I’ve long-since internalized “all stated reasons are post-hoc rationalizations”, so I’ve been gradually losing my ability to pick out “rationalizations” in particular.
That is, when a human answers a query as to their reasons for something, they usually inspect their self-model to guess what course of actions could have led to that outcome (as though predicting a future action). Some guesses are better than others, and we call the bad guesses “rationalizations”.
ETA: I wrote this comment before noticing that the cases seem to be talking about rationalizations that take place before performing an action (like rationalizing impending purchase of pizza by referring to calcium), which is surprising to me. I’m not sure how to spot those, or whether I do them.
I’ve long-since internalized “all stated reasons are post-hoc rationalizations”, so I’ve been gradually losing my ability to pick out “rationalizations” in particular.
That is, when a human answers a query as to their reasons for something, they usually inspect their self-model to guess what course of actions could have led to that outcome (as though predicting a future action). Some guesses are better than others, and we call the bad guesses “rationalizations”.
ETA: I wrote this comment before noticing that the cases seem to be talking about rationalizations that take place before performing an action (like rationalizing impending purchase of pizza by referring to calcium), which is surprising to me. I’m not sure how to spot those, or whether I do them.