Dysrationalia — The IQ-RQ gap and what to do about it
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The document discusses the difference between intelligence (IQ) and rationality (RQ) and argues that rationality is an important skill that can be improved through learning, despite only having a weak correlation with IQ. It notes that rational thinking is important for personal, moral, and societal reasons and outlines some common cognitive biases and debiasing techniques. The document concludes by calling for more research on rationality improvement and for efforts to incorporate rational thinking training into education.
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Dysrationalia — The IQ-RQ gap and what to do about it
- 1. Lucius Caviola Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus www.ea-stiftung.org Dysrationalia Dysrationalia The IQ-RQ gap and what to do about it 1
- 2. Outline – Introduction – The importance of rationality – The cognitive psychology of rationality – Teaching rationality 2Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 3. – “I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” – US President George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003 – Lack of intellectual engagement, cognitive inflexibility, need for closure, belief perseverance, confirmation bias, overconfidence, insensitivity to inconsistency – IQ of 120 – Cognitive aspects that are not captured by IQ tests 3Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 4. What is good thinking? – It is assumed that good thinking = intelligence – Intelligence plays important role in society – Determines academic and professional careers – University admissions use proxies for IQ scores (e.g. SAT) – What is intelligence - psychologically? – What IQ tests measure: cognitive capacity – Processing speed – Pattern recognition – Memory capacity and efficiency 4Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 5. What is good thinking? – IQ tests don’t measure rationality as defined by cognitive scientists – Epistemic rationality: accurate beliefs – Instrumental rationality: achieving your goal – Cognitive biases (thinking error) – Generating alternative hypotheses, goal reflection, hypothetical reasoning, actively open-minded thinking, changing your opinion 5Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 6. What is good thinking? – Conceptually and empirically: IQ ≠ RQ – RQ test being developed by Stanovich (2016) – Only weak correlation between IQ and RQ – For some biases no correlation (or even negative) (Stanovich et al., 2013) – Dysrationalia: inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence (Stanovich & West, 2008; Ross et al., 1977, Krueger, 2000) 6Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 7. Why is rationality important? – Personal – It pays for everyone to be more rational – Moral – Many people have broadly altruistic goals under reflection – Irrationality kills – Donating to ineffective charities (e.g. scope insensitivity) – Exploitation of non-human animals (e.g. speciesism) – Diminished concern for future generations (e.g. distance bias) 7Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 8. Sources of irrationality – Cognitive Miserliness (System 1, System 2) – e.g. identifiable victim effect – Mindware Gap – e.g. probabilistic reasoning – Unhelpful Mindware – e.g. superstitious thinking 8Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 9. Rationality can be learned – In comparison to intelligence, rationality can be learned (Stanovich, 2009) 9Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 10. Teaching methods – Knowledge about biases – Debiasing techniques (Larrick et al., 1990) – Acquiring Mindware 10Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 11. Knowledge about biases – Framing effects (Cheng & Wu, 2010) – Hindsight bias (Reimers & Butler, 1992) – Outcome effect (Clarkson et al., 2002) – Weak effects for anchoring (George et al., 2000) – No effects for overconfidence (Lipko, et al., 2009) 11Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 12. Debiasing techniques – Thinking the opposite (Koriat et al., 1980) – e.g. considering other causes – Take the outside view – e.g. planning fallacy (Lovallo & Kahneman, 2003) – (Self-)nudging – e.g. donation norm (Everett, Caviola, et al., 2015) 12Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 13. Teaching Mindware – Knowledge of scientific reasoning – Probabilistic reasoning – Qualitative decision theory insights – Economic reasoning – Rules of logical consistency and validity – Avoiding unhelpful mindware 13Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 14. Does rationality make us more altruistic? – In theory: rationality and goal orthogonal – Economics students are more selfish (Frank, et al., 1998) – Open-mindedness to moral arguments – Historic/social: people became more rational and more altruistic over time (Pinker, 2011) – Or just better incentives for cooperation? 14Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 15. Conclusion – We have important global problems to solve and cannot afford to make mistakes – Measure, select for, and improve rationality – Rationality improvement as a leverage – Action points: – More research is needed – Try to improve your own rationality skills – Center for Applied Rationality (rationality.org) – EAS is working on a policy paper proposing a school subject “Rational Thinking and Ethics” 15Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia
- 16. Questions 16Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia • lucius.caviola@ea-stiftung.org • facebook.com/lucius.caviola
- 17. Learn more 17Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus Dysrationalia