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

[The Grand Nudger]

We ended up on this one because we enjoy exploring novel positions, lol. We both think that taking action to deal with climate change is the rational course of action, and we both think that reason is an effective tool. Rational hellscape reason, or reason that leads us to conclude that climate action is unreasonable present -to us- as unreasonable.....but may in fact be both reasonable and a true state of affairs.

There may be no rational default between climate action and climate inaction to a given producer. The "default" being considered may be a-rational, or worse, positively irrational.

More broadly, we got into this one wondering what a 100% rational human being would actually be like, actually do, whether it would map to our preconceptions. I think it wouldn't. I don't think we'd be better or worse in any non novel sense (or that the world would). I think a 100% rational human would look alot like us. More effective pillagers of the earth, in context. As individuals, we may not be 100% rational all the time, but I do think that we can be or can approach it in the aggregate as a species - and we see where that got us. We're here, imo, because of the good and rational decisions that we've made. It wasn't poor thinking that lead to climate change, but pure human brilliance and skill. I want to say otherwise, and assert my own imperatives and criticisms as the rational set - but if I rationally assess them, I find the case inaccurate with respect to it's underlying assumptions and lacking with respect to the force of it's conclusion. I have a rationalizable but fundamentally a-rational stake in a particular set of outcomes. The application of partial reason* is the strategy that will lead to those outcomes.

Imo, this is why the green movement hasn't been able to gain better purchase. Saving the planet for saving the planets sake is a shitty pitch even if the contents of the pitch are reasonable and true. In any conflict between man and a rock, the default is man. Climate action will only happen when it connects to our personal stakes and is clearly beneficial to them. That's why charts and graphs and presentations about facts regarding climate change hasn't worked. I leave that out entirely when I make the case.

*Or, if we prefer, the methodical exploitation of other peoples a-rational and irrational biases, predispositions, and assumptions

[vulcanlogician]

Well, even pilligers of earth™ need to avoid pillaging the earth to extinction. After all, if pillaging is one's game, then you want to have something to pillage.

I agree that we would be getting away from the subject matter if we asked why, for instance, we want to survive and flourish as a species. I say we take that as a given or else we will stray away from "the limits of rationality's usefulness" into another philosophic sphere.

I feel you on criticism of green movement's pitch. There is no "benefit of earth" argument against climate change. The Earth will do fine once we're gone. The rest of life will go on flourishing... probably better off without us. Climate change is a human concern. And, yes, even completely melted ice caps won't destroy humanity. But it will send our social world into upheaval. And once that happens, humanity will be set back several centuries.

The fact that our own ingenuity got us there in the first place doesn't matter. If you build Rome, you attract the attention of barbarian armies. That doesn't mean you shouldn't build Rome. But it does mean that you need to spend time and attention to defense once you do. Likewise, if we want to have an industrialized world, we better make sure we take the necessary precautions to see that it lasts.

[The Grand Nudger]

We don't, the option that we need some known thing to pillage as pillagers is not a rational default. It's an a-rational default. One which I agree with and advocate for, but a-rational nevertheless. None of the producers I interact with have the ability to give us - no x to pillage. It's not within their power, no matter what they do.

If it were (againa, it isn't), theyd still have to decide on some rational default between pillage and conservation - that'd where I come in. I think that I'm a competent advocate, but it isn't on account of my appealing to their pure rationality - and if it were necessitated on that...I probably wouldn't be so.

[vulcanlogician]

We don't, the option that we need some known thing to pillage as pillagers is not a rational default.  It's an a-rational default.  One which I  agree with and advocate for, but a-rational nevertheless.  None of the producers I interact with have the ability to give us - no x to pillage.  It's not within their power, no matter what they do.

If it were (againa, it isn't), theyd still have to decide on some rational default between pillage and conservation - that'd where I come in.  I think that I'm a competent advocate, but it isn't on account of my appealing to their pure rationality - and if it were necessitated on that...I probably wouldn't be so.

So, I think the spirit of my original point was about human nature. The human condition is that we have an "a-rational default" as you call it. And one could argue that we are "mostly" a-rational default. Like, we are 95% irrational drives... and only 5% rational. (If that.)

But what if we weren't 95% emotions, drives, and appetites? What if our rational nature didn't have to struggle against our appetites? What if we were 35% rational? 

Things like nationalism (that we have because we are fearful and/or violent), and things like capitalism (which we see as necessary because we are desirous... ie. addicted to having our consumerist desires satisfied) would be less likely to have significant sway over us.

If we were (as individuals) less desirous and fearful ... more rational, climate change would be easier to solve. Mind you, it'd still be difficult. Just not impossible. (As it might be now.)

[The Grand Nudger]

You're being unkind, I'd give you more than 5%. Still, I'd avoid dumping my negatives as irrational. Perhaps capitalism and nationalism are rational, and objection to either/or is the 95% of you/us that's a-rational.

Don't you think it's strange that the things we don't like..are the things we commonly imagine to be irrational? That the things we do like would be what we would do, if we were more rational? Supposing we were 5% rational and we did that, if we were 35% rational..would we do less of that, or be more convinced in the strength of our arguments to that effect?

Would a more rational nationalist or capitalist advocate be more convincing, and would a more rational audience have fewer objections than you or I might to a given idea poorly situated in either of our a-rational valuations? The percentages could float, what we're discussing would be gain of function. Doesn't gain of function apply to propaganda just as much to philanthropy? Is the relationship between them linear, such that a gain of rational function makes propaganda more effective, but makes people equally more effective at spotting it (whether internal or external) and it all washes out, our could one thing be a more effective function multiplier than the other?

I suppose, in a nutshell, I'm wondering whether you see your position on those matters as arguable - as rational, or is it a function of how you see the world that both those things (or any other example) are fundamentally a-rational and non arguable as such. If we were more rational, perhaps we'd expect the world to be more rational. What positions are rational by default? Anti-nationalism and anti-capitalism? What objections to either do you think people might have if they were more rational, how do you come to possess them at our currently meagre rationality, and are they truly representative of an increase in rationality and accordance to the rational default?

Let's take a couple that I think you and I might share an opinion of. Nationalism ala third positionism. Trumpism. A populist white ethnostate. Do you think that it wouldn't work, or that it would be ethically wrong? Full on free market oxygen-by-the-second-for-profit capitalism. Again, that it wouldn't work, or that it would be ethically wrong? Why would we not do those things, or would they hold less sway, if we were more rational? Do you think that avoiding practical irrationality would prevent that, or is this a comment about wrong avoidance as a rational default. Something like, "If people were more rational, they'd be more ethical"?

[LadyForCamus]

I think if people were 100% rational we’d be extinct, because I don’t think there is a rational basis to choose life over death.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's this saying. Tell me about heaven and Ill tell you what's missing in your life.

Its hard to conceive of any rational basis for anything that doesn't choose life. That may not account for much - and it may be a bad choice - but life is most certainly a rational choice.

[LadyForCamus]

There's this saying.  Tell me about heaven and Ill tell you what's missing in your life.

Its hard to conceive of any rational basis for anything that doesn't choose life.  That may not account for much - and it may be a bad choice - but life is most certainly a rational choice.

I don’t understand. How so?

[The Grand Nudger]

If we're homeostats... living creatures with a tendency towards a stable equilibrium - and cognition is a physiological response - then the bare minimum normative case would suggest that a living, competent, and uncompromised cognitive agent should/would register a strong selective preference for life.

Which is to say that the choice (and subsequent mountain of natural behaviors) follows from premises genuinely apprehended by that agent, premises which we would grant without qualification - whereas ideation to the contrary would strongly suggest that something has gone horribly awry for that agent.

Consider this, while we might easily accept any number of rational cases for life, of the relatively few rational cases for death we might accept - do we imagine the person to be thinking clearly?

[Angrboda]

If we're homeostats... living creatures with a tendency towards a stable equilibrium - and cognition is a physiological response - then the bare minimum normative case would suggest that a living, competent, and uncompromised cognitive agent should/would register a strong selective preference for life.

Which is to say that the choice (and subsequent mountain of natural behaviors) follows from premises genuinely apprehended by that agent, premises which we would grant without qualification - whereas ideation to the contrary would strongly suggest that something has gone horribly awry for that agent.

Consider this, while we might easily accept any number of rational cases for life, of the relatively few rational cases for death we might accept - do we imagine the person to be thinking clearly?

If we go down the route of framing it in terms of what is physiologically normative then we enter the realm in which our choices are simply biologically determined and choice is no longer an issue. In some sense, one has to grant the fiction of free will for the discussion to have any meaning. Once you do that, there's no rational reason to presume the biological tendencies as any kind of norm.