Futurehead.com

Through the exercise of reason, human thought processes can approximate rational thinking. Rationality skills are a prerequisite to understand how the world works and how to make better decisions about how to act in the world. Progress in science and technology would not have been possible without the human ability for rational reasoning.

However, findings in cognitive psychology show that humans tend to make frequent errors in rational reasoning due to biases and faulty heuristics, which are related to the kludge[1] structure of the human mind. An example among numerous such biases is the “confirmation bias”. Confirmation bias is the phenomenon that people tend to look for information that confirms their hypothesis, while they often ignore alternatives[2].

Nevertheless, humans have been smart enough to identify a variety of these deficiencies. For example, LessWrong is a community that aims to refine our understanding of how humans think and to enable us to make more successful decisions. LessWrong has made progress in this field, but acknowledges that generally the “sanity waterline” among humans is (still) not very high. This means, humans often are unfamiliar with basic rationality skills such as utilizing base rates.

However, rationality is an essential toolkit to solve difficult problems linked to rapidly advancing technologies. New technologies might not only benefit humanity, but might also entail risks that could lead to the destruction of the human race, e.g. if a greater-than-human intelligence emerges that has goals inconsistent with human survival. Accordingly, the Singularity Institute encourages research towards so-called Friendly AI, i.e. an artificial intelligence that does not have a negative impact on humanity. The Singularity Institute does not only stress the importance of rationality in this regard, but also the serious consequences of non-Friendly AI and other technological risks. Paradoxically, due to certain biases (such as the confirmation bias) and faulty heuristics, we are led to doubt fundamental developments such as the destruction of the human civilization as a consequence of non-Friendly AI or other emerging technologies[3]. In response to this problem, various philosophical approaches, but also recently the Singularity Institute have developed methods to overcome such fallacies and to teach people how to reason better.

It is argued here that, while such rationality training is essential, its flaw is that it currently reaches only a minority of people, i.e. mostly educated Westerners. Therefore, this approach must be broadened and globalized to reach out to the entire world.

Article 26 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states “Everyone has the right to education. […] Elementary education shall be compulsory.” Given its impact, rationality must be considered as part of the elementary education to which everyone has the right. In other words, it is a violation of a human right to deprive millions of people of the ability to better understand how the world works as they lack rationality skills.

Furthermore, the opportunities of transhumanism and new technologies as well as the challenges of Friendly AI and existential risks concern everyone and not just the educated elite. Millions of people who are potentially smart talents in these fields are currently excluded because they never hear about them, let alone receive rationality training.

The basis for a global approach could be a schoolbook or a manual on rationality techniques. The rough outline of the content would be as follows: All known cognitive biases (decision-making and behavioral biases, probability and belief biases, social and attributional biases, memory errors and biases) would be explained as well as methods how to overcome them. Moreover, further rationality skills that have been proven to be teachable will be taught. The theoretical background, i.e. decision and probability theory, particularly Bayes’ Theorem, shall be skipped as much as possible.

The book would be unique as well as unprecedented in various ways: It should be a manual that is ideally already appropriate for primary schools because in many of the targeted countries a high percentage of children only go to primary school, if at all. The use of fables appears to be a good vehicle[4]. Also, the book must ideally be written in a way that is understandable without teachers or through teachers who are not well-educated themselves. This is because it should also be envisaged to distribute the book outside schools as well as in school environments where teachers often do not have sufficient knowledge about rationality techniques either.

While the primary target group are children, it should also be appealing to adolescents and adults who have not received rationality training. Girls and women should be equally targeted as established in article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. The manual should also be translated to relevant languages, e.g. Arabic, Swahili, Hindi, Hausa, Urdu, Zulu, Farsi, Mandarin, Russian, Braille etc. Moreover, rationality training for illiterates could be considered.

This book would be distributed for free as widely as possible among children in developing countries as well as to schools globally with the aim for inclusion to the curriculum. Strategies have to be developed on how to get international support for the project, on how to advocate for it and on how to distribute the book most efficiently. Potential partners for cooperation include relevant UN agencies, such as UNHCR, UNICEF and UNESCO, but also NGOs who work in the education sector and build and equip schools. For example, the distribution strategy of the “One Laptop per Child” initiative[5] could be explored. In addition, cooperation with this project might be sought by inquiring if the book could be preinstalled as an e-book on these laptops. However, the project should not be implemented by using new technologies, but rather by publishing a hard-copy manual since large parts of the target group do not have access to computers. Moreover, even in the more developed world e-books are still often limited to early adopters.

Challenges for the realization of this project are the following. Significant funding is needed to write and produce the manual as well as to sustain long-term advocacy and distribution. Strategies and advocacy campaigns have to be developed on how to raise the funds from institutions as well as from individuals. For various countries in the target group it can be foreseen that governments, ministries of education and other (e.g. religious) groups will not be interested in these subjects being taught to children. Distribution strategies have to be developed, which might include “inconspicuous” or “creative” ways to circulate the book. The impression that the book stands for the “intrusion of Western culture” has to be avoided, but instead it has to be highlighted that the project is non-ideological. The final challenge to be mentioned is that comprehensive teachability of rationality skills is still a work-in-progress. However, for those skills that have been proven to be teachable, everyone should have the opportunity to acquire them.

Soenke Ziesche holds a PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Hamburg and has worked for the United Nations in the humanitarian sector since 2000 in Gaza, New York, Colombo (post-tsunami), Islamabad (post-earthquake), Blue Nile State (Sudan), London and, most recently, in Benghazi (Libya).

[1] See: G. Marcus, 2008. Kludge – The haphazard evolution of the human mind.

[2] See for an overview: E. Yudkowsky, 2008. Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks.

[3] See for a detailed explanation: E. Yudkowsky, 2008. Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks.

[4] See for example: bpsundar.weebly.com/

[5] See: http://one.laptop.org/

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