"Pirsig thinks there’s a 'genetic defect' within Reason that keeps driving us to do what is “reasonable” even when it’s no longer good."
This sentence nails the issue of reason. Thinking that behaving rationally is also to behave in the best possible way is a disproved theory as far as I am concerned. Game theory, experience, and history say otherwise.
And weridly game theory itself is kind of a second-order rationality. Same goes for social science and management theory. Could it be that both calculated self-interest and idealist/utopian/universalist thinking are equivalent and inherently bad?
Maybe blind rationality is attractive is exactly because it is maladjusted, and that a more complete model of the world is unwieldy. This logic also would mean that "smart" irrationality is also attractive as per the appeal of movie "sociopaths"
TL;DR Pick Two between rationality, sanity, and aestheticism.
"Pirsig thinks there’s a 'genetic defect' within Reason that keeps driving us to do what is “reasonable” even when it’s no longer good."
This sentence nails the issue of reason. Thinking that behaving rationally is also to behave in the best possible way is a disproved theory as far as I am concerned. Game theory, experience, and history say otherwise.
And weridly game theory itself is kind of a second-order rationality. Same goes for social science and management theory. Could it be that both calculated self-interest and idealist/utopian/universalist thinking are equivalent and inherently bad?
The counter point of this, is "aesthetics worship are evil" (Venkatesh Rao) since "ambition is more beautiful than truth" (Curtis Yarvin) https://archive.ph/85IBU https://archive.ph/zXLFa
Maybe blind rationality is attractive is exactly because it is maladjusted, and that a more complete model of the world is unwieldy. This logic also would mean that "smart" irrationality is also attractive as per the appeal of movie "sociopaths"
TL;DR Pick Two between rationality, sanity, and aestheticism.