You didn't get the point of my OP. I'm not trying to say that the original football decision was the correct one or that the final decision was irrational. It just reminded me about an issue that comes up a lot. Namely situations where there is no doubt that people will overreact and even the overreacters admit it.

But then they go on to say that they would rather be an overreacter than be the kind of person who is capable of evaluating an emotional situation objectively. They are glad their pilot won't panic in an emergency but they wouldn't want to be like him. They know that they are swayed by advertising executives market research that has them showing commercials that will cause them to buy silly things but they wouldn't want to be the kind of person who can see through these tactics.

I just am curious as to which type of person our posters would want to be.

I want to not be fooled when it's important, life decisions I'm making, but be fooled when I'm at the movies. And a fool in love of course.

That is excellent. I think that one could take it to its logical conclusion and expect that **** sapiens went extinct in its second generation.

I don't think the judge and jury ought to be determining whether things are right or wrong any more than I think the cashier ought be determining whether you deserve an orange or how much you ought be forced to pay. Their job is to determine whether, in fact, you have an orange and to charge you the standard amount for an orange.

I think there's a third type of person. Just using myself as an example: I tend to overreact (or more precisely, I'll sometimes arrive at a conclusion without properly thinking a problem through, because I'm impatient), but that doesn't mean I prefer this quality and wouldn't be happy to rid myself of it.

On the flip side, I see through commercials (and/or attempts to sway people to buy things or sell a particular concept) to a fault. I'm the type of person that considers an otherwise great movie thoroughly ruined just because there was one thing in it that never would have happened in real life. I don't like this quality about myself either because I let things bother me that other people can let slide.

language is a bit loose here.

If we were for example consider a defense (in the uk sorry) of self-defense then a decision has to be made as to whether its reasonable force. We can imagine juries minds switching from yes to no after seeing a video and then switching back to yes if given lots of viewings.

If we imagine a case where the injuries were incidentally horrific to look at then the judge might not want the jury to see it.

In that case, on Brianworld, I want to have a strictly followed definition of what constitutes reasonable force and what constitutes a reasonable cause to feel threatened.

We then show them the video up until reasonable/unreasonable force is applied and see if the conditions have been met. If the person is found guilty, they then open to page 308 of The Book of Punishments and apply the correct formula.

On Brianworld, no leeway is given to the jury at sentencing.

That would be bad. I believe its a bit like that in Italy

ldo. No sane person would suggest letting juries be involved in sentencing.

Consider a computer program that has some input and gives some output. Change the code so that in some circumstances for the same input the program produces different output. Is the program's actions irrational? Its changed its output for no reason that can be determined by a black box analysis, can that be justified?

Now consider visiting an abattoir. The shock of the dying animals, the blood fear and suffering, either real or imagined, could have a large effect on someone. Its easy to imagine the shock could change someone into a vegetarian. But how can that be rational, as they surly knew where beef came from before visiting the abattoir?

Previously when they eat stake they had pleasant memories of previous meals. Now instead all they get is a picture of the abattoir. One might speculate that the neural links leading from memories associated with steak and chips has changed. Now there strongest links are to memories of their abattoir outing. The structure of the links in their web of memories have been changed by their experience.

My example of the computer program being reprogrammed was not an analogy so much as an example of the identical effect.

Why not? It might not be rational for someone who prefers apple to pears to eat pears in preferences to apples. But consider someone who by some trauma (maybe eating an apple with a maggot in it) changes from someone who prefers apples to pears to someone who prefers pears to apples. It now would make prefect sense for them to chose pears in preference to apples.

Of course the rational they give for choosing the pears over the apples will likely be thoroughly muddled. But that's something else.

If some trauma changes me from being a person with one opinion to someone with a different one. Then that is what happens.

Are such traumatic changes generally better or worse for the individual? Well off the top of my head say 40:40:20, Worse:Same:Better. However if it makes ones situation worse you can fight against it, and a well balanced person should be able to get over many bad experiences. So that in the long run it might end up as 10:60:30, Worse:Same:Better. Which would suggest trauma changing peoples actions in significant ways is a long term advantage, which is likely why it still happens. At least that how it seems it might work to me.

Clearly, "thinking persons" never update their beliefs based on new information.

That is actually a really difficult one to answer. I would like to be me. I didn't need to see the video.

I like stake and chips, I have never visited an abattoir. These are not coincidences.

Posters are still ignoring my stipulation that the people who are changing their opinion based on emotional factors are acknowledging it to be irrational. I'm not talking about times its may be rational to change. Their only argument, and the only argument I was interested in discussing is that this acknowledged irrationality is an acceptable tradeoff to them if the alternative is to be the type of person who can fight it off.

Steak.

I think you might be confusing the concepts rational, reasonable and emotional. Squeamishness is not rational.

They aren't going to be able to give an answer you are going to be willing to accept. You have read Thinking Fast and Slow, right?

Ya, of the two Memes, one is harder to justify to an SMP audience.

He actually might as well have asked whether everyone is satisfied with their thinking style and capacity for post-hoc rationalization.

I would like to be more "Spockish" regarding certain situations. I think I tend to react irrationally at times and when I look back at it I say to myself, "What was I thinking?" In the moment, ration is clouded by emotion and that leads to irrational decisions in my experience.

How can one become more Spockish and less emotionally driven?

Just curious, what makes you think people are glad that they are this way? I know I'm not.

You can train yourself. I know some people are glad they are influenceable by professional influencers because they have told me.

It is not really irrational behavior. Viewing the punch simply has a stronger effect to a human being than being told about the punch. The closer your senses get to something the stronger you will feel. If you have someone in your family run down by a drunk driver you are going to almost certainly have a stronger reaction when someone gets a light sentence for a similar act than you would if you hadn't been so close to a similar situation.

If your father was in the armed forces you are going to likely have stronger feeling for vets, wounded vets, nationalistic rah rah causes, etc., and you will be more sentimental to those things than if you father did not serve. Seeing is a stronger sense than hearing. If you hear about a beheading it sounds bad, but only when you actually see it to you really get the lesson.

If before you picked up your meat at the grocery store you had to witness the slaughtering of the animal, you would likely view the grocery store experience a bit different.

If there was video of the crimes that were committed by banks when they were giving 500K loans to janitors, and also video of the behind the scenes favoritism of all of the shenanigans going on during the bailouts, then the public would be demanding prison for lots of people.

If someone tells you that they just saw the sexiest woman they had ever seen it can only mean so much. If you see the woman with your own eyes and agree with that statement, then things have changed.

It is not irrational, it is more about how our minds work. That is why people buy TIDE for two and three times as much as the house generic brand, when it is all the same chemicals. They are influenced by what they see in the ads. There aren't any TIDE radio commercials. That product needs to be seen in ads.

I mean, there is a saying/song that says believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. Seeing is believing. It is a stronger sense, and it changes the dynamic in lots of things. How many blind degenerate gamblers are there? Blind sports bettors? It's all in the eyes, and how the eyes connect to your senses and shape your mind.

If you bought an extremely volatile stock that was moving back and forth a ton during a short period of time, if you watched that price change constantly you would develop fear when the there was a swift and sudden swing down. That fear would be stronger than if someone was reporting it to you. You would be more inclined to panic sell if you saw the price drop lower and lower with your eyes. That is why people who don't stare at stock quotes generally do better than those who do.

One man's Spockish is another man's sociopathic.

Philosophically, I lean towards the belief that we do not have an ethical duty to be rational, so I am open to the idea that it is morally permissible to be irrational in at least some cases. The range of acceptable goals for the kind of lives we want to lead includes varying degrees of rationality.

What is it like to be a psychopath? Curious healthy minds are curious about yours just as much as we are about those with other afflictions.

Tell that to ER docs, airline pilots or trial judges. Sociopaths may share some traits with those who strive not to be influenced by irrational emotions but they are not the same. The saying may be clever but it is really only words that people who aren't as honest about themselves as Lestat, might use to justify their not well thought out thoughts.

My thoughts exactly. People have much less control/understanding over their own thinking patterns and processes than they realize.

Derail:

Ok, the above deserves its own thread.

Mark Twain Quote:

An ignorance so shining and conspicuous as yours--now I have it--go on a jury. That is your place.
- New York Weekly, 7/14/1873 (letter originally written to Josh Billings, 3/1873).

/derail

I object to this. Where aren't I honest? I think I'm honest to a fault. I readily admit my intellectual shortcomings and my problem (ADD?) in having the necessary patience required to think something through properly.

I also admit that this isn't the best way to live life and if I could change it, I would. In fact, I've gotten much better at it now.

For the record, I think I would be good at those jobs you mentioned with proper training. An airline pilot, an ER doc, or a trial judge. In fact, these were all careers I had interest in and wanted to choose, but didn't have the schooling means to achieve my dream of becoming one.

Although it just now occurred to me that in my impatience I may have missed read this too. Are you saying that I'm one of the people that are honest? That wasn't clear on a quick first read. So I apologize. This is stuff I do all the time and I want to rid myself of it. Mostly I avoid posts I don't think I have a good handle on a post and I either take way more time responding to it, or neglected it altogether, since it's too much work to plod through.