Irrational Action

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

No it is not, why would it be?

[scineram]

It is obvious from the framing of the situation.

[Giant_Joe]

“is stupid” is subjective. To the person losing blood, your proposition is stupid.

[Smiling_Dave]

@The Late Andrew Ryan

@ Smiling Dave

No, one cannot act irrationally.

Uh oh. here’s dictionary.com s first two definitions of rational:

1.	agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development.

2.	having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm and rational negoti

So that the very use of the word rational assumes the existence of all of the above concepts. By which I mean reasonable, sensible, sound judgement and good sense. Now we may not know if a particular action fits the bill, there may be borderline cases, there may be disagreements on particulars, etc etc. But the existence of all these words implies that humanity has recognized that somewhere, somehow, there is reasonable and unreasonable behavior, sensible and foolish behavior, and so on. More, if all behavior is rational, why does the word exist at all? Everyone always is rational, so why bother with the word? it’s like the phlogiston in ancient physics.

In the case of the death before dishonor example, that is merley a case where the person in question prefers death over dishoner, wheras you don’t.

Let us agree that no one is born thinking “death before dishonor.” Certainly the concept doesn’t exist in the animal kingdom. So how do some people start thinking that? By late night lucubrations? No, usually it’s by being brainwashed into it. So that people can be brainwashed into believing utter nonsense.

i think we can find a case that violates what anyone would call sound common sense and good judgement. How about “Jump off a cliff to your death if you step on a crack in the sidewalk.” Would you call that sound common sense? Do you think anyone on this planet would call it sound common sense? So let’s say some people have been brainwashed by emotional appeals and massive propaganda to jump to their deaths off a cliff if they steps on a crack.

They “prefer” it not for a rational reason [good judgement, sound common sense, and all of the above], but because they have had thrust into their pliable minds, poor things. So that they are acting irrationality [against good judgement, sound common sense etc] though willingly.

All this means is that thier subjective value preferences rely more upon honor, or less upon life than yours do.

So the fellow who has a value preference that places not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk way way above life is a rational person? And when he jumps off the cliff he is being rational? Hey, let’s drop the brainwashing. You seem to be saying that even if he’s born thinking like that, he’s rational and all his behavior is rational. I say he belongs in a loony bin.

I might take a candybar over ice cream and you may do the opposite. Is this because I am irrational? No, this merley means that I have different preferences than you.

I’m not sure how sound commn sense tells me to value one over the other. But in many many cases sound common sense tells us which is the rational preference.

The mind is merley a model builder for action, nothing more.

Huh?

Therefore is somone does X to achieve Y, but X has no possibility of achieving Y then that merley means that this person’s model is not an accurate model of reality in whatever respect,

And in some cases this is because he is irrational. Like if he thinks planting a penny in the ground will produce a money tree, and keeps thinking that after 100,000 attempts. And if he plants penny number 100,001, he is being irrational, sorry.

or that this person didn’t fully consider or consult his model before taking action.

AHA! Here we are. Case closed. You admit that people behave like that [which of course they do, millions of times a day all over the world]. That they “leap before they look”, not consulting their model even when great loss is involved. That is called behaving irrationally, even by their standards of rationality.

Whereas with somone doing Z to Achieve A and Z has a very high liklyhood of, and does indeed achieve A, then this person’s model was more accurate in that respect than the previous person in the respect of area X and Y,

I agree with this line, of course.

you are no more “rational” in the word’s simplest sense than any other sane person on earth.

We aren’t discussing my personal level of rationality, I hope.

Can we agree that the word’s simplest sense is contained in defunitions 1 and 2 that i quoted? If yes, then I certainly am more rational, in my rational moments when I use good judgement and good sense, than other sane people in their irrational moments, [when they ignore their model andlor let their emotions or brainwashing get the better of them].

BTW what is insanity, by your standards? Who are we to judge their preferences, and so forth?

[scineram]

Why exactly?

If there is example of religious bigotry turned masochism, this is.

[Smiling_Dave]

@Giant_Joe

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec4.asp

Human action is necessarily always rational. The term “rational action” is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people’s aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of his fellow’s will and aspirations, declares what condition of this other man would better suit himself, the critic.

Let’s not make out a very smart man to be an utter fool. if you read the whole page in that link [which I thank you for, now I know where people are coming from], you will notice he never defends a preference for the trivial and foolish [as judged so by all mankind, say not stepping on cracks] over life itself as being rational. Nor does he defend planting the 100,001st penny [all other things being equal, meaning no brainwashing that it works] as a rational means of getting rich.

He is talking about people who prefer things many other people do and have done over the course of history, such as preferring living an honorable life over making a buck. None of his examples deviate much from that. Why didn’t he really thrust home his message and use my example of not stepping on cracks being more important than life? The obvious answer is because he’s not stupid, and never meant such a thing.

Or we can use any non-“Human Action” definition for what is or isn’t rational.

Mises did not give a definition of rational in there, on the contrary, he was saying it’s a pleonastic word. [Yeah, i had to look it up , too.]

In an earlier post I quoted 2 definitions of rational from dictionary.com, and made my case with those.

[Smiling_Dave]

Oh yes, let me add that he was not talking about people doing impulsive foolish things, or any of the other examples I gave in earlier posts of irrational behavior. The same argument applies, to wit, why didn’t he really bring out the full force of his case by using my examples [or similar ones] and calling them rational. All the people he talks about are acting pretty rationally, seems to me.

I suspect that it’s a translation problem, that “rational” was the best someone [him, who learned English late in life?] could find to describe a very subtle concept. If it was me I’d maybe use “desirable” for preferences, and maybe “seemingly useful” for the means to achieve things.

But make no mistake, he is not saying every nut case is rational.

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

@Dave

You said it yourself in your defintion of rational: “agreeable to reason” and to what reason? Human reason. In your above scenario you give an example of an insane man who has no relevant grasp on reality and is therefore insane, but according to his logic, he is being perfectly rational.

All action that you call irrational simply come down to different models of reality and different value preferences, in the case of individuals not consulting thier full logic every single time they make an action this is merley a case where each time they act they do not percieve positive benefits of consulting all of thier knowledge.

Please provide me with an example of irrational action of somone who has relativly sane ideas about reality.

[Knight_of_BAAWA]

@The Late Andrew Ryan

No it is not, why would it be?

Because neither prayer nor the faith upon which it is predicated have any efficacy whatsoever. sci is using irrational in the epistemic tense.

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

@Knight_of_BAAWA

@The Late Andrew Ryan

No it is not, why would it be?

Because neither prayer nor the faith upon which it is predicated have any efficacy whatsoever. sci is using irrational in the epistemic tense.

Then yes, he is correct, it will not work, if that is what the individual wants to achieve through prayer then he is mistaken and his practice will not cure him, and his actions are irrational if considered in relation to objective reality. However the individual believes that praying will cure him, therefore his actions are intrinsically rational even if the base information behind them is false, if his information about reality was correct then his actions would be perfectly rational, but under the real circumstances and based off of the true nature of reality they are not.

[scineram]

He does not know if it will cure him, but he knows transfusion would.

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

He must percieve some positive benefit to praying that he does not to the transfusion, otherwise he would not do this. We cannot knows the inner workings of this individuals mind, but we know that this must be true. We can make up a likley reason, such as say, he does not want to be degraded in the eyes of the gods for not getting a transfusion or whatever. So long as this person is indeed sane then there must be a reason

[scineram]

Yeah, excuses.

[Smiling_Dave]

@The Late Andrew Ryan

@Dave

You said it yourself in your defintion of rational: “agreeable to reason” and to what reason? Human reason. In your above scenario you give an example of an insane man who has no relevant grasp on reality and is therefore insane, but according to his logic, he is being perfectly rational.

i sense a slippery move here. “Good sense” and all the other things DO NOT mean “What an insane person considers good sense.” An insane person may think he is being rational, but he isn’t. He IS NOT using “good judgement”. The definition assumes that there is “sound good sense” out there, a standard by which actions can be judged.

All action that you call irrational simply come down to different models of reality and different value preferences,

I totally agree. What I’m saying is that there are irrational models of reality and irrational value preferences, and someone who acts upon them is being irrational. And I gave examples of both types.

in the case of individuals not consulting thier full logic every single time they make an action this is merley a case where each time they act they do not percieve positive benefits of consulting all of thier knowledge.

I don’t think so. I think their emotions get the better of them and they act with out thinking at all. i don’t beleive they sat down and said “Should I consult my model of reality? Nah. It’s not worth it this one time.”

Please provide me with an example of irrational action of somone who has relativly sane ideas about reality.

The brainwashed person, the person acting on his impulses, as I said earlier, with my reasoning also in earlier posts.

BTW, we have made some progress. Your last line once again concedes that people who are not “relatively sane” do act irrationally. So not ALL human behavior is rational. Which by the way raises a little problem with Mises calling “rational” a pleowhatever, by your lights. But as i said in an earlier post he wasn’t talking about brainwashed or impulsive behavior, or my other examples. What he wrote has to be taken in context, which can be deduced from the examples he gives.

Thinking about it, I’m guessing he was laying the ground for his economic theory. I don’t think he was writing a philosophy book with a goal of proving that all action is rational. What he was up to is this, probably. [All guesswork, of course]: Earlier works had laid as a foundation [either explicilty or implicitly] that 1] Most people who buy and sell are rational. The loonies are locked away somewhere. 2] The goal of a rational person is to get as rich as he can. 3] A rational person will only take actions that achieve his goal. And they took their studies from there, making all kinds of mistakes from the second and third assumptions. So Mises comes along and says, “Life, even rational life, is not about money. It’s about what makes you happy. And even rational people make honest mistakes.” I think that’s all he really wants. He wasn’t trying to say that a lunatic is acting rationally because the lunatic thinks it’s rational, or that everything anyone ever does or did in their entire lives was good judgement and common sense.

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

So, I think that inevitably we just come down to the fact that all action is rational, but not all information behind these actions are rational. Would you agree with this statment? That they make rational actions off of imperfect information? Because it seems to me that any other statment begins to imply that rational action must be infallable.

Also as for the emotional thing, then that is their input, that suddenly changes thier percieved reality and the model that they are working with, it corrupts information

[scineram]

No. My scenario had all necessary information. And it was realistic, this happens.

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

So how do you know that this person is irrational? How do you know that his concept of reality and his subjective value preferences aren’t just different than yours? Indeed how can you imagine a human mind working any other way than through rational action?

[scineram]

@The Late Andrew Ryan

Indeed how can you imagine a human mind working any other way than through rational action?

Have you ever debated a Cantor crank?

[The_Late_Andrew_Ryan]

No… But I would if I new what one was [:(]

[Smiling_Dave]

@The Late Andrew Ryan

So, I think that inevitably we just come down to the fact that all action is rational, but not all information behind these actions are rational. Would you agree with this statment? That they make rational actions off of imperfect information? Because it seems to me that any other statment begins to imply that rational action must be infallable.

Also as for the emotional thing, then that is their input, that suddenly changes thier percieved reality and the model that they are working with, it corrupts information

I think that we can agree on the following:

1. Even a nut is doing what he wants, or that he thinks will get him what he wants.

2. If you take that as a definition of rationality, then every human actiion is rational

3. [ I think] you indeed take that as a definition

4. Mine is diferrent