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

[The Grand Nudger]

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:

I think that people can rationally arrive at nearly any conclusion.  I doubt that the sorts of scenarios we have in mind where a person chooses death over life are examples of strong biological compulsion not being an issue, is all. If it seems like a valid objection in the one case, it must be even more so in the other.

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?

Are those rational cases for life, then?  The question of why we exist and whether or not we have rational reasons to want to live or to keep living, are not the same question.  

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!” 

We come across all sorts of interesting misconceptions about meaning and it's lack or it's absence, sure.  I would tell them that if they have no intrinsic reasons, whatever that set is supposed to contain, then so be it - but do they have other-than-intrinsic meaning?  

If intrinsic meaning were the only reason a person had for living, and they believed they didn't have that meaning, and they weren;t mistaken in that belief as expressed, they sound like they might be under significant cognitive pressure.  I would onsider it imprudent to then say "well, kill yourself and/or die that's the only rational thing to do.... or even "well, sounds like killing yourself might be rational, wishing that you were dead might be rational.""  We tend to provide people with feelings of abject worthlessness with care, not acceptance of the claim which has them so disaffected.

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.

Why is it a bad thing that you don't get to keep it - that you bolded this specifically as a negative qualifier? if it has no intrinsic meaning or value, or in fact no rational basis for your preference whatsoever?  You just wake up every day feeling that way? I'm not arguing your perception, it is what it is, just wondering what the bar for rational reasons is supposed to be if none of the things you mentioned or can even think of would qualify.  If someone handed me chocolate covered crickets and I didn't want them - and then they said I couldn't keep them - I'd say thanks, take em back asap.

That's what a homeostat does.  Maintains that equilibrium for equilibriums sake.  That's it's functional purpose.

(I wonder, btw, whether so many cultures strong taboos against suicide amount to the greater relative harm it would cause a lower pop society - were we in a situation where many people would just prefer to kill themselves outside of some pretty heavy duty conditioning?)