SuperCulture, I’m not clear on what point you’re trying to make. Let me address a few specifics, and then I’ll progress to a “bigger picture” discussion.
No, it certainly does not. But it makes it much, much, much, much, much less likely. For example, anyone with real mathematical training can differentiate a proof from an argument a mile away. Very few people on this forum could. And that is a remarkably important distinction if you want to settle an issue. So I agree with you – those with training are not gods. But on average, those trained in science are far better at rational proceedings than those who are not trained. Here’s one you’ve likely seen that most people get wrong. Even scientists get this one wrong a fair amount, but of course several orders of magnitude less than non-scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Hmm, I guess advertising that one is a mathematician sows the seeds for assumptions that you’re not anything else. You should be careful about that – I know a lot about a variety of fields. Mathematics mostly, and next, physics, philosophy, and neurobiology, all virtually to the same degree. (At the bottom of that list is visual art and history, so if you want to make assertions in areas about which I know little, those are good ones to shoot for.)
I’m well acquainted with the fact that the decision-making process, as a human facility, is dependent on other faculties in order to “function properly”. (In fact, some perceived component of reason is far more fallible than the video suggests: there is a part of the brain dedicated to coming up with rational-sounding explanations for activities. This part of the brain often doesn’t seem to care for whether or not those reasons are true; only that they are plausible. This was made painfully obvious in patients who would have a severed corpus callosum, the part of the brain joining the left and right hemisphere. Because of this damage, the two hemispheres couldn’t communicate. The patient may be shown a card in his left eye reading “If you slap yourself right now, I will pay you $100”. The corresponding right arm would slap the patient in the face; but when asked why, the patient would come up with some vaguely plausible but wrong excuse, like “there was a fly on my face”. This is because the explanatory part of his brain didn’t have access to the information on the card, or the processing that occurred between cause and effect.)
But despite this, the video you linked, while technically correct in most details, was incorrect and overblown in its analysis. Perhaps the biggest problem with the video snippet is the conflation of “reason” and “decision-making”. For example, the speaker claims that Democrats think that if they present the facts to people, the people will come to the correct conclusion on their own, but that people don’t truly work that way. This is obviously correct. This is not because most people have faulty reason, but rather because most people have a whole preponderance of decision-making faculties at their neurological disposal. These faculties are quite literally continually at war with each other to varying degrees, and there are devoted parts of the brain (such as the abovementioned segment) devoted to taking the decision the individual has arrived at, and trying to make that decision seem like the product of a unified consciousness. (In reality people are anything but a single unified consciousness, a fact that is rather disturbing when you think about it.) When you present the facts to someone and they don’t agree, it usually isn’t because there’s anything wrong with their ability to reason. It’s because all the other decision-making factors (mostly emotion) overwhelm the voice of reason.
Obviously examples of this are numerous. A man deciding whether or not to cheat on his wife. Short-term gratification says yes, long-term gratification (and rationality) says no. Which wins depends very strongly on the details of the situation, and even more strongly on the individual himself.
However, these multiple decision-making factors shouldn’t be confused with rationality, itself a very nearly isolated decision-making module. When you short out emotions, decision-making becomes very, very difficult. This is a point the speaker made, using the term “reason”. But he was using the wrong term. Rationality itself actually becomes easier.
There’s a fantastic example of this discovered in the last 5 years. Many people dismiss the moral theory of utilitarianism on either some vague emotional reason, or some precise logical reason. However, there are studies showing that people with damage to the emotional section of their brains tend to default to utilitarian judgments. In effect, there is evidence suggesting that there is a decision-making module that prefers utilitarianism, and that this tends to be true for all people. But the emotion module (among others) conflict with it. If you remove the part of the brain that prefers people you know over people you don’t know, for example, making a cold cost-benefit analysis is much easier. Utilitarianism is not a product of pure reason, of course, but you get the idea.
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/12958
Think about rationality not as something wholly subjective, but rather as a machine. When it’s working correctly, the person can predict the effect his actions will have with a good degree of accuracy. (If I slap this person, he will get angry.) He can solve math problems that are in his usual scope. He can identify arguments that follow from premises, and those that do not. When the machine is broken, one or more of these traits gets lost. And the machine is dependent on the proper function of many components, but that’s not an unreasonable requirement.
Uh, not really. The idea in this book is cute, but they limit themselves to such a tiny part of mathematics that the suggestion that their thesis covers all of math is laughable. One could plausibly claim that math begins in the way they claim – and even that would be sketchy – but to claim that higher math works in that fashion too is absurd. How about manifolds, or harmonic functions, or L-series, or the Jones polynomial? One would have an immensely difficult time justifying their thesis with these concepts. Here’s a more detailed criticism that I mostly agree with:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.136.3658&rep=rep1&type=pdf
The moniker “morons” is unnecessary, but your point is obvious, of course. There certainly could be such ideas. In fact, I think we can all agree that there are facets of such ideas that we can illustrate directly. I know very well what the number 3 means. I can picture 3 things as a single mental flash. But I can’t picture 10 things without thinking of, say, 2 groups of 5. I can’t do that for 100 things without effort, and I’m sure I can’t do that for 10,000 things at all.
But this is where the remarkable abstracting ability of the human mind comes into play. I can’t picture 10,000 things. But I can figure out patterns of numbers based on numbers I can picture. From that I can derive the field of number theory. And from that I can tell you all sorts of wonderful things about the number 10,000 — things you wouldn’t know even if you could picture 10,000 apples in an orchard. In fact, I assert that these facets are all there are. The notion of an idea about which we can fathom nothing is inherently self-contradictory. If X is an idea about which we know nothing, we automatically know something about X. Not a total victory by any means, but a partial one, and that’s nice.
But here’s where I get to the big picture. What are you getting at with your post? What assertion are you trying to defend? It sounds like you’re saying this:
- I don’t like ILP because people are insufficiently rational / insufficiently trained
- Training isn’t necessarily useful
- Rationality isn’t dependable
- …? Maybe that my criticism of ILP is invalid?
I agree with (1) wholeheartedly, (2) in principle but not even remotely in practice, same with (3), and I don’t see where you’re going with (4). In principle, all things can be doubted. In practice, we should gauge the extent of our doubt based on observation. The neurobiological facts that seem to undermine reason are very interesting, and very applicable in many areas of human endeavor. But to claim that they wholly undermine the value or validity of reason is absurd. The field of math is (in theory (nice amusing bit of self-reference there)) pure reason. And it really is perfect. If you have any math training at all, you realize that math is absolutely flawless. The people who practice it are not, of course. But math is a shining example of the sustainability, reliability, and productivity of reason. The fact that you’re writing posts on a computer connected to the internet should be breathtaking if you really understand what went into it. Training in rationality and in science produces such marvelous results, not only from science as an institution, but in the individuals themselves, that it really is a shame such training isn’t more widespread.