The premature application of cold, utilitarian, or cost-benefit analysis to a situation that requires emotional processing, ethical deliberation, or simply more time. It’s trying to be rational before you have all the values or facts on the table, often leading to a "correct" but tone-deaf or inhuman conclusion.
Example: "At the funeral, his hasty rationality was jarring: 'Statistically, driving here was more dangerous than the illness that killed him. Our grief is therefore irrational.' He'd calculated the risks correctly but rationalized away the human context at a wildly inappropriate speed."
by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026
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