Rational thinking?

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If you get put in jail for acting on your obsessions, then it is either because your actions are illegal (and not because NTs don't understand them), or you are behaving "suspiciously" and they've taken you in for a psych eval.

In many cases...

"Irrational" == "Thinks and acts differently from me"

Many NTs think perfectionism is "irrational" because they do not understand the emotional need for perfectionism.
Many Aspies think NTs being offended is "irrational" if they don't have the same reason to feel offended as they do.

Also, Objectivists and their right-libertarian brethren always mistake being "rational" for lacking any concept of fairness. You're not more "rational", you're just a giant gob-vomiting douche-nozzle. Sorry.

In summary, the terms "rational" and "irrational" have lost any consistent meaning in modern usage. I'd prefer to stick to using the term to indicate whether a real number can be expressed as a ratio of integers.

What is rational thinking? I don't believe such a thing exists.

What is rational thinking? It begins with...

1. Conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons to believe.

2. Optimization of one's actions toward the achievement of one's goals.

3. Independence from the influence of emotion, feeling, or instinct.

4. Objectivity in the examination of data and the observation of events.

5. A methodical approach to determining the causality of events.

6. A materialistic focus in the determining the causality of events.

But just like self-diagnosis of AS, one can not rationally accept just one or two of these qualities and say, "I am rational". Instead, one must constantly strive to pt into practice all aspects of rationality before one can even begin to consider one's self as rational.

The second and third items on this list seem to conflict with each other. You can't form goals from logic on it's own. You're subjective preferences are necessary in determining what you want to achieve. Once you have a goal you can use rational thinking to determine the best course of action to achieve it.

While one's goals may have been prompted by emotion, the achievement of those goals is best achieved with the least emotion. "Revenge is a dish best served cold" means that while you may have a burning desire to see your enemy pay for what he did to you, the best way involves careful planning and meticulous action - you can't just run into the boss's office, screaming accusations and threatening lawsuits; you have to hire a lawyer, collect evidence, and present your complaint to a higher authority.

There are exceptions, of course (see below).


Even my subjective preferences are subject to reason. If I want to eat, do I go for the sensible 800 calorie soup-salad-sandwich value meal, or for the mouth-watering 1800 calorie bacon-cheeseburger-fries combo meal?

The first one may not satisfy my inner glutton, but it is healthier, so reason dictates that I go for the sensible option, even though I really want the cheeseburger.

It is more reasonable to value one's health over gluttony.

Can you cite any real-world instances where emotional content is necessary for achieving one's goals? I can...

- A salesperson trying to entice a few more customers into buying something they don't need.

- A politician trying to squeeze a few more votes out of the constituency when the other politicians are just as good (or bad).

- A lynch mob looking for someone (e.g., anyone) to hang for the rape and murder of a young girl.

- A religious leader trying to incite violence against a nation that refuses to obey the leader's doctrine.

- A stripper trying to entice a few more customers into paying for "special" performances.

Independence from emotion is functionally impossible. In the example of the 800 calorie meal vs. the 1800 calorie meal, you have both the desire to eat healthy (an emotional motivation) and the desire to eat something that may taste better but not be as good for you (also an emotional motivation). Claiming that one is emotional and one is rational as if the two cannot coexist is fallacious.

In the real world, people who lose the ability to experience emotions become extremely impaired in decision-making ability, and emotions precede the conscious decision itself. Without emotion, one would have no motivation to choose either meal described above. Logic isn't sufficient.

Emotions provide motivation; instinct determines action; reason improves efficiency and effectiveness (imo) - not a hard-and-fast rule, but it seems to be the general principle.

I agree with this.

I've also wondered if people who are paranoid or experiencing delusions are really irrational. I don't see how they could be irrational if the source of their behavior isn't an error in their mental reasoning but an error in that what they are subjectively experiencing doesn't correspond with the reality the rest of us live in. If you truly experience hallucinations or delusions then reacting to those perceptions as if they were real seems perfectly rational to me. Seems like another case of people labeling something they don't understand as "irrational".

I've also had the experience before where if I try to remember a dream I just had upon waking I realize how irrational it is in hindsight, yet somehow it managed to make perfect sense to me just moments before while I was dreaming. Really makes me wonder.

It is the falseness of what they perceive coupled with their erroneous interpretation of those perceptions that leads to behavior that is inconsistent and inappropriate to objective reality.

False Perceptions + Subjective Interpretations + Inappropriate Actions --> Irrationality.

The difference is that these hallucinations are happening in a state of mind that is not rational. It's the same with you're dream. If you were in that dream you wouldn't look at a cow flying through the air and say "that's not real".

Many people have regular hallucinations in a clear state of mind. The majority of people experience them at least once in a lifetime briefly.

It is irrational to assume that something you see is real if it can't possibly be real. I saw an ant the size of a racoon once but I didn't think that was real since it was impossible. Ants don't get that big.

A person in a psychotic state isn't just hallucinating. He/she is also thinking irrationally and unable to be skeptical about the impossible things s/he is perceiving.

Not entirely true. Some of the mental health professionals I've dealt with agree with you, some disagree. I have interacted with people who are psychotic and I have seen they can be skeptical sometimes but not other times, but about some parts of their delusions but not other parts. It's not fully consistent.

However, it is virtually impossible to argue a psychotic person out of their delusions. They'll incorporate whatever you're saying into their delusions whether they view you positively or negatively.

You're not following my point. What appears as an erroneous to us given our information may not be erroneous to them. If you were trapped in The Matrix you would have absolutely no way of knowing that the information you are acting on isn't real. There's absolutely no way anyone can convince you that what you are experiencing isn't real just by banging you over the head and telling you you are an idiot.

I'm following very well - I just don't accept it. Here is what I think: What appears as erroneous to us given our information may not SEEM TO be erroneous to them.

For instance, if a pizza delivery truck passes your house four times in ten minutes, is the driver more likely to be (a) lost or (b) a government agent trying to track you down by the coded theta waves emanating from the alien implant in your brain?

A rational person might answer with: "The driver is lost"

An irrational person might answer with, "Purple Twinkies barking like transistors at Korean pumpkin fur".

The issue is my dreams come with their own "back knowledge", a sort of memory state that makes a dream seem to take place over a much longer time period than the time as measured by physical brainwave pattern corresponding to being in a dream state. Part of that "back knowledge" could be that cows fly through the air all the time. As long as the physics of my dream world is internally consistent how can you expect me to scientifically and logically determine that what I'm experiencing isn't real?


I have experienced them before, real enough to be intensely frightening in the moment. Afterwards I could piece together that what I experienced was a hallucination, but that's only because it lasted only a brief time. If it had kept happening over and over indefinitely I would start to not know what to believe and what not to believe. Also for me it wasn't something as unbelievable as an ant the size of a racoon. It was that there was an intruder in the house that I could both hear (footsteps, banging noises, etc... ) and strangely "feel" the presence of. I can't even describe how frightening it was. I am a deeply skeptical person as well.