[extropy-chat] Humans--non-rational mode

[Samantha Atkins]

On Mar 9, 2006, at 8:09 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Probably true.  I have had no end of difficulty getting people  
> (even three
> years ago on this list) to doubt the merits of unbridled  
> rationality. Folks
> here and elsewhere seem to equate rationality with critical  
> thinking, and to
> continually see those with whom they simply disagree as lacking in  
> rationality.
>

It depends a lot on how "rationality" is being defined, doesn't it.   
I don't equate as an equality rationality with critical thinking.   
Critical thinking is a tool used in service of rationality but it is  
not equivalent to rationality.  All of us have seen critical thinking  
be used in service of the decidedly irrational also, I imagine.

> Moreover, (perhaps we agree here) rationality in the absence of  
> moderating
> emotional and intuitive restraint has been highly oversold, and  
> despite
> help from Hayek, few seem to be getting the message.

I cannot agree without a great deal better agreement on what is meant  
by "rationality".

> Most of the horrors
> of the twentieth century came from unbridled rationality, e.g.,  
> Leninism
> and Nazism and people's general conviction that they could remold  
> society
> by the power of reason alone.

That is a blatant falsehood.  Lenin and subsequent party doctrine  
distrusted rationality and twisted away from objective reality into  
proletarian vs. bourgeois  truth.  Reason was seen as a weapon in  
service of a separate truth only, not as a guide to rational goals or  
action in the context of an objective reality.  The Nazi party rose  
to power on faith in "blood", in instinct and distrust of reason.



>
> You'd call it "out of control memes" I wager. But the extremism was  
> all
> very rational. What was missing from their thinking were the  
> traditional
> feelings for their victims, which they suppressed for abstract goals.
>

No, it was not "very rational".  This is too glaring an error for me  
to follow the rest of this post.

- samantha