the.com/rationality
the loudest argument in your head that's still just feelings wearing a lab coat
means the quality of thinking, deciding, or acting based on logic, reason, and evidence rather than emotion or impulse.
from From Latin rationalis, 'endowed with reason,' built on ratio — a wonderfully overworked word meaning 'reckoning, calculation, reason, account.' That ratio comes from reri, 'to reckon or think,' and is the same root that gives us ratio, ration, and rate — all of them about measuring and dividing things out. English took 'rational' in the late Middle Ages via Latin and Old French, with the abstract '-ity' noun trailing along behind, so that the word for clear-eyed thought is, fittingly, rooted in arithmetic.
- named bias
- Humans rationalize choices already made unconsciously
- split brain
- Patients invent reasons for actions they never decided
- bounded
- Herbert Simon won a Nobel proving reason has limits
- hot states
- Hunger and lust quietly rewrite every calculation
- useful myth
- Pure logic alone cannot pick a single goal
daniel kahneman — psychologist who won 2002 nobel prize proving humans systematically violate rational choice theory
efficient market hypothesis — theory that asset prices reflect all available info, contradicted by 1987 black monday 22% single-day crash
monty hall problem — 1975 game show where 90% of people choose irrationally, switching doors increases win rate from 1/3 to 2/3