if rationality is over-rated, how come you tried so hard to bind your entire thesis of its over-rated nature with more rationality?
Because overrated doesn’t mean completely useless.
So, then, it’s under-rated at the same time as being over-rated?
No, it’s very simple. Here’s a spectrum:
← Completely useless … overrated … just right … underrated →
My original claim was that rationality is over here:
← Completely useless … overrated … just right … underrated →
…[b]^[1]
Then you said: so it’s over here?
← Completely useless … overrated … just right … underrated →
…[b]^[2]
Then I said: Uh… no, it’s over here:
← Completely useless … overrated … just right … underrated →
…[b]^[3]
Then you said: so it’s over here?
← Completely useless … overrated … just right … underrated →
…[b]^[4]
Then I said:
](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7c349bf1053f368a5729d053e1e91215f22ce66c.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
Mostly, I am analyzing them, and analyzing has to do with rationality.
Oh yeah, definitely use rationality there (but also, make room for instinct, intuition).
What I’m talking about in this thread is strategies for engaging with people when they have in mind to exploit your commitment to rationality. ← In those cases, I’m arguing, it may be to your advantage to use different approaches to that of rationalizing (for example, trolling… have you ever tried to be rational with a troll?.. have you ever tried to troll a troll?.. which works better?)
Think for example of some of the junk mail you get sometimes: MAKE $10,000 IN A WEEK!!! ← Don’t you just hit delete on those? But is that the most rational thing to do? I mean, rationally, there will be a non-zero chance that they’re right, that you could make $10,000 in a week. Isn’t the most rational course of action to at least investigate the offer? See if it’s real or not?
Except that’s impossible since they are mutually exclusive. Unless you redefine the concept of irrationality such that it can be made compatible with rationality.
These are two entirely different goals. When you troll, the goal is merely to frustrate the person. When you are engaging with them intellectually, you are trying to make them understand what you’re saying. The former is often a degeneration of the latter . . . when your efforts to communicate are frustrated, it is easier to divert your attention to trolling, preserving the feeling that you are succeeding in your efforts, no matter how wrong that is, than to pull back and accept reality, which is to say, failure.
Yes, and they require two entirely different approaches. I’m mainly thinking about those who will attempt to use rationality for every single encounter with another person. I’m saying that this isn’t always the best strategy. You’re right that if you switch from being rational to something like trolling, that might involved switching your goals as well, and that means you’ve failed in your original goal, but I’m also suggesting that we ought to learn to recognize when rationality will work and when it won’t from the outset. If you choose the right approach from the outset, you minimize the chance of failure period.
The first isn’t rational and the second isn’t irrational. They are simply two different goals. If you want to achieve your goals, whatever these goals are, through your own personal effort, and not by luck, you have to be rational. You have to choose what helps you move towards your goal (rationality) and not away from it (irrationality.)
We say that trolling the trolls is irrational, and therefore bad, because of the common situation in which one does not switch between one’s goals properly – one remains focused on the former goal, a goal which has nothing to do with trolling – and because in such circumstances, trolling, no matter how rational in relation to the goal of trolling, is irrational in relation to the goal of helping others understand your point.
Try positing two conflicting goals at the same time. Say, move your hand to the left and move your hand to the right. Both goals will be unmet and both attempts will be irrational (even though they are rational in relation to one of the two goals.)
Yes, you have to be rational with yourself, but not necessarily with the other. In the trolling example, you’re best bet is to look for buttons you can press, sensitive spots, triggers… and just being irrational itself can be infuriating to the other person. ← But that’s just a front. Behind the curtains, you still have to strategize in your own head, and of course that requires rationality.
However, I think sometimes instincts and intuition have their place. Often professionals, when they do their work, rely on instincts and intuitions that have been embedded in their psyche from all the tactics and lessons and experiences they’ve had in the past such that they don’t have to think them through anymore–they just have a sense for it, they just “know”. I think salespeople are like this, those who make a career out of dealing with people.
That might be one way people construe it, but in the example of trolling, I’m thinking more along the lines of deliberately saying things that are irrational in order to frustrate the person. For example, if someone says:
“I’ve been to gay bars before.”
You might say: “So you’re gay?”
Really, it’s not rational to conclude that a person is gay just because they’ve been to a gay bar, but you’d say it anyway because you know that’s how to goad him.
I can do that. 
Only irrational people separate their instincts and “gut feelings” from their rationale.
Do you mean that if you integrate them, then it’s still rational?
I mean that if you Don’t integrate them, it is Irrational.
What did you think being w"holy" meant?
Makes sense to me.
At the point that what is labeled as completely useless is in this objective example at all, then it hasn’t been completely useless, has it?
Huh? You mean it was useful because it got to be in the diagram?
It shows that the defining label of ‘completely useless’ should be considered to change to ‘mostly useless’, at the very least. Nothing likes to be ‘completely’ useless, especially when it exists anyway.
Well then, I don’t see why you would call that irrational if that’s precisely what you want to do. It’s irrational only in its appearance – it appears to the other that you are irrational – but not in itself.
Again, I would say you’re discussing goals here and not modes of judgment. You’re simply saying it’s sometimes better to be disrespectful towards others than to be respectful. You are NOT saying that there are times when it’s better to be irrational rather than rational.
There is, however, one sense in which trying to make your point clear to others, and in general perform some action, is irrational.
Suppose that it leads to frustration, to overwhelming emotional reaction. Wouldn’t then be rational to stop performing that action and irrational to keep performing it?
You are rational insofar your instincts work with each other rather than against each other. Reason isn’t opposed to instincts. It is only opposed to their confusion. Pretty sure that these people that you mention are rational.