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

[pearcinator]

40% with many contridictions...and I knew they would point out these contridictions.

However, the questions dont take context into account.

 

[Nihilism_Is_Bliss]

13%
But I stand firm the two 'contradictions' I had were rational, and don't always contradict with one another.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I ended up with a strait up "Tension Quotient = 0%"
Guess that comes with the nihilism.

 

[gbemery]

I love how they put up complex, multiple-point statements and then ask you to agree or disagree with the whole thing. Lovely questionnaire, I could only answer a few of 'em, so... no score.

Yeah agreed. The makers of the test put forth the assumption that there is only black or white and not middle ground on anything. Majority of their questions are multi-point and are subjective to the point of how are you asking the question and what are you comparing it to.

I got a 33% but all the tension is reduced to zero because of the lack of clarity the question's subject manner relates. It was obvious what types of contradictions it was going for before it ever gives the score but then out of the two complimentary questions that are given they are worded to steer you towards a contradiction by being either too vague or too exact in one and not the other.

Lol i also like how the wording in the poll pretty much feels like the OP is saying "only those who understand philosophy are less "tense"" I also take it the OP doesn't like liberal democrats.

 

[zedel]

Oddly enough, most of my 33% "tension" arose based upon a question's wording. In addition, two of my questions were deemed contradictory based on incompatibilism despite my being a compatibilist. : / Really, this test has soo much wiggle room.

 

[conflictofinterests]

13%

Not that I can trust any score, for this reason:

Those statements are designed to come into conflict with each other. My apologies for not making the questions a little clearer.

Seriously, you don't get honest results by intentionally making things vague and easily interpreted the wrong way. It only results in people meaning to express their belief one way and the test interpreting their answer another way and telling them how they disagree with themselves.

It's not like you can't take the test again with full knowledge of the implications of each answer.

You mean get 0% now that you're considering your own philosophy through someone else's eyes. This whole thing is really just a test of how lucky you are in guessing what someone else means with an ambiguous statement, and a re-take is how well you can suck up to someone else's view of philosophy.

No. It's meant to show you how someone else views your philosophy so you can better evaluate it yourself. Also, it's not so ambiguously worded that you couldn't figure out what it meant if you cared to try. It's meant to be taken as literally and objectively as possible. A lot of what it has to do with is objective truths in general, in morality, and so forth. There are some parts that need clarification, but I dare you to make a clearer quiz.

Anyways, it's from a grekoroman philosophical base, so it pretty much only indicates tensions if you are also from that philosophical arena.

And yeah. Being able to view your own philosophy through someone else's eyes is a valuable tool for figuring out if you like your own belief system or not (something which few people actually explore)

I can get 0% when using other people's definitions for words. I can look at one question, answer it absentmindedly, then look at a related question and answer it how I know the creator of the test wants me to answer it. That has less significance than taking it the first time.

Viewing my own philosophy through someone else's eyes can only help me figure out if they like my own belief system. Considering someone else's questions alone is fine for evaluating myself, but someone else telling me about my own beliefs defeats the purpose of exploration of my own beliefs.

As for a more clear quiz, there is no such thing as a clear quiz with answers. The best "quiz" would simply be a list of questions to consider, with no right or wrong answers, and no final results given. Not questions intentionally designed to trip the reader up and warp their view, but just questions that make the reader think.

This is not that kind of thing. This is just another just-for-fun internet quiz, no more meaningful than "How many Justin Biebers can you take in a fight?" and I could've even ignored this as another just-for-fun internet quiz if it weren't for the people, including you and op, who insist that it's so much more.

It doesn't have right or wrong answers, it has answers that conflict with each other or don't. In general, the answers it picks out as conflicting DO conflict, so it's not absolutely meaningless.

Also, as a linguistic anthropologist, not attempting to understand diction doesn't make one's evaluation of another's question more meaningful. If someone asked me if I'd checked under my bonnet recently and I replied that I don't wear hats, neither of us would be gaining anything useful from the conversation. If I recognized the other person was from a different speech community and used the word "bonnet" instead of the word "hood" in reference to where a car's engine is accessed from, we would be able to converse on the same level then.

 

[RevRaptor]

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.

I got this, I believe this point of view is overly simplified and just plain wrong. firstly it is wrong to reject health care biased on a persons finical status. Yes there should be an upper limit on how much is spent to save lives. However if you disagree that 'The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives' then you are basicly saying it is ok for company's to use sick people as a means of making money and that its ok to let people die because they can not afford health care. The question is flawed.

2nd I fail to see how the first question relates to the second question. people in the west are in no way responsible for the state of third world country's. It's their mess not ours, a country's government first responsibility it to it's own people first and foremost.

I really don't see how this test can work they way they say it will, the issues it asks about are too complex and the choices you get to pick from are too narrow to cover all the angles.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

27%. Yet the conflicts in my replies can easily be explained or justified when not limiting yourself to those answers. Not sure what to think about this test.

 

[Paddin]

I got 13%, I got caught out by the environment question and the "can we please ourselves?" question.

The environment one I had to reconsider after looking at it but the other one, about limiting rights of people who do no harm to others and should we stop people doing recreational drugs, I can justify to myself. It's good I got low, otherwise it would have shed some dubious light on me currently taking Philosophy at university. I'm going to try out some of the other "games" on this website, they seem interesting

 

[kuros_overkill]

33%

Though for most of the pairings that I have in contention I did have to think long and hard about one of the two questions.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Limiting your options to yes or no, followed by the writer elaborating while the participant cannot. Kind of fundamentally flawed..."I present a counter argument, but I do not allow you to do the same. Haha!"

20% according to it, by the way...

 

[conflictofinterests]

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.

I got this, I believe this point of view is overly simplified and just plain wrong. firstly it is wrong to reject health care biased on a persons finical status. Yes there should be an upper limit on how much is spent to save lives. However if you disagree that 'The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives' then you are basicly saying it is ok for company's to use sick people as a means of making money and that its ok to let people die because they can not afford health care. The question is flawed.

2nd I fail to see how the first question relates to the second question. people in the west are in no way responsible for the state of third world country's. It's their mess not ours, a country's government first responsibility it to it's own people first and foremost.

I really don't see how this test can work they way they say it will, the issues it asks about are too complex and the choices you get to pick from are too narrow to cover all the angles.

You don't believe that "The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives" because even here you think that there should be a cap on the amount of money used to save lives, which makes financial considerations relevant.

You aren't contradictory at all.

EDIT: Negating a statement does not always imply its inverse. Saying Suzy is not tall does not mean she is short. She could be average height.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

YAY AMATEUR PHILOSOPHY!

If we want to go down this road, I have some bones to pick with you.

Your definition of objectivity assumes a Platonic concept of truth. You almost definitely don't want to assume that, especially if you're talking about theoretical inconsistency. In fact, the difference between objectivity and subjectivity is hard to define to the extent that you end up wanting to say that there is one at all. Thankfully, eliminating that divide doesn't necessarily cause too many problems if one thinks deeply enough.

A really, really nice paper on subjectivity/objectivity in science (and a lot of other things) for any who are actually interested:

Pylyshyn 1973 [http://nirvana.ucsc.edu/Courses/0910/Ling155/Readings/pylyshyn1973.pdf]

I'd love to get the chance to talk about these slightly more substantial issues in PMs if anyone actually cares about them.

More on topic: I don't really think these tensions are quite as damning as you make them out to be. You're basically just showing that ethical judgments are contextual rather than absolute, which really isn't saying much at all since even "absolute" judgments are relative to a particularly wide, though not unlimited, context (we wouldn't necessarily try to apply them to a wholly different existence for instance, where they might not make any sense at all). So in a context without anything more specific, you think that people should be free to make their own decisions and live out their lives doing what they want so long as they don't hurt anyone else. In a context in which a person sat next to you on a park bench and injected themselves with heroin in front of you and your kids, you think they should be arrested. The two aren't contradictory because the contexts are distinct.

TL;DR: You're getting stuck thinking of morality in terms of contextual morality conflicting with absolute morality (morality without a context). In actuality, the concept of absolute morality is incoherent. Once you have contextual morality versus contextual morality, the "inconsistency" evaporates - they're just different contexts.

 

[Brownie101]

47%. Well, I've said before I'm a ragin hypocrite.
Half of the contradictions, though, I either misread the question or interpreted it differently.

 

[ronnom 666]

I scored a 0% and ii have a question for debate(as I had a hard time with the question)

Can genocide be right? Lets say there was a non-redeemable evil nation. Everyone in it was a murderer or rapist. They have never produced a helpful thing and never will. They are sitting on the last reserves of wheat, rice and trees and refuse to give any up. Would it be reasonable to eliminate the problem? to kill them? Morally all lives are equal but is it right that we let our people die? should our kind people die for the ungracious rapists and murderers?
(Yes I know this is a little over blown and would never happen but I did it for discussion.)

tl:dr: if a extremely horrible nation(filled with Hitler) was to hold onto all resources would it be right to kill all of them?

 

[Axzarious]

Despite the 20%, and the contradictions, I have already rationalized the results. I consider myself 0, or perhaps only conflicting for the 1 vs 27. Its kind of tricky for me to say where the boundary is, but its there.

 

[Axzarious]

I scored a 0% and ii have a question for debate(as I had a hard time with the question)

Can genocide be right? Lets say there was a non-redeemable evil nation. Everyone in it was a murderer or rapist. They have never produced a helpful thing and never will. They are sitting on the last reserves of wheat, rice and trees and refuse to give any up. Would it be reasonable to eliminate the problem? to kill them? Morally all lives are equal but is it right that we let our people die? should our kind people die for the ungracious rapists and murderers?
(Yes I know this is a little over blown and would never happen but I did it for discussion.)

tl:dr: if a extremely horrible nation(filled with Hitler) was to hold onto all resources would it be right to kill all of them?

In the end, when all is said and done, its survival of the fittest.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I scored a 0% and ii have a question for debate(as I had a hard time with the question)

Can genocide be right? Lets say there was a non-redeemable evil nation. Everyone in it was a murderer or rapist. They have never produced a helpful thing and never will. They are sitting on the last reserves of wheat, rice and trees and refuse to give any up. Would it be reasonable to eliminate the problem? to kill them? Morally all lives are equal but is it right that we let our people die? should our kind people die for the ungracious rapists and murderers?
(Yes I know this is a little over blown and would never happen but I did it for discussion.)

tl:dr: if a extremely horrible nation(filled with Hitler) was to hold onto all resources would it be right to kill all of them?

I find a more relevant subject that of psycho/sociopaths. Those people who have no capacity to feel remorse, who do not form lasting, healthy relationships, who probably inherit their condition genetically and of which a fair amount of worthless assholes and serial killers/rapists are comprised.

I'm not entirely sure I would oppose their extermination...

 

[DRobert]

These two beliefs supposedly contradict one another (paraphrased):
"Judge people only by their merits".
"Positive discrimination is desirable in some circumstances".
But they don't contradict!!! Just because I think that a program to, for example, encourage women to participate in the workforce would be a good thing doesn't mean that I judge them as being more deserving than men. It just means that I take the view that, in the circumstances, the social benefit of the program outweighs the fact that it does not consider the merits of the individual.

It is not me saying that I judge this woman or that as being more deserving of the program; it means that I judge the social benefit as being worth ignoring such judgments.

It's basically saying that you judge the woman not only by her merits, but also by the fact that she was discriminated against in the past. It's not a bad thing to add things other than merit to the equation, it's just a different thing than judging solely based on merit.

I am not judging her on something other than her merits. I am, in fact, not judging her at all (or, if I am, I am not factoring that judgment into my decision making). I am making a decision regarding the institution of the program based not on who is worthy to receive its benefits but on the social utitlity of the program.

Continuing with this analogy, I could judge Jim next door as being a far better scholar than Jane but decide to award a scholarship to Jane because I feel that women have been typically disadvantaged in terms of access to education. That decision does not alter into my initial judgment of Jim or Jane.

I therefore am, both concurrently and legitimately, judging people solely on their merits, whilst viewing positive discrimination as desirable in the circumstances. There is no contradiction.

 

[Mechsoap]

27%, not that bad I suppose, though im not sure what I did.