Ambition and Experiences in an AI World | Jordan Harbinger

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altier show today on the James Alger show. You know what it really pays to understand what is rational behavior everyone assumes. Oh, I'm the rational one and everyone else is irrational. Well, we're all kind of irrational almost all the time. And there's reasons for that because we, our brain needs shortcuts occasionally to. So we could think faster and make decisions. But that means we sacrifice a little bit of rationality and particularly this year where it's like everyone is arguing about everything. There's no teams, rational thinking means you're an individual and you compile wisdom in your life, you use that wisdom and plus your knowledge which are different to make decisions. So I really happy to have Steven Pinker. One of my favorite writers, come on the podcast and talk about his new book, Rationality. Here We Go. The Better Angels Of Our Nature is one of my all time favorite books. And it's such an important book that people need to read if I wanted to. I could use that book in an argument at least once a day. Because it's such an important topic. The fact that in general against what people think, commonly, violence as a species has gone down, you know, century over after century. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about your book Rationality, which I will talk about in the intro. But I love the quote by Jonathan hate. Uh, if you ever consider taking drugs to make yourself smarter read Rationality instead. Yes, that's a quote to die for, which is a very interesting now. And you're, and, and I'll just summarize, not necessarily the argument of the book and you can correct me. But you basically argue that we are a rational species. But sometimes we get lazy in our thinking if I were to summarize it in, in one sentence. And like this past year, as you mentioned, we did all these amazing things. We, we developed vaccines for COVID in a few months and yet half the country and the other half of the country had all this mindless arguing all day long, all the time on all social media that you start to think people are really crazy. Facts don't matter. Rationality doesn't exist. And so I'm really taught when I began this book, I was really torn on both sides that yes, we're rational because we survived as a species. We got food, we got shelter, we lived. But on the whole, you just look at anybody's Twitter feed and you think, oh my God, people are completely insane and irrational almost all the time. Let's start from there. What do you think? Yeah, not almost all the time, but when it comes to certain politicized issues, they are particular issues can become badges of identity for political tribes or coalitions. Also, there are certain zones in which we uh we fall back on our intuitions, our intuitions such as that living things contain some kind of essence that gives them their form and powers. And that makes us receptive to, to homeopathy, to all kinds of quack cures. Crystal healing power makes people reject vaccines which seem like introducing some uh adulterant or germ into your body. We uh we, we unlearn some of these primitive intuitions if we vest some kind of trust in the scientific establishment. But uh if people don't vest trust in the scientific establishment, they'll, they'll fall back on these intuitions or they'll listen to other uh experts with uh the same uh air of confidence, but without the, the goods behind them. So, well, let me ask you this and this is, this is related to the book. Um But when it, where's the line where you should be a skeptic versus OK, this is uh established science and we must believe it. And, and I think specifically the example Igor Semmelweis in the, I think it was the 18 fifties basically without going into the whole story, just figured out that washing your hands uh will not convey diseases. And uh you know, he discovered germ theory and most people at the time, even scientists and doctors did not believe him. And he ended up for an insane in an insane asylum for a while. So he was rational. Most people were not rational, particularly when confronted with something new and it seems like that's the way of humans. Well, it's uh yeah, we have no one has a pipeline to the truth. And uh we're our natural state is ignorance about everything. We, I ideally have institutions that have built in uh checks and balances and demands for empirical testing so that the institution as a whole will over time kind of wander its way into, into true beliefs and discard the false ones. But only to the extent that that community, the community of scientists or journalists or government officials or, or, or anyone agreed to, agrees to abide by these rules to say no one can impose their beliefs by force. No one has a pipeline to the truth. No one is an oracle, no one is a deity. We're all fallible. We've got to provide the goods. If you believe something, you got to be able to explain why you believe it. You've got to be able to challenge someone who has a claim to the truth and, and, and uh get that person to show why why we should believe them. If you got a system like that then there's no guarantee that it'll, it'll find the truth and, and sometimes it won't, but that's our best is our only method for fighting the truth. Uh Given that none of us has a divine inspiration, none of us can listen to an oracle. That's our only choice. So you define rational as uh using knowledge to obtain a goal, the knowledge could come from many different sources. It might be incorrect knowledge. We have this sort of define knowledge, but it's rational to, to use the, the knowledge that you have people. And you're saying people could be irrational if they're not using this knowledge to do certain things. You know, for instance, I could be, I, I had COVID recently and everyone said, why didn't you get a vaccine? Using their models of vaccine taking? They thought, oh, I must be, you know, a racist if I didn't use a vaccine or I must be some, you know, right wing this or right wing that. But the reality was I was just lazy. I kept scheduling it and skipping the appointment and then I got COVID and no one believed people would rather believe that there was some devious reason why I didn't get vaccinated. And because I think people think that others are rational that in general people are making big rational decisions. But we're usually not. We're usually as, as you say, we're, we're, we're using kind of lazy thinking or lazy tools for, for deciding things. Well, that it's true that a lot of, uh, irrationally comes from falling back on, on your, your, you got feelings flying by the seat of your pants, uh, going for the first response that occurs to you. And then, and a lot of the demonstrations of, uh, predictably irrational thinking come from people not being smart enough to, to, to know the correct answer. As soon as you explain to them, they say, you know, they slap themselves in the forehead and they said, oh yeah, of course. What was I thinking? The problem was they weren't thinking and that our gut feelings often lead us into uh bad conclusions. It's also behind the philosophy of governance, sometimes called nudge promoted by thy Richard Thaler and my colleague, CASS Sunstein. The idea that uh people very often fall back on, they, they just slip into a groove, they, they don't think twice. And so if you set up the environment so that the lazy option happens to be the rational option, you get a lot more rationality. But it, it seems like there are a lot of, there are a lot more reasons even though you argue correctly, I feel that being rational will improve your life in general. It seems like there are a lot of, there are a lot more reasons to be irrational than to be rational. For instance, the community I live in might believe something as a community. And so it's easier for me to survive in that community, if I just choose to be irrational and believe along with them and, and this could happen at every level of society. So in general right now, uh how, how rational are we like? What's your, what's your take? Well, the thing is that ra rationality is always a means to an end and the end, you might use your rational faculties to pursue something that you can't really rationally defend. So for example, if it's just to be to earn brownie points within your, your social clique, uh then indeed you, if, if you're, if the people you hang out with uh believe a lot of false things and if they're going to attack you, if you speak the truth, then there's a limited sense in which it's rational to say things that are false because no one wants to be an outcast. We all want to be accepted by our social group that we can then ask the question. Well, is your social group rational and that's where, where you get to the implicit rules of the game that you follow as a community, what you reward other people for what you, what you tend to promote. And ideally since uh we all want to be accepted, but we also don't want to be diluted. We don't want to believe nonsense. You know, we really do want to reduce unemployment. We want to reduce COVID, we want to increase GDP, we want to increase happiness. We want to increase knowledge, given that, you know, at the end of the day, it's hard to argue against those things we're gonna say. Well, gee, are they the kind of rules for who's, who's cool and who's not in your social group? Likely to lead to more correct beliefs? Which is something that at the end of the day we probably all want. Yeah. And I would say probably most people want to be more rational and yet what, what do you, why do you think that particularly we saw this this past year? But I bet you we see this every year and I'm just focusing on this past year. But, you know, there's a kind of a cliche now that facts don't matter in arguments and you point this out in the book that people almost immediately start engaging in, you know, a hominid arguments or, you know, mistakes in causation versus correlation. And you know, what, you know, do we really want to be rational people or again, why do facts don't matter? Why? Is that a cliche right now? Well, it's no one would say facts don't matter. They would disagree as to what the facts are. The question is. How do we, um how do we make sure that our beliefs are facts and that we don't mistakenly believe things that aren't facts, right? But if I argue with you something where I think it's fact based and you and, and you don't know, you might just start with the ad hominem arguments. I'm not saying you specifically, but that seems to be a general argument and I'm not saying me either. Like, I mean, the problem is that people do want to win arguments and winning arguments doesn't necessarily mean that, uh, that you'll end up with the correct belief. It might be the person who shouts loudest who, uh, has the deepest voice, who has the most authoritative tone, uh, who uses dirty tricks of debating, like, like, uh, attacking the person instead of the argument or appealing to authority or appealing to the bandwagon. Those are all ways of appearing to win arguments. But they, uh, unless you've got kind of a forum in which you say no, no, wait a sec. Just because you're citing someone with a fancy schmancy degree doesn't mean that he's right or just because a majority of people believe it, that doesn't mean that it's right. You've got to show the goods by, you know, what are the verifiable sources? What are the empirical tests? Unless the rules of the game are such that the person who wins the argument is the one who has the best argument as opposed to the person who's got the, you know, the best mansplainer, the deepest voice, the one who shuts everyone up, the one who, who did the demagogue, then the winner of the argument may not be the one who correct So, what we ought to do is make it so that our debate forums, our discussions, our op ed pages, our classroom discussions, our, our everyday barroom discussions, uh, are steered toward, uh, what really are facts as opposed to who has the loudest voice or, or, um, uh, who can attack the other person, but maybe, maybe having as a goal, winning arguments and then using the knowledge at your disposal. Like if I have a louder voice, I'm going to win, these people are engaging in rational behavior. Like you, you started off as an evolutionary psychologist or you are an evolutionary psychologist and it could be that the one who wins the most arguments rises up in the hierarchy of the tribe back in, you know, hunter gatherer days. So that could be rational behavior. You don't even have to look back to hunter gatherer days. We still have uh implicit dominance hierarchies. Uh The thing is that what's rational for a uh you know, a, a local goal, a short term goal like uh being the, the, the uh alpha debater in your social circle or, or your, your, your barroom clique may not be rational if you step back and you say, well, gee is that, is that a rational thing to want? Yeah, you're really good at getting it. But at the end of the day, don't, we really wouldn't. We prefer that our beliefs are aligned with reality? And you could argue about what our goal should be and where it may be rational to strive for a goal that is itself irrational. So you've got to apply rationality at multiple levels, namely, what are the best means to a particular end? And is that an end that you really want or that you really ought to want? So, so what, what's an example where, uh uh, you know, the rational, your goals might be irrational? Well, if the goal is just to uh to, to, to win an argument to shout down the people who disagree with you, that's an, that's a goal that is maybe rational for yourself. But it's irrational. If you are uh deciding on what ought to count, what ought to be rewarded, what ought to be praised, what ought to be tolerated in a particular social group? So the, the, the social group itself can have goals that differ from the goals of the individuals just like in a democracy, the goal is maximum freedom and happiness and prosperity. Now, there may be individuals who have their own goal being to become, you know, a dictator, an autocrat, but that's just too bad. That is their goal. But the rest of us can get together and say we're not going to indulge that goal, you might want it, but we're not going to let you have it to the extent that we can prevent it. So, so it seems like you could be rational at the micro level and it gets more and more macro. So I could be like in science, for example, there, you know, there, there's intense competition for grants for tenured positions for prestige. Um And in, in a, in a narrow sense, it's rational to, to try to uh gain fame and glory and, and, and riches and, and prizes uh for that individual. But it's not rational for everyone else to let that person get away with it. It's rational for everyone else to set up the rules of, of scientific ar ar argumentation so that the person whose theory is right gets the prestige, not just the person who tries, you know, dirty tricks, who uh suppresses criticism, who fakes his data. There are all kinds of ways that it might be kind of narrowly rational to attain one goal, namely fame and fortune, but irrational if the system lets people get away with it. So in the book, you um describe rationality and, and you almost start with first principles. Like here's, here's what you know, logic and critical reasoning is all about. Here are the cognitive biases that we have to fight against. Let's just talk a little bit about cognitive biases for a second. So Daniel Kahneman uh has described all these almost shortcuts in our thinking that could create irrational behavior. And you give many examples in the book and Kahneman insists there's no way around these cognitive biases that humans fundamentally, it's like a primal thing, we, we have these cognitive biases, where does that fall on the side of humans are basically rational versus irrational. Well, um Daniel Kahneman, the, the uh the, the brilliant psychologist Nobel Prize winner, uh it tends to be something of a pessimist when it comes to overcoming human biases. He does believe that it's possible because he posits that there are two systems of, of, of uh thinking. He calls them uh not very colorfully. System one and system two, system one is uh uh got feelings. First response is instinct. System two is thinking twice, deliberating, pondering. And uh so he does, he, he, he does argue that system two can't override system one, but it's got its work cut out for it because system one is what comes to us uh naturally and easily. And there are, you know, I, I think we ought, we must be aware of the kinds of biases and shortcuts that uh that, that Kman and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky called to our attention. But there are ways of making people more rational and we know that people have to be rational at some level because otherwise, uh you know, unless we think that that Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and are, are a superior breed of humans, they're just like us. Uh So they have what we have and I, you know, we can, we can teach people why something is a fallacy and they nod and they say Oh, yeah, you're right. That doesn't make any sense. So, they've got a rational side that can do that. And there, you know, there was some human being who lay down the rules of logic and the loss of probability. So it's not like it's beyond us and it's not just that there's a tiny fraction of, uh, super geniuses and they're the only ones who can grasp these concepts, you can't explain them. And there are ways of presenting material that are more intuitive. And so that the kind of fallacies that people are uh that fall into, they can also um uh see their way around you. You can, you can present problems in a way that, that jibes with the way the human mind works. And then we uh we don't become so stupid. Give me an example of that. How, how can we present a problem so that we rationally look at it, you know, a notorious failure of decision making comes from um interpreting the results of, of uh medical tests uh if uh or, or for that matter, any other kind of iffy information, like you take a test and there's a certain false positive rate, there's a certain false negative rate as you take a COVID test and it might say you're free and you might actually have the disease. It might say you have the disease, but actually you're healthy. So there are errors in both directions. How do you given that you've tested positive. How do you assess your own chances or, you know, an X ray or scan for breast cancer or a PS A test for prostate cancer? They're all iffy. And how do you make sense of them as, as we do because we don't have a pipeline to the truth. Well, people are uh kind of notorious for not taking into account the base rate. That is if the disease is really, really rare, even if you get a positive result, if the disease is just rare in the population, probably your result is a false positive just by the, as we say, the law of averages. That's a fact that people have that doesn't penetrate even with doctors. Uh So for example, if they uh disease prevalence is a 1/10 of 1% and even if the test is pretty sensitive, uh then a positive result, um probably means you don't have the disease or most, you know, 5050 uh people get it wrong when you present the data as the base rate for the disease is point uh point 1% the false positive rate is 0.1 the false negative rate, etcetera. You give them people those numbers with decimal fractions between zero and one and they uh they come to the wrong conclusion. If you convert it now to something much more concrete, you say there are 1000 people in the population. Uh one of them has breast cancer. Uh of every uh 100 people who uh get a positive test result. Um 10 of them don't have the disease. You make it really concrete, you talk about actual bodies that people can visualize in their mind's eye. Well, all of a sudden they get the, the answer right. And they, the people who formerly were uh almost all wrong suddenly with a switch of format, get it right. It's even better if you present it as a diagram. So you the the the trick is to take advantage of the wi the formats with in which the mind naturally processes information. And that is not typically uh numbers fractions and decimals. Uh you know, you have to have a lot of experience with them for them to be intuitive. On the other hand, we are visual creatures. We are we encounter uh experiences in life. We, we, we take lessons from what happens to us and what doesn't happen to us. And if you present the information in terms of uh say uh one of 1000 people instead of uh 0.1% then it becomes much more intuitive. So, so in the book, you describe rationality, I think, and again, you build up from very numbers oriented, like here's the actual probability of this event or decision. You explain the rules of logic, cognitive biases and, and you know what happens there and, and illusions and so on and then it gets a little bit more there's a lot more uncertainty. So when it comes to political issues, ethical issues, economic issues and so on in general, through all of these, how can we become more rational? And, and like, I'll give an example of the, the logic when you give some puzzles in the, in one of the first few chapters, where is it more likely that someone, you know, Anne is a, is a feminist or is it likely that Ann is a feminist and a nurse? And people will say feminist and a nurse, e even though that's a subset of all the people who are feminists, so it can't be more probable. It's like saying that you, you have a greater probability of drawing a red queen from a deck of cards than a, than a queen the same fallacy. And people make it when the stereotype is vivid enough. If you describe Anne as a, you know, social justice warrior and she marches in Black Lives Matter and uh she supports Bernie Sanders, then you say, what are the chances that she's a uh uh a nurse? What are the chances that she's a feminist nurse? They say it's more likely that she's a feminist nurse? That's the so called conjunction fallacy. Yeah. Right. So why are people given that? That's so totally irrational? You know, why do people do that? And let's start with that and then from there let's build up and, and figure out how to be more rational. Yeah. So people this again is a discovery due to Tursky and con and they call it the representativeness heuristic, but a better way of thinking about it is thinking in stereotypes, namely we uh she, she fits the stereotype of a feminist and so feminist bank teller is, is compelling. She doesn't fit the stereotype of a bank teller. And we go with the uh the stereotypes not with the frequencies by the way, this is a another case in which if you present it as a instead of uh what is the chances that Anne is a feminist bank teller? You might think. What do you mean? What are the chances either she is or she isn't? What does it mean? What does it even mean to say? There's a 0.3 probability that she's a feminist bank teller? She is what she is. Uh On the other hand, if you say, well, imagine 100 women, like, like Ann 100 women who meet the de uh how, how many of them are uh uh bank tellers? How many of them are feminist bank tellers? Well, now people tend to get the right answer and suddenly they, they, they're no longer as stupid as they uh they, they seemed, and it's another example of how presenting information uh concretely in ways that we can visualize can sometimes make people a bit more rational than if you give them abstract numbers, even though it's abstract numbers that we deal with in school, we deal with in, in many professions, but it's just not what we evolved to work with. So that, that's the responsibility of the problem asker. So as a problem solver, how can one kind of train their mind and their mind and body to be uh more rational? Well, part of it is you can uh convert problems into images into concrete uh uh scenarios just to, to do that translation yourself. If, if the person posing the question wasn't considered enough to have done it for you in the first place. Uh But also you can uh you can, if you're an educated person and, and if you're a well read person, then all of these tools that are not second nature to us that we didn't evolve with. But that our uh you know, the, the magicians and mathematicians over the centuries have devised, we can learn them the same way we learn to read, which is an unnatural skill. And one of the points of my book rationality is to provide people with the basics of these tools of rationality that, that they don't come naturally to us, but they really do help us um uh become smarter to, to, to, to think better. So it's not so terrible if in fact, it's I I think it would be a good thing if everyone was taught probability in elementary school. If everyone including the what sounds complicated but isn't mainly uh Bay theorem. So kind of how, how do you evaluate uh beliefs in the light of evidence? Uh Some, some game theory, some logic, some probability theory and statistical decision theory. These are all things that I think a educated person should have at their fingertips and uh should call on to supplement the rationality that we were born with beyond that even because let's take like, um you know, political issues or economic issues or, you know, life issues, like, let's say, oh, I'm thinking of moving from Illinois to Tennessee, I wanna make a rational decision, you know, what, what, how should people go about thinking about everyday problems instead of, you know, problems where there's a concrete solution? Yeah, I mean, the um stepping way back, I think the one of the biggest uh boons to recently is just, is a trait, it's almost a personality trait called active open mindedness that is instead of always uh doubling down digging in, looking for evidence that supports your, your, your beliefs. Um consider the possibility that you're wrong. Listen to the other side, uh try to figure out if I was wrong. What, how would I know? How, how would the world tell me uh if the facts change, I change my mind, that whole suite of personality traits can make you more rational literally. And we know that because if you give people tests of say, predict the future, what's going to happen in the next six months, the ones who are open minded have a way better track record because the people who are close minded will, uh, glum on to a belief and hold it even if they are, even if the world is telling them over and over again, you're wrong. So you got to start with that, that mindset. Then for, uh, particular decisions you, you give yourself some time, don't go with your gut feeling with your first response. I mean, this is hardly new wisdom. But uh but although there is a uh a kind of a trend of fad to say, oh go with your gut, uh don't overthink things, but probably you're generally better off uh thinking at least thinking them through in the case of risky decisions, having a sense of the both the probabilities and the outcomes. What, what are the, what do I stand to gain or lose if this happens? And what are the chances that this will happen? Weighing those up is uh that's sometimes called rational choice theory or expected utility. And it's not a guarantee that you'll make the right decision, but it's a, it's a good thing to, to try to think through like, how do we, how do we uh develop, let's say adaptive, open mindedness like that seems like a muscle one has to practice or exercise. It is, it is kind of a uh a bit of wisdom that the SAGES throughout the uh eras have uh have have advised us. Uh part of it is just, you know, be, be a virtuous person and try to think that way. But part of it is also, you know, as I mentioned, at the beginning of our conversation, a lot depends on the, on the rules of the uh of the game of the community that you're part of, of, of the clique. Do we humiliate people for being a flip flopper? Uh and say, ah, well, that's yesterday you said this and today you say that and or do we reward people for saying the famous quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes when the facts change? I change my mind. What do you do, sir? Now, probably, by the way Keynes probably never said it but, but someone did as with most quotes as with most quotes. Yes, but it is a uh a good rule rule to live by. But that means it doesn't just mean cultivating that virtue in yourself. It means rewarding it in others like, hey, good for you. You changed your mind when the facts changed? Not. Oh, you're a flip flopper. Why should we believe you if you just change your mind? What's something you feel incredibly strong about? Like some common issue? Would it would be hard to change your mind because you've seen the facts, you've seen the science and so on or, or there's no facts in science. It's just your belief. Well, I, you know, I'll give you something that I've, I've certainly staked my, my, uh, my, my name to that is that progress is a real phenomenon. That is, if you measure things that are, uh, that we, we count as good, beneficial, like peace, like knowledge, like uh prosperity, like happiness, they have increased over the long run. Yeah, I think, I think, I mean, and, and this was a great example. You have great examples in both enlightenment now and the better angels of our nature. And those you give certain metrics as showing progress and then you're able to show how those metrics have increased. Stay tuned for part two, which came out today as well, where we continue our talk about what techniques can you use to actually specifically be more rational? And how do you know how rational you are? Listen to part two.