[ExI] Non-rational humans can have benefits

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 10:24 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Humans are emotional creatures, not logical machines.
> The floods of emotions in humans have survival benefits. That is
> why they developed and persist.
> Cold logic would "dehumanise" humans and produce bad results.
>

I'm not sure how it dehumanizes nor why it should produce bad results.


> That is why enemies have to be thought of as sub-human to justify killing.
>
> Benefits of non-rationality -
> Relationships, love, loyalty, and caring persist.
>

The benefits these things can offer makes them logically worth pursuing.


> Creativity and Innovation are often non-logical.
>

I would say rather, that they require a more complex process than can be
described by a short logical formula. But that doesn't make them
non-logical (just complex).
The majority of innovation can be seen as a process of
permutation/modification+evaluation/selection. Evolution works this way.
And similar applications in genetic programming work this way, and produce
creative results. For example, John Koza's "Invention Machine"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Koza


> Different moral systems that benefit their society are non-logical.
>

Spock, the most logical main character of star trek, often said "the needs
of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Is this not a logical statement?


> Quick decisions in times of stress are intuitive.
>

True. But it is logical to use a faster (less reliable) algorithm, when one
does not have the time to for a more rigorous, but slower process. So I
would say using intuition to make a snap decision is meta-logical.


> Hope and optimism keep humans going when, logically, they should just give
> up.
>

Continuing to waste resources due to the sunk cost fallacy is illogical.
But when there are no other options at hand, it can still be more logical
than giving up. One must weigh the available options, and their expected
values.


> And so on......   Being human seems preferable to being a "rational agent".
>

There are systems where being irrational confers advantages. Such as in
poker, or during negotiations. Being perfectly rational means being
perfectly predictable, and that can be exploited by adversaries.

Jason
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