Irrational nature of belief
This model is built to simulate the mechanism of believing using the binary variable for the decision about received information (true or false).
To start, let’s imagine how the assessing is happening in general:
Example: Jack is told that there is a shelf in a room behind the door (he received X). Now Jack is thinking: “I haven’t been to this room before, so I don’t know whether it is truth or not” (conclusion c). He decides to go and check the room (this is the stage of acquiring facts +f). He sees the shelf and he concludes that the statement was true (X’=1).
If we add time to the scheme, it will look like that:
Index “pa” stands for past, index “pr” stands for present. We can’t exclude all knowledge that we already have and it certainly affects our decision making process, but for the modelling purposes let’s assume that it’s not relevant to the task.
Example: Jack is told that there is a shelf in a room behind the door (he received X). He knows some facts already (those Fpa), like “apple is green” and “sun is shining”, he can also make a conclusion “apple is green, because sun is shining” (it’s a “Cpa”), but it’s not relevant to the task. Then he decides to go and check the other room etc.
So, we can make an equation:
X’ = Cpr (Х, Cpa, Fpr) ⋂ Min
The decision is made when the conclusion function (Cpr) meets some minimum level of information (say, the room is checked). Conclusion processes initial piece of information (X), all irrelevant conclusions made in past (Cpa) and new facts (Fpr) that were acquired in order to assess X.
Why we consider all previous conclusions irrelevant? Because even if we had some relevant knowledge, we can’t be sure things haven’t changed since then. Here it starts to look like that it’s touching solipsism in some way, but I consider this impression a byproduct of approximation that I made in order to build this model.
Now, the only changeable variable here is the new acquired facts, therefore we can build a two-dimensional graph:
Using the same graph system we can finally see how belief mechanism will look like:
Example. Let’s assume Jack is told that there’s a shelf in the room behind the door. “Okay, I believe this” — says Jack. (or “I don’t believe”, doesn't matter).
X’ is now random, we do not know whether it’s 1 or 0.
So why belief is irrational? Because certain individual that is making important behavioral decisions based on random variables won’t survive (or won’t succeed in modern society). There’s a very limited number of situations where randomness may lead to some benefits, e.g. gambling. But the major part of information needs to be assessed. That is essential for physical and psychic health.
But what about regular everyday conversations? Is believing your friend irrational? The answer would be: no, in this particular case we have a model with some relevant information from the past, that would be your knowledge about your friend, could he be trusted etc. If it’s a total stranger, we also can gather some small quasi-relevant facts about how he looks like, how he talks, is he sane or insane etc.
Another significant factor is the importance of the information. If it’s just a bunch of rumors, you are not likely to check it, because it’s not worth your time and effort, even if told by a total stranger. But if on the other hand your life depends on this particular piece of information, you are probably going to check it even if it was a closest friend or relative who had told it to you.
The final outcome will be: it is irrational to make important decisions based on unverified information.
Note: outside of this article I assume that human being is always being rational on it’s own set of data or knowledge. So the word “irrational” here is more like “ineffective”, but I decided to avoid this discussion in this particular article (and also use more catchy title).
