I got 20%
To be honest, I found some questions where I genuinely didn't find either option to feel 'right'
Also, the conflicts it lists for me show that they're playing very finicky wordgames, that I disagree with the reasoning.
For instance:
"
Questions 12 and 30: Is the future fixed?
22939 of the 173478 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.
You agreed that:
Having made a choice, it is always possible that one might have chosen otherwise
And also that:
The future is fixed, how one's life unfolds is a matter of destiny
Most people think that humans have free will. Yet many of the same people believe in fate, or destiny. But how can both beliefs be true? If 'what will be, will be' no matter what we do, then how can we have freedom? For example, imagine I am in a shop, deciding whether to buy one of two coats. If one believes in fate or destiny, then it must be true that it is inevitable which coat I buy. In which case, when I stand before them, choosing, it must be an illusion that I have a genuine choice, as fate has decreed that there is, in fact, only one choice I can make. I seem to be making my own mind up, but forces beyond my control have already determined which way I choose. This makes it untrue that 'having made a choice, it is always possible that one might have chosen otherwise'. So reconciling belief in destiny and free will is a tricky task."
I guess the wording of 'always' caught me out here, but from my point of view this isn't logical. The future being fixed doesn't mean I know what the future is, and just because I made a particular decision doesn't mean I couldn't have made a different one. (or rather, that what happened was the only possible outcome possible in the circumstances.)
I guess the real source of this conflict is that I essentially believe in the 'multiverse' concept, which implies that all possible choices happen at once, but in parallel worlds.
This implies both that the future is fixed, but that all the possible alternatives also happen anyway.
(taken as a whole, if every single possible option happens, then there is in fact, no choice, merely a question of which particular universe you perceive as being the correct one.)
"Questions 5 and 29: Can you put a price on a human life?
42034 of the 173478 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.
You agreed that:
The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives
But disagreed that:
Governments should be allowed to increase taxes sharply to save lives in the developing world
If the right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to making decisions about saving human lives, then that must mean that we should always spend as much money as possible to save lives. If it costs £4 million to save a cancer patient's life, that money should be spent, period. But if this is true, then surely the West should spend as much money as possible saving lives in the developing world. You may already give $100 dollars a month to save lives in the developing world. But if financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to saving lives, why not $200, or $1000, or just as much as you can afford? If you do not do so, you are implicitly endorsing the principle that individuals and governments are not obliged to save lives at all financial cost - that one can spend 'enough' on saving lives even though spending more, which one could afford to do, would save more lives. This suggests that financial considerations are relevant when it comes to making decisions about saving lives - there is a limit to how much one should spend to save a life."
That's probably a genuine conflict in my mind, but I was really uncertain about which answer to choose for the 'right to life' question.
"Questions 22 and 15: What is the seat of the self?
54213 of the 173478 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."
That is straight out not right. It's the most obvious example of being forced to give a true/false answer, when my actual inclination is to say 'neither' to the second question. (Or "I don't know")
It's an obvious conflict, but mainly one forced upon me by the structure of the questions, rather than a real mental conflict.
