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Spock has done a horrible disservice to the rationalist. Let me explain…
I’ve had discussions with people who, after being shown their side of the argument didn’t hold, would respond with: “You’re just being too rational.” As if there can be such a thing. I suspect what they really mean is that they feel like I’m not addressing their emotional need.
Spock has convinced the world (or at least some of it’s inhabitants) that rationality is the flipside of emotion. This is far from the case. Being rational doesn’t mean being emotionless or disregarding other people’s emotion.
When deciding what to believe, or what course of action you should take, the rational thing to do is consider how other people would react, how you would react, how you would feel. Emotional responses are just another part of the environment in which we live, to not account for them in our reasoning is folly.
The below started out as a comment on The Speculist, but as the comment grew I thought it’d make a good blog post.
In a post there, Phil Bowermaster states:
To which I replied:
His response:
(See the comments on his post to see all of his response, but the above seems to summarize his position.)
His original statement didn’t specifically say it, but his statement automatically means what he says he didnt say. If you say that it’s reasonable to expect that anything that can happen, will happen, you are automatically including something like lightening striking everyone! There is no natural law preventing lightening from striking everyone. It’s just lower on the spectrum of probabilities.
In order of probability:
Personally, I would put the Reasonable-To-Expect line between 1 and 2, maybe 2 and 3.
The crux of my point is this: It seems like Phil is drawing an arbitrary line in the spectrum of probabilities and saying anything above this line will happen. The problem with that is that it does not actually help us predict anything. Anything that doesn’t happen you can just say, “Well, I didn’t mean anything with that low of a probability.”
This leads me to guess at what Phil is actually trying to say. My guess is that his actual point is that there are many things that, while possible, some (many?) people don’t think it’s reasonable to expect them with no solid reason for thinking that. If this is indeed his point, I agree. However, I don’t think his statements lead to this conclusion. After all, the Reasonable-To-Expect is a minuscule subset of the Possible. Because of this, merely stating that something is possible says little about it’s probability of happening.
Phil goes on to state:
Astoundingly large in what sense? As mentioned above, and demonstrated by the above series, the Reasonable-To-Expect is an infinitesimal subset of the Possible. After all, as far as we know the universe has a limited life span.
Don’t get my point wrong. I am totally a fan of the idea that what people think is reasonable to expect has no bearing on what actually is reasonable to expect. This is why so many people are incredulous when you talk to them about most of the transhumanist ideas.
I’m just pointing out that misstating the case or being imprecise is not likely to win any converts. I’m not trying to bash you, Phil, I just found the subject matter to be interesting!