Rationality Is Not Reversed Irrationality

Epistemic status: Speculative psychoanalysis to illustrate a point Many people have observed that Tyler Cowen's Act Like it is science is a clear case of an isolated demand for rigor . I agree, but I feel it's worth trying to understand how he ended up there. Tyler Cowen is clearly very intelligent, so he's unlikely to have written such a howler without something interesting going on. Pychoanalysing others is slightly uncouth, but Tyler started it [1] , so I don't feel bad here. My intuition is that when Tyler imagines certain scenarios he becomes anxious. The longer he engages with these thoughts, the more anxious he becomes. It's hard to be rational when you're anxious and it's quite natural simplify this to "all these thoughts are irrational". Now, when someone is suffering from irrational anxiety, the typical advice isn't "keep thinking about it until you realise where you're being irrational", but "don't engage with those thoughts, it's a trap" . Cognitive behavioral therapy may seem like a counter-example, but it's the exception that proves the rule [2] . It pretends to be about challenging yourself to ask whether your negative assumptions are based in fact, but as far as I can tell, it appears to be about wielding isolated demands of rigor as mantras to provide your over-active mind a convenient excuse to believe what it wants. If it were really about rationality, it would ask you whether the situation was even worse than you thought and whether you were simply tellin…