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

[The Grand Nudger]

-ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it. I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice. I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.

[Angrboda]

-ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it.  I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice.  I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.

Choosing life only becomes rational if we "could have done otherwise." Without it, the term rational loses all meaning.

[The Grand Nudger]

I like to joke that life is downright kantian with respect to life. A (perceived) categorical imperative. There aren't a whole lot of off switches in life, it's true - but we can grant that cognition is one of them, cant we? That suicidal ideations can and do lead to suicides. It's amusing to think about a crab contemplating life and then throwing itself off a cliff - for example. I think we can and do choose otherwise, but, again, these are often taken to be the effects of significant duress.

I'm using rational in a minimal sense. That to a creature like us, it's rational to select life's continuation, because that state of affairs or conclusion or the conclusion that we should follows from sound assertions genuinely apprehended by cognition.

[LadyForCamus]

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.

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.”

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.

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. 

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?

I would say yes. Not in all cases of course, but yes.

[Silver]

Choosing death is just as rational as choosing life.

[vulcanlogician]

-ofc, and there's vast room to disagree and other ways of thinking about it.  I'm content to call it a selective preference so that we don't need to get bogged down with choice.  I would also suggest that regardless of whether we do or don't have free will, "choosing life" is a process of rational selection.

Choosing life only becomes rational if we "could have done otherwise."  Without it, the term rational loses all meaning.

I disagree. 

Rational agent, X, has no free will. All his actions are determined. X is unaware of these circumstances. 

So X goes around making judgments and decisions throughout his life. Some of these decisions are rational. That is, before deciding, X thinks of a premise (or premises) that he thinks are true, and uses them to come up with a conclusion. He then uses that conclusion to inform whether to do one thing or another. He did all this without free will. No incompatibilist argues that people don't think, reason, or use logic. They argue that none of it involves free will.

Other decisions X makes are not rational. Those decisions do not involve X considering premises or conclusions before making a decision. X makes these decisions based on gut, impulse, custom, or what have you.

So rational still has meaning even if we could not do otherwise.

[LadyForCamus]

Or maybe a third possibility? X reaches a rational conclusion but does not act or behave in accordance with it.

[vulcanlogician]

Or maybe a third possibility? X reaches a rational conclusion but does not act or behave in accordance with it.

I don't think we have to involve my life story in this.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

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. 

All sorts of rational things are ripe for debate.  

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?

I would say yes. Not in all cases of course, but yes.

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?  

More fundamentally, if person can be thinking clearly and rationally choose death, couldn't they do the same for life?

[tackattack]

"More fundamentally, if person can be thinking clearly and rationally choose death, couldn't they do the same for life?" Like in what instance? what if we add a moral imperative.

Person x choses death rationally because of moral imperative Z. The moral imperative overcoming the biological imperative? Interesting conversations, just doing a drive by thought injection.