[lern_too_spel]

That cognitive dissonance you're feeling comes from justifying horoscopes and jihad in order to try to avoid feeling silly about your unjustified beliefs.

Being smart is the opposite of irrational. Vengefulness is orthogonal to correctness. If the punishment serves to increase the length of your life, it is rational (equivalently, smart). If not, it is stupid.

[beepbooptheory]

Nobody should feel silly! These are good conversations to have.

Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality? This is important because rationality is something I assume we agree is a characteristic of humans. Humans can't help but be rational, which is why irrational behavior can be the exception that proves the rule. To say "being smart" is the opposite suddenly creates a a somewhat unscientific rift among human animals, doesn't it? But I do get why you want to say that for your argument, but you should be a little more nuanced in order to get one over on me. Not that I am particularly smart or anything, but just because I am listening to what you are saying.

But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you? That is a somewhat novel argument in this context.

[lern_too_spel]

> Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality?

If you are smart, you must be rational. The contrapositive must also be true. If you are irrational, you cannot be smart. My comment points out that your argument that worshipping at the altar of smartness is irrational makes no sense.

> But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you?

This is self-evident. If you die, all other rewards lose their utility.

[beepbooptheory]

I don't understand. Some people spend their whole lives in prison because of false convictions, others live beautiful and exciting lives and die before they're 30. I'd probably want the latter there, but I guess you'd want the former?

Edit to your edit: I have had the pleasure to know and study with some of the "smartest" people around in the hard and soft sciences, and let me tell you they can definitely act irrationally (we use the euphemism "eccentric" to gloss over this). Consider a genious mathematician who happens to have OCD. Does their sometimes irrational behavior mean they can't be smart?

Have you ever seen "smartness" in a microscope?

[lern_too_spel]

If you are offered a choice between prison and death, you should choose prison because you get to live and have the possibility of living an exciting life after prison (and maybe even in prison). The possibility increases as more people get smarter because those people can figure out how to extend your life.

Your scenario makes no sense because in both cases, you are dead, and dead people have no preferences.

[beepbooptheory]

Ha! Ok, I see. If you could really have the discipline to live like this, then yes you perhaps have extinguished dirty, irrational belief from your mind, achieved full Vulcan status. But at what cost?? How could you ever fall in love? How could ever be happy? It just sounds very lonely, very difficult, and not very human.

[lern_too_spel]

> How could you ever fall in love? How could ever be happy? It just sounds very lonely, very difficult, and not very human.

How is that different from belief in certain religions, where sex is solely for procreation? Everybody puts some sense of what they want to achieve over biological urges for immediate hit of dopamine. The only difference is that I say that these choices should be rational.