Rationality – What, Why and How

A while ago – back before I knew anything about the concept of “rationality” – a good friend recommended a book to me. Well, not an actual published book, but rather a Harry Potter fan fiction. Fan fiction loans characters and worlds from original works of fiction and switches things up by introducing new storylines, new relationships, or something as small as just a new concept. This particular fan-fic is called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” (by Eliezer Yudkowsky) and this is its plot according to GoodReads:

“Petunia Evans has married an Oxford biochemistry professor and young genius Harry grows up fascinated by science and science fiction. When he finds out that he is a wizard, he tries to apply scientific principles to his study of magic, with sometimes surprising results.”

In other words, eleven-year-old Harry Potter arrives at Hogwarts and cracks the secret to magic by applying some badass science. This is the book that first introduced me to rationality; having seen Harry use his rationality skills to turn the (wizarding) world upside down, I was inspired to do the same. (I strongly recommend you to read it if you are interested in science and rationality – it is amazing all the way through.) I don’t remember exactly what happened next – all I know is that I’ve galloped through a plentitude of videos, articles, blog posts and wiki entries in the months since, and I now apparently own a rationality blog. Things escalated quickly, let’s just leave it at that.

But what exactly is rationality, and why should one study it?

Let me begin by clarifying something important: scientific rationality does not equal “Spock rationality”. Rationality is not about abandoning your emotions and spewing out random probability percentages. You need to leave your preconceived ideas about rationality behind before we go on.

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Ready?

Good.

So, now that we have that out of the way – no source seems to be able to specify exactly what it means to be rational, but the best definition I have to give you is the following. Rationality consists of two subcategories, namely

1. Epistemic rationality, and
2. Instrumental rationality.

Very simply put, epistemic rationality is the art of having true beliefs about the world, while instrumental rationality is concerned with your own goals in life and how to reach them. Being rational, then, means working against your own brain in its endeavour to settle down in a comfortable, ignorant bliss; it means being sceptical; it means asking yourself time and time again if what you think you know really is true; it means updating your beliefs when you receive new evidence; it means looking past thought traps, biases and fallacies in order to be able to get what you really want out of life.

Doesn’t this sound like something worth striving for? Yes, I think so too. But the fact of the matter is that it is hard. Changing your mind about something when new evidence pops up is uncomfortable, as is admitting that you are wrong. Not to mention the fact that your own brain is wired against you – it frequently uses so-called heuristics (rules of thumb; shortcuts) to draw conclusions that may be not only wrong, but also detrimental to both us and our surroundings.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, we use two different cognitive systems when we interpret the world. Fittingly, these systems are called system 1 and system 2. System 1 is the one based on heuristics; it is intuitive and reacts instantaneously. When I say 2 + 2, you think “four”; when I say “lemon”, you grimace and start salivating. This is the system you use most often in your daily life. It’s the fastest of the system siblings, but a while after, system 2 kicks in. This system is the “big brother”; the system that deliberates, analyses and reasons. System 2 activates whenever you have to do something you’re not used to doing. When buying a new smartphone, for example, you compare prices, product details and brands; this is part of your deliberate reasoning.

It makes sense to use system 1 when you don’t have time to deliberate; in fact, our lives would be much more difficult and time-consuming (not to mention energy-consuming) if we had to actively think about all our decisions. But sometimes, using system 1 hurts us and our surroundings. System 1 allows for biases and prejudices to slip through, and this has an adverse impact on our ability to make rational decisions. System 1 also complicates becoming more rational, since an important part of rationality is to avoid biases and fallacies; in other words, to be rational, you need to learn how to stop yourself from drawing biased conclusions. You need to learn how to notice your thought processes and ask yourself,

“Did what I just thought really make sense?

“Are there other explanations for what I just experienced, and are those explanations just as – or even more – plausible?”

“Could I have fallen prey to any biases and fallacies just now?

And so, the first step to becoming a rationalist is to understand and accept that you – just like every other human being (even full-fledged rationalists) – are susceptible to biases, fallacies and other misconceptions, and that the road to overcoming this is long and hard.^[1] But if you truly feel inspired and motivated to go through with it, it will be a rewarding journey, and I will help you through it. (Even if you are not motivated to do all that, don’t worry – you can still read my rationality posts and apply their secrets and techniques to your life to the extent that you want to. Anything is better than nothing, eh?)

This has been a short introduction to rationality – if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

 

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[1] I should add that I have only just begun this journey myself (a few months ago), so I am by no means a master at rationality; however, I have a passion and inspiration to learn as much as I can on the subject, and you are more than welcome to learn with me.