[hadiz]

"Optimism Bias" improves our mental and physical well-being. Biases are irrational, by definition. Our mind is supposedly rational...and rationality is not always to our benefit.

This kinda blew my mind when I was reading up some philosophy. My key takeaway was that rationality and logic is not always helpful to make decisions, esp. when it comes to complex systems such as people (i.e. relationships). As an engineer, it's tough to get past this mindset. On a daily basis I am striving to disconnect everything as much as possible because of scale and performance, but the human brain is nothing like that.

[throwaway_tech]

>Biases are irrational, by definition.

Not all biases are irrational...in fact most biases are in rational predispositions based on knowledge and/or first hand experience. Basically its an attempt to apply logic/rationality to unknown situations.

Bias is always framed as a negative word/trait, and it certainly can be (like racial prejudice), but bias should also be looked at as an evolutionary tool humans can use to apply past learned experiences to similar situations in the future.

Just as an example, motorcycle riders may have a bias against certain types of vehicles because of their training/experience, and they apply this bias when making decisions that impact their safety on the road, even though the specific vehicle/situation may not pose a danger. In an evolutionary context, maybe you saw a fury 4 legged animal kill one of the members of your tribe, so you apply a bias against all 4 legged fury animals. Now you don't know if all fury 4 legged animals are dangerous, or pose a threat, but at the same time its no irrational to apply the bias because in potentially life/death situations it may be better safe than sorry. Obviously its good to keep and open mind, maybe you can train such an animal and it may even turn out to be your best friend, but nothing wrong with approaching the situation with your bias either.

[n4r9]

Two types of rationality are being conflated here, namely "close to the truth" and "increases my odds of surviving".

[minblaster]

We like to think of rationality as objectively true, but it’s not. Rationality is based on axioms that “feel right” and even the idea of being rational “feels good”.

Is it rational to believe the parallel postulate? In unchanging laws of physics? In using logic with creatures who tend not to share your axioms?

It comes down to a feeling. From a rational point of view, if rationality were always helpful it would be highly selected for, yet it is not.

[wozniacki]

Is it rational to believe the likelihood of violent physical harm directed at you if you use a transit station in a sketchy neighborhood as opposed to one in a non-sketchy one?

Does it "feel right" to use the sketchy one, despite everything you know about sketchiness of neighborhoods and crime in general?

[minblaster]

Is sketchiness determined by an instantaneous feeling or a well-deliberated rational thought?

[agumonkey]

Rational is also quite often faked under how you feel. Sadness makes you analytic, but also myopic so your conclusions are not that valid.

It's always good to balance things and aim for positivity (but not foolishness).

[nkrisc]

Personally I've found the one reliable metric I have with which to evaluate decisions is: happiness. Everything else is inherently externally derived and I might have good models of how they affect me, but I can neither control nor reliably predict them. For example, I have a good idea of how something will impact me financially, but only to a point. I also can't actually control that outcome. How something affects my happiness, though, that is something I have the most intimate ability to determine. As far as I know something makes me happy, I can't know anything else more. Therefore I try to focus most decisions around what makes me happy, with other metrics thrown in as applicable.

One can choose to be rational and logical, but to what end? How does that serve you, does it? If it doesn't serve you, perhaps consider abandoning rational thought and logic for as long as it might serve to do so. We are not static beings and can be simultaneously rational and irrational. That's our power: to choose how we react and adapt.

Lastly, one thing I've learned the power of as I've gotten older, is the power and benefit of holding beliefs you know to be false. I used to never understand how people could believe demonstrably false things, but I now understand that even something as absurd as that has useful applications. Use it wisely.

[mistermann]

> Personally I've found the one reliable metric I have with which to evaluate decisions is: happiness.

It's very similar, but rather than optimizing for happiness, I prefer Terence McKenna's advice to optimize for beauty...

The Good , The True and The Beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-J09gk0mJk

To me this seems superior in that it seems to be more all-encompassing, and can be more easily applied to others and the greater world, for me. But then happiness could very well do the same for you - I think it's the style of thinking (the means by which one evaluates options when choosing a course of action) involved that is the main point.

[nkrisc]

Precisely, "happiness" is a pretty squishy term and I'm sure many a debate could be had on exactly what it means. The main principle I adhere to is focusing on what is in my control, which is really what's in my head, and since one can't always control even your own feelings, how I react to those feelings.

[celim307]

Most memorable advice I got from my engineering professor: “you can get pretty far on feelings”

[hadiz]

All feelings are true, but they might not be valid. Invalid feelings are less actionable

[tim333]

To understand "rationality is not always to our benefit" from an engineering perspective it can be helpful to bear in mind the ideas of evolutionary psychology - the evolutionary pressures on brain design are towards getting your genes into the next generation, not towards being perfectly rational. For example as to who gets the girl or the leadership role the guy who says I'm the greatest and believes it has an advantage over the guy who thinks he's mediocre even if in reality both are equally mediocre. So rationality works well for engineering things, less so for dealing with humans.

[maratd]

> As an engineer, it's tough to get past this mindset.

Seems that way considering how you're being downvoted. A shame.

As engineers, we should be more concerned with what actually works, not with what works inside our heads.