[extropy-chat] Rational thinking

[Lee Corbin]

Keith wrote

> I claim that humans have mental mechanisms *for* irrational 
> thinking.  These get turned on when the "interest" of the person
> and his genes diverge (or he has been convinced they do).

There is an absolutely great book, "The Robot's Rebellion",
that goes into these issues in great detail, and it becomes clear
that these deep issues resist the simple evaluations I'm reading
on this list.

> Or do you have a better explanation for suicide bombers?

Suicide bombers are *not* irrational, not in the slightest.

It can be entirely rational for an individual organism (read human
being) to calculate an extremely careful behavior according to
all that individual's values and memes, and to execute that
behavior.

We must resist the simple equating of "rationality" = "what is
good for the individual vehicle", which several people seem to
embrace.  The entire "Neurathian project" --- which Stanovich in
his book makes so clear --- argues that in the manner so 
familiar to those who follow PCR, that each meme, each value,
each and every instinct must be individually evalutated in the light
of the others!  (Yes, the bulk of the book focuses on the need to
be able to hold up instincts and genetic impulses one at a time
and criticize them in the light of everything we know, and to 
somehow resist their domination, which, as hardly needs be
said here, characterizes the behavior of most people.)

Just how irrational would it be for you to sacrifice many hundreds
of thousands of dollars for a cause to which you were dedicated,
even though that sacrifice entailed a somewhat diminished 
expectation of the eventual survival of your own skin?

What I see over and over again on this list is that causes which
repel us we evaluate as "irrational" whereas causes that we
support---e.g. the reduction of the world's great terrorist
state (the U.S.) --- merit great effort and even sacrifice. 

Lee

P.S.  I hope that no one is offended by my changing the subject
line, since the current topic really has nothing to do with a movie
review.