel”. The feeling for rightness can serve as a pruning function for the billions of valid thoughts one can produce in an argument or decision making process (the billions of possible paths that can often lead the sincere and thorough rationalist who wants to make the right decision into a vortex of insanity).
Art, rationality, and the “feeling” for truth
Within all of us seems to be a sense for “rightness”, that is closely related to art, order, and harmony. The feeling of rightness is felt when your furniture feels a little off so you make an adjustment and everything “feels right”. The feeling of rightness is when you’re drawing a circle and it looks a little oblong, then you draw another and it feels right. The feeling of rightness is felt when an instrument is perfectly tuned. It is related to harmony, order, and patterning, but goes beyond both.
It seems quite difficult to live life as a sincere rationalist. There is an endless amount of information with which to update one’s priors, and the truth value of most information, especially online, is unknown.
There is also a more fundamental problem. Rationality cannot prove values. When we are reasoning probabilistically, what are we hoping to maximize? As you probably already know, one can make an argument for all kinds of answers.
And so I wish to propose a method that respects the primacy of reason while relieving the massive mental burden of information processing and probabilistic risk management, and solves the value problem.
It involves the feeling for rightness.
What is the feeling for rightness? The feeling for rightness is an inner sense for order and harmony. It is related to aesthetic intuition. The feeling of rightness is felt when your furniture feels a little off so you make adjustments until it “feels right”. The feeling of rightness is felt when an instrument is perfectly tuned. It’s felt when you look away from a pile of trash and towards a Renaissance cathedral with well thought out proportions. It is related to harmony and order, but seems to go beyond both.
It is not an emotion. It is not a subjective reaction like happy, sad, angry, because it can be linked to objective concepts of mathematical order.
One solution to the value problem and the problem of over-thinking is to trust the feeling for rightness as a guide for our reason.
Now of course I cannot prove anything about the feeling of rightness is related to the truth. We cannot prove much in this world. But we can experiment!
And, in my experiments, I have found taking this feeling of rightness as seriously has improved my life.
I propose an experiment for you to try and see for yourself: instead of considering every possible way in which a statement can be wrong, consider only those counter-arguments that feel right.
The justification for the experiment is this: one quickly finds, both in ones-self and in others, that most rational thought is unproductive. Some rational thought, however, is amazingly productive. How does one bias towards valuable thoughts? We can use the feeling for rightness!
I believe the results of this experiment will be that you will start to use aesthetic intuition, or a feeling for rightness, as a pruning function for the billions of possible paths one can make in an argument or decision making process (the billions of possible paths that can often lead the sincere and thorough rationalist who wants to make the right decision into a vortex of insanity).
If you wish to go further, you can apply the feeling for rightness to as a guard for the thoughts you let into your mind when going about your day or when focused on making a decision. A helpful cue is to label each thought as being “on track” or “not on track” based on the independent dimension of the feeling for rightness. Ignore the thoughts that feel “not on track”, even if they seem like “technically” valid objections. Please note that I am not at all saying avoid all contrary thoughts. You will still think in the dialectic of reason. But your dialectic will sound more like a dialogue between two philosophers with excellent intuition and practical wisdom, rather than an endless and unproductive internet forum war (as mine often did).
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Note on strengthening the feeling of rightness through art:
The feeling of rightness can be strengthened through the practice of art where the sense of rightness is fundamental. Abstract art is an especially wonderful exercise because one must follow the feeling of rightness which cannot be justified rationally.
I think this is actually already part of the LessWrong-style-rationalist zeitgeist. Taste, aesthetics, focusing and belief reporting are some keywords to look at.
(I think this post also seems to not understand what LessWrong’s conception of rationality is about, although I’m not 100% sure what you’re assuming about it. Vlad’s comment seems like a good starting point for that)
Rationality is centrally about attitude towards methodologies that make thinking more effective, in any forms they take and for whatever aim. Not about particular ways of thinking, or internalizing of particular truths, or effortful meticulousness in all things.
Emotions or slack can be good in themselves, and can have some use, and so they align with rationality where they are helpful in making thinking effective, or when they are more directly carrying out what you are aiming for.