Concise Summary简洁概述
Yudkowsky argues that "rationality" as it exists among self-described rationalists is disappointingly thin: familiar with a few biases, maybe able to derive Bayes's Theorem, but lacking the systematic training, shared techniques, and measurable results that make any real discipline formidable. He traces this to a missing aspiration — nobody has yet demanded that rationality produce the same visibly awesome practitioners that martial arts, chess, or nuclear engineering produce in their domains. Until rationalists feel the gap between what is and what should be, and are willing to put serious effort into systematizing and testing rationality training, the community will remain a polite hobby rather than an Art.
Yudkowsky 认为，自称「理性主义者」的人所实践的「理性」令人失望地浅薄：了解几个偏差、也许能推导贝叶斯定理，却缺乏任何真正学科所具备的系统性训练、共享技术和可测量成果。他将此归因于一种缺失的抱负——从未有人要求理性像武术、象棋或核工程那样，培养出明显令人生畏的实践者。只要理性主义者感受不到「现状」与「本应如此」之间的落差，不愿认真投入理性训练的系统化与检验，这个社区就将停留在一种客厅爱好的层次，而非一门真正的「术」。
Infographic信息图
The martial-arts benchmark
武术的基准
Martial arts exists because people believed a systematic art of fighting was possible and put their backs into building it. Rationality lacks exactly this founding aspiration.
武术之所以存在，是因为人们相信系统性的格斗技艺是可能的，并认真投入其建构。理性恰恰缺少这一创立时的抱负。
The verification bottleneck
验证的瓶颈
You can tell when you've hit someone; it's much harder to tell when rationality training has worked. Without feedback, you can't build evidence-based methods.
你能判断自己有没有打中人；判断理性训练是否奏效则困难得多。没有反馈，就无法建立基于证据的方法。
Ad-hoc vs. systematic
临时凑合 vs. 系统建构
Current rationality skills are self-taught and ad-hoc. No single mind can create a full curriculum alone; the community needs to get together, share techniques, and test them.
现有的理性技能都是自学、临时摸索出来的。没有哪一个头脑能独自建立完整课程；社区需要聚在一起、分享技术并加以检验。
The missing aspiration
缺失的抱负
Before martial arts could be systematized, someone had to believe it should be. Rationalists don't yet feel the gap between their actual competence and what a true Art would produce.
武术被系统化之前，必须先有人相信它应当被系统化。理性主义者还没有感受到实际能力与一门真正的「术」所能产出之间的落差。
Rationality as hobby-horse
理性作为爱好
For most people, "rationality" is just one more topic to discuss at parties — with no expectation of visible, measurable improvement in life outcomes.
对大多数人而言，「理性」不过是派对上多一个聊天话题——无人期待它在实际生活结果上产生可见、可测量的改善。
Detailed Summary详细概述
Setting up the problem
Yudkowsky opens with the most common objection he hears against taking rationality seriously: "I've known a couple of rational people and they didn't seem any happier." He immediately identifies who those "rational" people are — probably an Objectivist, an ordinary scientist, or an ordinary atheist. His diagnosis: that's not a whole lot of rationality.
Even the ability to derive Bayes's Theorem — which eliminates most claimants — is still just a pretty basic theorem, not a mark of a truly formidable thinker.
The vision he started with
Since the beginning of his thinking about these questions, Yudkowsky has held a sense that there ought to be a discipline of cognition whose students are visibly more competent, more formidable — "the equivalent of Taking a Level in Awesome." He glimpses hints of this in the writing of researchers like Robyn Dawes, Daniel Gilbert, and Tooby & Cosmides — a rhythm, a unity that begins to pervade their arguments — but even they fall far short of the full vision.
He draws the comparison starkly: the mastery of rationality by the best practitioners he knows does not approach John Conway's mastery of mathematics. Their knowledge base probably doesn't match what a professional nuclear engineer knows about nuclear engineering, or even what a bridge engineer knows about bridges. Their practice regimen certainly doesn't compare to an Olympic runner's training or a professional tennis player's.
The root cause: no systemization
Why? Because they haven't gotten together and systematized their skills. Everyone has had to create everything ad-hoc, from scratch, with one mind doing what should be a collective, iterative enterprise. The chief obstacle, he argues, is the difficulty of testing the results of rationality training — you can't build evidence-based training without feedback.
Current experiments on debiasing interventions are puny: "practice this for an hour, test two weeks later." What would real seriousness look like? Running half a cohort through version A of a three-month training program and half through version B, then surveying them five years later.
Daniel Burfoot's observation is cited approvingly: because rationality is improvised with so little training, raw intelligence ends up being the dominant factor — a sign of an underdeveloped discipline, not an intrinsic feature of the domain.
Self-criticism
Yudkowsky does not exempt himself. He calls himself a beisutsukai (master of the art) manqué — he has one sub-art, which he characterizes as "reduction of confusing cognitions," that he developed with tremendous effort. But there are other arts a full curriculum would teach that would make him stronger, happier, and more effective — if such a curriculum existed. His life doesn't have room for more of that kind of from-scratch creation.
He uses a vivid martial-arts metaphor for his own state: he can punch through brick and is working toward steel on the way to adamantine, but his grasp of kicking, throwing, and blocking is that of a casual street fighter.
The martial-arts analogy
Why do martial-arts schools exist but not rationality dojos? (This was his very first question in his first blog post.) The answer has layers:
- Verification: You can tell when you've hit someone. Rational success is much harder to confirm.
- Aspiration first: Before the verification problem could even matter, some people had to believe that a systematic art of fighting was possible and that they should be awesome — and they were willing to put serious effort into building it. Schools arose from that aspiration, competed in realistic contests, and developed the Systematic Art of Hitting.
The three obstacles, in reverse order of importance
Yudkowsky lists three reasons there is no Art of Rationality:
- Third (least): rationalists have trouble working in groups.
- Second: it is hard to verify success in training.
- First (most important): people lack the sense that rationality is something that should be systematized and trained like a martial art, that its superstars should practice as hard as chess grandmasters, that successful practitioners should be surrounded by an evident aura of awesome.
And — crucially — they don't look at the current absence of visibly greater formidability and say, "We must be doing something wrong." Instead, "rationality" is treated as just one more hobby, an adopted mode of conversational attire with few real consequences.
问题的引出
Yudkowsky 以他最常听到的反对意见开场：「我认识几个理性的人，他们看起来也没有更快乐。」他立刻指出那些「理性人」是谁——大概是某个客观主义者、普通科学家，或普通无神论者。他的诊断是：那根本算不上什么理性。
即便是能够推导贝叶斯定理的能力——这已经筛掉了绝大多数人——仍不过是一个相当基础的定理，算不上真正令人生畏的思考者的标志。
他最初的愿景
从思考这些问题之初，Yudkowsky 就有一种感觉：应当存在某种认知学科，其学习者会明显更有能力、更令人生畏——「相当于在威猛上升级」。他在 Robyn Dawes、Daniel Gilbert、Tooby & Cosmides 等研究者的著作中瞥见了这种可能的片段——一种节奏，一种开始渗透其论证的整体感——但即便是他们，也远未达到完整愿景。
他的对比颇为尖锐：他所认识的最优秀实践者对理性的掌握，根本无法与约翰·康威对数学的掌握相提并论。他们的知识储备大概不及一位职业核工程师对核工程的了解，甚至可能不及一位建筑工程师对桥梁的了解。他们的练习计划肯定无法与奥运选手的训练方案相比，甚至不如一位职业网球运动员。
根本原因：缺乏系统化
为什么？因为他们从未聚在一起，系统化地整理各自的技能。 每个人都不得不临时、从零创建一切，一个头脑做着本该是集体迭代的事业。他认为，核心障碍在于测试理性训练成果的困难——没有反馈，就无法建立基于证据的训练方法。
当前的去偏差干预实验规模极小：「练习一小时，两周后测试。」真正的认真会是什么样子？把一半参与者放进为期三个月的 A 版训练计划，另一半放进 B 版，然后五年后再调查他们。
他赞许地引用了 Daniel Burfoot 的观察：正因为理性是在几乎没有训练的情况下临时摸索出来的，原始智力最终成了最主要的决定因素——这是一个欠发达学科的标志，而非该领域的内在特性。
自我批评
Yudkowsky 并不把自己例外。他自称是一个未能完成的武術家（beisutsukai）——他只有一个子技艺，他将其描述为「减少混乱认知」，是耗尽巨大努力开发出来的。但如果一套完整的课程存在，还有其他技艺会让他更强、更快乐、更有效——可惜那样的课程并不存在。他的生命已经没有空间再做那种从零开始的创造。
他用一个生动的武术比喻来描述自己的状态：他能一拳打穿砖块，正在向钢铁迈进，最终目标是坚金属——但他对踢腿、摔跤和防守的掌握，不过是街头混混水平。
武术类比
为什么存在武术馆，却没有理性道场？（这是他第一篇博客文章里的第一个问题。）答案有几个层次：
- 验证：你能判断自己有没有打中人。理性上的成功则难以确认。
- 先有抱负：在验证问题变得重要之前，必须先有人相信系统性的格斗技艺是可能的，并相信自己应当变得令人生畏——而且他们愿意认真投入去建立它。学校从这一抱负中诞生，在真实的竞赛中相互切磋，发展出了「系统性击打术」。
三大障碍，按重要性倒序排列
Yudkowsky 列出了没有「理性术」的三个原因：
- 第三（最次要）：理性主义者不善于协同合作。
- 第二：训练成功与否难以验证。
- 第一（最重要）：人们缺乏一种感受——感受到理性应当像武术一样被系统化、训练和测试，其顶尖人才应当像国际象棋特级大师一样刻苦练习，其成功实践者应当散发出明显的令人叹服的光环。
而且——关键在于——他们看到当前明显缺乏更令人生畏的能力，却不说：「我们一定哪里做错了。」相反，「理性」被当成另一种爱好，一种采纳的谈话风格，几乎没有任何真实的后果。
FAQ常见问答
Is Yudkowsky saying most self-described rationalists are frauds?Yudkowsky 是在说大多数自称理性主义者的人都是骗子吗？
Not frauds — just under-trained. His point is that calling yourself a rationalist while having received no more systematic instruction than an Objectivist or ordinary scientist is like calling yourself a martial artist because you've read about fighting. The label is far ahead of the substance.
不是骗子——只是训练不足。他的意思是，自称理性主义者，却只接受了与客观主义者或普通科学家相差无几的系统指导，就像说自己是武术家，只因为读过一些关于格斗的书。这个标签远远超前于其实质。
Why does he single out verification as the central bottleneck?他为什么把验证列为核心瓶颈？
Because without the ability to test whether a training method works, you can't improve it iteratively, you can't compare competing schools, and you can't give students honest feedback. Verification is what turned martial-arts aspiration into an actual discipline; its absence keeps rationality stuck at the aspirational stage.
因为如果无法检验某种训练方法是否有效，你就无法迭代改进它，无法比较不同流派的优劣，也无法给学生诚实的反馈。验证恰恰是把武术的抱负转化为真正学科的东西；它的缺失让理性始终停留在抱负阶段。
What is the one sub-art of rationality Yudkowsky claims to have developed?Yudkowsky 自称开发出的那个理性子技艺是什么？
He calls it "reduction of confusing cognitions" — the skill of taking a tangled, confusing cluster of thoughts and carefully dissolving the confusion, often by identifying hidden equivocations or category errors. He says he developed this single sub-art with tremendous focused effort, and his life has no room for another from-scratch creation.
他称之为「减少混乱认知」——一种将纠缠、令人困惑的思维团块加以梳理，通过识别隐藏的歧义或类别错误来消解混乱的技能。他说他耗费了巨大的专注精力才开发出这一个子技艺，他的生命已没有空间再从零创造另一个。
Why is the aspiration listed as the first obstacle rather than the verification problem?为什么「抱负」被列为首要障碍，而不是验证问题？
Because aspiration is logically prior. Before you try to solve verification, before you try to build a curriculum, you have to want those things badly enough to put serious effort into them. Martial artists solved hard problems of standardization and testing because they already believed a formidable systematic art was possible and worth building. Without that belief, the other obstacles never even get attempted.
因为抱负在逻辑上更为优先。在试图解决验证问题、建立课程之前，你必须足够渴望这些东西，以至于愿意认真投入。武术家之所以解决了标准化和测试的难题，是因为他们已经相信一门令人生畏的系统性技艺是可能且值得建立的。没有这种信念，其他障碍根本不会被尝试去攻克。
How does the Burfoot observation about intelligence fit in?Burfoot 关于智力的观察如何融入这个论证？
Daniel Burfoot's point is that when a domain lacks systematic training, raw intelligence becomes the main differentiator — you improvise your way through with whatever cognitive horsepower you have. Yudkowsky cites this as evidence that rationality is an underdeveloped discipline, not a fundamentally intelligence-bound one: better training would reduce the intelligence premium by giving everyone better tools.
Daniel Burfoot 的观点是：当某个领域缺乏系统性训练时，原始智力就成了主要的差异化因素——你只能靠自己有的那点认知马力临时应对。Yudkowsky 将此作为理性是一门欠发达学科而非本质上受智力限制的学科的证据：更好的训练能通过给每个人提供更好的工具，来降低智力溢价。
Is this essay optimistic or pessimistic?这篇文章是乐观的还是悲观的？
Both, deliberately. It's pessimistic about the current state — today's "rationalists" are not impressive in the way a first-dan black belt is impressive, and they don't even notice the gap. But it's optimistic about what's possible: the martial-arts analogy shows that systematic disciplines can be built, and the only thing blocking one in rationality is the lack of the founding aspiration and the hard collective work that follows it.
两者兼有，且是刻意为之。它对当前状态持悲观态度——今天的「理性主义者」并不像初段黑带那样令人印象深刻，而且他们甚至没有察觉到这种落差。但它对可能性持乐观态度：武术类比表明，系统性学科是可以被建立的，而阻碍理性领域的唯一东西，是创立性抱负的缺失，以及随之而来的艰难集体工作的缺失。
In-depth Analysis · Pros & Cons深入解读 · 优缺点
Written in 2008 as part of the "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" sequence, this essay is a self-critique and a manifesto. Yudkowsky turns the rationalist community's own standards against itself, asking why the community that claims to value rigorous thinking has produced so little that is visibly rigorous.
本文写于 2008 年，是「理性：从 AI 到僵尸」系列的一部分，既是自我批评，也是一份宣言。Yudkowsky 以理性主义社区自身的标准对其发起反思，追问为何这个自称重视严格思维的社区，在可见的严格性方面产出如此之少。
- Genuinely self-critical真正的自我批评Yudkowsky does not exempt himself — he openly admits he has mastered only one sub-art of a full rationality curriculum, and that a proper training program would make him stronger than he currently is. This lends the critique credibility.Yudkowsky 并未将自己例外——他坦承自己只掌握了完整理性课程的一个子技艺，且一套适当的训练计划会让他比现在更强。这为批评赋予了可信度。
- The martial-arts analogy is illuminating武术类比富有启发性It isolates the two key variables — aspiration and verification — rather than vaguely demanding "more effort." The analogy explains why martial arts succeeded while also showing exactly what the rationality community is missing.它精确地分离出两个关键变量——抱负与验证——而非模糊地要求「更多努力」。这个类比既解释了武术为何成功，也精确指出了理性社区所欠缺的东西。
- Correct ordering of obstacles对障碍的排序是正确的Placing the absence of aspiration as the first and most important obstacle, before even the verification problem, is a genuine insight: you won't attempt to solve hard problems you don't yet believe are worth solving.将「抱负的缺失」列为首要且最重要的障碍，甚至优先于验证问题，是一个真正的洞见：你不会去尝试解决你尚未相信值得解决的难题。
- Honest about the verification problem对验证问题诚实Rather than hand-waving it away, Yudkowsky explicitly names evidence-based training as the chief technical obstacle and promises to write more about it. This turns a vague complaint into a concrete research agenda.Yudkowsky 没有敷衍带过，而是明确将基于证据的训练列为主要技术障碍，并承诺将进一步撰文讨论。这把一种模糊的抱怨转化为具体的研究议程。
- The "formidable aura" criterion is vague「令人生畏的光环」标准模糊Yudkowsky repeatedly invokes "visibly formidable" practitioners as the goal, but never specifies what this means in practice. Is it better decisions? Career success? Epistemic track records? Without a concrete criterion, the aspiration is as unfalsifiable as the current state of affairs he criticizes.Yudkowsky 反复援引「明显令人生畏」的实践者作为目标，却从未具体说明这在实践中意味着什么。是更好的决策？职业成功？认知追踪记录？没有具体标准，这一抱负和他所批评的现状一样无法证伪。
- Conflates training difficulty with domain impossibility混淆了训练难度与领域不可能性The essay assumes that a sufficiently rigorous training program would produce visibly formidable rationalists. But it's possible that general cognition is harder to train than domain-specific skills in ways that go beyond just "we haven't tried hard enough." The verification problem may be deeper than presented.文章假定足够严格的训练计划将会产出明显令人生畏的理性主义者。但通用认知能力的训练有可能在「我们还没有足够努力」之外，存在更深层的困难。验证问题可能比文章呈现的更深刻。
- The martial-arts analogy undersells the verification advantage武术类比低估了验证优势的独特性Martial arts works partly because the goal — physically defeating an opponent — is unusually clear and binary. Rationality's verification problem isn't just a matter of effort; it may require fundamentally different evaluation methods that don't yet exist and that the essay only gestures at.武术之所以奏效，部分原因在于其目标——在身体上击败对手——异常清晰且非此即彼。理性的验证问题不仅仅是努力程度的问题；它可能需要尚不存在的、根本不同的评估方法，而文章对此只是一笔带过。
- Optimistic about collective action对集体行动过于乐观The essay assumes that if rationalists simply "got together and systematized their skills," an Art would emerge. But it largely skips over why this coordination has failed and how to solve it, especially given his third obstacle — that rationalists are bad at working in groups.文章假设，如果理性主义者只要「聚在一起，系统化地整理技能」，「术」就会出现。但它基本上跳过了为何这种协调至今失败，以及如何解决，尤其是考虑到他提出的第三个障碍——理性主义者不善于协同合作。
A bracingly honest diagnosis of a real failure mode in intellectual communities: the gap between self-image and actual rigor. The martial-arts aspiration model is compelling and the self-criticism is genuine. Its main limitation is that it is more of a clarion call than a blueprint — it correctly identifies what's missing (aspiration, systematic training, verification) but does not yet show how to build the thing it envisions.
对知识社区中一种真实失败模式的严肃诊断：自我形象与实际严格性之间的落差。武术抱负模型颇具说服力，自我批评真诚有力。其主要局限在于，它更像一声号角而非一份蓝图——它正确指出了缺失之物（抱负、系统训练、验证），但尚未展示如何建造它所描绘的东西。
Original Text原文
To teach people about a topic you've labeled "rationality", it helps for them to be interested in "rationality". (There are less direct ways to teach people how to attain the map that reflects the territory, or optimize reality according to their values; but the explicit method is the course I tend to take.)
And when people explain why they're not interested in rationality, one of the most commonly proffered reasons tends to be like: "Oh, I've known a couple of rational people and they didn't seem any happier."
Who are they thinking of? Probably an Objectivist or some such. Maybe someone they know who's an ordinary scientist. Or an ordinary atheist.
That's really not a whole lot of rationality, as I have previously said.
Even if you limit yourself to people who can derive Bayes's Theorem—which is going to eliminate, what, 98% of the above personnel?—that's still not a whole lot of rationality. I mean, it's a pretty basic theorem.
Since the beginning I've had a sense that there ought to be some discipline of cognition, some art of thinking, the studying of which would make its students visibly more competent, more formidable: the equivalent of Taking a Level in Awesome.
But when I look around me in the real world, I don't see that. Sometimes I see a hint, an echo, of what I think should be possible, when I read the writings of folks like Robyn Dawes, Daniel Gilbert, Tooby & Cosmides. A few very rare and very senior researchers in psychological sciences, who visibly care a lot about rationality—to the point, I suspect, of making their colleagues feel uncomfortable, because it's not cool to care that much. I can see that they've found a rhythm, a unity that begins to pervade their arguments—
Yet even that... isn't really a whole lot of rationality either.
Even among those whose few who impress me with a hint of dawning formidability—I don't think that their mastery of rationality could compare to, say, John Conway's mastery of math. The base knowledge that we drew upon to build our understanding—if you extracted only the parts we used, and not everything we had to study to find it—it's probably not comparable to what a professional nuclear engineer knows about nuclear engineering. It may not even be comparable to what a construction engineer knows about bridges. We practice our skills, we do, in the ad-hoc ways we taught ourselves; but that practice probably doesn't compare to the training regimen an Olympic runner goes through, or maybe even an ordinary professional tennis player.
And the root of this problem, I do suspect, is that we haven't really gotten together and systematized our skills. We've had to create all of this for ourselves, ad-hoc, and there's a limit to how much one mind can do, even if it can manage to draw upon work done in outside fields.
The chief obstacle to doing this the way it really should be done, is the difficulty of testing the results of rationality training programs, so you can have evidence-based training methods. I will write more about this, because I think that recognizing successful training and distinguishing it from failure is the essential, blocking obstacle.
There are experiments done now and again on debiasing interventions for particular biases, but it tends to be something like, "Make the students practice this for an hour, then test them two weeks later." Not, "Run half the signups through version A of the three-month summer training program, and half through version B, and survey them five years later." You can see, here, the implied amount of effort that I think would go into a training program for people who were Really Serious about rationality, as opposed to the attitude of taking Casual Potshots That Require Like An Hour Of Effort Or Something.
Daniel Burfoot brilliantly suggests that this is why intelligence seems to be such a big factor in rationality—that when you're improvising everything ad-hoc with very little training or systematic practice, intelligence ends up being the most important factor in what's left.
Why aren't "rationalists" surrounded by a visible aura of formidability? Why aren't they found at the top level of every elite selected on any basis that has anything to do with thought? Why do most "rationalists" just seem like ordinary people, perhaps of moderately above-average intelligence, with one more hobbyhorse to ride?
Of this there are several answers; but one of them, surely, is that they have received less systematic training of rationality in a less systematic context than a first-dan black belt gets in hitting people.
I do not except myself from this criticism. I am no beisutsukai, because there are limits to how much Art you can create on your own, and how well you can guess without evidence-based statistics on the results. I know about a single use of rationality, which might be termed "reduction of confusing cognitions". This I asked of my brain, this it has given me. There are other arts, I think, that a mature rationality training program would not neglect to teach, which would make me stronger and happier and more effective—if I could just go through a standardized training program using the cream of teaching methods experimentally demonstrated to be effective. But the kind of tremendous, focused effort that I put into creating my single sub-art of rationality from scratch—my life doesn't have room for more than one of those.
I consider myself something more than a first-dan black belt, and less. I can punch through brick and I'm working on steel along my way to adamantine, but I have a mere casual street-fighter's grasp of how to kick or throw or block.
Why are there schools of martial arts, but not rationality dojos? (This was the first question I asked in my first blog post.) Is it more important to hit people than to think?
No, but it's easier to verify when you have hit someone. That's part of it, a highly central part.
But maybe even more importantly—there are people out there who want to hit, and who have the idea that there ought to be a systematic art of hitting that makes you into a visibly more formidable fighter, with a speed and grace and strength beyond the struggles of the unpracticed. So they go to a school that promises to teach that. And that school exists because, long ago, some people had the sense that more was possible. And they got together and shared their techniques and practiced and formalized and practiced and developed the Systematic Art of Hitting. They pushed themselves that far because they thought they should be awesome and they were willing to put some back into it.
Now—they got somewhere with that aspiration, unlike a thousand other aspirations of awesomeness that failed, because they could tell when they had hit someone; and the schools competed against each other regularly in realistic contests with clearly-defined winners.
But before even that—there was first the aspiration, the wish to become stronger, a sense that more was possible. A vision of a speed and grace and strength that they did not already possess, but could possess, if they were willing to put in a lot of work, that drove them to systematize and train and test.
Why don't we have an Art of Rationality?
Third, because current "rationalists" have trouble working in groups: of this I shall speak more.
Second, because it is hard to verify success in training, or which of two schools is the stronger.
But first, because people lack the sense that rationality is something that should be systematized and trained and tested like a martial art, that should have as much knowledge behind it as nuclear engineering, whose superstars should practice as hard as chess grandmasters, whose successful practitioners should be surrounded by an evident aura of awesome.
And conversely they don't look at the lack of visibly greater formidability, and say, "We must be doing something wrong."
"Rationality" just seems like one more hobby or hobbyhorse, that people talk about at parties; an adopted mode of conversational attire with few or no real consequences; and it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong about that, either.
要向人们讲授一个你标记为「理性」的主题，首先得让他们对「理性」感兴趣才行。（让人们掌握反映疆域的地图、或按其价值观优化现实，有一些不那么直接的方法；但明确的讲授法确实是我倾向于采取的途径。）
当人们解释他们为何对理性不感兴趣时，最常见的理由之一大致如此：「哦，我认识几个理性的人，他们看起来也没有更快乐。」
他们在想谁？大概是一个客观主义者之类的人，或许是他们认识的某个普通科学家，或者是一个普通无神论者。
这真的算不上什么理性，正如我以前说过的。
即便你把自己限定在能推导贝叶斯定理的人里——这会淘汰掉上述人员中大约 98% 的人——那仍然算不上什么理性。我是说，这不过是一个相当基础的定理。
从一开始，我就有一种感觉：应当存在某种认知学科，某种思维的艺术，研习它的学生会明显更有能力、更令人生畏——相当于在威猛上升级。
但当我环顾真实世界时，我看不到这种东西。有时，当我阅读 Robyn Dawes、Daniel Gilbert、Tooby & Cosmides 等人的著作时，我能瞥见一丝暗示，一个我认为应当可能之物的回声。心理科学领域极少数非常资深的研究者，他们对理性的关注程度明显极高——高到我猜测，会让他们的同事感到不自在，因为如此在意这件事并不酷。我能看出他们已经找到了一种节奏，一种开始渗透其论证的整体感——
然而即便是这样……也真的算不上什么理性。
即便是在那些让我隐约印象深刻、仿佛初露令人生畏之气的少数人中——我也不认为他们对理性的掌握，能与约翰·康威对数学的掌握相提并论。我们赖以构建理解的基础知识——如果你只提取我们实际用到的部分，而不是为了找到它而不得不研习的一切——大概都比不上一位职业核工程师对核工程的了解。它甚至可能比不上一位建筑工程师对桥梁的了解。我们确实在练习自己的技能，但都是以我们自学出来的临时方式；那种练习可能比不上一位奥运跑步运动员所经历的训练方案，甚至可能比不上一位普通职业网球运动员。
而这个问题的根源，我确实怀疑，是我们从未真正聚在一起，系统化地整理各自的技能。我们不得不自己凭空创造这一切，临时凑合；一个头脑所能做到的是有上限的，即便它能设法借鉴外部领域的成果。
以真正应有的方式做到这一点，最主要的障碍，是测试理性训练计划成果的困难，这样你才能拥有基于证据的训练方法。对此我将进一步撰文，因为我认为，识别成功的训练并将其与失败区分开来，是那个本质性的、卡住一切的障碍。
现在时不时也有关于特定偏差的去偏差干预实验，但往往是这样：「让学生练习一小时，两周后测试他们。」而不是：「把一半报名者放进三个月暑期训练计划的 A 版，另一半放进 B 版，五年后再做调查。」你可以从这里看出，我认为一个真正认真对待理性的人所参加的训练计划，应当投入多少精力——而不是那种随便打打嘴炮、大概需要一小时左右的态度。
Daniel Burfoot 精妙地指出，这正是为什么智力似乎在理性中占据如此重要的地位——当你在几乎没有训练或系统性练习的情况下临时应对一切时，智力最终成了其余一切中最重要的因素。
为什么「理性主义者」没有被可见的令人生畏的光环所环绕？为什么在任何以思维为基础进行精英筛选的顶层，你都找不到他们？为什么大多数「理性主义者」看起来就像普通人——也许智力略高于平均水平，只是多了一匹爱好的木马？
对此有几种答案；但其中之一，肯定是：他们所接受的理性系统性训练，在系统性更差的情境下，比一个初段黑带在打人方面所接受的系统性训练还要少。
我也不把自己从这种批评中例外。我不是武術家（beisutsukai），因为你能独自创造的「术」是有上限的，而在没有基于证据的统计数据的情况下，你的猜测精度也是有上限的。我只知道一种理性的用途，可以称之为「减少混乱认知」。这是我向大脑请求的，这是它给了我的。我认为，一个成熟的理性训练计划不会忽视的其他技艺，还有很多——它们会让我更强、更快乐、更有效——如果我能去参加一个使用了经实验证明有效的顶尖教学方法的标准化训练计划的话。但我为从零创造自己那单一的子技艺所投入的那种巨大、专注的努力——我的生命已经没有空间容纳更多那样的事情了。
我认为自己比初段黑带强一点，也弱一点。我能一拳打穿砖块，正在朝着钢铁努力，向着坚金属迈进——但我对踢腿、摔跤和防守的掌握，不过是随便出手的街头混混水平。
为什么有武术流派，却没有理性道场？（这是我在第一篇博客文章中提出的第一个问题。）打人比思考更重要吗？
不，但有没有打中人更容易验证。这是原因之一，而且是相当核心的一部分。
但也许更重要的是——世界上有人想打人，而且他们有一种念头：应当存在一种系统性的打人技艺，使你成为一个明显更令人生畏的格斗者，拥有超越未经练习者挣扎状态的速度、优雅与力量。于是他们去了一所承诺教授这些的学校。而那所学校的存在，是因为很久以前，有些人感到更多是可能的。他们聚在一起，分享各自的技术，练习，使之正式化，再练习，发展出了「系统性击打术」。他们把自己推到那一步，是因为他们认为自己应当很厉害，而且他们愿意在这上面用力。
然后——与其他一千种最终失败的卓越抱负不同，他们在那个抱负上真的有了成果，因为他们能判断自己有没有打中人；而各学校之间定期在有明确胜负的真实较量中相互竞争。
但在这一切之前——首先有抱负，有变得更强的愿望，有一种感到更多是可能的感觉。一种他们尚不拥有、却可以拥有的速度、优雅与力量的愿景——如果他们愿意投入大量工作——驱使他们去系统化、训练和检验。
为什么我们没有「理性术」？
第三，因为当前的「理性主义者」难以协同合作：对此我将另文详述。
第二，因为验证训练成功，或判断两个流派孰强孰弱，极为困难。
但首先，因为人们缺乏那种感受——感受到理性应当像武术一样被系统化、训练和检验，其背后的知识储备应当与核工程一样丰厚，其超级明星应当像国际象棋特级大师一样刻苦练习，其成功实践者应当被明显的令人叹服的光环所环绕。
反过来，他们也不会看着缺乏明显更强大的令人生畏能力这一现状，说：「我们一定哪里做错了。」
「理性」就像又一种爱好或木马，人们在派对上聊聊；一种采纳的谈话装束，几乎没有任何真实的后果；而且这样下去似乎也没什么不对的。