I recently got around to reading Scott Aaronson's Complexity of Agreement: http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/agree-econ.pdf
One of the predictions of this paper is that rational Bayesians sharing information will a) rapidly converge to agreement and b) after making arguments, will often switch sides. An individual's position in an argument will look like a convergent random walk rather than a gradual concession in a negotiation. Of course, real life arguments rarely go this way [1].
But when reading this, I was struck by the fact that in some rare cases I have engaged in arguments that move this way. In every case I can think of, the other participant in the conversation was either a mathematician, a philosophers or a lesswrong reader.
[1] One rare exception to this is real life arguments about what a stock price should be. Yay for market transmission of information!
> ...rational Bayesians sharing information...
setting aside the inherent humor of economics (which is sadly completely lost on economists), have you ever wondered - why would a purely rational actor even participate in the discussion, or, as a matter of fact, in anything? why would a purely logical machine get out of bed in the morning? would it not need to "want" something first? what would an emotionless logical machine "think" about, and why would it think about that and not something else? intellect without emotion is nothing. not figuratively, not poetically, but literally nothing.
P.S. since when does the word "converge" apply to anything going on in a market? :P
The word "converge" has always applied to market responses to new info. Find a news event (e.g., WMT Oct 13-14) and look at the second or minute level movements near that event. It's qualitatively quite similar to Aaronson's theorem.
so, just IMO, a perfectly rational actor should be emotionless, at least on the matter at hand. any kind of emotional tendency would skew their reasoning.
to add to what you said more above, about those fruitful discussions: i would bet that the people you had those fruitful discussions with have had another common characteristic. namely, they did not have much personal stake in the issue you were discussing. when people approach a discussion with only a desire to learn and improve their opinions, they can indeed have a quality discussion.
ultimately, i don't believe such neat separation of rational and irrational can ever work (aside from sometimes being a useful approximation). which is why i asked those silly questions - how can a rational actor want something, without wanting it? i find the concept very contradictory, borderline useless.
edit - i think i have to back down a bit, or maybe just clarify, dunno. i maybe get what you meant. people that appreciate rationality will tend to be better discussion partners even if they are personally affected. but it will be much harder...
Nope. A perfectly rational actor should have unskewed reasoning, yes, but you can (in principle) achieve that by making your emotions not skew your reasoning rather than by throwing your emotions away.
In a word - huh? An irrational person might wake up one morning with the urge to paint a picture - are you suggesting a purely rational person wouldn't feel such an urge, or that they wouldn't act on it? In either case, why not?
See: [0] about the definition and [1] about the feelings angle.
[0] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/
>The point of rationality is to detect your own cognitive failures and to recognize and exploit those of others.
This is false. The point of "rationality" is to achieve greater cognitive success: to have your thoughts yield information about the world by allowing the world to move your thoughts. The people who try to do this (such as, in this case, me) do so because we feel like our thoughts and emotions ought to be about stuff. The more I make my emotions be linked to my thoughts and my thoughts be linked to the real world, the less gnawing self-doubt I have to deal with when things go bad, and the more I can enjoy when things go right.
If all you can do was recognize cognitive failures, you will end up an epistemic relativist, which is useless.
If what you care about is exploiting the cognitive failures of others, you're just a jerk.
> If what you care about is exploiting the cognitive failures of others, you're just a jerk.
I totally, 100% agree with you. Rationality is a tool; if you use it to exploit people, you're just a jerk.
Is everyone a jerk?
In my view, a big failure of rationalists (coming from the typical mind fallacy, most likely) is that too little effort to manipulations of this sort. It's certainly a failure on mine.
I thought long about it and I'm still confused at some points, but I ended up viewing the issue through a lens of intent. Am I exploiting people by building a pretty website? Maybe, in a way that my actions cause them to spend more time on it. But if I do it with intention of helping them accomplish whatever they're looking to accomplish, that will be beneficial to them, then it's ok. If I'm doing it to trick them into wasting more time on my site full of half-assed linkbait content so that I earn money through them viewing ads, then I am a fucking jerk.
So no, not everyone is a jerk. Only those who seek to act to purposefully harm others (usually to gain something at their expense). Which sort of fits the very definition of the world "jerk".