Before any of this, I need to ask a serious question. How do you define "rational"?
Are you referring to "Using reason over emotion"? If so, you might be heading down a dead end path. Emotional reasoning is not a bad thing. I've encountered the term "Wise Minded" in talking to psychologists and it refers to using a balance of emotion and logic in your reasoning. The idea is that you can't ignore either.
Or are you referring to the belief that some people don't act in their best interests and are therefore "irrational"? I know Julia Galef is a proponent of the idea, but I'm not convinced of her ability to see "best interests" as subjective. I tend to believe that everyone always acts in their best interests, in whatever way they define "best interests". I expect institutions operate much the same way.
Or are you thinking of something else?
It seems to me that most people assume that everyone uses the term "rational" in the same way. My experience is that this is not true.
my answer, which you may or may not like, is that one of the first sessions of the seminar will be allotted to discussing definitional issues. I hope that we will be able to arrive at a provisional consensus for our purposes, and then move on
I'm glad to hear that. I get accused of being pedantic, but far too many disagreements are caused by people thinking their definition of an issue is the same as the other side's when in reality they aren't even talking about the same thing. Looking forward to taking a crack at being one of the 6.
You're not pedantic at all. It's all but dirt-common, for demagogues to subtly shift between different senses of a word's or phrase's meaning, thus helping to produce the "surplus of vituperation" to which Arnold refers.
When a Pinker, in his recent chat with Hanania, pontificates on
“How could any *sane* person believe in Qanon?”,
he most likely is trying, to conflate the clinical definition of "sane" with some colloquial definition.
For a Prof. of Psychology at "prestigious" Harvard, to so tee off on what's likely a small segment of the US public, raises fears that he'll be delighted, to back the next Stalinesque bid to herd dissidents into funny farms.
1. The seminar is a great idea; I wish I had more time on my hands to commit to pariticipating actively, but I have to be realistic about my schedule.
2. Viz your comment "there are good reasons to be unhappy with the intellectual climate in journalism, academia, social media, and government," I would add business to the list of dysfunctional organizations. As you mentioned, businesses are about as adept as the others to committing obvious blunders - real estate in 2008, fiber optic infrastructure in 1999-2001, Enron, the AOL-Time-Warner merger, and for that matter, most mergers and acquisitions (the winner's curse), as well as many other well know examples.
3. $40 seems generous for an annual subscription. I was guessing you'd charge $40 per session, and I'd bet you could and still attract half a dozen active, diligent participants.
$40 is a bargain, probably not an Qd=Qs price. You could try a 7th price auction? Yes, defining institutional rationality seems plagued with problems. The best and the brightest came out of the sheltered halls of academia and elite corporations. McNamara was one of those guys who spoke well, knew the textbook answers, ignored feedback and moved on before the dominos fell. Narcissist? On the issue of completing the sentence--"A rational governing institution protects the ability of its subjects to pursue lives of virtue and voluntary community." The key goal is to enable the subject to work out their own lives of virtue, where virtue and virtues are life-long projects involving work and habit in the classic sense of Aristotle and others. With such a definition, I believe I'm building on some of the ideas that went into the American Declaration of Independence and the later Constitution. Adams wrote a number of times about virtues and their foundational importance for self government. He and others were also aware that the line between good and evil passes through each of our hearts and minds. Rational institutions are formed to protect life, property and autonomous human action. Rational institutions meld elements of conscious design by human intelligence and emergence from autonomous human action.
“They might use the chat feature among themselves, but I doubt that the participants and I will need to pay attention to one another, and I imagine we will ignore the audience chat.”
two tiers of subscribers: participants, only 6. they and I discuss live; audience could be dozens, but all muted. Zoom has a "chat" feature where you can type comments. I'm thinking that the audience might use that, but the participants will ignore what the audience writes because we will be too focused on the live discussion. The chat will be sort of like a comments section on a blog, ignored by many but allowing a few to let off steam
Before any of this, I need to ask a serious question. How do you define "rational"?
Are you referring to "Using reason over emotion"? If so, you might be heading down a dead end path. Emotional reasoning is not a bad thing. I've encountered the term "Wise Minded" in talking to psychologists and it refers to using a balance of emotion and logic in your reasoning. The idea is that you can't ignore either.
Or are you referring to the belief that some people don't act in their best interests and are therefore "irrational"? I know Julia Galef is a proponent of the idea, but I'm not convinced of her ability to see "best interests" as subjective. I tend to believe that everyone always acts in their best interests, in whatever way they define "best interests". I expect institutions operate much the same way.
Or are you thinking of something else?
It seems to me that most people assume that everyone uses the term "rational" in the same way. My experience is that this is not true.
my answer, which you may or may not like, is that one of the first sessions of the seminar will be allotted to discussing definitional issues. I hope that we will be able to arrive at a provisional consensus for our purposes, and then move on
I'm glad to hear that. I get accused of being pedantic, but far too many disagreements are caused by people thinking their definition of an issue is the same as the other side's when in reality they aren't even talking about the same thing. Looking forward to taking a crack at being one of the 6.
You're not pedantic at all. It's all but dirt-common, for demagogues to subtly shift between different senses of a word's or phrase's meaning, thus helping to produce the "surplus of vituperation" to which Arnold refers.
When a Pinker, in his recent chat with Hanania, pontificates on
“How could any *sane* person believe in Qanon?”,
he most likely is trying, to conflate the clinical definition of "sane" with some colloquial definition.
For a Prof. of Psychology at "prestigious" Harvard, to so tee off on what's likely a small segment of the US public, raises fears that he'll be delighted, to back the next Stalinesque bid to herd dissidents into funny farms.
Three brief comments:
1. The seminar is a great idea; I wish I had more time on my hands to commit to pariticipating actively, but I have to be realistic about my schedule.
2. Viz your comment "there are good reasons to be unhappy with the intellectual climate in journalism, academia, social media, and government," I would add business to the list of dysfunctional organizations. As you mentioned, businesses are about as adept as the others to committing obvious blunders - real estate in 2008, fiber optic infrastructure in 1999-2001, Enron, the AOL-Time-Warner merger, and for that matter, most mergers and acquisitions (the winner's curse), as well as many other well know examples.
3. $40 seems generous for an annual subscription. I was guessing you'd charge $40 per session, and I'd bet you could and still attract half a dozen active, diligent participants.
$40 is a bargain, probably not an Qd=Qs price. You could try a 7th price auction? Yes, defining institutional rationality seems plagued with problems. The best and the brightest came out of the sheltered halls of academia and elite corporations. McNamara was one of those guys who spoke well, knew the textbook answers, ignored feedback and moved on before the dominos fell. Narcissist? On the issue of completing the sentence--"A rational governing institution protects the ability of its subjects to pursue lives of virtue and voluntary community." The key goal is to enable the subject to work out their own lives of virtue, where virtue and virtues are life-long projects involving work and habit in the classic sense of Aristotle and others. With such a definition, I believe I'm building on some of the ideas that went into the American Declaration of Independence and the later Constitution. Adams wrote a number of times about virtues and their foundational importance for self government. He and others were also aware that the line between good and evil passes through each of our hearts and minds. Rational institutions are formed to protect life, property and autonomous human action. Rational institutions meld elements of conscious design by human intelligence and emergence from autonomous human action.
This sounds amazing, when will it be held?
I was a little confused by this sentence:
“They might use the chat feature among themselves, but I doubt that the participants and I will need to pay attention to one another, and I imagine we will ignore the audience chat.”
two tiers of subscribers: participants, only 6. they and I discuss live; audience could be dozens, but all muted. Zoom has a "chat" feature where you can type comments. I'm thinking that the audience might use that, but the participants will ignore what the audience writes because we will be too focused on the live discussion. The chat will be sort of like a comments section on a blog, ignored by many but allowing a few to let off steam