Poll: Think you think straight? Think again...

[conflictofinterests]

Spoiler

Mine was fairly high, but in all of the cases there were other matters to take into consideration. They were too complicated to be answered by a 'yes' or 'no.'

Spoiler: Example

Questions 16 and 21: What should be legal?

70506 of the 172162 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
The government should not permit the sale of treatments which have not been tested for efficacy and safety
And also that:
Alternative and complementary medicine is as valuable as mainstream medicine

If alternative medicines are tested, I don't see a problem.

"You know what they call alternative medicines that actually work?... Medicine" - Tim Minchin

And there was a point in time when vaccines were considered insane and not worth testing.

We won't know what works without lab testing.

And they'll be called alternative medicines until proven otherwise.

If a loved one has a life threatening injury and a strange women walks up to you and says "Here, put this (ominous looking) dust into their wound and it'll save their life".

Would you?

If she claims that it's an alternative medicine would it be necessarily be a good idea to let her pour some strange dust into your partner?

Didn't think so, not because it's close minded to dismiss her claim, but because you are going to want an ambulance to come with some scientifically proven medication.

Perhaps if the dust is proven to be scientifically valuable then it wouldn't be called alternative medicine. Anyone can claim something is medicine, you agreed that until it's been proven there's no way to guaruntee it's value.

I didn't say it should be the only medicine used, just that it's worth further study.

The answer you picked indicated that alternative medicine was AS VALUABLE AS mainstream medicine. Basically you said that unproven medicine is as valuable as proven medicine. To which one might respond: But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

 

[SwimmingRock]

I got 7%, but only because the dumbass test isn't as sematically precise as I am.

This is precisely my problem. I got 20% and it gives me a rundown of how I disagreed with myself on 3 subjects. However, I considered what it tells me it believes I think while trying to answer the questions and came to a conclusion entirely different from theirs, because their definitions of the statements aren't the same as mine. Similarly, a lack of a "don't care" option caused a conflicting result that's not actually a conflict in my mind.

 

[ProjectTrinity]

Spoiler

Questions 17-28: Are there any absolute truths?

59480 of the 173030 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
There are no objective truths about matters of fact; 'truth' is always relative to particular cultures and individuals
And also that:
The holocaust is an historical reality, taking place more or less as the history books report

If truth is relative then nothing is straightforwardly 'true' or 'factual'. Everything is 'true for someone' or 'a fact for them'. What then, of the holocaust? Is it true that millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other 'enemies' of the Third Reich were systematically executed by the Nazis? If you believe that there are no objective truths, you have to say that there is no straight answer to this question. For some people, the holocaust is a fact, for others, it is not. So what can you say to those who deny it is a fact? Are they not as entitled to their view as you are to yours? How can one both assert the reality of the holocaust and deny that there is a single truth about it? Resolving this intellectual tension is a real challenge.

Questions 22 and 15: What is the seat of the self?

54067 of the 173030 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
Severe brain-damage can rob a person of all consciousness and selfhood
And also that:
On bodily death, a person continues to exist in a non-physical form

These two beliefs are not strictly contradictory, but they do present an awkward mix of world-views. On the one hand, there is an acceptance that our consciousness and sense of self is in some way dependent on brain activity, and this is why brain damage can in a real sense damage 'the self'. Yet there is also the belief that the self is somehow independent of the body, that it can live on after the death of the brain. So it seems consciousness and selfhood both is and is not dependent on having a healthy brain. One could argue that the dependency of the self on brain only occurs before bodily death. The deeper problem is not that it is impossible to reconcile the two beliefs, but rather that they seem to presume wider, contradictory world-views: one where consciousness is caused by brains and one where it is caused by something non-physical.

Questions 16 and 21: What should be legal?

70745 of the 173030 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
The government should not permit the sale of treatments which have not been tested for efficacy and safety
And also that:
Alternative and complementary medicine is as valuable as mainstream medicine

But most alternative and complementary medicines have not been tested in trials as rigorously as 'conventional' medicine. For example, the popular herbal anti-depressant, St John's Wort, has recently been found to cause complications when taken alongside any of five other common medicines. This has only come to light because of extensive testing. Yet the product is freely available without medical advice. The question that needs answering here is, why do you believe alternative medicines and treatments need not be as extensively tested as conventional ones? The fact that they use natural ingredients is not in itself good reason, as there are plenty of naturally occurring toxins. Even if one argues that their long history shows them to be safe, that is not the same as showing them to be effective. This is not to criticise alternative therapies, but to question the different standards which are used to judge them compared to mainstream medicines.

I am a 20%, but the reasons they gave me were bat-stupid. Based on the Holocaust. If one person doesn't believe, and I do believe, who am I to say that he's wrong? I think that's a bit of a stretch to peg me 10% with, and the medicine thing felt like a cheapshot.

 

[Spleenboy]

Atheism generally isn't a faith though... it's the lack of faith.

There aren't many atheists that will say they are for sure 100% there is and can be no god. Without a way to prove it, that idea becomes a faith. Such people are severely lacking in the logic department.

There shouldn't be ANY atheists that say there can be no God. It isn't possible to disprove the existence of God, but that doesn't mean He cannot exist, merely that He most likely does not. In a case where there can be no proof for either option, it is always a matter of faith.

There shouldn't also be anyone who claims that God does exist without proving that he exists. Yet many do... People are weird.

I agree. Atheists should not say God cannot exist, and therefore certainly doesn't, as they cannot prove that. Theists should not say that God certainly does exist, for the same reason.

Both groups being wrong when they say these things changes nothing though, it's still all a matter of faith.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

EDIT:
Just took the test. 13% contradiction quotient. Though, I must wonder if part of that is due to the fact that I was partially prepared in such a way with your original post.

Felt like I was responsible for too much rage If I didn't haha.

I meant to single out physical harm in that question by the way.

Physical harm, yeah sure, go ahead and do whatever you want, as long as it's in the dark corner of the world and you have no one that could possibly love and care about your well being and didn't have an impact on anyone's life during your lifetime. Then yeah, sure, shoot 'er up.

Okay, that's some serious generalizing I just did, but I feel like I've done well in my 20 years of life despite all the bad and potentially bad parts mainly by considering these ideas.

 

[Ladette]

Of course I don't think straight, I haven't thought straight since my freshman year of high school. Budum-tish!

..........................

I'll get my coat.

 

[Raven's Nest]

I didn't say it should be the only medicine used, just that it's worth further study.

Of course, without innovation and experimentation, knowledge stagnates.

But the question wanted you to consider that not all alternative medicines are useful and that if you agreed that all medicines should be tested before being dispensed, you shouldn't allow the use of potentially harmful medicines.

 

[-Ulven-]

20% I always contradict my own thoughts in a philosophical manner

And my friends always say that I am a natural leader of chaos XD

 

[Jackpot524]

Example:
"Its always wrong to take a life?"
this is where it should have "depends" button
no one should kill, but then again sometime bitches got to die (im looking at you al-quadaffi)
so why it may not be RIGHT it may also be NECESSARY at the same time.

Key for this one is "ALWAYS," Agreeing means that there is absolutely no reason to ever take a life, Disagreeing means that taking a life could be justified...

So you "Disagree" with this statement.

"It is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence"
but what if there is evidence to support it, but its not recognized as valid evidence by some?

I'm a bit confused by your objection to this one... I think you might be taking this to heart on a particular subject.

Assuming that's the case, let's scratch that particular issue because you see the evidence for it's existence... Now, if there was NO evidence for the existance of a particular thing would you think it was reasonable to believe in it or not?

"Having made a choice, it is always possible that one might have chosen otherwise"
what the hell does that even mean? isnt that the point of 'a choice' the fact i could have chosen other wise? maby i'm missing the point, but im not exactly sure what these have to do with thinking straight.

You pretty much explained it yourself there, you "Agree," This just means you feel people have an internal locus of control and can make choices. As opposed to an external locus of control where things will just happen to them and whatever happened was their destiny.


Do you have any issues with what I said? Just let me know!

 

[Raven's Nest]

I agree. Atheists should not say God cannot exist, and therefore certainly doesn't, as they cannot prove that. Theists should not say that God certainly does exist, for the same reason.

Both groups being wrong when they say these things changes nothing though, it's still all a matter of faith.

For both of those extremes yes, the belief becomes a faith. But there are people on both sides that have doubts. Agnosticism is ripe amongst atheists, not so much amongst theists as they choose to have faith regardless, but they do exist.

Physical harm, yeah sure, go ahead and do whatever you want, as long as it's in the dark corner of the world and you have no one that could possibly love and care about your well being and didn't have an impact on anyone's life during your lifetime. Then yeah, sure, shoot 'er up.

Okay, that's some serious generalizing I just did, but I feel like I've done well in my 20 years of life despite all the bad and potentially bad parts mainly by considering these ideas.

Considering that a child witnessing someone injecting heroin is unlikely to either know that it is heroin (and that it is harmful to the body if abused) nor is it particularly likely to cause them to start injecting themselves. I don't see how witnessing the act can cause physical harm.

The response of the typical adult would most likely be one of disgust, again not exactly harmful in a physical sense.

The question is about personal freedoms however. If you agree that people should do what they want so long as they don't harm others (physically), you should also agree that drugs should be legalised for personal use. If you don't there is a conflict between your understanding of freedom and personal responsibility.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I wonder how we could re-state the statements to be both more all-encompassing and more layman-friendly.

I wonder if there is a way to circumvent the words "objective" and "subjective" entirely...

 

[Baneat]

"High - I'm the leader of the Liberal Democrats"

Can you list some examples of contradictions the Lib Dems hold? just curious, haven't actually looked into modern political philosophies employed by parties yet.

I wonder how we could re-state the statements to be both more all-encompassing and more layman-friendly.

I wonder if there is a way to circumvent the words "objective" and "subjective" entirely...

Hm, "Matter of taste/opinion" and "Matter of fact"?

I see the issue here, the guy's reaching out to people with a layman's interest and blindsiding them with terminology that stretches into srs bsnss

 

[s0m3th1ng]

Knowing what the test is for kind of skews the results a bit. Kind of like those "personality" tests for job interviews that ask a question several different ways to see if you are telling the truth about your personality. I got a zero percent because I was trying to fuck the test up. I also always play Chaotic Neutral if the option is there so...maybe I just loike to play the system and cause havoc?

 

[crudus]

I enjoy how it said "In order for there not to be a contradiction you need to..." and I was doing all of that while taking the test.

I actually did misread one of the questions though which it marked me off for. I read "The second world war was just a war" rather than "a just war". The test says 20% but I would say 0-7.

 

[OutforEC]

I was at 13% But I still have played mostly Chaotic Neutral characters in D&D So what does that make me?

A roleplayer?

 

[Eroen]

Okay, so now I have dismissed a (semi-)long list of statements as false, as they were based on false dichotomies and false absolutes, whereupon I'm told that further false dichotomies are present in my answers, indicating "tension."

Not impressed. Also, about ⅓ of the questions (presumably) only make sense from a North American POW.

Specific problems (from my list of "tensions," as it is ready at hand) which nullifies the specific "tensions" I was presented with:
- I consider "evil" to be an expression of cultural values. I recognize this might be different from the common opinion.
- I don't believe prohibitions by law to necessarily stop me from doing anything, they only control (potential) consequences. A lobotomy on the other hand, might stop me from accomplishing my goals.
- The consumption of "drugs" in the general sense includes (empirically observed) "harm to others." Simple examples: Increased government spending on healthcare. Unpleasantness, especially in the case of needle heroin.
- When questioned on matters of taste, my best/only resource for answers is *my* taste.
- In order for a procedure to be classified as medicine (alternative or otherwise), I believe it must be provably more effective than placebo. This is the case for some "alternative" procedures and not for some "mainstream" procedures. In the both cases this is generally simple, albeit controversial, to test by experiment.

Some of these points are lampshaded in their accompanying texts, but none are justified. However, there is an abundance of hand-waving.

I believe this demonstrates part of the reason I regard certain academic disciplines as "lesser" than others. Some of us actually (rigorously) prove our hypotheses, rather than state them as facts and wait for believers.

Uh...

I realize you consider morality to be subjective, but somewhere you picked an answer that indicated you believed otherwise. Or you believe there is at least ONE objective moral imperative, but then said all cultures have different moralities, which I would think a scientist would see the contradiction there.

I agree you have a point with some drugs, the question was poorly worded, but the sense the question was trying to convey was closely related to the legalization of marijuana which has been argued to be only as deleterious as or less deleterious than alcohol, which apparently falls under the heading "only hurts oneself"

For the art one, though it was poorly worded, it was checking for consistency with objective value in art. The statement was "Michelangelo IS" not "I think Michelangelo to be" or any derivation thereof.

As for your point on medicine, you appear to desire controls on medicine, and to ignore the fact that alternative medicine does not have to jump through the hoops mainstream medicine has to (or at least is supposed to).

Anyways, you have a superior air about you. Might I point out that science has never PROVEN anything. It only disproves things, and what is left is accepted as true FOR NOW.

1. The division was between morality being subjective and the (implicit) assumption that evil is objective.
2. 3. My main point was that most of the questions were sufficiently poorly worded to make the result hinge on the reader noticing the word "all," "always" or something similar.
4. The main disagreement here comes from an unclear definition of "medicine."
5. When I describe a method I believe to be better than some alternative and then proceed to do controlled measurements on the two, resulting in a quantified difference in performance with a known confidence value, it is said to be "empirically proven." If I ask a group of people poorly worded questions and count the answers I have something that can be used for analyzing reading comprehension and habits, not a valid psychiatric theory. The latter happens far to often.

 

[mechanixis]

I got 20% Tension.

Questions 1 and 27: Is morality relative?

76516 of the 172834 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
There are no objective moral standards; moral judgements are merely an expression of the values of particular cultures
And also that:
Acts of genocide stand as a testament to man's ability to do great evil

The tension between these two beliefs is that, on the one hand, you are saying that morality is just a matter of culture and convention, but on the other, you are prepared to condemn acts of genocide as 'evil'. But what does it mean to say 'genocide is evil'? To reconcile the tension, you could say that all you mean is that to say 'genocide is evil' is to express the values of your particular culture. It does not mean that genocide is evil for all cultures and for all times. However, are you really happy to say, for example, that the massacre of the Tutsi people in 1994 by the Hutu dominated Rwandan Army was evil from the point of view of your culture but not evil from the point of view of the Rwandan Army, and what is more, that there is no sense in which one moral judgement is superior to the other? If moral judgements really are 'merely the expression of the values of a particular culture', then how are the values which reject genocide and torture at all superior to those which do not?

I was simply expressing my own personal interpretation of Morality. In my view, genocide, in most cases would be wrong, although, there could be exceptions depending on the circumstance. Otherwise, I fully accept that this my own personal interpretation of morality, which is a subjective invention to begin with.

My beliefs on Morality are essentially just personal opinions. Not everyone is going to agree with me and there is no true standard, nor does morality technically even exist, it's a fictional invention of sentient thought.

This is not a contradiction.

I think your mistake with a lot of these questions is that they never actually asked for your opinion, only what you think is objectively true. The question was "Is genocide inherently evil?", not "In your opinion, is genocide evil?"

If genocide is objectively evil, then evil objectively exists, and therefore morality is objective.

 

[bpm195]

13% and I contend that my beliefs are not actually contradictory. I condemned genocide and also said that there is no objective morals, which in retrospect I should have answered as yes because there are very few objective moral standards.

More alarmingly, it called it contradictory that I believe that price shouldn't be a factor when it comes it saving lives, but I don't believe in arbitrary taxation to do it. I do believe it's every persons obligation to help each other, but I don't believe it's anybody's right to force that belief on others. To use a practical example, I don't believe the American government has the right to take a dollar from every citizen to aid Japan, but I do think you're a dick if you refuse to give at least a dollar.

You could reasonably follow that logic to me being a hypocrite for not donating everything I can, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I'm not a perfect person or living a perfect life.

 

[Chrinik]

Atheist - Meaning one who does not believe in Gods. This does automatically assume the statement "There are no Gods".

Fixed! There are a ton of hypothetical and possible gods...and most religious seem to be politheistic, so there.

I just had 7%, my undoing was:

You agreed that:
The environment should not be damaged unnecessarily in the pursuit of human ends
But disagreed that:
People should not journey by car if they can walk, cycle or take a train instead

Which was actually more or less a typo...should have rechecked my answeres better.
This test is great, particulary because it showed me I´m not a hypocrit, at least as far as the test goes...might pass it around, thanks.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I also think the test is somewhat flawed, but I sort of like the idea. I was 27% and most of my problems came from the questions using double negatives. I wouldn't prefer if it did not not do that. The other thing is the utter lack of relative relationships. I said it's okay to drive a car when you could walk, but I also said we shouldn't destroy the environment without good reason. The single act of one man driving one car to make his life slightly more convenient is not the same thing as tearing down the tree of life in Avatar.

I also said there are no objective moral standards, but also said genocide was bad. The former just acknowledges that genocide exists, not that I think it's okay. One is an opinion, the other is fact. A lot of the questions are like that.