What are some examples of this?
Affect, confirmation bias, selective perception, cognitive dissonance, naive realism, survivorship bias, illusion of control, etc.
Civilization is all about capturing and codifying our best moments, and minimizing the damage we do in our worst.
I agree. I just disagree that 'Rationalism' is necessarily a source for good and 'irrationality' intrinsically harmful.
From a cognitive science perspective, the word "rational" needs a tight definition. Can you explain how you're using the word in this case? For example, would you include "expert intuition" in your definition?
Systematic decision making based on (what is deemed to be) empirical data.
Expert intuition tends to be marginalised by Rationalists as it is not quantifiable ("Prove it"). Michael Oakeshott:
Technical knowledge can be learned from a book; it can be
learned in a correspondence course. Moreover, much of it can be
learned by heart, repeated by rote, and applied mechanically: the
logic of the syllogism is a technique of this kind. Technical knowledge,
in short, can be both taught and learned in the simplest meanings
of these words.
On the other hand,
practical knowledge can
neither be taught nor learned, but only imparted and acquired. It
exists only in practice, and the only way to acquire it is by apprenticeship
to a master - not because the master can teach it (he cannot),
but because it can be acquired only by continuous contact with one
who is perpetually practising it. In the arts and in natural science what
normally happens is that the pupil, in being taught and in learning
the technique from his master, discovers himself to have acquired
also another sort of knowledge than merely technical knowledge,
without it ever having been precisely imparted and often without
being able to say precisely what it is. Thus a pianist acquires artistry
as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the
game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires
(among other things) the sort of judgement which tells him when
his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which
enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable
directions to explore.
Now, as I understand it, Rationalism is the assertion that what I
have called practical knowledge is not knowledge at all, the assertion
that, properly speaking, there is no knowledge which is not technical
knowledge. The Rationalist holds that the only element of
knowledge involved in any human activity is technical knowledge,
and that what I have called practical knowledge is really only a sort
of nescience which would be negligible if it were not positively mischievous.
The sovereignty of 'reason', for the Rationalist, means the
sovereignty of technique.
