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Comment by desertraven | Hacker News Reader

True, I should have used the comment space more liberally.

By UX of the human brain, I mean the experience of being a human.

Your example of rationality is a great one, let's assume an ideal human being is one who optimises for rationality. Why isn't rationality innate in being human? I'm sure to a degree it is, but I think you'd agree that the world could be a little more rational, and perhaps even you yourself could be (I certainly could be).

To speak further to my experience, there's things I rationally know I should or shouldn't do. But I don't act accordingly always (or often - depending on my mindset).

I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds the endeavour of making rational changes difficult? And rationality is just one aspect of 'human-brain UX'.

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I would began from the another end of problem. We, the humankind, do exist and that's mean we have something very rational innate. Then we used to develop the concept of rationality per se, but seems we haven't develop the proper understanding of the human nature. So, I propose you to consider to look at your "isn't rational" as a rational on some higher level which is definitely beyond of our understanding of the human nature and the rest of world's nature.

A little example from my experience: I know that programming on Lisp is kind of one of the most rational things I (as the citizen of world, not as a greedy egoist) can do, especially if the result will be a FOSS software. But also I need to spend time to: sleeping, eating, cleaning my body and house, earning money, having rest after workday, having travels for having bigger chunks of rest, having rest after that travelling, having some another duties... Am I not rational? Potential users of my (unreleased) FOSS application might think that I can be a lot more rational than I use to be, but some other people can say I am enough rational, especial if I have an ability to think about all of that. Maybe your problem is very different from mine, but please do not forget that you do have a lot of rationality which seems to be so rational that you even can not think about it (because it is also rational!)

Hope my example helps you to look at your problem from another angle.

"Rationality" simply means "properly thought out in advance", that's all. There's no secret rational thought exercise or smartdrug that can turn you into a superhuman with no foibles. Personally, I've found it gets easier as I get older and the hormones wear off.

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