Is it just me, or is this really creepy?

[giblets]

There is no irrational if you want to define it that way.

No, he's saying you're only irrational if your thinking contains a logical contradiction. I think that's retarded, even if you have hundreds of goals you must have some way of ranking them. When people try to go on a diet but end up eating potato chips, in their mind they preferred "no potato chips and physical fitness" over "potato chips and being a fatass" but they acted differently. They behaved irrationally.

[giblets]

It's the old "model the society in order to fit with the greater good of the individuals" versus "model the individuals in order to fit with the greater good of the society" -dilemma in new clothes. The 'people are scientifically irrational and don't know what's good for them' line of thought is particularly unoriginal, replace 'scientifically irrational' with x, y or z and you will find countless examples of societies & communities run this way from history books.

The fallacy, IMO, is that "society" is abstract and "individuals" are real, what good is it to have a "great" society if the individuals within are living in misery?

You summarized the dilemma poorly and that's why you think it doesn't make sense. It's "let people decide for themselves what is best for themselves" or "have some governing body decide what is, on average, in the best interest of everyone".

[loinburger]

There is no irrational if you want to define it that way.

How would you rather define it? Every would-be overarching definition of rationality I've ever encountered relies on some overarching assumption(s) about what it means to be rational (that is, what it means for a life goal to be worthy of consideration), e.g. "rational people prefer long-term happiness over short-term happiness" as gribbler seems to define it. Or you can use a Mills definition of rationality if you prefer, or a Kantian definition. It all amounts to you defining what constitutes a worthy goal or set of goals in life.

I've met a fair number of drug addicts whose goal in life is to consume their drug of choice as frequently as possible, and who consume their drug of choice as frequently as possible. These people are behaving rationally. I've also met a fair number of drug addicts whose goal in life is to do something that their drug addiction is preventing them from doing, e.g. being a better husband/wife/father/mother/etc, and so when they consume their drug of choice they are behaving irrationally. Whether I consider the second groups' goals to be more noble than the first groups' goals is irrelevant to whether I consider the second groups' actions to be less rational than the first groups' actions. Rationality != morality.

[loinburger]

No, he's saying you're only irrational if your thinking contains a logical contradiction. I think that's retarded, even if you have hundreds of goals you must have some way of ranking them. When people try to go on a diet but end up eating potato chips, in their mind they preferred "no potato chips and physical fitness" over "potato chips and being a fatass" but they acted differently. They behaved irrationally.

How wonderful it would be if humans were robots.

[giblets]

How wonderful it would be if humans were robots.

I agree, assuming robots can be happy.

[loinburger]

Over the past five years, I have had at least five "overarching life goals." At various times during the past five years, I have had several "subsidiary life goals" take on a combined importance that was greater than my current "overarching life goal." In all cases, except when behaving irrationally (and there were times when I behaved irrationally), I followed the most pressing goal or combination of goals, which by any rational definition (harrr) is an example of rational behavior. But, according to your robotic view of human behavior, I'm irrational as a result of not having a single overarching goal in life that never changed over five years and that always overrode all other subsidiary goals in life. And that's stupid.

[loinburger]

I agree, assuming robots can be happy.

If I had an algorithm for happiness then I'd be wealthy. If an algorithm for happiness were possible, then somebody smarter than me would rule the world with it.

[Al B. Sure!]

the last time "model the individuals in order to fit with the greater good of the society"-model was used within a single nation in history was oops godwin

And Sparta

[giblets]

Over the past five years, I have had at least five "overarching life goals." At various times during the past five years, I have had several "subsidiary life goals" take on a combined importance that was greater than my current "overarching life goal." In all cases, except when behaving irrationally (and there were times when I behaved irrationally), I followed the most pressing goal or combination of goals, which by any rational definition (harrr) is an example of rational behavior. But, according to your robotic view of human behavior, I'm irrational as a result of not having a single overarching goal in life that never changed over five years and that always overrode all other subsidiary goals in life. And that's stupid.

I never defined it that way. I simply said that if someone wishes they'd stop eating junk food but continues to do so their behavior is irrational.

[Al B. Sure!]

Sparta wasn't a nation. -gribbler

[giblets]

Also, I never claimed that rational people always prefer delayed gratification over immediate gratification, in fact a rational person would have a slight preference for immediate gratification because of the possibility of getting hit by a bus tomorrow.

[loinburger]

I never defined it that way. I simply said that if someone wishes they'd stop eating junk food but continues to do so their behavior is irrational.

And if people never had conflicting goals, then your oversimplification of human behavior would mean something.

[RGBVideo]

You summarized the dilemma poorly and that's why you think it doesn't make sense. It's "let people decide for themselves what is best for themselves" or "have some governing body decide what is, on average, in the best interest of everyone".

Yes, clearly it is completely different. Supreme being who or which has an unchecked and unlimited power for deciding what is best for us is a completely different thing from that supreme entity modeling the society along the lines what's good for it.

my point is: every time the former has been tried, it has inevitably led to the latter. sorry for not being clear enough in the first post.


i don't obviously want to godwinize this thread but the line of thought that we need some sort of supreme entity to decide what's best for us (oops, no i'm sorry, "the stupidest 50% of people", not one of "us" can be stupid) is not only elitist, it's also a great first intellectual stepping stone to totalitarianism.

How wonderful it would be if humans were robots.

I think his example is a bit funnier than he even realizes. Taking (of all the things in the world) nutritional standards as an example of a thing where there is a "rational", objective truth which can be said with 100% accuracy. 10 years ago Atkins' diet was thought to be crazy and everyone who knew what the official nutritional recommendations were knew that it's users would die of liver failure, and 50 years ago butter was thought to be healthy.

[giblets]

Sparta wasn't a nation. -gribbler

I was actually going to point out that he said "the last time x happened" which makes citing an example from over 2000 years before his example irrelevant, but thanks for pointing out another of your failures at reading comprehension.

[loinburger]

As an exceedingly simple example, hopefully one that's easy to grasp: I have a high level goal of saving money for retirement. I also have a median goal of adhering to my family's "fifty dollars or less" policy for gifts. I also had a short-term goal of purchasing some earrings for my mom that matched the necklace that I got for her twenty years ago. This short-term goal temporarily overrode two conflicting goals. Somebody who is a cretin would say that I behaved irrationally. Somebody who isn't a cretin would immediately recognize that people have multiple goals that are sometimes in conflict with each other.