On Rationality

2026.03.29

XCLV

[The Fall of the West; Narcissistic Irrationalism; A Merciful Legacy OS; It's always been this way]

Thesis: The most valuable parts of our modern society are a product of rationality and critical thinking, which is why we must preserve and elevate them at all costs.

[The Fall of the West]

Whether explicit or not, over the last couple of months, I've been writing a lot about the decay of Western Society.

I've written about...

• The dangers of the erosion of critical thinking

• How "stretching the truth" is just lying and how rampant lying is

• How writing helps you think more critically and how verbal communication can hide lies

• Why reading books is so different (and better) than consuming short form content

• Why you should keep doing hard things even when the world tells you to spam AI

• My own journey learning to emotionally regulate in a world of vices and how you can, too

• A rant countering some intellectually lazy AI Doomer Porn

• A criticism of short form content

I actually didn't realize how much these are circling the same topic until I wrote them all out here. More or less, lately, I've been writing about (empirical and anecdotal) societal trends that push us away from a Rational culture towards an Irrational one.*

To be crystal clear about what I mean, I believe:

• The dominate cultural trends in the West are moving us away from a society that rewards rational, critical thinking and instead towards a society that rewards, irrational, emotional decisions.

• For the good of the human species, A Rational Society is preferable to an Irrational Society

These are two very, very heavy and dense claims that cannot be done justice in eight 2,000 word blog posts, let alone in a single sentence.

Still, it’s so important to me to continue fleshing out and supporting these claims over time. I believe the West to is currently our best bet at a sustained, Rational Society, and I do not want it to fall. Even if, in some ways, I believe it's already slipped away from an idealized state, it's made substantial progress towards that state in other regards as well.

I'm taking the same stance culturally that myself and some other founders take about startups: An aggressive, protective pessimism constantly analyzing risks and threats, along with an unassailable, borderline delusional optimism that the desired outcome will be achieved.

_{*To be utterly clear, I am NOT using the word 'Rational' in the way that our modern 'Rationalists' use it. A working definition for Rational is logic and science based reasoning and decision making, while Irrational is a catch all for all that falls outside of that, including emotional decision making or tribalism. I understand the latter point, tribalism, might take some work to draw a connection, but I intend on getting to it. And as much as I love Popper, I'm not comfortable fully hitching my cart to his horse either, even though much of what I'm arguing is inspired by and (I think) consistent with what he might say Rationalism is.}

[Narcissistic Irrationalism]

In some ways, I think that the behaviors of 'narcissistic' personalities that piss people off are pretty in line with the behaviors you see more of in a less Rational Society.

I’m thinking in particular of one significant interaction I had with someone whose behavior you could safely label as narcissistic, although I could bring up many such examples.

In this case, I approached an individual, we'll call him Eli, who had consistently not been delivering promised work. After a laborious conversation, Eli surprisingly agreed that he could do a better job of estimating and delivering different items, and promised he'd complete 2 tasks by the morning of the next day.

When I woke up the next day, one task was half done, and the other was left completely untouched. Of course, I noted this to Eli, bringing up the recorded conversation from the day prior.

Eli responded very emotionally by telling me that our work environment was toxic and he was being micro managed. The bulk of his argument was emotional drivel about how it was somehow unfair to hold him accountable to something he said he would do.

This was ultimately an inflection point that rapidly devolved into a drawn out, quite violent, 2.5 month break up.

In a lot of ways, this argument encapsulates a rational vs irrational world view:

• My rational world view was contingent on verbal and recorded statements and consistency within and across those. If someone said they'd do something, they ought to do it.

• Eli's Irrational world view was contingent on emotional state, how he was feeling, and his desire to use words and arguments to get his way regardless of what he had said or committed to ('might makes right').

This is not at all to say that there is no room for grace or humanitarianism in a Rational world view; to the contrary, I think there is a very strong, rational argument for it. But there are also limits: this interaction came at the end of 9 months of build up and empty promises. And it was clear that we would continue on a death spiral if nothing was done.

And, to be even more clear, this is not at all to say I behaved wholly rationally; quite far from it. There were many instances in which I made decisions that were influenced more heavily by my emotions that logic. Funny enough, it’s those decisions that seemed to have been the most destructive by slowing our approach to resolution the most.

[A Merciful Legacy OS]

In the US, we're still thankfully functioning within the bounds of a relatively rational system.

Eli, in the above example, actually attempted to wield our legal system to get his way. Since his position was largely irrational, he utterly failed to achieve that. By sending me a cease and desist letter on complex business matters from a personal injury lawyer, he did succeed in giving my lawyer a good laugh, however! (he also succeeded in giving me cause to set ablaze dollars in the form of billable hours)

Our largely rational, argument based legal system seems to be, on the whole, still intact, notwithstanding some high publicity questionable decisions.

It thrives on laying out all of the information clearly, and then having two separate arguments that are (supposedly) rationally evaluated and decided upon. In theory, jurors are picked to be as neutral as possible through a process of both sides agreeing upon them, and judges are highly educated and rational people whose biases we attempt to control with lifetime terms.

This does not always work, but it has been the bulwark our society in the US was built on. The fact that it is even partly still intact is a grand protection against irrationalism.

[The Emotional Vote]

In other very important ways, as I've written about extensively, our society is becoming less Rational and more emotion based.

Everything about short form content is emotional. There is literally no time in a 10 second reel to formulate anything resembling a meaningful, rational argument. And even if there was, you’d have no time to evaluate it, because the system pushes you on to the next thing!

Instead, the reward mechanism is totally emotion based. If watching the thing triggered an emotional state, you'll vote on it by watching it again or liking it or sending it to your friends. This vote isn't based on an objective valuation of the value of any argument in the post; it's based on how it made you feel.

Since your attention has been monetized, your "attention vote" is similar to the concept of the "dollar vote": like the goods and services you spend money on influences the goods and services that are produced, the content you watch and like and share influences the content that is produced.

And if you're consuming and sharing content that makes you feel angry or righteous or upset or elated or like you're politically in the right, that is what will continue to be produced!

This doesn’t get us closer to truth, this propagates paper thin ‘ideas’ and ideologies on the back of emotions. In such a system, Rationality is not involved in directing resources; emotional state is.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe; it’s not always overtly about rationalism vs irrationalism, but it is constant theme as I reflect on and detail my life journey.

[It's always been this way]

I might sound like the classic trope of the "it used to be better" kind of guy who doesn't actually know what it used to be like... and maybe I am that guy!

But that doesn't mean there isn't a way to rationally evaluate observable trends, like decreases in literacy and attention spans and increases in political extremism (on both sides) and make a value judgement on it. And it also doesn't mean that once you've made a value judgement that you shouldn't attempt to infer cause and effect and, if the effect is negative, to directly address and attack the causes as being dangerous and harmful to society.

So yes, there are always people like myself identifying problems. Some of us are wrong, some of us are right. It's up to you to make your own judgement about which one I am.

While I use anecdotes and emotionally charged language to get my point across, I ask you to judge me less on emotion and more on the arguments I continue to make and build throughout my posts.

Finally, to make my position clear once more, I'm not saying that the world is trending down on every important axis. We live in a truly incredible time where the barrier to learning and creating is incredibly low. That should be cherished and preserved.

My fear is that there are certain trends away from rationality that not only jeopardizes our ability to preserve that coveted freedom and opportunity, but that also jeopardizes our ability to preserve all of our freedom and opportunities.

As we go on, I'd ask you to continue to do so with a critical mind. The attitude of rationality is what I believe has gotten us to such an incredible place. If protected and elevated, it can take us further than we ever thought possible.

Live Deeply,