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Schrodinger's choices.

Here is something I have observed (quite obvious I am aware) I call it Schrodinger's choices.

Basically you never really know if a choice is good or bad til the end. The fact at least seems to be no matter how good a choice you think you made you have no idea how good it is til the end. Honestly, it is a bit of a play on the butterfly effect if you think about it.

For example choice A is good to you but leads to a horrible outcome and choice B is horrendous in your mind but you choose it and it somehow turns out grand.

What are your thoughts on such a thing?

(Side note I prefer the dragonfly version from Fringe. I could write a book about a dragonfly never being caught leads to the apocalypse.)

Malus 4 Feb 6
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13 comments

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Sounds like you're having a bit of a stumble getting past the ethics of consequence. "All's well which ends well." Which is okay, I guess, but in my opinion that's incomplete.

The moral value of a choice is not measured solely in the actual outcome. There is also the reasonably anticipated outcome, and related to that is your subjective intent (which may or may not be reasonable).

Going a step further than this, there is also the perspective of universalization: maybe it's okay if you and only you do this thing, but what if everyone did it?

And then there's also the principle of reciprocality: it may seem okay for you to do action X, but would you be okay with it if someone did action X to you?

And then there is consistency with virtuous behavior. Is your choice consistent with the kinds of choices that are part of a thriving society and a happy life? These are concepts like "honesty," "industriousness," and "generosity."

Let's go down the list. Morality is grey and in reality different to each person much less different regions/countries/whatever.

Okay if I did it but what if everyone else did it. Who says they aren't I would say a majority chooses the so call good choice which could be bad. It does not matter if I do x or if others are allowed to do x to me it will happen either way. Shit happens be it good or bad.

I hear the word virtuous and laugh. That word should not even exist it is useless. At best a way to measure dicks with someone while seeming absolutely eloquent.

Now onto the other thing. Thriving society well we live in a society where a lot of "bad" choices that others would not make happen and it is thriving. In societies where people barely get to make a choice, it is horrid and they are dying daily so in those examples I have flipped the table and shown you you are wrong.

Happy I have no concept of that but it seems like a very grey vague nebulous term what makes me happy will not always make another happy and then some serial killers are only happy when they are bathing in another's blood.

Going to say it now "honesty," "industriousness," and "generosity' < that does not create a happy life. Usually, the opposite if you are good at it.

You think of us as some infallible creatures almost with how that is written. Nope usually the darker the person the easier they have it in life there is, of course, a tipping point but if you balance it right you will be far better off than some stereotypical hero type. I am where I am because I am honest, loyal, loving and caring (or was) if you wondering where I am well it is below the bottom.

Have you read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics?

[classics.mit.edu]

Much of what I discuss here is the product of Aristotle. Maybe you disagree with the arguments there, which again is your prerogative.

But I do bristle at the notion that honesty, industriousness, and generosity are not ingredients in a happy life. The liar, the idler, and the miser are not going to be happy people, even if their lies, indolence, and greed produce pleasure in the short term. (Perhaps you are treating "pleasure" as synonymous with "happiness," something else I'd disagree with.)

I don't follow your argument "Thriving society well we live in a society where a lot of 'bad' choices that others would not make happen and it is thriving. In societies where people barely get to make a choice, it is horrid and they are dying daily so in those examples I have flipped the table and shown you you are wrong." Could you flesh that out with an example?

0

You may never be totally sure of any choice, but informed decisions are still the way to go. No choice is still a choice, & freezing in the headlights gets one nowhere. Ya' pays your money, ya' makes your choice.

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B is horrendous in your mind but you choose it --- I contend that this is impossible unless you are forced. You evaluate the options. The one that seems best is your choice.

Not always some idiots jump off bridges 100s of feet into a river breaking a shit ton of bones while others refuse. The ones who refuse could easily end up in jail while the one who chose to could find his happily ever after per se.

If you evaluate the options and suicide seems the best, well by-by.

The butterfly effect may choose it to be but it is the end of your choices of course.

0

How about not opening the box?

Or the cars trunk?

0

Deep, deep thinking on here....amazing to read! But, on a lighter note...how do some of you decide what to eat for breakast?

I go with my urges or what is simplest if I am tired. I a lot of the time just rely on rice lol. Well, rice and cheese with sandwich meat tossed in. With of course the typical butter, salt, and pepper.

2

You have a choice of your actions. You do not have a choice of the consequences of your actions.

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Ones life is a continuum of decisions, with past decisions affecting the present and the present guiding the future.

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And the cat came back, it just wouldn't stay away. And the cat came back the very next day. Words to a song, I always enjoy. Choices, or paths in a maze with a piece of cheese somewhere.? Free to choose, but not free to define the choices. We don't control the box. Do we really even control the choosing? Gets pretty deep if you think about it, or you can just go blindly on searching for the cheese, wherever it is, or whomever it was that put it there.

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"Basically you never really know if a choice is good or bad til the end."
This assums that:

  1. there is a beginning and an end
  2. we know what is good and bad
  3. that we can "really know" anything
  4. there is a "choice" and we have it
  5. "never" is ever
cava Level 7 Feb 6, 2018

You are correct I am however speaking from a typical human perspective. I mean the end of your days looking back. Good and bad is quite grey indeed but to each person, they have their own so if your life is bad to you or has been and it is what all based on what feels good then you chose the option that felt good with a bad outcome. We can only base our knowing if you wish on what we assume is reality if not we all would go insane eventually because we honestly could all have been born yesterday. The choice and us being able to choose is unlikely but there is a small percentage of it being possible.

5

I am willing to go a ?step? further: you will never know if a choice is good or bad, because once it is made, it is only a sum of other choices that were made before it and one more choice added to future choices. And even if you were to isolate one choice, it would continue from the moment it was conceived to the point were all things it touched were no longer existing. Fringe, I forgot about that show...I think I liked what I saw of it.

At any given time, we are the sum total of all of our experiences.

1

Applying principles observed at the quantum level to mass objects governed by conventional (Newtonian) physics is a link that only Deepak Chopra and others of his ilk have dared to make. It's nice to think we can control the world with our minds and influence circumstances and outcomes, but it's just wishful thinking. Unless anyone can cite research to prove otherwise, I remain a skeptic.

6

HAMLET
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

I use that quote often, along with this one, which is also (I think) relevant: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
~Hamlet to Horatio

Love Hamlet! My first encounter with the play was as a small boy buying shoes. The salesperson asked me whilst getting ready to measure my foot with the Brannock device, "2B or not 2B? That is the question! I"ve been a Shakespeare fan ever since.

Hamlet is my favorite. After reading it the first time I'm always surprised by how liberally it gets borrowed from. I have to admit my first exposure to it was from Gilligan's Island 😉

He seems like someone I should read. I guess I belonged in olden times lol.

1

Because we contribute to creating our own reality.

"For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." -Einstein

“I regard consciousness as fundamental, and matter as derivative from consciousness." – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics

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