That canât possibly be your true objection to this line of reasoning, as it doesnât make sense, so what do you really believe? Let me speculate...
Seriously though, the reasoning is perfectly valid. If itâs true that spiders will reduce the net amount of bugs in your home, then not killing spiders is something you can do to reduce the bugs in your home with zero effort. And, if you were killing spiders before, this means you actually reduce your effort, so the amount of effort required is negative.
Your reversal test is not apt. Buying spiders (or other predator bugs) and releasing them in your home is incredibly costly in terms of money, time, effort, and attention when compared to deciding not to do something you were previously doing that took effort. If deciding not to kill spiders is a â10 amount of effort, buying and releasing live spiders is like a +1000, plus it costs money. The correct comparison would be if there is another â10 effort thing you could do that would have comparable benefit. But there isnât.
If you did want to go through the trouble of expending +1000 effort and all the time and money and mental energy required to release live bugs, then indeed it would be more rational to buy poison or traps or whatever, and I think thatâs exactly what most people would do â and actually do, when the amount of bugs in their home rises to a level where they feel it warrants a response.
Thereâs also an ecological problem with releasing more spiders (or other predator) bugs to catch prey bugs. You might think that the number of spiders in a home will naturally grow to the equilibrium, that is, spiders reproduce until the population of prey bugs is no longer large enough to support further population growth. On this assumption, buying spiders would be a waste, and would just lead to a bunch of dead spiders in your home â not something people want. (Conversely, if you notice a lot of spiders in your home, like an unusual, disconcerting amount, itâs probably because of a termite infestation or some other problem where a large population of prey bugs has arisen without your knowledge.)
Moreover, even in cases where people make reasoning errors, it is often simply an accidental error, and not a subconsciously deliberate error designed to mask psychological discomfort or inner conflict. People make reasoning errors all the time, particularly when itâs a topic theyâve barely ever thought about at all. Itâs unusual to spend much time thinking about bugs.
I think itâs a dangerous habit to tell yourself stories about other peopleâs mental states that serve to reinforce your belief that youâre not just right, youâre so obviously right that nobody could sincerely disagree you, so all disagreement must be self-deception. I donât think this habit serves the goal of ârationalityâ, and I think itâs one of the many mistakes made by the so-called ârationalistâ community â which, in my opinion, is more systemically irrational than the general population. (For instance, the rate of the formation of cults or groups similar to cults in relation to the rationalist community must be something like an order of magnitude if not two, three, or four higher than for the general population. Why would anyone rationally take advice on rational thinking from that community given that abysmal failure rate? Why take fire safety advice from the neighbourhood with houses all aflame?)
One of the most important and most difficult habits to cultivate in service to rational thinking is simply the habit of engaging with dissenting views and perspectives with curiosity and open-mindedness, cultivating an emotional state (and social relationships, and group norms) where it feels emotionally comfortable to change your mind about things. A lot of the ârationalistâ thinking tips I see people link to seem oriented around the opposite of this: debating to âwinâ, boosting your sense of your own cleverness, scorning others for not being as clever as you, etc. This leads to disasters, of which there have already been too many (including the cults).
But of course everything I just said is so obvious, deep down you must already believe it, so let me work out why youâre pretending you donât believe it...
Although Iâm not convinced that sparing spiders is justified on self-interested grounds (arenât most prey insects less dangerous to have around than spiders? if you introduce new spiders, yes, they will starve, but wouldnât this still cut the prey population at least in the short term?), you make good points on that front, and more important, you are right that, even if someoneâs reasoning is shaky, it is unfounded for me to assume a specific motive without evidence for that motive.
That canât possibly be your true objection to this line of reasoning, as it doesnât make sense, so what do you really believe? Let me speculate...
Seriously though, the reasoning is perfectly valid. If itâs true that spiders will reduce the net amount of bugs in your home, then not killing spiders is something you can do to reduce the bugs in your home with zero effort. And, if you were killing spiders before, this means you actually reduce your effort, so the amount of effort required is negative.
Your reversal test is not apt. Buying spiders (or other predator bugs) and releasing them in your home is incredibly costly in terms of money, time, effort, and attention when compared to deciding not to do something you were previously doing that took effort. If deciding not to kill spiders is a â10 amount of effort, buying and releasing live spiders is like a +1000, plus it costs money. The correct comparison would be if there is another â10 effort thing you could do that would have comparable benefit. But there isnât.
If you did want to go through the trouble of expending +1000 effort and all the time and money and mental energy required to release live bugs, then indeed it would be more rational to buy poison or traps or whatever, and I think thatâs exactly what most people would do â and actually do, when the amount of bugs in their home rises to a level where they feel it warrants a response.
Thereâs also an ecological problem with releasing more spiders (or other predator) bugs to catch prey bugs. You might think that the number of spiders in a home will naturally grow to the equilibrium, that is, spiders reproduce until the population of prey bugs is no longer large enough to support further population growth. On this assumption, buying spiders would be a waste, and would just lead to a bunch of dead spiders in your home â not something people want. (Conversely, if you notice a lot of spiders in your home, like an unusual, disconcerting amount, itâs probably because of a termite infestation or some other problem where a large population of prey bugs has arisen without your knowledge.)
Moreover, even in cases where people make reasoning errors, it is often simply an accidental error, and not a subconsciously deliberate error designed to mask psychological discomfort or inner conflict. People make reasoning errors all the time, particularly when itâs a topic theyâve barely ever thought about at all. Itâs unusual to spend much time thinking about bugs.
I think itâs a dangerous habit to tell yourself stories about other peopleâs mental states that serve to reinforce your belief that youâre not just right, youâre so obviously right that nobody could sincerely disagree you, so all disagreement must be self-deception. I donât think this habit serves the goal of ârationalityâ, and I think itâs one of the many mistakes made by the so-called ârationalistâ community â which, in my opinion, is more systemically irrational than the general population. (For instance, the rate of the formation of cults or groups similar to cults in relation to the rationalist community must be something like an order of magnitude if not two, three, or four higher than for the general population. Why would anyone rationally take advice on rational thinking from that community given that abysmal failure rate? Why take fire safety advice from the neighbourhood with houses all aflame?)
One of the most important and most difficult habits to cultivate in service to rational thinking is simply the habit of engaging with dissenting views and perspectives with curiosity and open-mindedness, cultivating an emotional state (and social relationships, and group norms) where it feels emotionally comfortable to change your mind about things. A lot of the ârationalistâ thinking tips I see people link to seem oriented around the opposite of this: debating to âwinâ, boosting your sense of your own cleverness, scorning others for not being as clever as you, etc. This leads to disasters, of which there have already been too many (including the cults).
But of course everything I just said is so obvious, deep down you must already believe it, so let me work out why youâre pretending you donât believe it...
Although Iâm not convinced that sparing spiders is justified on self-interested grounds (arenât most prey insects less dangerous to have around than spiders? if you introduce new spiders, yes, they will starve, but wouldnât this still cut the prey population at least in the short term?), you make good points on that front, and more important, you are right that, even if someoneâs reasoning is shaky, it is unfounded for me to assume a specific motive without evidence for that motive.