CDZ Can you be rational?

[westwall]

And, as has been pointed out to you before, you are presenting a false choice and it is not a rational one.

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

Wrong. You are all already dead. Merely choosing cause extreme mental anguish to the chooser and merely prolongs the suffering. Far better to kill the oppressor and die in the attempt than to allow ones self to be tormented at their will. My choice IS the only rational one. Yours is a choice based on fear and an inability to think about the future outcomes, you are only capable of thinking about the here and now, like any two year old child.

You are a child, and you think like one. When forced to make a rational decision you don't like you try to change the rules instead of saying, based on that situation, here is the rational choice. The Nazis have guns pointed at your heads and one will die but two will live and your "rational" choice is to have all three die? That is the thinking of a mental infant.

No, it's you who are thinking like a child. Like a child you can only understand that which is immediately in front of you. The ability to see a situation and follow it to its logical conclusion is apparently beyond you. Your choice of the Nazis is an excellent example. You are only capable of the here and now question. Which child do you kill. That ignores the fact that all of you are dead in that situation, you are merely postponing the inevitable.

In other words it is YOU who are incapable of thinking like an educated adult and can only react as a child would.

 

[320 Years of History]

Your attempt to change the conditions of the test has failed.

??? What test condition did I change?

I deleted that. You did not so much try to change the test as work much too hard trying to explain your answer, which is wrong.

What's wrong about it?

The much more valuable life in this case is the one that can, within a year, replace the other one. All lives are not equal. Brutal, but rational.

You didn't specify that this was an end of the world scenario where a woman's ability to reproduce is all important. I would without hesitation save the baby, gender doesn't matter. We must help the baby first because the baby can't help himself/herself. Protecting the young is a trait that has been with us since we were swinging from the trees, and it has served us well
I'm interested in how Socrates would counter that as irrational.

Socrates would counter that as irrational by noting that the basis for your choice of the baby is emotionally driven rather than rationally driven. It's emotionally driven because the value judgement -- help those who cannot help themselves -- accrues from how one feels about who deserves to be saved and who does not. Reason/logic doesn't care who is more or less deserving. Reason asks one to consider the objective realities and choose means and ends based on the situation itself, not based on the parties to the situation and the realities inherent to those parties.

In the "car on fire" scenario, reason recognizes that the teenager's is the more valuable life, but it also considers whether there be objective cause to believe one child's life is more possible to be saved, one should save the baby rather than attempting to save the teen and failing. Reason also recognizes that the teen's life is the more important one, and as such, it's the life that reason would, absent any other consideration, dictate be saved.

In scenarios such as the one in this thread, reason understands that the "savior" may or may not be privy to certain facts:

• Might it be that the heat has, upon the "savior's" arrival effectively "cooked" the infant's key organs?
• Might it be that fire burn rates and teen vs. infant oxygen consumption rates/needs collaborate so that one could know which of them will be alive and "savable" upon a "savior's" arrival at the car door?

Those are just two examples of immutable factors that reason would consider in assessing which child to save, but the fact is that, I for example, don't know enough about fire burn rates or pediatric oxygen consumption to incorporate those factors into my decision. Reason knows and accepts that in dire, time critical scenarios like the one presented, each "savior" must use the information they have available to them and act accordingly.

Knowing every piece of knowable (in the abstract) information is what is referred to as having "perfect information." Rarely, if ever, does one have perfect information. In the "car on fire" scenario, the imperfection of the information I can apply to my decision may lead me to save neither life or even loose my own life trying.

Reason allows one to apply assumptions; however, in doing so, the thinker must know the assumption is plausible and probable, and to what extent it's probable, rather than plausible and merely possible. In evaluating the information one has at the ready, one must place the greatest importance on that which is immutable -- say, for example, time will not stop and time is of the essence -- and place less weight on that which, for the person performing the analysis, is plausible and having uncertain probability.

So coming back to how Socrates would evaluate one's choice...He'd say that if one's choice fails to consider something one must necessarily know and know that it applies to the situation, one's choice is irrational. Using the time factor I provided. If one ignores that split seconds can make the difference in that situation, Socrates would say one's choice is irrational.

For example, if the fire just started and is but a flicker, there is certainly room to incorporate the emotional motivator arising from the infant's helplessness. If the fire is well on, but not so far that one has all but no hope of saving either, one must consider time as critical. Similarly, it's immutable that the teen's life is more valuable, but considering that in conjunction with the passage of time and the status of the flames, and one's proximity to the teen and to the infant, one may have to resign oneself to the fact that attempting to save the teen has the lower probability of success and the higher probability of failure; thus one attempts to save the baby. If on the other hand the teen is the only fertile female on the planet, reason dictates that one try to save the female teen rather than then infant boy because saving the boy does little but defer the inevitable, extinction, and in that situation, saving one's own life has no real value either because reason does not see mere existence as a worthy end on its own.

Lastly, Socrates was no fool. As such, he'd also recognize that pathos, logos and ethos together rightly inform most decisions. He'd only take exception with the weight one assigns to the factors in each of those categories. What weight he'd say is appropriate to each would vary with the reality of the circumstances that call one to make the decision.

Edit:
It's worth noting that Socrates, like any good rational thinker, may declare one's decision as irrational even though he concurs with the actual choice itself. Many are the folks who do the "right" thing for the wrong reasons.

 

[JoeMoma]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational. Given the situation, it's not more rational to save either child rather than the other for there are many ways to rationalize the situation in the favor of either. Just pick one and get the job done.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

Letting two die when you could have saved one if not rational, not at all. It is however very selfish...

Potentially getting yourself into harms way to save someone when you get nothing oit of it is irrational..... Investment very likely exceeds Return in you scenario.

So, you lack all morals and rational thought. Only mental infants think as you do.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

Wrong. You are all already dead. Merely choosing cause extreme mental anguish to the chooser and merely prolongs the suffering. Far better to kill the oppressor and die in the attempt than to allow ones self to be tormented at their will. My choice IS the only rational one. Yours is a choice based on fear and an inability to think about the future outcomes, you are only capable of thinking about the here and now, like any two year old child.

You are a child, and you think like one. When forced to make a rational decision you don't like you try to change the rules instead of saying, based on that situation, here is the rational choice. The Nazis have guns pointed at your heads and one will die but two will live and your "rational" choice is to have all three die? That is the thinking of a mental infant.

No, it's you who are thinking like a child. Like a child you can only understand that which is immediately in front of you. The ability to see a situation and follow it to its logical conclusion is apparently beyond you. Your choice of the Nazis is an excellent example. You are only capable of the here and now question. Which child do you kill. That ignores the fact that all of you are dead in that situation, you are merely postponing the inevitable.

In other words it is YOU who are incapable of thinking like an educated adult and can only react as a child would.

When forced to pick between A and B, you want what a child does, something else.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational.

A mistake...

 

[320 Years of History]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational. Given the situation, it's not more rational to save either child rather than the other for there are many ways to rationalize the situation in the favor of either. Just pick one and get the job done.

I agree with the post above, overall. Your last sentence, however, made it considerably more difficult for me to do so, whereas minus that remark, I'd have had no cause to pause before thus concluding. The matter and choices aren't nearly as desultorily determined as that statement, which connotes a blase, perhaps even serendipitous, tone, implies.

 

[westwall]

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

Wrong. You are all already dead. Merely choosing cause extreme mental anguish to the chooser and merely prolongs the suffering. Far better to kill the oppressor and die in the attempt than to allow ones self to be tormented at their will. My choice IS the only rational one. Yours is a choice based on fear and an inability to think about the future outcomes, you are only capable of thinking about the here and now, like any two year old child.

You are a child, and you think like one. When forced to make a rational decision you don't like you try to change the rules instead of saying, based on that situation, here is the rational choice. The Nazis have guns pointed at your heads and one will die but two will live and your "rational" choice is to have all three die? That is the thinking of a mental infant.

No, it's you who are thinking like a child. Like a child you can only understand that which is immediately in front of you. The ability to see a situation and follow it to its logical conclusion is apparently beyond you. Your choice of the Nazis is an excellent example. You are only capable of the here and now question. Which child do you kill. That ignores the fact that all of you are dead in that situation, you are merely postponing the inevitable.

In other words it is YOU who are incapable of thinking like an educated adult and can only react as a child would.

When forced to pick between A and B, you want what a child does, something else.

Nope. That is you. A child can only see what is directly in front of them. They lack the ability to think about future outcomes. Thus it is you who are thinking like a child. your so called rational thought truly isn't. Rational thinking requires measured observations, using those observations coupled with empirical data to arrive at a conclusion. really smart people can do that super fast, not so smart people take longer. But ALWAYS there is a gathering of knowledge and information to derive an answer.

You simply wish to ignore ALL information save 1+1. The world, and life is far more complex than your simplistic view of it. Some day you may grow up enough to realize that simple fact.

 

[westwall]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational.

A mistake...

A fact. You display nothing even remotely rational. You merely demonstrate base reactionary thought that a simple ape can accomplish.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational.

A mistake...

A fact. You display nothing even remotely rational. You merely demonstrate base reactionary thought that a simple ape can accomplish.

Nothing of the kind. There is A and there is B. Pick one and you can't.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

Wrong. You are all already dead. Merely choosing cause extreme mental anguish to the chooser and merely prolongs the suffering. Far better to kill the oppressor and die in the attempt than to allow ones self to be tormented at their will. My choice IS the only rational one. Yours is a choice based on fear and an inability to think about the future outcomes, you are only capable of thinking about the here and now, like any two year old child.

You are a child, and you think like one. When forced to make a rational decision you don't like you try to change the rules instead of saying, based on that situation, here is the rational choice. The Nazis have guns pointed at your heads and one will die but two will live and your "rational" choice is to have all three die? That is the thinking of a mental infant.

No, it's you who are thinking like a child. Like a child you can only understand that which is immediately in front of you. The ability to see a situation and follow it to its logical conclusion is apparently beyond you. Your choice of the Nazis is an excellent example. You are only capable of the here and now question. Which child do you kill. That ignores the fact that all of you are dead in that situation, you are merely postponing the inevitable.

In other words it is YOU who are incapable of thinking like an educated adult and can only react as a child would.

When forced to pick between A and B, you want what a child does, something else.

Nope. That is you. A child can only see what is directly in front of them. They lack the ability to think about future outcomes. Thus it is you who are thinking like a child. your so called rational thought truly isn't. Rational thinking requires measured observations, using those observations coupled with empirical data to arrive at a conclusion. really smart people can do that super fast, not so smart people take longer. But ALWAYS there is a gathering of knowledge and information to derive an answer.

You simply wish to ignore ALL information save 1+1. The world, and life is far more complex than your simplistic view of it. Some day you may grow up enough to realize that simple fact.

The question is A or B, pick one? You don't have a week to decide. Rational people can do that, you cannot.

And is the world complicated and not black and white? Yep, but this is an easy question to answer.

 

[JoeMoma]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational. Given the situation, it's not more rational to save either child rather than the other for there are many ways to rationalize the situation in the favor of either. Just pick one and get the job done.

I agree with the post above, overall. Your last sentence, however, made it considerably more difficult for me to do so, whereas minus that remark, I'd have had no cause to pause before thus concluding. The matter and choices aren't nearly as desultorily determined as that statement, which connotes a blase, perhaps even serendipitous, tone, implies.

Perhaps! But if only one child can be saved then the last sentence is the optimum. Being emotional or grief stricken will no in any way improve the situation. I suspect that if I were involved in such a situation, I would need professional counseling because I would beat myself up for the child that did not survive even though I know that such grieving to be irrational.

 

[TooTall]

You are still presenting a false choice. Can you make a rational argument as to why someone should risk their life saving either of them?

Their life is not at risk. They are simply forced to make a choice. The question is, what is the rational choice?

And, as has been pointed out to you before, you are presenting a false choice and it is not a rational one.

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

The Jews would have been forced to take a knife to a gunfight since their guns had already been confiscated. Does that remind you of the present day at all?

 

[PaintMyHouse]

Their life is not at risk. They are simply forced to make a choice. The question is, what is the rational choice?

And, as has been pointed out to you before, you are presenting a false choice and it is not a rational one.

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

The Jews would have been forced to take a knife to a gunfight since their guns had already been confiscated. Does that remind you of the present day at all?

Ten to one, 50 to one and you don't fight back? Fuckin' pussies.

 

[MarathonMike]

The only scenario that I can think of "speed of replacement" being of higher value is with a farm or collective that depends on child labor. Otherwise I disagree with you, their lives are equal in value.

Nope. not even close.

It is reasonable to have more than one rational approach to the problem you presented. It is rational to want to minimize loss of life including the the rescuer. Given the time element I submit it is irrational to risk your own life with the additional seconds it would take to rescue the larger person.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

The only scenario that I can think of "speed of replacement" being of higher value is with a farm or collective that depends on child labor. Otherwise I disagree with you, their lives are equal in value.

Nope. not even close.

It is reasonable to have more than one rational approach to the problem you presented. It is rational to want to minimize loss of life including the the rescuer. Given the time element I submit it is irrational to risk your own life with the additional seconds it would take to rescue the larger person.

Submit all you like, you are wrong.

 

[TooTall]

And, as has been pointed out to you before, you are presenting a false choice and it is not a rational one.

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

The Jews would have been forced to take a knife to a gunfight since their guns had already been confiscated. Does that remind you of the present day at all?

Ten to one, 50 to one and you don't fight back? Fuckin' pussies.

I served in the military, did you?

 

[PaintMyHouse]

It is nothing of the kind. If you have two children and the Nazis say pick one to live or they both die, that is very real. There is a rational answer here, whether you like it or not.

No, the rational answer and the only one that matters, is to attack the Nazi and kill him. The reason why a few hundred thousand scumbags were able to kill millions is the millions acted like sheep when they should have acted like lions and attacked. You see your choices are not choices based on reason. They are false choices based on fear and an unwillingness to think.

To fight them in that case would have meant you and the children would have all died then and there, which is irrational. It was too late to do anything but choose.

And yes, the Jews died like schoolgirls, not men.

The Jews would have been forced to take a knife to a gunfight since their guns had already been confiscated. Does that remind you of the present day at all?

Ten to one, 50 to one and you don't fight back? Fuckin' pussies.

I served in the military, did you?

I was never stupid enough to be cannon fodder, and got well paid to build death machines instead.

 

[320 Years of History]

I do not accept PaintMyHouse as being an authority on being rational. Given the situation, it's not more rational to save either child rather than the other for there are many ways to rationalize the situation in the favor of either. Just pick one and get the job done.

I agree with the post above, overall. Your last sentence, however, made it considerably more difficult for me to do so, whereas minus that remark, I'd have had no cause to pause before thus concluding. The matter and choices aren't nearly as desultorily determined as that statement, which connotes a blase, perhaps even serendipitous, tone, implies.

Perhaps! But if only one child can be saved then the last sentence is the optimum. Being emotional or grief stricken will no in any way improve the situation. I suspect that if I were involved in such a situation, I would need professional counseling because I would beat myself up for the child that did not survive even though I know that such grieving to be irrational.

I agree with you. It was solely the tone of that final sentence that troubled me.

Personally, I think the final sentence weaken the paragraph as a whole, that is, the paragraph was far more poignant without that final sentence in a "less is more" way.

That probably comes as a shock to some readers for I often write long posts that attempt to comprehensively express the overt and subtle elements of my ideas, but I do understand the "less is more" principle too. I just don't take it to the extent whereby I use it as a reason to be less than fully clear and expressive.

 

[MarathonMike]

Good discussion topic. You're stubborn as a mule but you made me think.