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