Do We Choose Irrational Beliefs or Irrational Actions?

Our “irrationality” may be helping us more than our “rationality”

In Nigeria, where I’m from, superstitious beliefs are held by many people. The Yorubas, for example, believe that a pregnant woman should not walk under the sun. They believe the evil spirit that roams the earth during the day would enter the fetal baby. In the Igbo land, it is believed that you shouldn’t sweep at night. If you sweep at night, you might sweep away the family’s wealth.

The lists of superstitious beliefs are endless. Even with the rise in education and science debunking many of these false claims, some superstitious beliefs are engrained in our minds, and we can hardly let go of them.

Economists tell us these beliefs are irrational and just plain false, with no benefit for the believers. And the atheists consider those who believe in nonverifiable claims to be plain idiots. As with religion, some evolutionary biologists/psychologists have found justification and utility for these so-called irrational beliefs. And they claim it helped in the survival of the human species.

The Dispute on the Definition of a Rational Belief.

We cannot tell for sure how superstitions developed. Using our Nigerian superstitious beliefs as examples, it’s plausible that somebody swept at night and because of a poor vision of the night, swept away some important items that could have made his family rich. Again, let us assume that these persons pass on this life lesson (Don’t sweep at night, else you’d sweep your fortune away) until it becomes a cultural thing.

Or as in the earlier example, perhaps, a pregnant woman walked under the sun and lost her pregnancy due to stress or an unknown circumstance. And the people also pass this from one person to another that evil spirits possessed the baby and that led to the loss of the pregnancy.

In these two examples, we can say for sure, these “irrational” beliefs, on the good side, must have saved one or two pregnant women’s lives, and one the bad side must have prevented some pregnant women from going about a beneficial daily business. That leads to the question, are these “rational beliefs” or, to be more pragmatic, do these beliefs lead to rational actions?

What Is a Rational Belief?

Nassim Nicholas Talib, an expert in decision-making under uncertainties, argues that a belief that protects a person, tribe, community under opacity is rational because it leads to rational actions irrespective of the probability of the bad outcome happening.

To Nassim, ” Survival comes first, truth, understanding and science, later”

A rationalist, our beloved economists, would argue that there is no evil spirit in the world that can possess the pregnant woman. Although there a chance that the pregnant woman might lose the baby to stress or the unknown event while walking under the sun, it’s improbable. Therefore, avoiding events with very low probability is irrational.

It Doesn’t Have to Be One or the Other

The problem mainly is on the definition of rationality and irrationality. On one hand, one who is rational sees the probability of something being low and bets against it happening irrespective of the domain. On the other hand, one can say, it is irrational to bet on low probability events if the outcome is costly. That means, if the payoff is extreme, it is irrational to make a positive claim on low probability.

While one sees paranoia and panic as a problem of superstitious believes, the other sees it as a benefit. Although superstitious beliefs are costly, it has kept our species from going extinct for the millions of year we have existed on earth.

Depending on the domain and what the payoff is, we have to employ the different definitions of rationality to survive and live an efficient life at the same time. So, where should we deploy the different forms of irrationality?

Imagine you have a bias to see ropes as snakes — Every time you see a rope, you think it’s a snake. Chances are that you would run away and avoid a snake bite as long as you see the “rope” before it strikes. In converse, if you train yourself never to run when you see a rope that looks like a snake, the one unfortunate day you see a snake, you might get bitten with venom and die. As a “rational being”, you would want to make sure that it’s a snake, and the snake wouldn’t wait for you to confirm your rational or irrational beliefs.

In some domains, where the payoff is mild, we can be rational in the economic sense. But in other domains, where the payoff is extreme, we have to be “irrational”, like we have been for millions of years. And it’s not so easy to draw the line on how the payoff is or how it would turn out to be.

If we had panicked during the early days of Covid-19, we would probably not have a death toll of millions, and we would not have had the long months of lockdown and loss of jobs, social lives, and businesses that resulted from our “rationality”.