Good point. I think I have a better understanding of what you have been saying. I guess there are two ways of using the word "rational" --one might be called logical (regardless of the crazyness of the premises), the other might be reasonable or responsible or something like that.
--John ________________________________________ From: Friam [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of glen [g...@ropella.name] Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2014 6:24 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "rational" On 01/07/2014 02:50 PM, John Kennison wrote: > Watching men neck in public makes me uncomfortable > Married people are allowed to neck in public. > Anything that makes me uncomfortable should be banned > Therefore Gay marriage should be banned. > > AT any rate, my question would be: Is there a sense in which the above type > of thinking (based on the premises Nick assumed) is irrational. Well, we've been discussing exactly this. If discomfort is a) opaque to analysis and b) not shared by the audience, then it would fail to meet some of the definitions of rational we've been discussing. Similarly, if we adopt the distinction made by Roger's citing of Altemeyer (or Steve's satisficing for the immediate and optimizing the distal), then we could say that although the behavior may be beneficial, it contains gaps in rationality. But I also think it's flawed in the sense I tried to identify with libertarians. (Or as Marcus just pointed out.) The dependence between discomfort and banning behavior is myopic because it _selectively_ considers only a subset of the logical consequences of that premise. -- ⇒⇐ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
