It doesn't sound rational for a Klansman to sit down to dinner with a black man. What you're overlooking is, to be racist is to be irrational. So, they are already irrational, and irrational people do irrational things. That's why a Klansman will sit down with me.
When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and think "there, I'm so irrational!". But your reluctance to sit on a probably rickety chair is not irrational - you think it's irrational because you have a false view of what irrationality is.
I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.
I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a "rational" understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, "irrational" yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesn't get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.
If you simply announce that things are irrational, then that alone doesnt get you very far. You have to replace rational agents with some concrete notion of what it means to be irrational.
There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women or that men are more willing to surrender their irrational beliefs. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
In the '90s it was irrational exuberance. Now it may be irrational doom and gloom.
I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.
People are irrational. What I want to do is let's take the irrational aspects out of it and let's just break this down. And you and I, let's go and see if we can't master this thing, a few steps at a time without giving up your day job, without having to give up your whole life.
We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.
I think anybody who has been abused as a kid - and I was abused as a kid, by various people - will say it's irrational because violence is irrational.
I don't think we are all irrational every time we fail to see through an argument in a book, but suppose it's true about you. You are still more rational than you think you are. You are irrational in a minor way - believing a misguided theory of the nature of rationality - but rational in a major way - you respond well to probabilistic evidence as you go through the day.
There's absolutely nothing irrational about me; insane, yes, irrational, no. But my dumbest fear would be spinning in the magic tea cups. Who the hell wants to pay to spin around like a bent yoyo for laughs?
I still believe that any country understands that if they use nuclear weapons, they will be wiped out of existence. They could be irrational in many ways, but I don't think they're irrational to the point that they're ready to annihilate their own country.
I know that the dream mind is irrational, but I like to think that if I hear something in a dream that's really good, then it's irrational... but it's not crazy.
I think it's ok to have wishes that conflict with each other - it's irrational to try to make them both come true, but not irrational simply to have them.