If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?

[LadyForCamus]

Sure, but the instinct to live is just that; a biological instinct. Simply that we can be rational; a de facto attribute or characteristic of being both alive and cognitively capable; isn’t a rational argument for the continuation of life itself, or that the choice to live is somehow a more rational choice than the alternative. At least as far as I can tell. It sounds like you’re saying, “choosing life over death is the rational conclusion because if you stop living you’ll be dead.”

I don't think that we can dispense with the rationality of a thing purely on account of it also being a biological instinct.  It's rational to take a piss when we need to, after all.

Sure. I’m not saying that something necessarily can’t be both a biological imperative and rational. I’m just not sure I’m sufficiently sold on the notion that something is necessarily rational because it’s a biological imperative. If that makes any sense.

What premise? That life is preferable to death? Or, that life is “better”
than death? I’d say both of those are ripe for debate. 

[quote]
All sorts of rational things are ripe for debate.

Of course. Why else are we all here hashing this shit out every day? 🙂

This is interesting.  In what case (or sort of case) where an animal like us might choose death over life would you be concerned with biological instinct as a dealbreaker - but not whatever duress, misfortune, or abject misery the subject might be considering when making that choice?

This seems like a false choice. You don’t think a person can come to a rational conclusion about the value of human life that isn’t the result of either some biological instinct or some specific circumstance or condition of their life that is causing suffering? Let me try to articulate myself here, and bear with me because it sometimes feels like a monumental, near impossible hurdle to find words that adequately reflect my thoughts on the subject:

We don’t exist for any reason; that is to say not in a colloquial sense. There are causes for our existence, ofc; a “how.” But not a reason, or a “why.” At least I’ve yet to see a demonstration for that proposition. Do I have reasons for continuing forward with the life that I already have in this moment in the span of time? Sure, but those reasons are contingent upon other lives. I have two young children, a husband, and living parents. But preventing the harm that my death would cause those people is not necessarily a comment on the value of life, or let’s say conscious life, in a larger sense as a property or biological fact of the world. Rationally speaking, why should our ability to be aware of our own eventual annihilation count as a sound reason to avoid or delay it?

How many times have we come across on the forum, this question: “If our lives have no intrinsic meaning, what is the point of living at all?” Answers tend to be along the lines of: “The meaning of experience is experience for its own sake. You get to laugh, and cry, and feel love when you caress your newborn, and eat ice cream, and contribute something meaningful to society, etc. So why not live? What a silly question!” 

Well, so what? Why am I obligated to participate in experience in order to be perceived as rational? Choosing between life and death isn’t choosing between eternal experience and no experience, after all. I was thrust into an experiential existence without my consent, and I don’t even get to keep it. That, coupled with my awareness that every emotion, thought and pleasure I have is rooted in nothing more than a blind, biological drive to reproduce leads me to regard conscious experience with growing dispassion, or perhaps ‘clinical detachment’ is more accurate. I suppose I just find the whole business of finite conscious experience rather silly and trying. If the inevitable is to end up right back where I started; not existing; if there’s no meaningful distinction between being born, living, and dying, and having never been born at all; then maybe I simply don’t want to be bothered marching forward with the business of it. I’m not depressed (I don’t think) or miserable, or suffering. I just can’t think of many good philosophical reasons for actively living. Camus said we should “revolt” against and in spite of the absurd; that that was the most reasonable choice; and I used to agree with him. But now I’m not so sure.