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Annals of Inquiry
August 23, 2021 Issue

Why Is It So Hard to Be Rational?

The real challenge isn't being right but knowing how wrong you might
be.

By Joshua Rothman

August 16, 2021

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A man draws a technical drawing of a cartoon head
Part of being "metarational" is knowing when to let someone else do
the thinking.Illustration by Francesco Ciccolella

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Content

I met the most rational person I know during my freshman year of
college. Greg (not his real name) had a tech-support job in the same
computer lab where I worked, and we became friends. I planned to be a
creative-writing major; Greg told me that he was deciding between
physics and economics. He'd choose physics if he was smart enough,
and economics if he wasn't--he thought he'd know within a few months,
based on his grades. He chose economics.

We roomed together, and often had differences of opinion. For some
reason, I took a class on health policy, and I was appalled by the
idea that hospital administrators should take costs into account when
providing care. (Shouldn't doctors alone decide what's best for their
patients?) I got worked up, and developed many arguments to support
my view; I felt that I was right both practically and morally. Greg
shook his head. He pointed out that my dad was a doctor, and
explained that I was engaging in "motivated reasoning." My gut was
telling me what to think, and my brain was figuring out how to think
it. This felt like thinking, but wasn't.

Published in the print edition of the August 23, 2021, issue, with
the headline "Thinking It Through."
[rothman-jo]
Joshua Rothman, the ideas editor of newyorker.com, has been at The
New Yorker since 2012.
More:RationalismLogicSociologyMax WeberBooksKnowledgeReasonCollege
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