Map and Territory, Predictably Wrong

LessWrong contributor Manuel del Rio has published an essay examining rationality, arguing that emotions can be rational responses to reality — pushing back against the idea that clear thinking requires suppressing feeling. He explores cognitive biases, including the availability heuristic, which causes memorable events to seem more common, and the absurdity bias, which too quickly dismisses unlikely scenarios as impossible. Del Rio expresses skepticism about certain rationalist movements, particularly those emphasizing low-probability existential risks like artificial general intelligence. He's wary of Pascal's wager-style arguments where theoretically tiny probabilities demand urgent action, advocating instead for what he calls bounded reasoning. The essay asks: how much can we trust our evolved minds to reason toward truth, even with effort to overcome bias?

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