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Wrong-way reductions | Meta-rationality

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Wrong-way reduction is a logical fallacy that turns messy, tractable problems into tidy, impossible ones.

Wrong-way reduction is a logical fallacy no one seems to have pointed out before. 1 Regular people rarely make this error on their own. It’s common for philosophers, cognitive scientists, and theologians. The wrong-way reductions made by these professionals escape into the general culture, and cause trouble for everyone else. A wrong-way reduction is emotionally attractive when you have a problem that is nebulous —complicated, messy, and ambiguous. A wrong-way reduction claims to replace that with a simple, tidy, clear-cut problem. What’s wrong is that the new problem is harder than your origi

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