LESSWRONG
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Against Rationalization

Aug 24, 2017 by Eliezer Yudkowsky

The last sequence focused in on how feeling tribal often distorts our ability to reason. Now we'll explore one particular cognitive mechanism that causes this: much of our reasoning process is really rationalization—story-telling that makes our current beliefs feel more coherent and justified, without necessarily improving their accuracy.

228Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
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117Update Yourself Incrementally
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108One Argument Against An Army
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210The Bottom Line
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126What Evidence Filtered Evidence?
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129Rationalization
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103A Rational Argument
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189Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points
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95Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation
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129Fake Justification
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167Is That Your True Rejection?
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108Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies
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33Of Lies and Black Swan Blowups
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126Dark Side Epistemology
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