on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group
from a proximate (game-theoretic rational actor) and ultimate (evolutionary fitness) perspective ditching reason is often quite reasonable
Calculus and mechanics is included in the curriculum not because all of the individuals who decide the curriculum understand these two topics in detail, but because individuals whom they trust and believe are worthy of emulation and deference, as well as past empirical history, tell them that this is the “reasonable” way to go.
The basic model is that you offload the task of reasoning about issues which you are not familiar with, or do not understand in detail, to the collective with which you identify, and give weight to specialists if they exist within that collective.
Why do we do X and not Y? Because in the past our collective unit did X, not Y
Traditional conservatives argue that the past has wisdom through its organic evolution, and the trial and error of customs and traditions
Liberal utopians....rely on their reason in the here and now, more or less, to “solve” the problems which they believe are amenable to decomposition via their rational faculties
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/05/reason-the-god-that-fails-but-we-keep-socially-promoting/
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