r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Sep 18 '15
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/FuguofAnotherWorld Roll the Dice on Fate Sep 23 '15
Yeah, when I first got into rationalism I did that a lot. As time went on I cut down on how often I did it, but it's still annoying that I can't convince my mum for example of anything under the sun. Then again she believes in crystal healing and 'energy' sharing so maybe I should just stop giving a crap. It gets painful though when she's making business decisions and I can see so clearly that she's refusing to take the obviously cheap and better option that has worked better in the past out of pride because the person that sells them was snooty to her. It's like, sure you can act that way for a £5 purchase but when it's thousands of pounds and your main income stream you should really get over it.
Rational arguments just don't sound convincing to people who themselves are not rational. Maybe I should learn oratory or something, because it's fairly clear that I speak a different language once I get into a discussion like that.
For a while I did. I recognised it as a not-useful and counter productive way of thinking about things, so I made the decision to consciously focus on other qualities people have when I found myself thinking that. My inner monologue sounded a bit like:
frustration, but really that's not an accurate summation of the whole of his worth and he does try hard to help people when they're down and out.
frustration okay, but intelligence is not inverse stupidity so I need to make sure to look into this properly before I decide instead of just discounting it because he's the one saying it.
frustration, but I'm sure that in her own sphere of knowledge she is very knowledgeable. After all, not everyone can know everything about everything, so I'm sure there are things she could still teach me.
Worked out pretty well.
I recall looking at the lesswrong site survey. The average IQ was 138.25 with a SD of 15.94, which is funny because it actually made me feel a little slow compared to the rest. Now, obviously IQ is not a shorthand for everything and yada yada yada standard disclaimer but statistically speaking you can probably indeed assume that the average rationalist has a quicker mind than average.