the inability for self-described rationalists to reason about how their emotions determine what they deem "objective" or significant is the most annoying thing on the planet.

one example where a lot of rationalists stop making sense is blaming challenges with dating on macrotrends and demographics when their own 'microtrends' of personal behavior, manners, and selection bias is the larger contributor to the issue.

No different than a company blaming the macro with 'the market wasn't ready' rather than their failure to bring a compelling product to market. Example: Instacart vs. Webvan.

> one example where a lot of rationalists stop making sense is blaming challenges with dating on macrotrends and demographics when their own 'microtrends' of personal behavior, manners, and selection bias is the larger contributor to the issue.

Both can be true at once though. The rational person says: these are the facts, I have to work harder to date successfully. Is dating then still worth it? Some say yes, work harder, other say no, and give up. Those who give up says that society made dating too hard, not sure why you think that is wrong. You can call them lazy, sure, or maybe they don't value relationships highly, but that is hardly an irrational choice.

Often, the problem in dating requires one to work differently rather than harder. They are missing some facts -- people always are. So the conclusion that their decision is rational is incorrect.

That doesn't make their decision irrational, except to the degree that all complex decisions are made on the basis of incomplete information. You make the best possible induction from limited information. It becomes irrational when one believes they are making infallible deductions, which is false.

Dating may not be worth it. That's a valid choice. But it's misleading to attribute it to facts which may be false or incomplete, and leads to problems with other human interactions.

I agree that both are true but what contributes to loneliness is far more likely to be your own personal choices.

Is challenging your own choices and behavior worth it? The answer to that is subjective.

So true

Discounting the fact that humans aren't coldly rational is irrational. People love to hide behind "logic", but poking a bear and expecting it not to attack you because that would be an "irrational" emotional response is not smart, it's wishful thinking. I can understand why people crave a "grand unified theory" on how the world works and the importance of emotion is an obstacle to having an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but that doesn't mean it's right to ignore it.

> I can understand why people crave a "grand unified theory" on how the world works and the importance of emotion is an obstacle to having an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but that doesn't mean it's right to ignore it.

I agree that emotion does provide somewhat of an obstacle to building an elegant, comprehensible model for the world, but is it really that complicated?

If one simply models emotion as a specialized type/instance of thought, and thoughts as processes that run on a biological neural network (where processes are not isolated and cross contaminate each other), and consciousness and "rationality" are higher level, complex ~thoughts (predictive estimations of reality, perceived as reality itself) that emerge[1] from all of this semi-organized complexity...doesn't it seem fairly obvious what's going on?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

That's thoughtful.

I think we can use rationally or emotionally-focused language to express our desires, wishes, demands etc. I think it's worth considering the language used to merely be the dress we give to what we want to say - we use the language we are accustomed to or that we think will have an impact.

So it's not always people are more or less rational/emotional, but they express their goals in that language.

We use rational language to express desire for ostensibly arbitrary choices all the time, for example. Rational language can also serve just as a way to dress up an opinion.

also, it usually forget that humans are in essence emotional beings. emotions and the relation between people and these emotions are far too large to ignore in advance of "rational" thinking.