Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft

I posit that the typical human being has what we might call "rationalism fatigue". Everyone's threshold is different, but even those a few SDs away from the middle aren't fantastically untiring.

So you're trying to be rational, for a day or a week or a decade, and eventually it's just too exhausting. Despite doing everything rationally (at least according to your own limited and irrational faculty for introspection), has your life improved? You still have anxiety about global warming and this particular president's ability to go Fourth Reich on everything. Your wife's left you or you can't get a girlfriend. There's nothing good on tv to watch despite the fact that you've been a Netflix premium customer since they started offering streaming.

And a little switch flicks off in your brain. Soon, thoughts are haunting you like "what if I color in the numbers on my lottery ticket card in the pattern I saw those Starlings flying across the parking lot the other day?!?!". Or "hey, I bet if I just say a prayer to some trendy hipster deity/spirit I read about in a Salon article last February, maybe I won't have so much indigestion".

Eventually, these thoughts become more persuasive, intrusive, or both. And they give in.

It might be that rationalism doesn't pay off except in the ultra long term. And no one can make it to the finish line. Or it might be that rationalism is a game theory game, and it won't ever pay off unless all (or most) other people are playing it with you. Possibly even, no one who tries to be rational even comes close, they just mistakenly believe they do.