(-Death)rant.net

The more I pondered about the concept of rationality, the more I got the feeling that people are actually much more rational than I had believed. If you want to be rational, it’s often neither helpful nor necessary to dig into formal mathematical or philosophical concepts like decision-theory, utilitarianism or Bayesianism. After all, in most situations people have to decide quickly and on the basis of sparse and imprecise information. Additionally, the former mathematical concepts are just simplifying models about how the human mind works, or should work in the ideal case. It’s not to say that those concepts aren’t useful, but it is important to know their limitations and simplifications, as well as the areas in which they are effective, when applied in a rather classical sense (those simplifications would be worthy of some posts on their own). Apart from that, people also have to deal with their own psychological limitations and their lack of skills which could be used to compensate for those limitations. All of those factors make the world extremely complex, so that if you want to be really rational, you have to be rational in a much more general sense. Instead of applying “correct” formal algorithms all the time, you have to use much more fuzzy techniques to find the best course of action, given the numerous limitations you have to consider. And there are much more limitations that people usually have to consider than I had just listed. Add systematic restricting philosophical, religious, ideological, political, economical, societal, neurological, psychological, biological, technical and educational factors, and you get a hint of the massively ugly situation we have to muddle through.

Complexity by nerovivo CC BY-SA

After accounting for all those hindrances, I come to the quite fuzzy conclusion that people are remarkably rational almost all the time. The real problem is not that people are irrational, or evil, or unwilling to do their best. They are indeed rational and benevolent and virtuous, but only up to the level that their own abilities and their whole situation actually admit. It’s a too simple view that the problems of the world simply result from the character flaws of people. What actually causes most problems is the lack of skills to compensate for all the kinds of adverse factors that we have to cope with. People are not bad! They just aren’t skilled enough to be better than they actually are!

To give this line of reasoning a name, let me call it Capability Criticality. This concept means that the ideas and values which people have, depend critically on their capabilities. Let’s take a look at some rather abstract examples:

• People are not good at dealing with inconvenient truths, therefore they tend to believe in false, but convenient ideas. That way, they can avoid the problems they would face when being confronted with the harsh reality. In the case that those people actually don’t have the necessary coping skills to endure the repeating confrontation with certain inconvenient facts, this strategy is actually a rational behavior.
• I think that people mostly adhere to the ethical principles they can actually psychologically afford. More demanding principles create a higher emotional burden and that’s a strong obstacle to adapting them in the first case. Questioning simple moral systems, which are established by parents, authorities, and the society in general, is pretty hard, because it creates moral uncertainty, or even fear of rejection and punishment. If the emotional burden becomes to high, people can actually regress regarding their ethical integrity, and start justifying moral principles which are more convenient for them. In most societies it is hard to be vegetarian or even vegan, and that’s one of the most important reasons why there are so few of them. Most other causes just stem from the difficulty that is connected to those lifestyles. Why even bother thinking about adapting such a lifestyle, if you don’t think you have the necessary skills to keep it up in the first place? But let’s consider something different for now: Why do people commit crimes at all? I guess it’s just because they don’t have the right skills to reach their goals in any other viable way (unless they just think that the laws are illegitimate). If legal or societal restraints become too bothersome, they will be ignored. Moral integrity is a concept that can only be understood correctly, if one understands that people have real psychological limits for what they can afford to care about. Once those limits are reached, meltdown becomes inevitable! And yes, there are other determining factors like intelligence or empathy, which are also critical. After all, increasing your ethical scope only makes sense if you really understand what that’s good for.

In general, people are as bad as they are, because they lack the necessary skills to improve themselves, and they lack the knowledge how to improve their skills. Malevolence, character flaws, and irrationality are just superficial concepts, which hide the fact that people really just can’t do any better at their current capability levels. No amount of moralizing or complaining does any good. In any case, understanding capability criticality is a good reason to stop being judgmental. Don’t punish people or complain about them, simply help them!

So, when truly acknowledging the principle of capability criticality, then the apparent solution for our predicaments is to make people more skilled. Usually that process is called education, but I think education is a term that is viewed much to restrictive and is reserved for special “educational” situations, like parenting and learning situations in schools or universities. What we really need is a massive paradigm-shift towards an integrated educational society in which generalized and effective skill-sharing happens everywhere. Is there already an app for that? How would a fully effective educational system look like? Do we need more psychological knowledge beforehand? I’m not sure, but here are some suggestions that ought to help you increase your skill levels in most situations:

• Ask people who really do what you want to do, how they do it, and how they cope with related problems!
• Read excellent self-help books. Here, the word “excellent” is very important!
  • For overcoming depression Feeling Good by David D. Burns is pretty ideal. His Feeling Good Handbook helps against more general everyday problems (for example procrastination)and teaches effective communication.
  • Once you are happy, you might want to think about what to do with your life. Here Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson might be a great inspiration.
  • Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson comes up with the most recent scientific results on how to define and reach your goals in an optimal way.
  • If you want to become more organized and efficient, read Getting Things Done by David Allan.
  • Great lifestyle design and effectiveness tips can be found in The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris.
• Read my post Problem Analysis is useful, but doesn’t help! It explains how scientific self-improvement works.
• Read my post Capability Augmentation Will Solve All Our Problems! It’s quintessential!
• In general, it helps to read the best books about the area in which you want to improve your skills.
• Be very serious about becoming better! It could save your life or even the whole world!

And of course, share your skills and insights with others. That will help turning the world into a place you actually love living in.