Trump and others denounce social democrats as communists without evidence. Mainstream Democratmembers of Congress insist there is little they can do to pass legislation when they hold a majority.

Both rely on disingenuous messaging. We are to assume rational-legal authority is rational because laws get passed by those making rational decisions. What seems rational is more emotionally charged rationalizing, of using a veneer of reason to cover for what is actually unreasonable.

Never mind the distorting influence of big money donors or corporate promises of jobs or aging out-of-touch senators who don’t know what AI is or the flood of constitutionally questionable surveillance cameras. Never mind all the irrationality in the name or rational-legal authority.

Hyperrationality culture is that dimension of react culture privileging over-intellectualizing that undermines the value of human emotions and intuition. Impersonal laws and detached reasoning fill in for actually knowing what we specifically need from each other.

Defunction: hyperrationality norms

Laws serve as metaphors for publicly confirmed yet socially uncommunicated needs. Virtually nobody cares about laws except their role in conveying their needs.

We expect others to know what we need of them in large part by using cold reason and simply following the rules, even as those rules never address vital details. And even when biased against what we actually need.

Lawyers do little if anything to apply scientific principles for checking confirmation bias. Or ensure public policies result in bettered lives. They blindly expect the best sounding reason will win the day, despite distorting such reasons with unchecked biases.

While two wrongs do not make a right, they often make a law. What sounds rational merely rationalizes poor outcomes. Hyperrationality then rules supreme. Problems persist. Laws get cited again. Rince and repeat.

Examples: 

1. Ascribed legitimacy – accepting authority as trustworthy if rationally persuasive despite lacking empirical evidence of leading to measurably improved outcomes.

2. Belief delusion – idea that what one sees as true or untrue accurately reflects reality. (another name for this is pisticentricity; see beliefer epistemic reliance level)

3. Cognitive bandwidth contraction– unresolved needs consume focus, which limits attention elsewhere or can distort comprehension, which often gets falsely labeled as limited intellect.

4. Cognitive privatization - beliefs and views shaped by one’s own isolated thinking, with little to no input or critique from others.

5. Diluted rational choice theory– watering down general idea about people acting in self-interest by weighing costs and benefits to justify politically privileged outcomes that actually result in harm.

6. Diluted social exchange theory–assume decisions are made squarely or solely upon fair options available to all the same instead of settling for poor options

7. Dumbing down – limiting access to reliable information from dismissing as others as too stupid, enabling the distortion of choices and outcomes in favor of the powerful at the expense of the exploited.

8. Emotional bias - belief that emotions literally bias thinking, when in reality it is affected needs that bias thinking, which are conveyed through emotions; the emotions themselves do not bias or prioritize our thinking; our emotions are the messengers and not the message, so let’s not shoot the messenger so we can get the message.

9. Emotional numbing – the suppression or repression of the messenger of emotions, neglecting the message about the state of one’s affected needs.

10. Hyperrational adversarialism– the adversarial process (of politics and the judiciary) presented as impartial with a veneer of rationality that actually covers biases that distort actual outcomes, undermining the public trust in political and judicial institutions.

11. Intellectual supremacy – valuing who apparently is individually the smartest in the room rather than who is the most emotionally mature or unselfish or loving.

12. Intellectualizing – regarding own beliefs as reasonable if convincing or persuading others to accept one’s own groundless views, i.e., smarts lacking wisdom.

13. Misattributing as stupidity- labelling as "stupid" those with a contracted cognitive bandwidth from too many unresolved needs. The more basic and essential for functioning the need, the less one can fully function as expected. It appears the person is choosing not to think right. Which lacks empathy for what's actually going on: distracting pain robbing one's overtaxed focus. [Idiocy, stupidity, dumb, moronic, not so smart]

14. Privileged confirmation bias– normalizing the filtering of evidence to sanction own premature conclusions and avoid contrary views, widely permitted with an adversarial approach that tends to create a conflict of interest.

15. Provoked defensiveness – aggressively challenging another’s views that easily triggers their guard, which tends to distract from fuller awareness instead of leading to a better understanding.

16. Pseudo-debate – believing a defensive argument about who is right counts as an actual debate, despite lacking an open exchange of ideas to learn from each other.

17. Rational supremacy – regarding impassionate reasoning as better than intuition, heuristics or emotional responses.

18. Reified reductionism – narrowing the scope of something for clearer understanding but then forgetting to return to include again the excluded matter or full context.

19. Sanctimonious assertions - privilege self-righteousness in name of free speech or freedom of conscious; can include pontificating.

20. Sanewashing – rationalizing the irrational rhetoric or actions of a public figure; attempting to stretch the Overton window to accommodate one’s favored public figure (e.g. Sanewashing of Donald Trump).

21. Self-censored emotional honesty – outwardly disingenuous to avoid risk for embarrassment for emotional responses falling outside of what is perceived as socially acceptable.

22. Unchecked assumptions – build premises on faulty perceptions with resulting misconceptions negatively impacting others; include rarely if ever applying checks on own confirmation bias.

Refunction: emotional honesty path

Now don’t get me wrong. Generalizing can be useful, sometimes even necessary. An effective messenger understands their audience. And their level of reasoning.

Epistemic reliance level

Anankelogy recognizes three cognitive levels of reasoning, mirroring Lawerence Kohlber’s three levels of moral reasoning.

1. Preconventional beliefer. The message is kept plain and simple. But should not be deceptive or biased to coerce agreement.

2. Conventional faither. The message gets reshaped by the crowd, so keep it grounded in verifiable facts.

3. Postconventional truster. Trust the message will be processed critically yet respectfully.

Need-response aims to incentivize each other’s emotional maturity level, to improve outcomes by engaging the messy details of life more authentically.