Nassim Taleb: How to be Rational about Rationality (aka: Skin in the Game)
https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rationality-432e96dd4d1a
Lots of debates these days aim to secure a certain position by claiming that rather than being an opinion where adults can disagree, it's either been scientifically proven ('those who disagree with me don't believe in science') or it's the only rational view (and thus inescapably correct). Nassim Taleb takes this apart bit by bit:
We can't look inside people's heads, so views are unobserved. Actions are objective, not opinions. Watch what people do, not what they say. Most expert talk is 'decorative' - it means nothing, because it has zero cost of production. The expert has "no skin in the game"
So when only actions can be rational, which actions are rational? Those that help survival. The only empirically viable measure of success is success at surviving. Actions are rational the more they correlate with survival
By that measure, actions that are often viewed as "irrational" can be rational. Taleb cites examples of religious rituals that while scientifically "irrational", enhance the cohesiveness of a group and thus helped that culture survive as a group.