The Benefits of Letting Rationality Slide

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Given constraints on processing power and these limits on our time, I wonder if there's cases where it's maybe not worth fighting against this in a machinery that's working against our rationality. If things are going badly for you in an area, or you just see a really large opportunity to like improve something, then I think that's where rational thinking is more likely to be helpful. And of course, rational thinking is incredibly helpful for risky decisions,. For things that really do require us to sit and process information and reach this optimal outcome.

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To increase our chances of success (in whatever domain and using definition of success), should we focus on boosting our strengths or shoring up our weaknesses? Are we harsher in our critiques of ourselves than in our critiques of others? What should an ideal inner monologue be like? What are some useful taxonomies of pain? Are there times when irrational, magical, emotionally-driven, and/or delusional types of thinking are useful?

Anna Paley is insatiably curious about how best to live our lives. She is a behavioral scientist and marketing professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She received her PhD from New York University, Stern School of Business in 2017. You can reach her at a.paley@tilburguniversity.edu.

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