Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
I'm all for analysis and research and informed decision making, but I don't think that these activities are necessary for a decision to be logical. I agree with the principle of what you're saying.
I just don't think that the concept of "logic" as it is defined colloquially is necessarily all that useful in evaluating the validity of a perspective. The concept of logic is meaningless if one is to take it in any sort of absolute sense. If one wants to be that strict about it, there are no ideas which are completely logically valid, which means every idea is illogical, including the idea that logically valid ideas are better than logically invalid ideas.
Fortunately there's really no need to be strict about it, because logic is the kind of thing that can be based off of completely arbitrary assumptions. If one assumes that fitting in with their family is more important than fitting in with the scientific community, then a completely logical result of this might be for that person to remain purposefully ignorant of anything facts which disagree with their parents' perspective.
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1. Gaining information is very important to making good and correct decisions. Sure someone with piss poor information can only act on that information to come to a conclusion therefore their logic can be fine, but the bottom line is, the answer to which they conclude will likely be false. Also Our universe plays by rules that at the micro level adhere to time and space and therefore logic is the most important thing that leads to truth and understanding. Without logic you don't have an understanding of math, language or anything else for that matter.
2. Again if you define better being more truthful and relevant to things, then yes logical ideas are better. If someone who is wearing a chicago bears t-shirt swears at someone and then gets punched out, logic is what tells us his swearing at that person provoked great anger in which served as the outlet to the physical attack. This logic can then be used to avoid this problem in the future. In this example that's quite frankly the reason for the attack 99.9%. Someone with poor critical thinking could say the guy who was sworn at saw the kid had a bears t-shirt and because of that attacked him. Good logic and reasoning skills is what points to the truth which then can be used to successfully plan things in the future to the outcome you desire.
3. If that person doesn't care about what is true, right and just, then yes for him being purposely ignorant could be good for him, which would be a logical decision. But I really think most people care about the truth (at least i hope) they just get lost.