A minor follow up, just so that readers of this weblog know where I’m “coming from.” I accept the contentions that:<\/p>\n
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\u00a0My ideas are strongly influenced by contemporary cognitive science<\/a>, they’re not an a priori<\/em>\u00a0assumption that I hold because of some deep philosophical belief, or an inductive inference derived from a survey of human history. \u00a0Rather, laboratory experiments on American college students suggest that as a species we fancy ourselves as much more reflective and rational than we truly are. \u00a0These findings have made contemporary human behavior much more intelligible to me, and human history as well. \u00a0<\/p>\n Now, it does turn out that people who are two standard deviations above the norm in intelligence are more<\/em> rational than people who are around the human norm. \u00a0These people form about ~2% of the American population, and, they are the ones who are likely to expend their marginal time on discussion about abstract topics. \u00a0“Big Think” if you will. But, even these people are not very rational or reflective by absolute criteria, or at least not as rational or reflective as they think they are.<\/strong> Rationality has to be graded on a curve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A minor follow up, just so that readers of this weblog know where I’m “coming from.” I accept the contentions that: \u00a0Most cognition is implicit. That is, we do not have access to it to so that it is amenable … Continue reading