> The thing I dislike about so much of this rationalist stuff is that, honestly, it breaks apart like so much driftwood when confronted with the jagged incongruities of how real people work.
> Intelligence is resented, systems are illogical kludges, people are unpredictable...this sort of thing is just popcorn reading for folks that are more comfortable reading pandering fiction than facing the harsh and chaotic and unforgiving world outside their computer.
"Rational" does not in any way mean "only capable of dealing with rational systems and rational people". Intentionally choosing to not develop and use models for such systems would be decidedly irrational.
Social conventions, fashion, rhetoric, mob mentality, cognitive biases, and many other aspects of human behavior don't match how a rational actor would behave; that doesn't prevent someone from modeling them and behaving in ways that produce better results than if they hadn't.
For example, there are many otherwise smart people, or people who want to consider themselves smart, who decide at some point in their lives that fashion is fundamentally not sensible, and therefore they want nothing to do with it. Thus, they ignore the social signals associated with it, to their own detriment; they make poorer first impressions, and generally do not look how they wish to be perceived. This is not intelligent behavior.
> Intelligence is resented, systems are illogical kludges, people are unpredictable...this sort of thing is just popcorn reading for folks that are more comfortable reading pandering fiction than facing the harsh and chaotic and unforgiving world outside their computer.
"Rational" does not in any way mean "only capable of dealing with rational systems and rational people". Intentionally choosing to not develop and use models for such systems would be decidedly irrational.
Social conventions, fashion, rhetoric, mob mentality, cognitive biases, and many other aspects of human behavior don't match how a rational actor would behave; that doesn't prevent someone from modeling them and behaving in ways that produce better results than if they hadn't.
For example, there are many otherwise smart people, or people who want to consider themselves smart, who decide at some point in their lives that fashion is fundamentally not sensible, and therefore they want nothing to do with it. Thus, they ignore the social signals associated with it, to their own detriment; they make poorer first impressions, and generally do not look how they wish to be perceived. This is not intelligent behavior.