I figured better to merge into a shared discourse, especially since we seem to have independently arrived here. A lot of Robin Hanson’s old stuff is pretty explicitly about this, but I somehow failed to really get it until I thought it through myself.
This is definitely within the broad strain of thought sometimes called “postrationality” (I don’t recall hearing “metarationality” but this post links them), which as far as I can tell amounts to serious engagement with our nature as evolved, social beings with many strategies that generate “beliefs,” not all of which are epistemic. My angle—and apparently yours as well—is on the fact that if most people are persistently “irrational,” there might be some way in which “irrationality” is a coherent and powerful strategy, and “rationality” practice needs to seriously engage with that fact.
I figured better to merge into a shared discourse, especially since we seem to have independently arrived here. A lot of Robin Hanson’s old stuff is pretty explicitly about this, but I somehow failed to really get it until I thought it through myself.
This is definitely within the broad strain of thought sometimes called “postrationality” (I don’t recall hearing “metarationality” but this post links them), which as far as I can tell amounts to serious engagement with our nature as evolved, social beings with many strategies that generate “beliefs,” not all of which are epistemic. My angle—and apparently yours as well—is on the fact that if most people are persistently “irrational,” there might be some way in which “irrationality” is a coherent and powerful strategy, and “rationality” practice needs to seriously engage with that fact.