[Darryl_P]

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Can those core values ever be irrationally constructed?


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I don't think so. Rationality can only start from a set of givens. It cannot start from a vacuum. The givens, by definition, must come from a source outside of rationality and are therefore neither rational nor irrational.

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[One of the best examples I can think of is a no-talent adolescent with dreams of hitting it big in the music industry and becoming a rock star. It's not that uncommon of a scenario, but the fulfillment of those wishes is EXTREMELY uncommon. Most adolescents don't realize (or defiantly ignore) just how difficult and unlikely such a result is, and almost all eventually become disappointed. Some become slacking adults with similarly juvenile aspirations that are impossible.


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True, and I would argue that neither their actions per se nor the values behind them are irrational. They may say a lot of irrational things when discussing their actions, though, indicating they have not fully come to terms with their own state of being. In fact, I'd say that happens in over 99% of the cases.

One possible rational explanation for their actions is that they want to test themselves to see how far they can go. They can maximize their chances relative to their own abilities if they truly believe they can reach the top. Tricking themselves to overvalue their chances is one of their internal techniques to maximize their expected utility. I'm not saying this is necessarily how it is for everyone, just one possibility to show there exist scenarios in which behaving that way may not be irrational.

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I consider rational paradigms to be those that are conducive to actions that are most likely to result in happiness (the definition of which is unfortunatel complicated), while factoring in the dimension of time (an action that yields immediate happiness at the expense of future happiness, like shooting heroin, is not always rational). What do you think?

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I agree with what constitutes a rational paradigm and also with the extreme difficulty in defining happiness (for ourselves, leave alone for others), especially over long periods of time. And I would even argue that the heroin shooter might actually be maximizing his own long-term happiness by shooting heroin (!), assuming he knew enough about the effects of the drug before getting into it. For whatever reason, testing the limits might be of extremely high value to him. Only he can know that. If it's of high enough value, then taking huge risks would be the rational course of action for him. As an outside observer, I would sooner assume there is something about his underlying values that makes his actions rational than assume that he's not acting in accordance with his own underlying values. The reason is simply based on the statistics of prior observations that I have made in situations when I've been able to get a lot of information and analyse things deeply.