Recently I read in a book “Lepiej już było” of Macin Król ISBN-978-83-7700-240-7 that there is a theory that freedom is not for a generic population because this population is not making decisions using a rational way of thinking.
So today I would like to talk a bit about it… but from a programmer point of view.
Machines are hyper-rational
The said above theory was formulated by philosophers. More than five decades ago I suppose. Most of philosophers are not technical people. We, people who do programming are. I, personally, am double technical because I am not only programming but also designing machines, both electronics and mechanics and do plan and perform some physical experiments from the area of nuclear physics. So I am well aware how brutally rational are computers and how cruel are laws of physics against those who plan experiments.
Before the computer era the only brands of science which were testing how rationally You think were those derived from physics. You might have formulated a brilliant theory but if the nature law were different then then experiment would have clearly shown that all those lovely calculations were not worth the price of a paper they were scribbled on.
Now we have computers. And those are a true hell for humanists. If You write a rule then computer will use that rule exactly as You have written it having absolutely zero regards to what You really had in mind.
So if You like to know how it is to think truly rationally and logically ask us, experienced programmers. We may be not thinking that way ourselves but we surely communicate with hyper-rational machines every day. And believe me, it is soaking through.
Ok., so people are dumb because they do not use rational thinking, right? Wise people do think, dummies do act on emotions, right?
Rational thinking is absurdly… inaccurate
Let us do it by an example.
Consider You have to make a choice between buying a certain product, let us call it X, from either shop A or from shop B. Shop A is selling it for 100PLN (PLN – some monetary unit), shop B is selling it for 115PLN.
The rational decision is, of course to buy it from shop A for 100PLN. Since product is the same, why pay more?
But what if shop A is giving You 1,5year warranty, while shop B is giving you 2years warranty with door-to-door service?
Hmmpph…
Now it stops being that clear. Do the 15PLN difference in price will pay back? How to make rational decision about the worth of additional half year of warranty?
Rational decision making needs data
What do You need to know to decide how much is half of a year of an additional warranty worth?
First You need to know what are the probabilities that:
- the product will break within a an extended period of warranty;
- what is a chance that the failure will be covered by the warranty.
Getting at least roughly accurate data about it is not easy. First You would need to know how many pieces of the same make of product X were already sold. Then You would have to know what was the percentage of warranty claims….
What is still far not enough! You will have to know a histogram of when warranty claim was filled since the moment of product sell. Only this will allow You to decide what is a chance that the product will not fail in first 1,5 year and will fail in the additional half of a year.
Once You will know that You must also check what percentage of warranty claims were accepted by producer and what percentage was rejected.
Knowing all of it will allow You to start rationally thinking about this decision!
Just to start.
All right, You had those information squeezed out from the producer. And I assure You it is not an easy task. Blah! Plenty of renowned manufacturers do not even collect such information!
But imagine, You have it.
Can You now make the rational decision about if to buy it for 100PLN from shop A with 1,5year warranty or by 115PLN from shop B with 2years warranty?
You need more data…
Yes, sadly You need more data.
Warranty covers only failures due to manufacturing errors. Warranty does not cover failures due to intensive use. Even if You would know what is the ratio of rejected warranty claims, You will still not know if the use intensity You are planning is in any way close to the average use intensity among all the claims.
If, for an example, You are planing to buy a cheap drill machine and use it every day for serious work You may expect it last… for how long? One of my cheap drills lasted about 100 holes in reinforced concrete. Which took me two weeks to make. The other, also cheap last for five years… and also for no more than 100 holes. I simply used it significantly less intensive.
So You also need to know what is a declared endurance of a machine…
Can You find such declaration in manual or on the box before You buy it?
Rational decision making is expensive
I intentionally used the PLN monetary unit because it is not widely known. How much is 15PLN worth?
For me it is about 15 minutes of work or four beers.
How long would it take me to collect all data I need? If they were provided on the product box then sure, just few seconds. Buy how often do You see such data like failure rate or endurance?
If I would have to ask producer about those data it would take me… an hour? Two? Plus a weak for waiting for an answer.
Assuming two hours, 2x4x15PLN => 120PLN….
Nice, isn’t it?
A rational decision would cost me more than the product is worth!
Irrational is rational
We are very wrong when we think about “emotional choices”, “impulsive choices” and etc. as about a stupidity. This is because we have at least two modes of thinking.
Machine learning
Since computers are hyper-rational we should check how do we attempted to teach them to think. Surely we tried to teach them to think in such a way, that they would make correct, wise decision, right? We did not try to make it stupid because they are hell dumb out of the box.
During the history of computing we created two possible strategies for machine learning:
- rule base (Prolog and expert machines);
- “geometric” (neural networks and genetic algorithms).
Rule based machine learning creates… well… rules. “If something then something”. The geometric approach just tries to represent observations as point in N-dimensional space and clump them together to find “alike” clusters.
Rule based machine learning is, effectively, as our science and what we used to call “rational thinking”. When rules are applied we can trace them back and show a proof: “We made a decision because that and that...”.
The “geometric” approach just tells us “We have seen something like that before and such and such decision worked well”.
Both have pros and cons, but the most important are the questions about how they deal with inaccurate, not trusted data and how fast they are.
Rules are very weak with noisy, faulty, uncertain data. The set of rules also always grows becoming more and more detailed and more and more data hungry. So the wiser it is, the slower it works. Geometric, on the other hand do “generalize” and cannot provide the pin-point accurate answer. Their ability to generalize directly depends on the assigned computing power, so they will rather answer inaccurately than slow down.
Quick decision is better than none
“Hey, there is a tiger! Should we run or hide?”
Nowadays that kind of question is rare, but used to be crucial. And honestly, it did not matter how much better it was to hide than run since both were far far better than staying put pondering what to do.
Irrational decision making is in fact, in my opinion, a form of a “geometric” machine learning. We collect experiences, our own and from other people, and from them we build “clusters” of events. Those clusters do drive our “intuition”, “hunch”, “likes” and such.
Looking on irrational decision making as a form of geometric machine learning we may notice that it is fast, is usually good enough, but surely inaccurate. Geometric machine learning by the nature has problems with accuracy. So irrational decision will be always worse than the rational… but less expensive. And due to its “made of experience” nature it will prefer tested, old solutions over something new.
In our example case the “geometric” system of rules can make a choice based on, let’s say, how nice is a saleswoman instead of on pondering about a product endurance, failure rates and etc. All just because some time in the past I might have experienced something good from a nice woman.
Considering the cost of that specific rational decision and cost of that specific product the irrational choice will be most rational.
Summary
I have shown You that a rational thinking may be expensive and that irrational is not such irrational as philosophers used to think.
And since freedom is a political term how about applying it to politics and elections?
I my country the parliament has circa bout 640 members and we have a direct voting system during which we select members of parliament country wide. So even if I would be “The Voter” and my vote would be the only one to say “Mrs. X enters the parliament” then even then I would have 0,15% of influence on what the parliament would decide. Since I am not “The Voter” but only one of about 20 milions my influence on final parliament voting is… about 1×10^-8%.
To make a rational (in classic terms) political choice You need information. Data. Facts. Facts, not “stories”. Politicians do make for living from telling stories, so what they say has zero factual data. The true information is hidden in “why they are telling it” and “what are they doing“. And believe me, they will do everything to hide it.
Now put on a one side of a scale the real influence I can win as a voter in direct, country wide election system. Then put on the other side of a scale the tens of hours I would need to spend to dig out true, trustworthy data about every of few tens of candidates I can vote on in my region. Add to it the method of votes counting, which in my country removes the weight of my vote even more.
Check the balance.
Does making election decision based on: “Gosh, she has really nice pair of bumpers up there” still look so much dumb to You?
Old coder's ramblings about software concepts and quality. 