Irrationality as Blocking Error Correction

CF treats irrationality functionally: an action, policy, or attitude is irrational to the degree it blocks error correction or prevents problem-solving. This follows from CF’s view that reason is fundamentally error correction — so the cardinal failure is to obstruct the channels by which mistakes get caught and fixed. The standard is what you do with potential corrections, not how clever or how calm you are.

The picture this inverts is the usual one. Irrationality is not low IQ, not ignorance, and not having emotions. A public intellectual who refuses to consider that he might be wrong is being irrational; CF holds it is “irrational to try to spread ideas if you aren’t open to debate and error correction,” because ignoring critics who can correct you teaches avoidable errors to everyone you influence. By contrast a beginner who eagerly seeks out criticism of his mistakes is being rational. Smart experts who ignore correction are a paradigm case of irrationality, not an exception to it.

The paradigm cases are all forms of obstructing correction: ignoring a critic who knows you are wrong and is willing to say so, blocking debate, evading an argument you cannot answer, or leaving no route for your error to be addressed. Evasion, in the Objectivist sense of refusing to look at relevant evidence, is one mechanism by which this happens. The positive complement is not blocking error correction: keeping those channels open. CF’s practical machinery — debate policies, reusable answers, and taking responsibility for one’s ideas — exists to operationalize it. The contrast partner is not stupidity but the active or passive suppression of correction, whatever one’s intelligence or feelings.