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Reason Seen More As a Weapon Than a Path To Truth
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the NY Times:
"For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment. Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."
So now that we have the internet and the evolutionary push for reasoning and rationality is gone - what do you think will happen?
God made our mind for reason!
I dare you to tell Hiro that Reason is not a weapon... :)
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Certainly one of the evolutionary benefits of reasoning could be to win debates. On the other hand problem solving certainly plays part. I can picture a cave-man saying "remember when we hunted those mammoths near the cliffs and one fell down. It was an easy kill, and nobody got hurt. Lets drive the mammoths towards the cliff again"! As the article says, the "winning debate" comes to the fore more in larger groups - and people started off in small hunter-gatherer tribes. Also there are two types of debate - the academic debate where people knowledgable in the field evaluate arguments and the sort of debate that two politicians have on TV. In the first case reason is very important. In the second case dissembling - not answering questions - and implying things that they know are wrong are more important. A slick presentation of a lie would easily convince most of the viewing population over a rigorous, boring argument for the truth.
No, it isn't.
No they don't. Oh and if you don't agree with me I'll call Teddy R. back to quietly walk up behind you and hit you with something ;)
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Of course I'm a fan of the somewhat less predictable "funny" tag for busting up a flame war and getting a discussion back on track
To be honest, this sort of discussion doesn't really sit very well on this site, but if it's instead of another 'article' about Bitcoin then I guess it won't hurt.
I expected a link to The Onion. Truth is stranger than fic^H^H^H satire.
You know, I wonder if this is also driving internet trolling, since trolls can vacate a logical "win" at will. Trolls can additionally create false arenas in which people can rack up meaningless "wins".
Perhaps trolling is just the system balancing itself. There is an overabundance of people who cannot resist the urge to correct another person, which creates a natural predator-prey relationship for trolls.
Researchers are blinded by their above average intelligence into thinking that other people respond to "reason".
Arguments are won by the person(s) with the loudest voices, and failing that - the biggest sticks. This is called "politics", but it also travels under other guises like "religion", "nationalism", "sports fanaticism", etc. If you want evidence you merely have to look at human history, or even current events in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. A lot of "reasoning" is going on there.
If you want a good insight into how the human brain works and responds to arguments, I suggest reading the first few chapters of Mein Kampf. No, not all the stupid babble about the superior German race and the Jew Hate, but the first few chapters take a powerful, honest and insightful exploration as to what we humans really are and how we "reason".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Such is the weakness of our reason; most often it serves only to justify our own beliefs." [from La Gloire de mon Père, my translation]
Having read that from Pagnol (and it's now my favourite quote), I'm not surprised that it was a French team who came up with this theory -- Pagnol was one of the most important figures in French literature of his era.
Pagnol's original context is no less relevant today than it was at the time: he was referring to how the local teacher and the local priest where he grew up were both very well educated, very intelligent people, yet their conclusions were almost diametrically opposed. I think the parallel to modern life is clear....
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Well, actually, this is kind of obvious. When you realise that all our petty little philosophical differences arise from the fact that we start with different assumptions which we have little or no proof for, you generally come to the conclusion that "reason" is just a tool for us to beat each other over the head with and ignore the fundamental issues in favour of a feeling of elitist superiority.
But to realise this and agree to disagree is contrary to our evolutionary programming... So, let the games begin:
[troll] (Not 'fundamentalist')Religion is equally valid with atheism/naturalism because the only difference it has with (strong)atheism/naturalism lies in its fundamental assumptions. Both rely on unproven or unprovable assumptions. [/troll] :D
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
This is kind a classic distinction, rhetoric is the art of persuasion by charm and other means while reason is supposed to have truth standards. But it becomes a little circular when one needs reason to figure out how many repetitions of a phrase in a speech will win over the crowd.
There is nothing divine about humanity. We came from animals and maintain our animal nature in everything we do. There is no reason it should exclude "reasoning." And we have known for quite some time that belief trumps fact.
It shows in nearly everything we do. In fact, "reasoning" has been used to support disinformation, misinformation, lies and misunderstanding for as far back as humans go. Religion and religious organizations are a wonderful example of this. Even the practice of saying "bless you" after a sneeze evolved from the reasoning that sneezes are the body's rejection of bad spirits and to say "bless you" would invoke a barrier that prevents those bad spirits from re-entering the body.
We like to think in terms of ideals even now. The people who want to reject the idea are clinging to their ideals without acknowledging our truest natures.
I had not considered this idea before I read the article. But it really does fit with everything else I know of human nature and behavior -- certainly fits better than the idea that we are of divine origin and everything we do is because we are "special and unique" in some way. Everything we learn about ourselves eventually proves we are not quite so unique or special... we are just dominant, adaptable and successful.
“Reasoning doesn’t have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions,” said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. “It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.” Truth and accuracy were beside the point.
As such, this model also allows for emotional reasoning ('truthiness') and the acceptance of logical fallacy.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
So now "The Journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences" qualifies as "the media"?
I think the rant that you just went through is a good demonstration that you may not have the reasoning skills that you think you do. Perhaps, instead of an uniformed knee-jerk reaction, you could actually think about what is being said and (more to the point for your argument) who is saying it.
It seems to me that the article is reporting on a series of papers from cognitive and social scientists who are asking some questions concerning the evolution of consciousness and rationality. Interesting questions, at that.
Moreover, either you didn't actually read the article, OR you have terrible reading comprehension. One of the points in the article is that reasoning evolved as a way to "help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us." Thus, they are saying that reasoning is a useful tool.
In short, the article states that reasoning is a good tool and is important. However, they are wondering why it came into existence. An interesting question. I would suggest you read and reason through the article next time, rather than post something that demonstrates that you have done neither.
I used to think I was clever for being aware of how often an argument can be seen as instinctive urges of people to position themselves higher in the primate dominance hierarchy. e.g. I am better than you; the software I use is better than what you use; ad hominem attacks; speaking louder and longer. :)
Then I noticed that by pointing out these dominance hierarchy games that I was really just playing the same instinctual game to show that I am more clever than those people "just" following their instincts. This paper seems to back up my theory that I'm just as much a slave to those instincts as the "me > *" flamebait types.
A biased opinion is just a more convincing way of lying, because the liar actually believes he is right. In that context, lying has a evolutionary advantage because it allows one to siphon resources from others to benefit the spreading of one's own genes.
Sound Reason still is an evolutionary advantage, because stuff actually work when you use it, and I prefer to see that faulty reasoning as closer to lying than a "evolutionally useful reasoning".
If you believe that reason can be used to triumph in discussions, try reasoning with an idiot.
"Reasoning doesnâ(TM)t have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions," said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. "It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us." Truth and accuracy were beside the point.
That is a fairly damning quote on its own, but I will assume that Dr. Mercier is being misrepresented by omission of context.
It is not the case that all strategies have the same value. If reason were no more accurate than random choices, then there would be no evolutionary value whatsoever to evaluating the suggestions of others on the basis of reason.
The "purpose" of claws (if we are ascribing intentionality to natural selection, which is a mistake) may be to help climbing or to grip onto prey, not to be strong and sharp, but if they weren't strong and sharp they wouldn't be able to do that.
How unreasonable of you.
Back to the subject, from the article
"Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed to the best arguments".
I don't think that it is a given at all.
In fact this common over-simplification is at the root of some of our basic problems. The composition of the group, the size, the amount and quality of the arguments discussed, to name but a few of the more obvious factors, are all to be considered in this equation.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Disclaimer: tipping her until she stumbles into a wall can be a substitute.
Disclaimer 2: no unwanted violence in this actions should be implied.
Well; they can shove their tiny little minds and mouths up their copious arseholes...
See? Just like the article was talking about!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Are we talking here about the evolution of a meme instead of the mankind? The word evolution seem to be used in both contexts in the article, but complex enough language, and probably reasoning as a social weapon came a bit later than the point were we became homo sapiens.
For some things the reasoning hypotesis is not needed, figuring out a pattern could be more expensive or slower than deciding if something fits on it or that could be something random that should be ignored, so could had been an human (or less intelligent species) evoluitionary advantage to keep considering a pattern as valid even if exceptions exist.
Would be ironical than Hanlon's razor could be a way to disprove this.
Nietzsche on back on forth argumentative debates: "As a dialectician, he holds a merciless tool in his hand; he can become a tyrant by means of it; he compromises those he conquers. The dialectician leaves it to his opponent to prove that he is not an idiot: he enrages and neutralizes his opponent at the same time. The dialectician renders the intellect of his opponent powerless."
"One chooses logical argument only when one has no other means. One knows that one arouses mistrust with it, that it is not very persuasive. Nothing is easier to nullify than a logical argument: the tedium of long speeches proves this."
"you're right" = "tu as raison". "This is not right" = "c'est pas juste". I don't know if it's a leftover from the Lumieres, but where English uses terms of right and wrong, French uses reason and justice. Back when I was in the US, I was indeed surprised by how objective reality (or the quest the establish it) seemed to very often take a back seat to feelings and moral / religious aspects.
Turns out both are just "my way" vs "your way" then ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Reason was originally for figuring out how to make sharp sticks and poke them into animals. After that stopped being such a problem, it was for poking sharp sticks into your neighbors. Put simply, better ideas meant better technology, which meant you could out-compete everything else.
Ideas are the root thing that reason enables, not debate. Debate might help the process along, but at the end of the day debate isn't about reason, debate is about making your group cohesively strive towards a single set of goals. Winning debates isn't just about reason, it's about charisma... the ability to persuade people to your side of the issue.
Just because we often use reasoning when we debate doesn't mean that reason is only for debate. That's simplistic. It's for all forms of conflict.
Neither reason nor the brain evolved "to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth" quoting TFA.
This is all leading to the eventual inclusion of "rationality" as a diagnosable disorder in the DSM. We'll have to diagnose it and treat it with drugs, because being rational and thinking critically and having the capacity to think and see the world in abstracts rather than a narrow and often blissfully naive limited scope that makes the success of your local professional sports team the most pressing concern in your life makes you generally less happy than someone who just worries about sticking their dick in something occasionally and having a six pack while watching Dane Cooke give you the superfinger.
If the purpose of reason is to win arguments, what faculty is in charge of deciding the winner? We can't reason who the winner is, because reason in this account is about arguing for one side, not weighing the arguments fairly and evenly.
Put it the other way around: This whole argument is presupposing that people can come to reasoned conclusions and by that change their course. But then it is saying the purpose of reason isn't to allow us to come to reasoned conclusions, but rather to undermine the capability of others to come to reasoned conclusions, by allowing us to construct unbalanced and perhaps unfair arguments to virtually force them to come to some conclusion that we, by whatever means, have come to favor.
This is an argument for being a sociopathic predator, a parasite on reasoning society, and the riches which reason has enabled us to amass. It's sanctioning this predator's attitude by saying "Evolution wants us to be this way." It's making the standard form of argument in "evolutionary psychology," in which "evolution" plays the role formerly played by "God" in constructing an argument along the lines of, "Your maker says: behave thus." They're both arguments against using our own reason. That is to say, they are both perversions of reason, turned against reason itself.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If you assume that there is no teleology, no higher design, in evolutionary processes, you are left with a blind process building up the human mind. Furthermore, you have to reduce everything to physics and chemistry. Why do you believe anything is true? The atoms are bouncing around in your head a certain way. Why does evolution proceed the way it does? It is neutral about truth so the only answer that can be given is to pass on genes.
If believing a lie and being convinced of it will give you an advantage, evolution will favor that outcome.
That is no basis for trusting your own rationality.
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." - J.B.S. Haldane
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I am not even going to click on the TFA's link.
Was it a scientific article behind subscription I would consider it, yet I would still complain about it not being on an open-access journal.
I have read enough 'scientific breakthroughs' from clueless journalists to be sufficiently annoyed. Seriously, Slashdot, stop supporting this paywall already.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
I did understand the article and the fact that it is a social science analysis.. That was not what I was commenting on (oh shock-horror, I was attacking the messenger; not the message).
This is being promoted by those who are good at 'one sided argument' to say that reason is somehow invalid as a form of argument. This is due to them lacking intelligence (reason) and only having weasel cunning and control of the media to fall back on.
ie: the article might well be right; but it will be used by the media muppets to argue that we have to take them seriously; no matter how unreasoned their stance is.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
However, the extrapolation one can and likely will make to serve their greater purpose is that we created guns as a way to help us defend ourselves as well as attack others. A weapon that serves a purpose, but has to be controlled, limited, regulated. Like rational thinking. Rational thinking is the enemy of government, religion, media, and advertising. We already see society treating people who appreciate rationality and critical thinking, to a degree, the way society treats "gun nuts". A certain discomfort, uneasiness, and disdain.
The article appears in the Arts Section, not the Science Section. Time for another submission to Social Text? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Really what they are saying is that the ability to convince someone else of something leads to the convincer having more sex, and therefore his (or her) genes being propagated. Is that so hard for /.ers to believe?
Where it breaks down is if we try to interpret this to mean that people arguing from scientific evidence have no greater claim to the truth than people arguing from their own gut feeling. This theory doesn't state anything about truth being subjective; just that the human brain may have evolved in such a way that we are predisposed to believe stuff based on the argument rather than the evidence.
No surprise from the paper that brought us Judith Miller's Iraq reporting, but in this article the New York Times utilizes the same irrationality and deception that the article claims to be describing as controversial.
The article claims to draw a distinction between rationality (or reasoning) and irrationality in the first paragraph and then proceeds to conflate the two, calling argumentation "reason":
The above paragraph would make more sense if you replaced the word "reason" with "argumentation" and be even more clear if "flawed reasoning" were replaced with "flawed reasoning and deception".
It reinforces the common meme of "reason is bad". An example of that meme is the recent popularity of a word that irritates me just as much as "cloud" and "mashup" do: "narrative". Whenever someone lays out a series of arguments, the media, politicians and spokepeople have recently especially within the past year referred to that as a "narrative". A narrative is what you find in a novel. It's not a series of arguments laid out in the open to be picked apart and contested by the opposition. By using the word "narrative", it denigrates the role of reason and debate (and becomes itself a tool of irrationality and deception to avoid and implicitly win a debate).
The article's bid to further destroy math education at the end of the article demonsrates the New York Times' continued commitment to destroy independent thought:
The lack of good math education is why the populace is so gullible, and this would only make it worse. John Taylor Gatto holds up the ideal form of education as one-on-one tutoring, pointing to the U.S. founding fathers as examples of having received this type of education. That's great if you can afford it; otherwise, compromises have to be taken. The best compromise is limiting the amount of time spent in one-on-one tutoring to make it affordable, even the U.S. founding fathers spent only 2-3 years in tutoring. The compromise conventional education has taken, in contrast, is the didactic classroom with a teacher facing a group of students. While this may work for a history class or even basic grammar (if it's drawn out long enough to allow everyone to learn in sync), it cannot develop the reason or teach math because quick confirmation of correctness and quick correction of mistakes -- i.e. one-on-one coaching -- is necessary. Compounding this problem, of course, is that most teachers are bad at math. Compounding that problem is that math is a subject that builds on itself, so any one bad teacher in the chain dooms the student to a lifetime of math and logic illiteracy. Compounding that is the generational decay of logic and reasoning skills as the problems perpetuate themselves.
Now on top of all of that, the scientist quoted (unquestionably) by the New York Times wants to take math education even further away from the ideal coaching scenario by forcing students to stop working and thinking independently. Of course argumentation skills are refined by testing them with a group, but developing reason and logic is inherently a solitary activity. It would be like throwing a group of students on Mt. Everest without each one first individually practicing the use of camming devices.
The New York Time has deceptively advanced the meme that all "reason" is mere deception and has even thrown out a bone to ensure that schools churn out gullible New York Times readers for the long term.
Well, there we have it. The trolls don't like moderation, so we should get rid of it. Maybe eventually it will occur to you that the reason that you don't like moderation, and the reason you need to keep creating new accounts to get around the bad karma that you collect, is that you keep trolling.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Success in propagating a meme isn't necessarily related to it's truth-value, merely to it's value in engendering behavior in others. But the mechanisms of intelligence are involved even there. Appeals to emotion or other assorted well documented fallacies have been well described (by reason). The problem, perhaps, is in some philosophical jig where the word 'reason' (traditionally the most gloried phenomenon of human thought) somehow takes on multiple meanings. ...So what is reason?
Is it logic? The claims (referred to in) this article, would seem to negate a pure aristotelian glory of A implies not B and the like. Thus it would seem to cheapen the idea of those who bother to think logically. It leans towards suggesting that 'reason' is merely a sociological, nay, anthropological phenomenon. A matter of primates beating their chests, albeit with their brains instead of hairy arms.
And this is utter nonsense.
First of all, it denies the fact that fallacy is -necessary- in order to convince another thinking being of a false truth, and then turns around to imply that reason has no truth outside of a group phenomenon.
Obviously, pre-and-up-to-humans evolved language to share ideas. (It's audible telepathy, afterall!) And that was adaptive ..why?
Because a meme, a social construct, a compellingly successful narrative could coordinate collective group behavior in an adaptive manner? Of course.
But however does any argument manage to do such a thing? By presenting a compelling explanation to other individuals that they fail to refute the truth of.
It all comes down to the personal analysis of truth of the part of the recipient of an argument, though. To be crass, we all have personal bullshit detectors. ;) And some worse than others, of course.
But to decry the the fact that false but compelling arguments can be accepted too-readily negelects the very fact that they succeed BECAUSE THEY ARE COMPELLING. That they make a logical and self-consistent sense to the recipient. To the recipients own personal sentience, thought, and reason (however mistaken).
Many people may be ill-educated, worse; evilly-educated into a false set of hot-button moral certitudes (due to the social-darwinisticly-adaptive usefulness of such levers, perhaps, so as to facilitate obedience to certain top-down social hierarchy command structures)...
But it's still the reasoning of their own minds that reaches either accepts or rejects any such rhetorical exercise.
Reason is beautiful. Were it not for man's ability to reason, we'd still be living in caves, at best! Nowadays we use ion-beam lithography to carve out features thousands of times smaller than a single hair on our bodies. Nowadays we know the chemical composition of the outer atmostphere of stars billions of light years away. And how?
From reasoning.
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the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Winning arguments used to help you get laid. Of course that was before women learned how to roll their eyes.
Since I'm at work, I dont have the appropriate quote, but Nietzsche extensively examined how reason is searving the desires (and the "will to power" in particular, of course).
Then, I am pretty sure it will be possible to find some prearistotelian thinker who came up with the same idea. Its not really a surprise.
Invita Invidia
All human male activity boils down to competitiveness for apparent sexual advantage. Even apparent as opposed to actual advantage.
Reasoning is not a uniquely human trait and to believe so is arrogance. If you study the behavior of animals, they too use reasoning to solve problems and maneuver through their world. Since I have two cats, I'll use them as an example. One is a young, just slightly out of kittenhood and the other is twelve years old. The young one dominates at the food bowl so the older one simply takes her paw to scoop some of the food out of the bowl and onto the floor so that she can eat. If that is not a good example of reasoning, I do not know what is. The "dumb aminal" belief is very much an anachronism today.
That's not to knock the research without reading it. Perhaps it's about arguments that actually matter instead of the many storms in a teacup we have here?
... FTW!
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787)
I8-D
The only justication for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am convinced that the philosophers have had a harmful effect upon the progress of scientfic thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism, where they are under our control, to the intangible heights of the a priori. For even if it should appear that the universe of ideas cannot be deduced from experience by logical means, but is, in a sense, a creation of the human mind, without which no science is possible, nevertheless this universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body. This is particularly true of our concepts of time and space, which physicists have been obliged by the facts to bring down from the Olympus of the a priori in order to adjust them and put them in a serviceable condition. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36276/36276-pdf.pdf
He sees empirical evidence as providing a ground from which reason can proceed legitimately.
How unreasonable of you.
Back to the subject, from the article
"Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed to the best arguments".
I don't think that it is a given at all.
Agreed.
It may be true in in a Darwinian sense. I.E., I would say the "best argument" is the one that most closely represents the truth, and that advocates a course of action that is in the best interests of those the argument is appealing to, but this is like assuming that evolution's ultimate goal is to make us completely honest, hardworking superheroes who never die.
But in the US, the biggest argument arenas seem to be politics, advertising, and academia. How often does the most truthful political argument or advertisement end up being the most effective? The norm is emotionally charged arguments based on irrational fears and dubious assertions.
Academia is the exception, specifically because they try to take measures to elevate the discourse. They try to overcome their nature.
Having read "Snow Crash", my first reaction was, of course REASON is a weapon.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Rationalizing and The Truth are two completely different beasts.
Haven't there been a number of articles on group think and how people will select the wrong answer while in a group?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Complementing a crowd is simple. You just subtract it from 90 degrees.
(I kid, I kid, of course.
...It's really 1/4 tau radians.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
And the complaint is NOT new.
Sophists are lying sacks of shit and should be fed slowly feet-first into a ham slicer.
With a pause every ten slices and washdown with vinegar that they may better enjoy the next ten slices.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
In reality, it seems that the strongest, or loudest debater wins out, not the best argument, or the best idea.
Being the most effective persuader often has no correlation to being the most correct.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I assure you all my arguments are based in altruism and truly wanting the best for others. Unlike yours which are based in crass self interest.
Now, be reasonable and do it my way!
You tell 'em! Those damned idiots and their emotion-filled arguments!!!! Screw em! They can shove their heads up their asses! Those bunches of morons!
Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, the superiority of making reasoned arguments. The rest are just bastards!
Oh, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
You want room 12A, Just along the corridor (Stupid git!).
Have gnu, will travel.
(I kid, I kid, of course. ...It's really 1/4 tau radians.)
I love you. Just sayin'.
Seems to me that the way in which we reason develops from how we are socialized as children. The popular kid that everyone wants to hang out with doesn't use logical facts to make everyone like him, in fact, that kid could possibly be a little douche. What he does is puts on a display to persuade others that he is cool to hang out with whether it's just being a nice person or dominating others via duress. For other kids to want to hang out with this person, they also have to persuade the alpha male that they are somehow worthy to associate with him. This involves heavy use of rhetorical reasoning, since these other kids could be little douches with little to no substance as well. Not everyone will be able to hang out with this alpha male so we end up with those kids who are left out and singled out as outcasts. For these outcasts to survive without associating with a powerful figure, they rely heavily on the use of logical reasoning to navigate their world and to justify their right to exist when those associating with the alpha male deny this fact. Years of this kind of socialization either makes us more proficient in the use of rhetorical reasoning or logical reasoning, or a mixture of both. If the alpha male in my example was an outcast instead, it is likely he would grow up being proficient in logical reasoning regardless of whether his brain was hardwired for rhetorical reasoning or not.
The way we socialize indicates that we value association with prestige more than individual autonomy, and this is what perpetuates an excess of rhetorical thinking. There are huge problems in this world that can only be solved if we reduce all the pointless rhetorical debate and start solving problems bit by bit. This requires more people who are capable of logical reasoning, or rather, more people of significant influence and those who have the most decision making power. The only way we can do this is to change the way that kids learn and socialize so that they have a diverse inventory of discourse to rely upon for when they solve problems both in the real world when they grow up and in their social lives as well.
to quote Snow Crash, "you can't argue with Reason".
You could say the same thing, or make a more powerful argument for Religion over Reason.
What single purpose has pitted groups of people to dominate, absorb, convert, other groups in the entire world. Nations perhaps. One could simply look at "government" or nations as the biological extension of the individual will to dominate its neighbors and protect like advantages.
This falls into the common fallacy that something evolves for one purpose only, and is always and only used for that purpose. If I use a long stick to support me wile walking, I can also use it to fight of attackers. The tongue evolved to help me eat also helps me talk. If I develop the ability to reason in order to understand my environment, I can use that same ability to bullshit the rest of the tribe. It is not an either/or, it is both.
And you see it in action often. People try to win an argument by logic. When they realise they are losing, the retreat into bullshit. Or try to change the argument to one they can win. Because coming out top in an argument - showing one's wisdom - is a status thing among humans. And, as always, if you haven't got it, faking it will do as well much of the time.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
(Plato's Republic, Book VII 539b)
How new is this notion again?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
This makes me think back to an old discussion on "Car Talk", where they came to the amazing conclusion that two can be more stupid than one. In their line of reasoning, one person might see something obviously absurd and label it as such. With two, both might see the absurdity, one might see a less absurd corner and start nibbling at it, with the other joining in, until together they've talked each other into swallowing the whole thing.
In political terms it's called the "echo chamber" where something repeated often enough, loudly enough, and with dissent ridiculed enough, it begins to take on the appearance of truth, regardless of actual merit.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Anybody who's been in the US court system would likely agree with you. There's no room for logic and reason in society as a whole. There may be concentrated groups of logical thinkers who hide in mensa meetings, but for the rest of the country (USA for me), it's about being an effective persuader, not about being logically correct or having a sound argument.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena.
No it isn't!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Now we're using Pat Benatar as a troll.
It's official... civilization is done with.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This argument has been settled a very long time ago...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
It's impossible to separate Reason from the capacity to argue. The article incorrectly divides the capacity to argue from the rules of argumentation, as though "Reason" referred to methods of argumentation rather than the very thought processes involved in thinking rationally. (Hint: it is the latter. That's why we call it "Natural deduction")
Reason did not evolve to win arguments; arguments existed from the moment reason did, and so debates could be won the moment either existed. If one could debate at all, then one already possessed Reason.
And btw logicians have known for CENTURIES that logic (or reason, whatever) is not about the pursuit of truth. It is about maintaining consistency in thinking - whether argument, debate, etc. Internal consistency, not truth. What can be known is not the same as how and why things are known, and Reason was never really concerned with the former. This guy is saying nothing new, just trying to be famous, and probably simply squandered some research money and came up with this "radical new theory" the day before his abstract was due to his boss.
Also, I think he just isn't aware Philosophy classes were offered at whatever university he graduated from.
Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!
There, it's been said. Can we stop, now?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
No, they won't always select the wrong answer when in a group. We are easily persuaded by group think, just like every other pack animal. What makes humans special is that sometimes a smarty comes along and can out smart group think. And thus the fittest survive yet again.
I disagree. Also, everything you said but the OPPOSITE. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
"America loves a winner!"
Soooo, things that are NOT reason, pollute something they are NOT, namely reason. Therefore, reason itself evolved not as a path to truth, but merely a way to win arguments. Huh?
If anything, this article shows that bias and lack of logic evolved as weapons. Reason is innocent.
I'm suprised these same authors don't argue that since bombs and bullets are often transported by railroad, then railroad was originally designed to kill people.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
xx
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
It seems pretty obvious that some people - maybe most - use "reason" as an rhetorical debating device to win. It is equally obvious that some people actually use reason to sort their way to the truth. Most people probably do both, depending on the topic and their mental/emotional state at the time.
I've had my mind changed on important topics by reason and discussion, so I know that I have the capability to use it that way. I have convinced others of things with reason and discussion, so I know it goes both ways. I've also had arguments where I could sense that the other person was not really interested in the truth, but in winning. I'm sure I've done that too, but I didn't "sense" it :)
The researchers may be right that it evolved as a weapon. But many things that start as a weapon become useful in other ways. I think a large percentage of people use reason to seek truth a large percentage of the time - whatever its origin.
Reminds me of one of my favorite Archer moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS-7zTzrSAA
"Academia is the exception, specifically because they try to take measures to elevate the discourse. They try to overcome their nature."
Khm ... women's studies ...
I guess that the continuing of the species requires believing but reason shows that belief is false. If you believe you will continue the species but be wrong. If you refuse to believe you will be right but go extinct.
The tongue is the only weapon that goes sharper with use.
(I know it was not Confucius).
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
...or not.
I agree. I was saying that the "best" argument is the one that persuades the most people, even though we wish the word had a more noble meaning.
My own view is more survival oriented: Cave man's friend walks under a tree and gets his face eaten by a jaguar. Cave man says, "why?". The realizes that he should look up to check for jaguars before walking under trees. Cave man lives longer and has a better chance of passing on his genes.
;)
Most humans have a driving need to know 'why' - so much so that we make up "reasons" in the absence of conclusive evidence. We just aren't comfortable without answers and it's nothing more than a hardwired survival mechanism working overtime. Explains a lot about the world's religions, really.
Winning arguments could improve survival/chance to pass on genes, so I'd call TFA's argument a subset of mine.
I'm blowing 5 moderater points to contribute to this diatribe, but... Evolve? Really?
When I think evolution, I consider the slowly emerging symbiosis between wasps and dicotyledons during the Cretaceous, something that took about 80 million years to get right (and less than 200 to shove to the brink of extinction by apes).
When I think evolution, as well, I consider that "reason" is unreasonable about the forces that push plastic DNA into every available free space in a four dimensional ecosystem that owes far more to Yin than Yang. Malthusian drama? Puh-leez.
When I think of reason, I am most often reminded that most often it is not cogent appreciation, but barratry, that passes for intellect in the brains of apes. When reason finally annihilates the human race, I will suffer, but when I get to address Gaea about her mistakes this time around, I will suggest that next time, no brains for apes might be a good idea.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I am writing to offer profound thanks to you for resolving an important philosophical question that has been heatedly debated for the last twenty years. The rumination began on a construction site one summer in the early 1970's, as my friend Jamie and I were working our way through college. The question we raised and have agonized over, lo these many years, is one that I've never read about in any philosophical treatise, and yet I have found it has applied to countless situations and conversations overheard in bars, repair shops, sporting events, political debates, etc. etc. etc.
Posit the question: Do two people who don't know what they are talking about know more or less than one person who doesn't know what he's talking about? (Pardon the un-PC masculine pronoun, but I have found this to be, most predominately, a male phenomenon.)
In your recent conversations regarding electric brakes on a cattle carrier, I believe you definitely answered this query and have put our debate to rest. Amazingly enough, you proved that even in a case where one person might know nothing about a subject, it is possible for two people to know even less!
One person will only go so far out on a limb in his construction of deeply hypothetical structures, and will often end with a shrug or a raising of hands to indicate the dismissability of his particular take on a subject. With two people, the intricacies, the gives and takes, the wherefores and why-nots, can become a veritable pas-de-deux of breathtaking speculation, interwoven in such a way that apologies or gestures of doubt are rendered unnecessary.
I had always suspected this was the case, but no argument I could have built from my years of observation would have so satisfyingly closed the door on the subject as your performance on the cattle carrier call. To begin your comments by saying, "We'll answer your question if you tell us how electric brakes work" and "We've never heard of electric brakes" and then indulge in lengthy theoretical hypostulations on the whys and wherefores of the caller's problem allowed me to observe that you were finally putting this gnarly question to rest.
I am forever indebted to you for the great service you have performed! I'm truly impressed that it took so many years of listening to your show to finally have this matter resolved.
Why would people even think nuclear-powered gatling guns were the path to truth?
At least those "Ultima Ratio Regnum." stamps were honestly admitting that it has always been about winning arguments, not about finding the truth.
**TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.
It's so obvious. So this smug-face publishes an article that says "reasoning is a way of measuring and comparing the intellectual cock". And what happens? A bombardment, one more verbose than the other. "My personal view" (so the one you don't have to value much) is that this article actually makes some sense, however the fact that it's published with a picture of this dude, posing arrogantly, tells me that he claims this piece of "truth" for himself. He pisses on intellectual turf, to mark that spot as his own, by which he disrespects everything around him that contributes to the publication. Hog. We cannot reason untill we stop claiming "truth". I post this based on my own experience, and if you disagree, you've experience otherwise. To reason is to share experience, not to shred it to pieces. -- since I made that up you may now shred that to pieces.
Thank you for the refresher.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Yeah...just like the comments sections of the (especially political) news articles often linked from here: an occasionally nested though usually flat mess of replies with all of the pointless tiny feuds and tiresome obvious or erroneous observations obscuring the far fewer worthwhile posts.
Slashdot has the best moderation system on the web, period. The interface varies from decent to poor depending on what the overlords are mucking about with this week,* but the system generally does a very fine job of putting the best comments in front of my eyeballs. It's the only way to have any kind of meaningful discussion with a userbase this big. Of course the system can be abused, and of course it is far from perfect. The same old quote about democracy being the worst form of government save for all those previously tried can be applied to Slashdot's moderation system with respect to promoting good discussion online.
At this point in my life I tend to care about only one or two of the posted stories per day--keeping up with the tech news is much less interesting to me now--but it is the discussion attached to those few stories I am interested in that keeps me coming back. I have found nowhere else quite like it.
* I was quite happy that I could paste links into comments again from within Chrome, only to later discover a new problem opening them with cmd-click--this now only expands the next-highest comment in the thread until the whole thread is expanded, and only then does it work as intended. At least this bug has a bearable workaround.
Your brain is not a computer.
Winning arguments used to help you get laid. Of course that was before women learned how to roll their eyes.
Because only men are capable of reasoned argumentation.
No, in this I have to agree with him. Forums suffer when they become moderated. Posts stop being just the sum of their content. People start posting to please moderators or provoke others to say something that will get them down-modded, etc.
For instance c64-love/6502 is being followed by a flock of meta-trolls who waste more time than he could. If people just ignored those who wasted their time we wouldn't need the moderation apparatus or these self-righteous anti-trolls.
In political terms it's called the "echo chamber" where something repeated often enough, loudly enough, and with dissent ridiculed enough, it begins to take on the appearance of truth, regardless of actual merit.
Sounds like modern radical environmentalism and the notion that global warming is anthropogenic.
"Groups are more likely than individuals to come up with better results, they say, because they will be exposed to the best arguments". I don't think that it is a given at all.
It may not be a given, but it is reasonable. Take a group of four individuals, each with a different solution to the problem.
In the absence of any discussion, one of those people will implement the "best" solution that the group came up with (not necessarily the optimal solution).
With discussion all four people have been exposed to that best solution and thus have at least some chance of implementing it. The probability of implementing a solution that you have considered must be higher than the probability of implementing a solution that you have not considered.
Note, this analysis also works the other way, a group is more likely to implement a worse solution than an individual.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
The Human Being is a predator animal, that is, everything either can be eaten or can eat you, and our brain is organized to help this behaviour. That is why Buddhism has such a dismal opinion of human thought and searches instead for a direct, non-thinking way to truth.
Funny, I think one can point to a lot of measurments and data that at least suggest anthropogenic orgins. There may be questions, at least in the US, but I don't think it's echo chamber.
Whose motives would I question more, an academic doing it for a 6-figure grant, or a company with 11-figure quarterly profits?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Whose motives would I question more, an academic doing it for a 6-figure grant, or a company with 11-figure quarterly profits?
A multi-billion-dollar industry has been built around the public's fear of death, destruction, and doom at the hands of anthropogenic global warming. From things that aren't so bad like hybrid and electric vehicles to absolute scams like wind energy, and the best thing about it (to those in these industries) is that much of their profitability comes directly from the government in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. I'm not saying reducing pollution and our dependence upon foreign energy is a bad thing (I drive a hybrid) but I'm basically being forced to pay for other people's cars because congress and the majority of voters have been scammed by the green movement and global warming.
And no, one cannot point to a lot of measurements and data that suggest anthropogenic origins. The measurements and data state that Earth is currently in a warming trend over the last hundred years or so, and a graph that has not been "tweaked" to favor a particular side of the argument shows a clear cycle over the last few thousand. Remember in the 70's when people were afraid that smog was blocking the sun and sending us into an ice age because the average surface temperature was dropping for a few years? This is the same thing but the other direction. Echo chamber.
I won't bother digressing too hard. I'll admit that there there are billions in alternative energy solutions, and I'll also suggest that it's not all about anthropogenic global warming. But then again, you probably know that peak oil is pure bunk, just like anthropogenic global warming.
But my point was, billions in sales of alternative energy solutions still doesn't hold a candle to 30-40 billion pure profit in one quarter by one admittedly very large oil company
I'm willing to accept that perhaps global warming isn't anthropogenic, but I haven't seen as much evidence as I have the other way. How about you - what would the burden of evidence be to convince you?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have yet to see any substantial evidence pointing towards the notion that global warming is anthropogenic. The main point that was discussed has always been the "greenhouse effect" (which was never actually studied... more theorized about), but that has been firmly disproven by the discovery that the average global temperature at any given time is proportional to the amount of radiation emitted by the planet and the amount of radiation emitted by the sun at the same time. The greenhouse effect theory states that as the CO2 concentration increases, the atmosphere reflects radiation back down upon the surface, which means that the amount of radiation escaping the atmosphere should not be proportional to the amount of radiation being emitted by the sun. This study was undertaken over a 20-year period (in order to actually gather enough data that it would actually be useful rather than racing premature and insignificant information to the polls) before the results were published.
Luckily for the global warming leaders, the world was already convinced that we're causing it and you know how the general public refuses to acknowledge data contrary to their point of view. Since the world is already convinced, Al Gore and friends didn't have to do much to quash these little-publicized scientific works from the public eye.
Then there is the presence of much evidence pointing to the fact that global warming "scientists" have intentionally skewed data for political means. I think one such article ran on Slashdot not so long ago when somebody released emails between renowned global warming researchers conspiring to falsify data. They run computer models and algorithms that are designed to spit out graphs of a predetermined shape and predictions of a predetermined result regardless of the data that is input. They display graphs in such a way that the contrary data is hidden (Medieval warming period, anybody?).
The public is easily confused by numbers and data, so all they do is read the headlines and look at the pictures. So all you have to do to reinforce the public's conviction that is already firmly in your favor is to generate a headline and pictures that agree with you knowing that the public won't look at the data inside. This is also how the anti-smoking trend started. The EPA published a document in 1992 titled "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders" which stated that approximately 3000 nonsmokers die every year as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke, which sent everybody flying to ban smoking everywhere. That study was completely lambasted by the supreme court in 1998 due to cherry-picking data and ignoring anything that didn't support a predetermined conclusion. The World Health Organization also announced a study with a press release titled "Passive Smoking Does Cause Lung Cancer, Do Not Let Them Fool You" when the study they were talking about effectively stated the exact opposite: No association between childhood exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer risk, and that the increased risk of cancer in those with combined exposure to spousal and workplace ETS were not statistically significant.
Both studies are still used as the main references with regard to getting tobacco smoke banned, even though one was proven in court to be a boldfaced lie and the other one showed no statistically-significant evidence that secondhand smoke harms you. Echo chamber.
(I don't smoke. I don't like smoke. I don't like it when people smoke around me. But I also don't like Lady Gaga (who is arguably more dangerous than ETS because her music creates a nearly-irresistible desire to jam a fork into my testicles), and you don't see me trying to get her banned from public places.)
I think I just got the high score in Who Can Be The Most Off Topic While Still Being On Topic.