I have a complicated relationship with rationality. On one hand, I believe it can help me make better choices that make sense for what I want to accomplish. On the other hand, I’m afraid of employing it so much that I lose what it means to be human.
Some, though, may argue that our ability to reason is actually what makes us human. For example, 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes wrote that “reason… is the only thing which makes us human and distinguishes us from animals” and that he is “nothing but a thinking thing; that is, a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason.” Despite how seminal Descartes’ work has been to modern philosophy, his musings on how rational humans are definitely seem a bit far-fetched in retrospect considering later research on cognitive biases, or errors in thinking, that even the smartest and most educated people have.
Nevertheless, the legacy of Descartes’ confidence in his rationality passed through the centuries. Notably, in the early 2010s, a group called the rationalists, who try to apply Bayesian reasoning, or a method of using statistics and probability, to every topic, emerged and congregated on the Bay Area-centric website Slate Star Codex.
Having lived in San Francisco for two years, I have definitely encountered rationalists and those influenced by their ideas. They’re less likely to have any interest in discussing social justice issues and more likely to geek out over what the average person would consider sci-fi-esque scenarios like a future AI being incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential to exist but did not directly contribute to its development (what is referred to as Roko’s basilisk).
Robin Hanson, an economics professor who helped create the blogs that grew the rationalist movement said that they were “easily persuaded by weird, contrarian things” and that because they decided that “they were more rational than other people, they trusted their own internal judgment.” Accordingly, although cognitive biases are a focus of discussion for the rationalist community (being one of the main topics of the prominent rationalist forum LessWrong), it appears that by trying to be as rational as possible, some rationalists have deluded themselves into thinking that they could do no wrong. Studies have shown that when people believe that they are objective, they feel dignified to act on biases they may have otherwise suppressed due to personal and social inhibitions. A sense of personal objectivity creates a “I think it, therefore it’s true” mindset.
In his book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of history and philosophy of science, claims that the desire to make people or society more rational often results in huge outbursts of irrationality, most likely due to the inability to suppress unreason. For example, the Pythagorean cult of 5th-century BC was so devoted to the perfect rationality of mathematics in explaining the world that it had trouble dealing with the discovery of irrational numbers, or numbers that can’t be expressed in rational forms. When a member of the group, Hippasus of Metapontum, started telling people outside the group that the world can’t be explained by mathematics alone, legend has it that the leader of the group had him drowned in a fit of anger. Smith believes that although what rationalists are saying “might be true and reasonable… it’s just obvious that the reason they’re saying it has to do with self-glorification, venal ambition, and other base motives.”
Returning to Descartes, consider the scenario below in which a black student contends with one of his thought experiments that attempts to establish knowledge through rational intuition and deduction:
“Imagine that you are a Black person going to your class, Philosophy 101, a few days after witnessing (via video) the horrific killing of George Floyd. That day you are reading Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. Your white philosophy professor asks you to consider what it means to assume that you don’t exist. He assures you that Descartes’ philosophical project was intended for any epistemic subject to engage. You try, but you can’t. You hear the cries of George Floyd. You can’t get out of your head the sound of his calling out to his dead mother — “momma!” You know that you are George Floyd, that he and you are fungible under white racist logics. You know that your day is coming; in your head, you hear your own voice: “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” It suddenly occurs to you that the collective Black experience, one filled with death and white bloodlust, belies the perk of white feigned non-existence regarding yourself and the external world. You realize that you are not the generic (read: white) epistemic subject who is being addressed by your professor. Something is amiss. You feel it as an affront to Black life (your life) under conditions of anti-Black racism. This is where you engage in immanent critique.”
George Yancy, “‘Charles Mills: On Seeing and Naming the Whiteness of Philosophy’: An Essay by George Yancy”
Rationalists’ tendency to embrace outlandish scenarios that are out of touch with our reality but can be rationalized makes it unsurprising that they are largely comprised of libertarian and atheist white men who work or are interested in tech. While rationalists should be debated on the substance of their arguments rather than their demographics, their bias toward their own judgments when they, like everyone else, can’t be perfectly rational and homogeneous perspective call their legitimacy into question.