Reason and logic are struggling to keep up with unintended consequences from our own creations
Like climate change from manufactured goods
[[til2021]] Hyperobjects
Coined by philosopher Timothy Morton
Something that is so massively distributed in space, but so sticky that it adheres to everything
Any civilization that progresses on reason will create such objects, but the fact that we have not observed any could mean there is a "Great Filter" that the hyperobject create which destroys the civilization
An hyperobject we are creating could be the climate effects and if we don't solve it we will be casted out by this great filter
What if reasoning is not built for what we have become
Behavioral inertia
Is the tendency to do what we are already doing
Reasoning
A way of making inferences, making new information from existing information
Not automatic inferences like sight, but deliberately
Why are we the only species with developed version on this?
Why do we have disagreements if reasoning is a "good" skill?
Not only are we bad at reasoning due to bias, but these flaws seem to be intentionally built into us
We are built to give reasons for whatever we must, and not reason the logical outcome
Intuitions
Ability to react to our environment with very low input from our conscious mind
Instead of reason from facts to a conclusion, we can jump to the conclusion by gathering very low amounts of information without knowing exactly how
We often use conclusions to come up with reasons
Reasonings evolved to help us to be social instead of reaching logical conclusions
From #[[2. 📚 Books to Read]] The Enigma of Reason - Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
The social theory of reason helps to explain why two people can have different reasons for the same thing - because they are appealing to their own values
Confirmation bias
Our tendency to find, interpret and conclude evidence that agree with our initial viewpoint
Partially developed to reduce cognitive load
Lone reasoner
It is known that the "average" answer from a crowd to a problem is often more accurate than any individual person
Why we tend to have groups deliberate on big decisions instead of letting one person to make an executive decision
What if reasoning is not built for what we have become
What we established
Reasoning seems to be a skill used for social purposes and evolved to enable us to function as a group and not to reach logical conclusions
A solution that is deliberated and reached by a big group is often better
Lone reasoner is susceptible to biases and mistakes
What we noticed
Such context is becoming less common and it is easier for people to be a "long reasoner"
Allows people to disengage from different views and find similar views
The internet forces people to find problems and we feel compelled to have an opinion about all of them
Specialization and complexity is creating problems that less and less people have basic understandings about
So we look for experts to defend our viewpoints, since we are suceptible to any kind of reasoning, the experts solely by existing allows us to feel justified
What this means
The future of reasoning is the past of reasoning
We need to use reasoning more ever than before
Lottocracy - decisions are made by people who gets chosen randomly
Retrospective::
One week ago: [[April 28th, 2021]]
One month ago: [[April 5th, 2021]]
One quarter ago: [[February 5th, 2021]]
One year ago: [[May 5th, 2020]]
Daily Stoic::
In the life project, our mind is the raw materials