Recent comments

Superseding truth?

xpym 2023-08-07

Commenting on: Interlude: Ontological remodeling

So, if “true” as a concept scores only 2.2, what’s the meta-rational “workhorse” replacement? Something like “adequate”?

Perhaps the system is working quite well... for insurance co shareholders

JD 2023-08-03

Commenting on: Post-apocalyptic life in American health care

First–what a nightmarish situation you describe. I’m sure seeing your mother’s decline into more severe dementia is heartbreaking, and to spend this time battling colossally frustrating dead ends is the last thing you (or anyone) needs.
Second–the for-profit insurance model is inherently bad–especially medical insurance. Customers pre-pay for a service (paying their medical bills) that, if delivered, eats into the insurer’s profits. So their incentive is to dawdle, confuse, stonewall, etc.–and if they do that long enough, the patient may get better–or die–and they are off the hook. And not only do the customer’s pre-pay, they are required to buy the insurer’s product, and often have little choice which insurer to go with–and changing insurers is made absurdly difficult.
Third – I wonder if the move to concierge medicine by the wealthy is exacerbating these problems, as those with power and influence to enact big changes have removed themselves from this syster and thus, for the most part, from caring to fix it. (analoguous to private jets and the joys of economy commercial)

The Cell of Theseus

Fred Polgardy 2023-07-28

Commenting on: Reductio ad reductionem

The way you described “the transition from cell to non-cell” makes me think of the Ship of Theseus. I’ve always considered the Ship of Theseus to be the the birth of postmodernism, and one of the most important thought experiments in all of ancient philosophy. (Despite its reputation as cute dinner party banter.)

Accounts, theories, and understandings

David Chapman 2023-06-10

Commenting on: What can you believe?

Is a model of belief and truth just a set of propositions?

“Model” is rather vague, so there’s no definite answer here. However, “theory” is sometimes used specifically to mean a set of propositions, and I try to use that word with that meaning consistently. Rationalist explanations of truth do try to be theories in this sense. (This is one way in which rationalism tries to be a rational theory of rationality.) In fact, rationalist models mostly fail to be theories, because beliefs aren’t propositions, and you can’t make a theory work starting from that wrong assumption.

The outstanding example of a rationalist model of belief and truth that is a theory is model theory. That’s a beautiful piece of mathematics, and in some sense it is the rationalist theory of belief and truth. However, no one uses it outside the narrow field of mathematical logic, because it fails to capture most of what we understand about its informal subject matter.

If so, what sense does it make to talk about abandoning them if the idea of propositions is taken as incoherent?

Propositions are an artificial construct that are made necessary only because rationalist theories take abstract universal beliefs as the prototypical case. (Taking “propositions” here in the technical sense of the word, as opposed to a vague, informal meaning like “things people say.”)

Relevant here is the explanation of three types of explanations in “Accounts, theories, and understandings.” Inasmuch as this book aims to explain belief and truth, it offers meta-rational understandings of them, rather than rational theories. Meta-rational understandings do not involve propositions (in the technical sense of that word). They mostly don’t even center “claims” or “assertions” (although those may be involved). Understanding (in terms of ontological distinctions) is prior to anything that could be true or false. (Using “true” and “false” informally here.)

Abandoning propositions

Crawl 2023-06-09

Commenting on: What can you believe?

If we accept that the idea of propositions is incoherent—that there is nothing that could be believed or true in the rationalist sense—then we have to abandon the rationalist models for belief and truth.

Is a model of belief and truth just a set of propositions? If so, what sense does it make to talk about abandoning them if the idea of propositions is taken as incoherent?

a simple solution to the planets thing: YOU get a number

Malcolm 2023-06-07

Commenting on: Interlude: Ontological remodeling

what if we just decided that every astrological body, including planets or things-that-might-be-planets or I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-A-Planet… got an IAU number? like there are currently only 8 things that don’t have one, unless I’m misunderstanding, and they already gave Pluto a hilariously large one given how long we’ve known about it.

…and then the IAU wouldn’t have to sweat about what gets a number, because everything gets a number, and they could rest because THEY can do their job without THEM needing to be the ones who are responsible for coming up with a reasonable definition of “planet”.

and folk classifications could continue to treat Pluto as a planet for cultural reasons or whatever (I still call Venus “the evening star” sometimes even though that name is listed on wikipedia’s page “List of former planets”)

(more precisely, it seems like comets still wouldn’t get numbers?)

Dancing with systems as permaculture education

Danyl Strype 2023-06-04

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

David, thinking about Brent’s comments from 2001, which you responded to by talking about the need for apprenticeship. Are you familiar with the system of Permaculture Design Certificate training?

David Holmgren and co designed this as a way to introduce people to the basics of the design system, in a short course (or a series of shorter ones). In a way that gives students a solid conceptual basis for lifetime learning about the application of the design principles, choice of material techniques to implement designs, and so on. Anyone who has completed a PDC is considered capable of teaching one.

First, I wondered if this could be a model for introducing people to meta-systemic thinking and practice. Then, I wondered if it might already be an example of doing exactly that? The approach that many of the “systems thinkers” often referenced by permies, eg Donella Meadows, author of Dancing With Systems, seem to me more akin to stage 5 than stage 4.

Cool!

David Chapman 2023-05-01

Commenting on: Maps, the territory, and meta-rationality

Hi, Richard, I’ve followed up by twitter DM—in short, cool! I’d like to read it!

Comments on meta-rationality primer?

Richard Ngo 2023-05-01

Commenting on: Maps, the territory, and meta-rationality

Hi David, I’ve found your writing on meta-rationality very illuminating, and have written an exposition of my understanding of meta-rationality and how it addresses a range of open problems in epistemology. I couldn’t track down your email address but I’d love to get your feedback on it - drop me a message if so!

You can find me at @richardmcngo on twitter, or via my homepage (richardcngo.com).

Maybe it means something, which would be embarrassing

David Chapman 2023-04-14

Commenting on: This is not cognitive science

I should say, btw, that I haven’t made a serious attempt to figure out what Hegel was trying to say. It’s possible that it’s perfectly sensible in context. If you can explain it, that might force me to find a different example!

Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume 3, p. 550

David Chapman 2023-04-14

Commenting on: This is not cognitive science

It’s real, but I simplified it slightly (as I said in this footnote), to make it less unwieldy. The full quote is:

This is a light that breaks forth on spiritual substance, and shows absolute content and absolute form to be identical; - substance is in itself identical with knowledge. Self-consciousness thus, in the third place, recognizes its positive relation as its negative, and its negative as its positive, - or, in other words, recognizes these opposite activities as the same i.e. it recognizes pure Thought or Being as self-identity, and this again as separation. This is intellectual perception; but it is requisite in order that it should be in truth intellectual, that it should not be that merely immediate perception of the eternal and the divine which we hear of, but should be absolute knowledge. This intuitive perception which does not recognize itself is taken as starting-point as if it were absolutely presupposed; it has in itself intuitive perception only as immediate knowledge, and what it perceives it does not really know, - for, taken at its best, it consists of beautiful thoughts, but not knowledge.

It’s p. 550 in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Volume 3. You can see it on Google Books here.

I stole the example from David Stove’s “What is Wrong with Our Thoughts? A Neo-Positivist Credo.”

Source for the the Hegel quote?

Jonathan Moregård 2023-04-14

Commenting on: This is not cognitive science

The only hit on google for “self-consciousness recognizes pure Thought or Being as self-identity, and this again as separation” is this blog.

Same for subsections of the quote, such as “self-consciousness recognizes pure Thought or Being as self-identity” and even “self-consciousness recognizes pure”

Is this an actual Hegel quote?

Keynes

David Chapman 2023-04-12

Commenting on: Probability theory does not extend logic

Oh! I got sufficiently sucked into the Ognjanovic, Raskovic and Markovic book that I forgot to address your actual point, sorry!

On page 49, there is some discussion of John Maynard Keynes, and then “Thus probability extends classical logic” (ostensibly according to Keynes).

Yes, by “classical” Keynes here meant Aristotelian logic.

And, it’s worth noting that Keynes was doing metaphysics more than mathematics. He was trying to explain what reasoning “really” is, with an unfulfilled fantasy that this could be reduced to some mathematical system. As Ognjanovic, Raskovic and Markovic observe on page 50, his attempted axiomatization doesn’t work.

Jaynes fell into the same sort of error. He was sure that science “really” is Bayesian inference, and therefore, by metaphysical intuition, probability theory must be the correct account of scientific reasoning. But it isn’t.

Ognjanovic, Raskovic and Markovic

David Chapman 2023-04-12

Commenting on: Probability theory does not extend logic

Thanks! That section of the book is available on Google Books, so I read it.

A couple pages earlier, pp. 47, they discuss Frege’s discovery of the predicate calculus (i.e. “logic” in the modern sense). On the one hand, this overcame the severe limitations of Aristotelian logic, which they praise him for.

On the other hand, (p. 48) “from the viewpoint of this book, which is devoted to connections between logic and probability, Frege’s influence might be considered as negative. Namely, … there was no room for probability in his approach. … [predicate calculus’] elegance and effectiveness completely eclipsed the probability logic.”

So, the upshot is that, “logic” for the past almost-century has meant “predicate calculus” unless otherwise specified. There are lots of formal systems called “logics,” including probabilistic ones, but they’re used only in narrow specialized applications, because they lack predicate calculus’ generality. This was the key point that Jaynes apparently didn’t understand.

Aristotelian logic can be generalized in several directions, and some of them turn out to be incompatible. Predicate calculus gets you the ability to say anything you want (pretty much). Probabilistic logic gets you the ability to express uncertainty at the level of the language itself (whereas in predicate calculus you need to introduce additional axioms and notation to talk about probabilities). However, in basic probabilistic logic, you have to give up most of the power of logical quantification.

There are probabilistic logic systems that give you more ability for logical quantification. They’re complicated and have various undesirable properties. The one covered in this book requires literally infinitely many axioms, and proofs of infinite length. That’s not the sort of thing Jaynes had in mind, and does not seem likely to be useful in practice.

Extending Logic

Will Kuch 2023-04-11

Commenting on: Probability theory does not extend logic

This blog post is really quite excellent and I also enjoyed all of the comments. I just wanted to add something that I found in a book which may be of interest.

“Probability Logics”, Ognjanovic, Raskovic and Markovic, Springer 2016, ISBN: 978-3-319-47011-5

On page 49, there is some discussion of John Maynard Keynes, and then “Thus probability extends classical logic” (ostensibly according to Keynes).

So I thought that this was an interesting thing to find in a book. Please bear in mind that I personally am in agreement with your overall thesis here, but the reference to Keynes is interesting and I just wanted to share that. Of course, Keynes interpretation of probability is pretty bizarre, so it might come as no surprise that he would take that view.

Hmm

John McDonnell 2023-03-17

Commenting on: A fully meta-rational workplace

I bet early OpenAI was like this. Algorithms at SFIX when I joined (2015) was somewhat like this. Maybe you could think of YCombinator as being like this? In some ways the old Netflix culture doc implied something like this (maximal freedom from structure, if you do a bad job you are fired)

The biggest problem is there ends up being a superposition between L3 and L5. L3 stuff happens and drags the whole thing down. How can you staff your org only with L5 people? Natural tendency is to apply L4 systems to prevent the L3 stuff.

Big statements. Lack of evidence

kabs 2023-02-28

Commenting on: Upgrade your cargo cult for the win

“Companies run on cargo cult business management; states run on cargo cult policies; schools run on cargo cult education theories (Feynman mentioned this one); mainstream modern medicine is mostly witch doctoring.”

Could you please provide some evidence of this? And something to show it’s a significant percentage?

Gilbert / joint commitments

David Chapman 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

BTW, I waved toward Margaret Gilbert’s work on joint commitments (cited in the SEP social ontology article) in my chapter on believing as a social (joint commitment) phenomenon.

Woefully incomplete

David Chapman 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

Too bad Vygotsky died young. But his focus was limited to the development of children and thus more closely tied to the biological development of their bodies. Kegan’s focus is on “adult development,” which is much harder to tie to biology or otherwise pin down empirically. This is why, in the realm of adult development, developmental psychology is woefully incomplete due to its lack of engagement with social ontology.

Yes, I agree with all that strongly.

I’ve emailed you.

Social ontology

Steve McIntosh 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

Too bad Vygotsky died young. But his focus was limited to the development of children and thus more closely tied to the biological development of their bodies. Kegan’s focus is on “adult development,” which is much harder to tie to biology or otherwise pin down empirically. This is why, in the realm of adult development, developmental psychology is woefully incomplete due to its lack of engagement with social ontology.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy contains a fairly recent article on social ontology …

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology/

… pointing out the downward causal influence of “joint commitments.” But due to the SEP author’s apparent metaphysical allergy, the aggregation of joint commitments into larger structures such as historically significant worldviews is not addressed.

Anyway, when it comes time to invite you on our podcast, should I post that invitation here, or is there a way to correspond with you outside the comments section? My email: steve@culturalevolution.org

Cultural evolution and individual development

David Chapman 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

I critique developmental psychology for inadequately integrating the evident impact of cultural evolution on psychological development—i.e. the relationship between the emergence of modernity and the growth of stage 4 cognition.

Yes, I think this is exactly right. Vygotsky’s alternative developmental approach is relevant here.

I took a quick look at your site, and liked what I saw!

Noosphere Evolution

Steve McIntosh 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

Thanks for your quick and thoughtful reply.

I came across this piece of yours while doing research for an article I’m working on about the evolution of human nature—expanding the idea of “nature” to include the evolution of consciousness. My article includes an appreciative critique of developmental psychology: I appreciate Kegan and the neo-Piagetian school he represents for clearly framing “stage 5” in psychological terms. But I critique developmental psychology for inadequately integrating the evident impact of cultural evolution on psychological development—i.e. the relationship between the emergence of modernity and the growth of stage 4 cognition. Reading around in your larger body of work on meaningness has been stimulating.

Relatedly, for the past 10 years I’ve been working to build a stage 5 cultural institution (or perhaps just “a bridge to stage 5”) in the form of a think tank—the Institute for Cultural Evolution. We have recently received a new level of funding and are in the process of building up our staff. Perhaps we can find a way to engage you in our work, and promote your work in the process. This might take the form of us interviewing you on our soon to be launched podcast, or perhaps republishing excerpts from your work on our fledgling political magazine, “The Developmentalist.”

But whether you have any interest in collaborating or not, I salute you for your ongoing contribution to the evolution of the noosphere.

Where do Kegan’s stages come from?

David Chapman 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

These are good questions. They are empirical questions, not a priori ones, and mostly good data are unavailable, so any answers must be fairly conjectural.

I’ve been planning a follow-up essay to explore these issues (but it’s been back-burnered for years). My guess is that the stages are culturally-dependent, not universal, and do not involve significant brain restructuring. This is consistent with what data we do have.

Psychological eternalism?

Steve McIntosh 2022-12-15

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

Where do Kegan’s stages come from?

This piece seems to contain the assumption that Kegan’s stages are universal and simply given. And this violates the author’s disputation of the “meaningness” of “eternalism.”

Is moving “up” a stage merely a matter of developing into a more complex form of brain wiring, requiring only neural plasticity as the ontological ground for this hierarchy of consciousness? Is it simply comparible to patterned stages of learning to play the violin? It seems to me that there must be more to it than that.

I think Chapman needs to do some more “ontological remodeling” to better include a “fluid” intersubjective ontology wherein these universal stages can be more systemically grounded.

Help for stage 3 to see that stage 4 is not stage 2, preferably not via formalised education?

dreieck 2022-11-12

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

People in stage 3 tend to misunderstand stage 4 as being stage 2

Which help do you see that can help stage 3 people to see and understand that there is something else (“stage 4”) that is different to what they are afraid of (“stage 2”)?, and that is not through Science, Technology, Engeneering or Mathematics (“STEM”), and not through a formalised education programme at all?

It does not need be a bridge to cross, but enough to see that there is something else which in fact is not stage 2, so that there is some ground for stage 3-people that acting and communicating from stage 4 is not attributed as stage 2-behaviour.

Causal reference

BenayaK 2022-11-07

Commenting on: Reference: rationalism’s reality problem

“Intuitive theories of causality don’t seem to be compatible with physicalism. A physics-grounded theory requires…” - there seem to be an implicit false dichotomy here, where a theory is either physics-grounded, out incompatible with physicalism. But that attitude would make pretty much everything about the manifest image incompatible with physicalism.

Causal reference

David Chapman 2022-11-07

Commenting on: Reference: rationalism’s reality problem

Well… There’s multiple difficulties here. There isn’t a “the” causal theory of reference, there’s several vague theories. None of the theories work. And, there also is no “the” theory of causality. There’s several vague theories, none of which work. Intuitive theories of causality don’t seem to be compatible with physicalism. A physics-grounded theory requires that everything be caused by everything within its preceding light cone, which makes it useless.

Stage 3 people "traumatising" people capable of using stage 4 functioning.

dreieck 2022-11-07

Commenting on: A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse

Thank you for your writings on stages 3, 4 and 5. Now I see clearer an aspect that happened to me: Gotten “traumatisesed” (not in the PTSD-sense) that a natural part of mine (logic) is bad. With your writings, I can now rephrase it as: While stage 4 functioning was a natural part if mine, stage 3 people told me that it is destructive and not-wished to be in stage 4. Thus did lead to an inner wound within myself.

Casual theory of reference

BenayaK 2022-11-06

Commenting on: Reference: rationalism’s reality problem

I’m sure that there are other problems with that theory, but isn’t the causal theory of reference physicalist enough? The thought after all a physical thing, generated by the physical thinking process and usually whatever the thought I’d about.

Profoundly misinformed

Wow Just Wow 2022-11-04

Commenting on: A fully meta-rational workplace

This is a profound misrepresentation of anarchist organization. Freeman never uses the word anarchism and anarchist organizations have distributed this very essay as an example of what is not anarchist. Even a little research into actual real anarchist organizations would show you how wrong your representation. Try researching, for example, the Spanish CNT. This is an embarrassing strawman, David.

I'm grateful you put enough sense into your thoughts...

Jason Hoobler 2022-10-30

Commenting on: Upgrade your cargo cult for the win

To remind me of awe-inspiring sensibility which occurs though overweight at by the darker side in structural discipline.. unfortunately, my conclusion is evolutionary discipline as mimeses are profoundly weighted toward on one hand inadequacy by ressentiments and a dual symmetry needed in both the casablanca shocked by gambling sense in inadequate risks of horror and backups serving the skeptic-cynic survivors and on the other hand chance by skinner vicarity.

Ontological Nebulosity

BenayaK 2022-10-23

Commenting on: When will you go bald?

It may be basically the engineer’s response from the end of the sequence, but I disagree with the characterization of nebulosity as “ontological”. In the boldness example (in the broad domain where humans and hairs and their positions are reasonably well-defined), there is a fact of the matter about the distribution of hairs on my head, and that of any other person. No relevant problem with the territory’s ontology. We want to define boldness for our own use, and are not very successful because the territory is continuous and does not cluster well. Which wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t use discrete language - so I still see it as a linguistic problem, though not a solvable one.

This is hysterical!

Kim G 2022-10-22

Commenting on: Nutrition offers its resignation. And the reply

I’ve long suspected this. And after reading Nina Teichold’s “Big Fat Surprise,” it pretty much confirmed what you write above. For me, the big warning sign was this focus on how dangerous saturated fats were, and how much superior were seed oils. Funny how humanity has evolved for thousands of years to be best suited to fats that were only invented about 120 years ago. And the fats we were eating meanwhile (animal fats) were somehow the problem all along.

I try to keep it simple: meat and vegetables, with a little wheat product thrown in in modest quantities. Little sugar.

Cheers,

Kim G
Roma Sur, CDMX
Where the obesity rate is appalling.

What's in your bag?

Michael 2022-10-17

Commenting on: How To Think Real Good

Are you able to share your bag of tricks?

Salt for Babies

Malte Skarupke 2022-09-12

Commenting on: Nutrition: the Emperor has no clothes

I was thinking of this blog post recently because I have twin babies and me and my wife were arguing about whether to add salt to their baby food. They eat noticeably better when the food has a normal amount of salt on it, because otherwise it tastes bland, but you can find no end of advice online that tells you it’s dangerous to add salt to baby food.
Example: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/salt-for-babies
Note all the links to scientific papers.

But what’s frustrating in that article (and similar articles) is that all the links go to papers like “babies who ate salty food, are more likely to eat salty food as adults.” The actual claims about salt being dangerous aren’t linked to papers. Why? Because it’s based on nothing, as this person found out:
https://lilynicholsrdn.com/salt-baby-food-infant-sodium-requirements/

To summarize that article: some nutritionists tried to figure out how much salt babies need. They didn’t know how to do that, so they said “lets assume human breast milk has the right amount of salt,” except that they got a number that’s too low. Human breast milk actually has like 50% more salt than they thought. When babies get old enough to eat solids, they concluded with the same assumptions that solids should have proportionally the same amount of salt as breast milk. (despite it being obvious that babies really like salt in their food. If you give a baby salty food, like a piece of fried bacon, they will suck the juices out of it for minutes)
Then in 2019 some other nutritionists came along and said “nah, that number is too high. We’ll make the official recommendation even lower.” With no evidence, and despite the fact that the first group got numbers that were too low.

Now lots of Americans are freaking out about salt in baby food, because the official numbers are crazy low, which suggests that you have to avoid salt altogether. Literally every book about feeding babies mentions that it’s dangerous to add salt, lots of online articles say the same, yet nobody ever links to any evidence for this, because there is no evidence.

What’s the right thing to do? Who knows, too much salt probably isn’t good, so now we just try to use a normal amount of salt.

Wondering one thing

wassp 2022-08-08

Commenting on: A fully meta-rational workplace

What would recruitment look like for such a company?

Science

Richard Silliker 2022-08-04

Commenting on: Upgrade your cargo cult for the win

RMCM: 5 … Mathematics is the manipulation of Function and Form to elucidate Cause and Effect.
RMCM: 6 … Science is the manipulation of Cause and Effect to elucidate Function and Form.
RMCM: 7 … In the cases of mathematics and science, technology is the final proof.

https://rationalmechanisms.com/first-principles-share/

What are the benefits of STEM education?

Zafar Yaqoob 2022-06-14

Commenting on: What they don’t teach you at STEM school

STEM education has been on the rise in recent years. It is a field that covers many different disciplines, but one that is increasingly important for future job prospects.

STEM-related fields have always been a big draw for students, but the demand for STEM-related jobs has grown significantly as well. This is due to the fact that many of these jobs are high paying and offer opportunities to work with cutting-edge technology.

STEM education teaches students how to use their analytical and creative skills in order to solve problems and tackle challenges that arise in everyday life. It also helps them develop the skills needed to work with new technologies and innovations - which will be crucial in the future.

Objective Reality

Commenting on: A first lesson in meta-rationality

The fuzziness of objects, along with subjects, has long interested me. That comes up in discussions about hyper-objects, which are those that are so large and complex that we tend not to easily perceive them as coherent and unified things. And we can consider hyper-subjects of the bundled mind (4E cognition, communal, animistic, bicameral, etc)

But we don’t need to turn to unusual examples and speculations. Such vagueness can be observed directly in our own experience. It’s similar to how, in turning one’s awareness onto the mind, one will never discover a soul, ego, or a willpower. All that one can find is a stream of experience that has no clear boundary or stopping point. And that supposedly ‘inner’ experience is continuous with external perception. The metaphor of the body-mind as a container is a cultural bias.

Are reductions psychological substitutions?

Robert M Ellis 2022-06-08

Commenting on: Wrong-way reductions

I was finding this interesting and useful until I got to your footnote about it being mathematical rather than philosophical or scientific reduction. If so, what is the point? How can there be any practical significance in whether a process involves a mathematical reduction or not, given that mathematical processes are just shuffling round within the terms of a rationalized model? How can there be any basis for ‘right’ v ‘wrong’ forms of reduction if it is merely mathematical?

Where I think you might be onto something useful would be if you related this to the psychology of bias (e.g. Daniel Kahneman), which notes a process of substitution in biased thinking from a more difficult ‘slow’ process to an easier ‘fast’ one. When you talked about reduction being easier, at first I thought that was what you meant. I think philosophical reductionism is another version of the same process, i.e. the adoption of an easier model in the place of a more difficult one, and this is what it shares with more traditional forms of metaphysics. The significance of this seems to have nothing to do with mathematics though.