[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Perhaps I voiced my opinion too strongly; I meant that if one does reason with such, the results of reasoning will be flawed, and usually untrue. People make many such small choices every day, based on incomplete or possibly false information, to get results which are good enough for them. For such practical results it's fine. Still, reasoning in such a way when making decisions influencing whole course of life, or other people's lives, is very foolish in my opinion.

Sorry but you seem to contradict yourself here.

Firstly, you assume that the "reasoning will be flawed, and usually untrue" without providing any sort of proof of such. Your assumption is based purely on whether or not you personally believe the outcomes are the best that could be achieved and then further assume that an outcome based on reasoning of right and wrong could not possibly come up with that outcome.

Secondly, basically you are saying that people should reason based on a set of principles and values that you think are appropriate. Or to put it another way the set of principles and values that you think are "right". Whilst this reasoning may not be based on your concept of "right and wrong" it certainly takes right and wrong into account by suggesting that your way of reasoning is the right way.

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Definitely. If a person has a strong feeling of what is right, such person will do it no matter if it makes sense - suicides are plenty, to point out the obvious.

I don't see the point in using a mentally unhinged person as an example really. Of course there are always going to mentially ill people, psychopaths etc that make decisions that are questionable based on what they think are right. Arguing that no one should make decisions based on what they think is right or wrong because of it seems rather inane to me.

I can point out many real world examples of people making decsions based purely on greed, hatred, revenge, a sense of obligation and even what would seem to be pure logic at the time but end up completely screwing a situation up that would support my position. However, I see that those examples are extreme and not indicative of the norm so I wont bother.

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

Actually, they're at least predictable. While I don't think there's any system of government that can manage self-interested, egoistical people, those are manageable. It's those who have their own concepts of "right" and "wrong" and live by them that I'm afraid of. One day one of those altruistic idealists will launch the nuclear missiles for the good of mankind - it would never happen with simple egoists.

Well I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's that are now dead because Georgie boy needed to bolster his oil mates bottom line are very glad he was predictable and didn't use nukes!

And btw, Georgie boy has gone on record and stated that the USA would use any and all means, including nuclear strikes, to protec the USA so I wouldn't be so sure that all those self interested egotists are predictable and would never launch nuclear weapons. For that matter it was one of those supposedly predictable people who made a very logical decision to drop 2 atomic weapons in the past. Based purely on the numbers of US lives that would be saved of course and had nothing whatsoever to do with wanting to see which design would work better! There was of course a logical and absolute need to drop 2, even though Japan had already sent overtures of peace.

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

That reminds me of a movie - "2012". In there, we have President's Chief of Staff who is a realist and makes really informed decisions that assure the survival of maximal number of people, a geologist with concepts of right and wrong who feels those can't be the very best decisions because some people will die, and doesn't show even traces of logical thinking, and a science fiction novelist, similarly encumbered. I was amazed through the whole movie watching how those two people living in the land of pink unicorns are portrayed as good ones, and the practical, reasoning specialist as a bad person - to the point where at the end they make him make a completely idiotical decision just to be able to show that those two were for once "right" with their feelings. I don't understand where this world is going, when people think it's better to be completely wacko, not understand reality one bit, but show humane feelings than to be a competent specialist, a person in the right place, making informed choices, having to choose lesser evils all the time, and being good at it and not broken by responsibility.

Yes well for every movie example of little worth you can come up with I could come up with one of a psycho making purely logical decisions. I could probably even come up with a relevant real world example too.

Cheers,
PKFFW