[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.

[beepbooptheory]

Because despite what their religions told them, people still surely fell in love, experienced passion! Im not talking about biological urges, I am talking about the need to feel whole, Desire itself. The idea that some moments can make you feel like life is beautiful, moments where you feel you can die right then and it would all be worth it.

In general you are suddenly being prescriptive rather than descriptive, which implicitly seems to show you agree with what I am saying about belief, but you simply think that humans should change fundamentally. Which is fine, but it is itself a belief you have that you contextualize your life with!

[lern_too_spel]

> I am talking about the need to feel whole, Desire itself. The idea that some moments can make you feel like life is beautiful, moments where you feel you can die right then and it would all be worth it.

That feeling comes from dopamine. If you actually believe that feeling is better than actually living to experience that feeling again in the future, a heroin dealer will be more than happy to help you out.

> but you simply think that humans should change fundamentally.

Only in that they should be more rational. I don't think that is an onerous request. Many people already try to be.