logic on S Anand

A flaw in rationality

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:16:47 +0000

I found this piece from “The Happiness Hypothesis” pretty interesting:

In the 1990s, Damasio found that when certain parts of the orbitofrontal cortex are damaged, patients lose most of their emotional lives. They report that when they ought to feel emotion, they feel nothing, and studies of their autonomic reactions (such as those used in lie detector tests) confirm that they lack the normal flashes of bodily reaction that the rest of us experience when observing scenes of horror or beauty. Yet their reasoning and logical abilities are intact. They perform normally on tests of intelligence and knowledge of social rules and moral principles.

So what happens when these people go out into the world? Now that they are free of the distractions of emotion, do they become hyperlogical, able to see through the haze of feelings that blinds the rest of us to the path of perfect rationality? Just the opposite. They find themselves unable to make simple decisions or to set goals, and their lives fall apart. When they look out at the world and think, “What should I do now?” they see dozens of choices but lack immediate internal feelings of like or dislike. They must examine the pros and cons of every choice with their reasoning, but in the absence of feeling they see little reason to pick one or the other. When the rest of us look out at the world, our emotional brains have instantly and automatically appraised the possibilities. One possibility usually jumps out at us as the obvious best one. We need only use reason to weigh the pros and cons when two or three possibilities seem equally good.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality.

Guess it shouldn’t be a surprise then that models based on rationality fail.

Comments

Nithin 3 Sep 2009 9:23 am: The best thing I read today
Lucy 27 Sep 2009 11:18 pm: Very interesting. Plus, without emotion, wouldn’t life be boring?

Quotes from Alice in Wonderland

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:00:00 +0000

From Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. These are the quotes I found most… how shall I put it… eye-opening. Paradigm-shifting.

“..the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury found it advisable-”
“Found WHAT?” said the Duck.
“Found IT,” the Mouse replied rather crossly. “Of course you know what ‘it’ means.”
“I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where-” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“-so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. Do you grant that?”
“I suppose so,” said Alice.
“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags it’s tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

“I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”

“I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - that’s all.”

“Fan her head!” the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. “She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.”

“Five nights are warmer than one night, then?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Five times as warm, of course.”
“But they should also be five times as cold, by the same rule - “
“Just so!” cried the Red Queen. “Five times as warm, AND five times as cold - just as I’m five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!”

Comments

unknown 8 Apr 2007 5:27 pm: could you put the part from Alice in Wonderland where TwiddleDee and TwiddleDum are telling the story about the oysters when the walrus says somehthing like, The time has the walrus said to speak of other things… thanks
jolene 20 Dec 2006 12:00 pm: the time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things. of shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings. and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings, calloo-callay, come, run away. with cabages and kings!
johnna 18 Sep 2008 2:08 am: i adore every quote from this story. my favorite is the Cat. i just had to say how much i get out of reading your quotes. much oblige!
Captain Whitney 17 Apr 2009 5:15 am: Insanity, pure and simple. Isn’t it beautiful?
courtney 14 Mar 2010 4:10 am: Off with his head! I almost love beheadings as much as I love caviar
Moon 1 Jan 2010 8:31 am: Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what your at. Up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky. But I don’t want to go amongst mad people. Oh you cant help that, we’re all mad here.
Aditya 20 Jun 2012 7:01 am: “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Such is life and inflation!

Paradox of randomness

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Another interesting piece related to complexity: a speech on the paradox of randomness by Gregory Chaitin. via missing matter

Expectations higher than expected

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Infosys, Wipro and TCS are “expected to see a higher than expected rise” in their revenues. Hmm… I didn’t know that was logically possible.

Logical fallacies

Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies – a comprehensive list of common fallacies.