The Problem With Trying To Be Rational - Steven Pinker

Reasoning itself has costs, and the benefit of choosing the optimal decision always has to be traded off. You can't spend the rest of your life gathering data, because then, you know, your life is gone. You've got to, at some point, act on the information you have, knowing that you're taking a risk, but still weighing in the cost of inaction. (wind blows)

Steven Pinker, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

There was a time not long ago when I thought that reading another Eliezer Yudkowsky blog post, or another Shane Parrish mental model definition about some cognitive bias that I didn't realize that I had, there was a period where I was adamant that that, that was going to be the solution to all of my problems in life, and then, uh, I found out that it wasn't. Why is it that I need a glossary mental models toolkit in order to be able to function? Has making sense of the world always been this difficult?

It, it always has. We're, uh, I think we are equipped to reason about cause and effect, and about logical implications, and about probability when they, uh, the problems are ones that we have dealt with all our lives, when they're, i- involve subjects that we deeply care about that impinge on us. But when it comes to general purpose tools that we can apply across the board, including to novel situations, like, "Oh, it didn't occur to me this is another example of the sunk cost fallacy or of the availability bias," namely reasoning, uh, from anecdote. Having those tools at your fingertips as generic, uh, all-purpose cognitive, um, uh, tricks, that you really do need to be reminded of. You need to know the names of the fallacies and how to avoid them, the names of the normative models, that is, uh, uh, rules and, and systems of how you ought to reason, uh, to, uh, uh, to, to deal with n- novel situations, ones that aren't, uh, and abstract situations.

Daniel Kahneman got asked, I think by Sam Harris when they did a live event, about, "After all of this time, Daniel, learning about the human brain and biases, has it made you any more rational?" And his response was basically, "No." What's your thoughts on that? Have you managed to make yourself any more rational?

Um, somewhat. Uh, I mean, I'm, uh, w- we know from the literature on biases that I'm probably not the person to ask-

(laughs)

... because all of us are subject to a biased bias, namely all of us think that everyone else is biased, but not us. Uh, so I, I might be the l- the person least equipped to spot my own biases, but I, I tend to think so. And there, there is research that suggests that people who are less susceptible to the classic cognitive, um, fallacies and biases have better outcomes in life, in general. They're less likely to get into accidents, to lose their jobs, um, to, uh, break up their relationships. Uh, uh, uh, as always, these p- pertain to averages. Certainly less likely to be scammed by, um, psychic or, um, uh, medical charlatans. So, uh, uh, so applying the average to myself, I would think so on average. I would hope so.