I got to thinking about something this morning. This is barely past the ‘notion’ stage here.
But is rational thinking advantageous?
Basically, I’m wondering if there is a bias towards or against rational thinking that is genetic in humans. I don’t know if rational thinking can be taught as I would think that someone who rejects rational thinking would revert back to non-rational thinking in times of stress.
For example, we know that the Enlightenment began in the 17th century and that’s about the time the human population began a large, constant increase.
Obviously, the Enlightenment brought better medications and the like that helped improve the population.
So, in that regard, I would argue that rational thinking has an evolutionary advantage. But, humans are fairly unique on this planet. An individual human has the ability to take advantage of rational thinking without being able to think rationally. Someone does the work and someone else takes advantage of it.
If I had to grind my own glasses lenses or build my own computer CPU, then I’d be toiling in a field right now about to be eaten by wolves. But I can take advantage of others’ knowledge and skills and use them to my benefit.
The US has the greatest domestic product in the world (if you don’t count the European Union as a single unit for the calculation). Yet, at this point, we no longer are even in the top ten in science and mathematics. We have millions of people using technology that they cannot understand and are complaining because we teach ho to develop that technology in the classroom.
Of the top ten countries ranked by GDP, six are mostly irreligious (I use religion as a proxy for irrational thinking), but except for the US, none are in the top 5.
I don’t know if that is significant or not.
