dysrationalia — the iq-rq gap and what to do about it

Lucius Caviola Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus www.ea-stiftung.org Dysrationalia

Dysrationalia

The IQ-RQ gap and what to do about it

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Outline– Introduction– The importance of rationality– The cognitive psychology of rationality– Teaching rationality

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– “I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.”– US President George W. Bush,

aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

– Lack of intellectual engagement, cognitive inflexibility, need for closure, belief perseverance, confirmation bias, overconfidence, insensitivity to inconsistency

– IQ of 120– Cognitive aspects that are not captured by IQ tests

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What is good thinking?– It is assumed that good thinking = intelligence– Intelligence plays important role in society

– Determines academic and professional careers

– University admissions use proxies for IQ scores (e.g. SAT)

– What is intelligence - psychologically?– What IQ tests measure: cognitive capacity

– Processing speed

– Pattern recognition

– Memory capacity and efficiency

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What is good thinking?– IQ tests don’t measure rationality as defined

by cognitive scientists– Epistemic rationality: accurate beliefs

– Instrumental rationality: achieving your goal

– Cognitive biases (thinking error)

– Generating alternative hypotheses, goal reflection, hypothetical reasoning, actively open-minded thinking, changing your opinion

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What is good thinking?– Conceptually and empirically: IQ ≠ RQ– RQ test being developed by Stanovich (2016)– Only weak correlation between IQ and RQ– For some biases no correlation (or even

negative) (Stanovich et al., 2013)

– Dysrationalia: inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence (Stanovich & West, 2008; Ross et al., 1977, Krueger, 2000)

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Why is rationality important?– Personal

– It pays for everyone to be more rational

– Moral– Many people have broadly altruistic goals under reflection

– Irrationality kills– Donating to ineffective charities (e.g. scope insensitivity)

– Exploitation of non-human animals (e.g. speciesism)

– Diminished concern for future generations (e.g. distance bias)

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Sources of irrationality– Cognitive Miserliness (System 1, System 2)

– e.g. identifiable victim effect

– Mindware Gap– e.g. probabilistic reasoning

– Unhelpful Mindware– e.g. superstitious thinking

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Rationality can be learned– In comparison to intelligence, rationality can

be learned (Stanovich, 2009)

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Teaching methods– Knowledge about biases– Debiasing techniques (Larrick et al., 1990)– Acquiring Mindware

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Knowledge about biases– Framing effects (Cheng & Wu, 2010)

– Hindsight bias (Reimers & Butler, 1992)

– Outcome effect (Clarkson et al., 2002)

– Weak effects for anchoring (George et al., 2000)– No effects for overconfidence (Lipko, et al., 2009)

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Debiasing techniques– Thinking the opposite (Koriat et al., 1980)

– e.g. considering other causes

– Take the outside view– e.g. planning fallacy (Lovallo & Kahneman, 2003)

– (Self-)nudging– e.g. donation norm (Everett, Caviola, et al., 2015)

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Teaching Mindware– Knowledge of scientific reasoning– Probabilistic reasoning– Qualitative decision theory insights– Economic reasoning– Rules of logical consistency and validity– Avoiding unhelpful mindware

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Does rationality make us more altruistic?

– In theory: rationality and goal orthogonal– Economics students are more selfish

(Frank, et al., 1998)

– Open-mindedness to moral arguments– Historic/social: people became more

rational and more altruistic over time(Pinker, 2011)

– Or just better incentives for cooperation?

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Conclusion– We have important global problems to solve and cannot

afford to make mistakes– Measure, select for, and improve rationality– Rationality improvement as a leverage– Action points:

– More research is needed– Try to improve your own rationality skills– Center for Applied Rationality (rationality.org)

– EAS is working on a policy paper proposing a school subject “Rational Thinking and Ethics”

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Questions

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• lucius.caviola@ea-stiftung.org• facebook.com/lucius.caviola

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