What does 'rational' (or 'irrational') even mean anyway?

S

slightly crooked

Active member
nomadthethird said:
Believe it or not, the way our brains function hasn't changed all that drastically in terms of basic cognitive capacity in the past several thousand years.
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How would that view relate to something like the Flynn effect?

(This is a genuine question, rather than an attempt to argue with what you've said - I only recently came across the FE, so would welcome some scientific perspective upon it).
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
slightly crooked said:
How would that view relate to something like the Flynn effect?

(This is a genuine question, rather than an attempt to argue with what you've said - I only recently came across the FE, so would welcome some scientific perspective upon it).
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Diet has a big effect on intelligence, esp. your diet as a young kid and even your mum's diet before you were born. Then there's better schooling and probably other effects like lower rates of exposure to harmful industrial/agricultural chemicals and childhood diseases.

Maybe even the effects of playing computer games? Though you'd have to balance that against other psychological effects - christ, some mates of mine had Game Cubes a few years ago and some of the 'games' looked like they'd been designed by and for people on about six strong Es, I could practically feel the damn thing giving me ADHD as I watched it...
 
M

massrock

Well-known member
Rupert Sheldrake's take:

In the appendix to my book 'Dogs That Know When Their Owners
Are Coming Home' I discuss the Flynn effect and show data for these rises in
IQ. I predicted this effect in the early 1980s but could find no data about
it. Then Flynn discovered that there had in fact been rises in IQ. He and
a colleague, William Dickens, have recently tried to explain this by what
seems to me a highly complicated and artificial argument, published in the
Psychological Review (Vol. 108, 2001). (Unfortunately I don't have the
page numbers because I only have a proof copy of the article).

The fact that Dickens and Flynn have been driven to this tortuous attempt
to explain the phenomenon is because all previous attempts to explain it
have failed, and yet the data are very solid and have been replicated in at
least 14 different countries. The paradox is that IQ test improvement is
not paralleled by any other indication that intelligence really is
increasing. I think this is happening because people are simply getting
better at doing IQ tests because so many people have done them before. In
other words, it's a morphic resonance effect. They have already tested
possibilities about it being due to more TV, increasing test sophistication,
etc, etc, and none of these have been shown to explain it. This might be an
interesting subject to take up on your discussion list, if you have not done
so already.

http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/6425.html
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Interesting that Sheldrake should come up in a thread about rationality... ;)

I met the guy's son once at a party organised by the Chap magazine. He seemed nice enough, I hope I didn't come across as unpleasantly sceptical when we was talking about his old man's ideas.

Anyway, re. IQ tests: surely it wouldn't be too hard to compare, year on year, results from people who are taking an IQ for the first time? You'd have to take their word for it, I guess, though that'd probably be a fair assumption if you were testing young kids. Or you could even compare figures for people who'd taken the test loads of times and were practised at it. As long as it was a fair comparison, you could draw meaningful conclusions.

Edit: Ohhh, I see: he means that because a large minority of people have done the tests a lot, that's making everyone better at them. Um, yeah OK...
 
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Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Mr. Tea said:
Arguably it's profoundly irrational for me to be posting shit on the internet when I should be asleep. But be that as it may...

Zhao's whole argument in the 'mystery' thread seems to hinge on the idea that there are two fundamentally different worldviews; two different ways of seeing things, of interacting with the world, of considering the subjective experience against objective phenomena. Now while Zhao has made it very clear that he values both kinds of worldview, as he sees them, and would like to see them somehow reconciled or synthesised into some new transcendental worldview with the best of both worlds, I think there's a fundamental cognitive mismatch going on here.

Namely, the idea that 'superstitious' or 'traditional' or 'spiritual' beliefs are somehow irrational. When you live in a pre-technological society (and I'm aware that this is an imperfect term, because all societies have technology, but it has to be better than the troublesome 'indigenous' or the essentially meaningless 'traditional') it is profoundly rational to attribute to spirits or unseen forces the ebb and flow of the seasons, weather and other natural phenomena, illness and other catastrophic events like plagues of locusts, (were)tigers and so on. Because everything happens for a reason, right? And if the reason for something happening cannot be seen, then it happens for an unseen reason, by definition.

From the point of view of someone raised in a technological society in which natural phenomena are for the most part accounted for by science (crop circles can just fuck off, OK? I mean proper old school weird crop circles, not some undergraduate dickheads high on X-Files and scrumpy and psytrance), it can seem 'irrational' to view the world in terms of weretigers. But that's just begging the question, because no-one here has any idea what it's like to live in (and make sense of) a weretigerish world on a full-time basis. I think it would be ridiculous to assume that people who live in that world all the time, because that's the world they know, have gone out of their way to think of things as irrationally, mysteriously (etc.) as possible - no-one does that, because from a survival point of view it's a total dead end. A belief that the world is amenable to understanding - which is to say, rational understanding - underpins all belief systems in their infancy, before they calcify into structures of tradition, ritual, social heirarchy and so on. So while it would be wholly rational to a villager in the Sumatran jungle to view the world in terms of weretigers, and for someone designing novel semiconductors to view the world in terms of quantum mechanics, it would be utterly irrational to try and explain weretigers in terms of quantum mechanics or quantum mechanics in terms of weretigers. At the same time, it would be irrational to try and explain semiconductors in terms of Newtonian mechanics, or weretigers in terms of Biblical creationism, and so on and so on.

So as Nomad has pointed out several times in the other thread, it's not that pre-technological or 'primitive' people (or however you want to put it) have privileged accesss to some inherently intuitive or irrational or pre-rational sixth sense. They're using the same rational faculties as anyone else, to make sense of the world - that's what humans do. As well as any every other species, as far as I can see. Elephants venerate their dead for the same reason we hold funeral ceremonies: it makes sense. Roger Penrose makes a great point that although it's seemingly by-the-by that humans have the ability to understand advanced mathematics, if they so choose to apply themselves, there must be some archaic complex of genes that encode for a brain with the capacity to understand, and that somehow the same circuits that enable the evasion of predators and the capture of prey animals and the cohesion of a basic social group somehow happen to suitable for grappling with integral calculus. It would be trite to assume that this is a coincidence, I think. So you have Stonehenge and Avebury and the Egyptian pyramids and the Mexican pyramids as the pre-modern Greenwich Observatories and Jodrell Bankses and Hubbles and VLAs; likewise alchemy as the forerunner of chemistry and haruspicy (the pre-science of prescience based on the shape of entrails) as the forerunner of anatomy. Newton was an alchemist as much as, if not more than, a physicist and mathematician not because he felt like being rational some days and irrational on others, but because he saw it all as aspects of natural philosophy: the pursuit of understanding the (physical, senisble) world by rational means. It's just that mechanics and optics have stood the test of time and emprical trial, and alchemy has not - even though its underlying philosophy survives in the modern science of chemistry.

Which brings me to a sort of denouement here: as much as some po-mo types would love us to think that science is just another kind of religion or superstition or belief system (and I'm aware no-one here is actually advocating that, of course), it's much closer to the truth to say that superstition and religion are kinds of science. Call it pre-science or proto-science or whatever, it's a response to the same implulse.

What is irrational, one level, is the insistence of many people who live in a technological society and for the most parts reap its benefits but who persist in an entrenched pre-modern worldview that is blatantly disproven by all available empirical evidence (yes, America, I'm looking at you). But then, on another level it's surely rational to stick to these outmoded but familiar and comforting beliefs when you feel your culture is under attack from outsiders who seemingly have few values in common with yours, right?

Murray Gell-mann has a lot to say about adaptive and maladaptive schemata - I could paraphrase but I've gone on too far already and those ideas deserve their own thread.

All this just makes me think of the inherent implausibility of the purely 'logical' Mr. Spock - surely he'd recognise the existential futility of the human/Vulcan condition and realise that the most rational thing to do is top himself in two seconds flat? Logic my arse, I've seen the episode where Spock gets the horn and all hell breaks loose. Then again, if you want to get laid you might as well go about it logically...

This post brought to you by nomadologist, Jonathan Meades and insomnia.
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the line which separates the 2, are of course constantly shifting. which often makes people with rigid definitions look pretty silly.
 
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Z

zhao

there are no accidents
nomadthethird said:
No, you're exactly right. Blood, sweat, tears, and a few moments here and there of leisure time or fun or pleasure or whatever. Take them as they come, basically. Isn't there an entire book of the Old Testament about this?

It's always been this way. Try not to make the world an even shittier place than it already is or needs to be. Try to make things better where you can. Etc.
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if you want to ignore scientific data gethered during the last 100 years, just because they cause problems with the way you see the world, that is your choice. but it is sad that someone so young can be so blindly invested in a particularly rigid world view that it would make one as stubborn, irrational, and unscientific as you.

apologize to everyone else for going over well covered territory, but this silly person apparently has major blocks in her mind, caused by rigid adherence to a particular world view, which makes it near impossible for her to rationally consider scientific evidence on subjects which anthropologists world wide agree unanimously -- groups of band level societies, which are numerous, such as the Dobe Ju/'hoansi:

• gather 70 percent of their food (roots, nuts, fruits, etc.)
• no hierarchy and no authority, only "temporary leaders"
• no private property
• work 20 hour weeks with only division of labour being between sexes
• does not distinquish between work and play
• zero starvation: 100% of population fed compared to 30% starving in the "civilized" world
• superb health (relative to ours)
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
zhao said:
but it is sad that someone so young can be so blindly invested in a particularly rigid world view that it would make one as stubborn, irrational, and unscientific as you.
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just so we're clear & you can't try to squirm out of it later, that is exactly the kind of condescending, passive-aggressive Internet hectoring that people constantly call you on. don't try to write it off as a "bold statement" or whatever either.

also, that view of h-gs is extremely one-sided; even the staunchest anti-civ primitivists might be a bit uneasy with the rose-colored glasses. it is (unsurprisingly, given that this is a Zhao argument) considerably more complicated than you make it to be. I don't want to get into an involved, proper answer right now b/c I need to go to sleep but I don't to just let that stand either.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
padraig (u.s.) said:
just so we're clear & you can't try to squirm out of it later, that is exactly the kind of condescending, passive-aggressive Internet hectoring that people constantly call you on. don't try to write it off as a "bold statement" or whatever either.
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you are confusing "aggressive" with "passive aggressive", you dickless wanker.

padraig (u.s.) said:
also, that view of h-gs is extremely one-sided; even the staunchest anti-civ primitivists might be a bit uneasy with the rose-colored glasses. it is (unsurprisingly, given that this is a Zhao argument) considerably more complicated than you make it to be. I don't want to get into an involved, proper answer right now b/c I need to go to sleep but I don't to just let that stand either.
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AND you are wrong. anthropologists world wide agree amost UNANIMOUSLY on the data collected on the Dobe over the past 100 years, which all support the list i made above.

now go suck that lemon to sleep.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
but i must admit to having been very sexist here on this forum:

because the only reason Nomad has many times gotten away with her ugly, vile behavior is because she's a girl.

use personal information i disclose in good faith to condescend and patronize, just because you disagree with my ideas on sprituality? that is simply the behavior of a massive CUNT, of whatever gender.

and of course it doesn't stop there. since the beginning of the "Mysterious" thread, i have received 3 private messages, none of my initiative, from long time active members, in regards to the constant stream of nasty shit coming from you:

...Nomad can be unbelievably annoying and patronizing...
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i don't completely agree with you, but this Nomad is really out of line sometimes. it's like listening to a 12 year old brat.
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i have to say regarding this forum that i do dislike the way some of the shit that nomad character (and i hate to single one person out but really...) comes out with is so often let by without comment. i find that strange to be honest. is it for the entertainment value, or maybe because she's just about the only female poster? highly rigid mentality anyway. where do you even start with what's wrong there? it's sort of funny to bait i suppose but there are surely more productive ways to interact.

but more than this irritation i get the impression that quite often posters who may have interesting perspectives to bring just don't bother saying anything. and maybe they're right to stay out of it but i can't help feeling that the potential for a more rewarding discussion is sometimes frustrated by certain kinds of behaviour being overly condoned, even encouraged.
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what we have on this forum is a unique chance for some good discussions to occur, because there are a few here who come from different backgrounds, and bring different perspectives. nomad, you should realize that your hostility on a personal level destroys what might have been much more fruitful dialog.

and before you give us the bullshit accusations of me being the one who is hostile, just re-read the original "mysterious" post again: my impatience with what i perceive as "western rationality" is a fair statement of opinion, and a valid starting point for a discussion, and bare no resemblance to the "insult" that you try to paint it as.

but the fact that you, and Padraig, and Tea, the same few people who always have a problem with my posts, see what i said as a personal insult, well that right there is indication of some deep insecurity and deeper rooted issues.

in all sincerity, i understand you are all very much invested in your chosen perceptual paradigm, and that is why it is so threatening to you when someone presents another, or even present that there is more than 1 valid way to perceive the experience of humans on earth.

but the fact remains that your view is not the only "correct" one, and there are scientists who disagree with your vision of a dog eat dog world, and eternal slavery as the "natural" "fate" of humanity, etc, etc.

remember this little exchange? and the only reason i bring it up is because your bahavior has not changed in the slightest, and is just as annoyingly closed minded now, as then:

nomadthethird said:
yeah you could "posit" that "symbiotic" (marketing catch phrase or what?) relationships "outnumber" other kinds, but you'd have no way of quantifying that in reality so it'd be basically a wild guess based on, well, nothing.

things exist. things sometimes need to kill other things to continue existing. end of story.
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WIKI: The biologist Lynn Margulis, famous for her work on endosymbiosis, contends that symbiosis is a major driving force behind evolution. She considers Darwin's notion of evolution, driven by competition, as incomplete and claims that evolution is strongly based on co-operation, interaction, and mutual dependence among organisms. According to Margulis and Dorion Sagan, "Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking."
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but all of that is beside the point. which is this: i am giving up on you, Nomad.

because you have shown clearly, one last time, that you are, ironically, incapable of a rational, reasoned discussion, and will go to any length, willfully ignore, falsify, mud sling, in other words, act like a rude little brat-bitch, to try to prove that your world view is the only acceptable one.

so go on believing what you want, and dismiss those with other ideas as "unscientific" "new age" "hippies", hahaha makes zero difference to me :D it is for sure the more popular position at this point in time anyway, as pathetic little slaves like grizzleb is too happy to demonstrate. this will help you feel smart as you go along, and become even more calcified in your views, for you will find many who agree with your rigid, fundamentalist notions, and you can all gang up and hate "mystics" together. :rolleyes:

you will reap what you sow, and everything in the universe will be, just as it was before.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Actually, I think that Zhao is on quite solid ground when he says that ancient hunter-gatherers lived much better lives than most of humanity. I'm not sure that I would say that they live better lives than people in modern OECD countries, and I dunno about that list, but I'd certainly prefer to be a primitive hunter-gatherer than a medieval European peasant or starving African farmer.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I've kinda lost the thread of this. I think there's an argument that's being carried over from another thread that's usurped this one.

Going back to the original post, which I thought was very good:

Not that there is such a thing as a homogenous scientific community, but what are some of the views of science ont he project that it's involved with? Is it to "explain everything" or a variant of that? Obviously there will always be some things outside science, that are mysterious without being Mysterious, if you like, such as emotional life, the mind-body conundrum etc.

As to the relative merits of Western/non-Western life (although the heterogeneity involved within each of these terms makes any such discussion of necessity very approximate), surely a non-Western view of Western science is kinda needed here? But then Western science is founded on a lot of non-Western principles, and the West defined what Western/non-Western was anyways...I'm getting confused.

Fuck it, the mudslinging makes my head hurt less. As you were.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
vimothy said:
Actually, I think that Zhao is on quite solid ground when he says that ancient hunter-gatherers lived much better lives than most of humanity.
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this may/may not be true. it depends heavily on what you define as a "better life". I'm not disputing any of those specific points about the Dobe Ju (which I didn't to begin with, anyway), but there is a flipside; considerably lower life expectancy & higher infant mortality rate, endemic low-level warfare in many h-g societies, a greater vulnerability to the elements, lack of access to modern medicine (I'm not sure about that bit about "better health" which again depends on the definition), etc. now, there are counter-arguments to all of those, and counters to those counters. actually, you can - & I've seen it done plenty of times - argue that all of the things I mentioned are good, or at least more "natural" (that, for example, life expectancy now is artificially inflated) which, I dunno. I'm just saying it's not all peaches & cream, that there is a cost to the benefits, hard choices (for example, infanticide) that Internet h-g enthusiasts will likely never have to face.

further, not all h-g societies are the same. the San/Basarwa (of which the Dobe Ju are a specific group) are different from the Dani are different from the Yanomamo. the San are kind of the go-to for people who want to "prove" that h-g societies are egalitarian, non-hierarchical, etc. which may be largely true - the issue is more that almost everywhere humans abandoned h-g for agriculture, out of necessity. h-g requires an extremely large amt of land/person; in fact, many h-g practices are linked to keep population low. as resources (specifically, large game) become depleted & pop density goes up people become more sedentary & agriculture creeps into the picture, linked with hierarchies & division of labor & patriarchy & all that. so it's all very well to go on about original affluence & so on from your laptop, but it's not the reality we're stuck with, yunno?

(of course none of this should detract from the many valid critiques of Western/advanced/etc. society that can be made)
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
oh & opinions about the Dobe Ju & San generally among anthropologists are anything but unanimous (or UNANIMOUS). I'm not up to speed on the ins & outs, but there's been serious debates on the topic for several decades running.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
I'm thinking of the basic Malthusian Trap model, which states that, because resources are essentially fixed, for any pre-industrial society (and it need not necessarily be human), population levels will reach equilibrium at the subsistence wage. Any gradual positive technological change will simply increase the net birth rate and return living standards to subsistence. For example, one of Africa's tragedies is that thanks to advances in medical science, the modern subsistence wage is quite a bit lower than it was in the past.

EDIT: So ultimately, less people = higher standards of living. Since there were obviously less people sharing the same set of resources, living standards were higher for primitive hunter-gatherers than for medieval peasants.
 
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Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
What do the comparative advantages of nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles and high-tech specialized lifestyles have to do with rationalism, anyway? I don't see any essential correlation.
 
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