Poll: Think you think straight? Think again...

[LadyPhera]

I'm sure it's been said, but this is making me really think about myself. Granted some of these questions are only partly of what I believe but it doesn't change the fact that I'm more of a hypocrite than I realized. At 40% I may have to really reconsider some of my beliefs.

 

[R0cklobster]

I think some of the questions could be worded better; there were quite a lot of moral absolutes that I felt a simple "Agree/Disagree" answer incorrectly described my view on the particular subject.

 

[MikeOfThunder]

No I feel the test was right about that one. If no objective moral standards exist then no testament of great evil can exist. Because after a certain period of time the culture will have changed, and that great evil will not be considered as a great evil anymore. Ergo it wasn't a testament of evil, only an act that has been considered as evil for a while.

You make a good solid point there. I completely agree with that answer although that doesn't alter the fact that 'in my opinion and that of my culture: evil genocide blah blah...'

When i aswered the question I didn't mean that genocide will always be percieved as evil, I just referring to my personal opinion.

I think when answering I wasn't quite looking at the bigger picture. I don't think, when answering, that I understood what it was talking about. I thought it was asking for my opinion on genocide not the general opinion of genocide through the ages.

I hope I'm making sense!

 

[Randomologist]

20%.

You agreed that:
The environment should not be damaged unnecessarily in the pursuit of human ends
But disagreed that:
People should not journey by car if they can walk, cycle or take a train instead.

As walking, cycling and taking the train are all less environmentally damaging than driving a car for the same journey, if you choose to drive when you could have used another mode of transport, you are guilty of unnecessarily damaging the environment.

It's not unnecessary- I need to be somewhere. Necessity also comes in when you want to save time, or money, or you don't want to sit next to a hobo who hasn't showered since 1976. So I disagree with the unnecessarily damaging the etc, etc. I know it explains itself, but it's still making judgements.

 

[amucha98]

.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

The problem with that quiz is that there are too many questions that require an answer that acknowledges some grey area. Most of the issues it addresses are far too complex for a simple yes or no answer. The notion that this thing is of any merit as a genuine psychological study is frankly laughable. well, unless you are the kind of person who does see everything in terms of black or white, yes or no, etc. See, even the question of "Is this a valid psychological test" is not a simple matter of yes or no. But by that rationale, the evidence suggests that it is deeply flawed, which brings us back to the "it's fine if you see everything in terms of black and white" clause. See, even that simple question is waaaay too complex for yes or no answers.

 

[Zephirius]

Spoiler: My results

Tension Quotient = 7%

Questions 5 and 29: Can you put a price on a human life?

42751 of the 176560 people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs.

You agreed that:
The right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant in any effort to save lives
But disagreed that:
Governments should be allowed to increase taxes sharply to save lives in the developing world

If the right to life is so fundamental that financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to making decisions about saving human lives, then that must mean that we should always spend as much money as possible to save lives. If it costs £4 million to save a cancer patient's life, that money should be spent, period. But if this is true, then surely the West should spend as much money as possible saving lives in the developing world. You may already give $100 dollars a month to save lives in the developing world. But if financial considerations are irrelevant when it comes to saving lives, why not $200, or $1000, or just as much as you can afford? If you do not do so, you are implicitly endorsing the principle that individuals and governments are not obliged to save lives at all financial cost - that one can spend 'enough' on saving lives even though spending more, which one could afford to do, would save more lives. This suggests that financial considerations are relevant when it comes to making decisions about saving lives - there is a limit to how much one should spend to save a life.

I don't think I can justify this very well. I guess I can say I do disagree with the initial statement in that I don't believe in a fundamental right to life, but right to a certain quality of life. Or something. I don't honestly know.

Most interesting one:
RE: Genocide. Not a testament to man's ability to do great evil, but rather a testament to man's great ability to justify/rationalize acts of evil. I don't consider genocide any more inherently evil than that culling of Irish horses I just read about. I do think it's evil, but then those are my values. It's not objectively evil.

 

[Shining_Pyrelight]

I got 33%, lowish medium but I am happy I didn't mess up the spiritual and environmental questions. Mainly art and drugs were my problem.

 

[Chrinik]

Okay, most trains here in germany run on electricity.
The moral question is NOT about genocides...
You said morality is subjective, so why make a moraly objective statement afterwards?

No, the second statement is still morally subjective, even if it does use the word "testament." It is my opinion that genocide is evil. My education and life has taught me that and I believe it. If I wasn't taught that, I might not hold the conviction as strongly, say for example if I grew up in Serbia or Turkey or America (a couple hundred years ago). I can believe morality is subjective, while certain things are wrong. Otherwise I'd be a sociopath.

That is the Problem...you say "it is wrong/bad"...it is...that does not make it EVIL...
Evil is a completely different thing then "oh, this is bad."
And you SAID to the test a few questions earlier you agreed that morality (the definition of what is good and evil) is subjective, yet make an objective statement that genocide is inherently EVIL...not bad, not whatever, EVIL...it is not.
Most likely not for the people that commit it.
So there is the tension, there is the conflicting views.
The questions are phrased in a way that, when you agree to them, you don´t agree to them on a personal scale, you say "This is the testament that humans can do great evil!" Evil is subjective, as you said when you agreed to it beforehand, so why generalize genocides as generally EVIL things to do, when it is subjective? Even tho this is your personal, subjective opinion about genocides, the question didn´t ask about what you think of genocide being evil. It said "By agreeing you verify that genocides are evil, PERIOD.", which you denied a few questions earlier, because an action can be both good and evil, depending on which side you are on, so they are not JUST evil...But you just made them. You personally think that genocides are evil, but that´s A: Wrong, and B: not the point...

Actually, why don´t you just read the blurb on WHY the test thinks those two views conflict each other, and take it for granted...

 

[Chrinik]

Cut

Well, you are welcome.
And to your random rant about atheism, atheism is, as far as I know, always considered to be a lack of faith, rather then a faith itself, we don´t just believe there are no gods, we simply REFUSE even the probability, even if there is one, because that would be agnosticism.

But that is not the point, the OP just said what the TEST thinks about atheism, for clarification. This is not the OPs definition of atheism or whatever you thought correcting him would help.

 

[sdafdfhrye3245]

I didn't finish it there were far to many loop holes I kept coming up with in my mind :\

 

[ntw3001]

24. The environment should not be damaged unnecessarily in the pursuit of human ends

That's pretty leading. Personally I'm in favour of the environment being damaged unnecessarily! Just for the hell of it, you know?

 

[Dr.Fantastic]

I got a 7%

Yes

 

[taciturnCandid]

0% I know I am pretty set in my ways without much tension. While I would argue with 0%.. I do agree with very little

 

[DanielDeFig]

Fair enough, you're arguing the point that the quiz doesn't really consider. It should probably be adjusted for such. What was the point you were making about euthanasia, though?

Ah! Arguing against euthanasia. If you feel up to discussing this i will try to indulge you (must go to sleep now, but will be online again within 8-10 hours).

The argument goes as follows: A sane, psychologically stable human being, is incapable of actively choosing to end their own life. We have seen examples of people who "decide" to end their own lives, but these people's minds have all bee disturbed and warped by psychological factors (usually depression, but anything that disturbs your sane psychological state counts. Including alcohol and drugs). This means that euthanasia will always be wrong, on the basis that no doctor will never get "legal consent" to euthanize someone.(think rape and other instances where consent seems to have been given, but as other factors were involved to heavily affect the mind of the "consenting" person, it doesn't count legally)

A more basic argument is on the basis of ethics. Where the action of killing a person (including yourself) will never be ethical. But that's if you buy into Deontological Ethics, that define ethics based on the act rather than the end result (Utilitarianism. Blech!).

Hey, don't bag so much on utilitarianism Limited utilitarianism is what this country is founded on. (At least the democracy part. Though there are plenty of people who'd prefer a theocracy, I'm guessing you might be one of them)

Dentological ethics are a bit unwavering in my opinion, which is why I don't buy into it. It doesn't leave room for a mother stealing to feed her baby, a person killing in self-defense, or any extenuating circumstance whatsoever. That is neither here nor there, however.

Fair enough point on the first paragraph. Does your definition allow for coercion to play into the decision to end one's life? As in a case where a soldier throws himself over a bomb to protect his squad mates?

Also, given that a person cannot give legal consent to end his or her life, in the case of aware, consensual, passive euthanasia (Where the patient is awake and tells you that he or she would like to die and will manage this on their own if you just leave them be for long enough) and in the case that the person is simultaneously terminally ill, very debilitated and is in the process of degenerating, as they WILL NEVER thereafter be able to give legal consent, due to being psychologically unstable because of their circumstance, do they revert to the legal status of minors? What are the implications of that?

Hmm, i don't get where you got the idea that i might be pro-theocracy. I'm as anti-religious as they come, so the very idea disgusts me.

Yeah, pure dentological ethics alone becomes somewhat absurd in the long run. So i personally prefer using it as a central idea, but building upon it for the purpose of putting it into practice.

The self-sacrifice is not something i have looked at in deteail, in respect to ethics. I i can say that while it would be absurd to call self-sacrificing acts "unethical", i think it is entierly possible to say that they aren't ethical either, because not sacrificing yourself to save others can't be an unethical act (It's your choice to decide to stay alive if the risk to your own life is too great, even if it would mean saving the lives of others).

About your final pragraph: yeah, pretty much. These people must still be treated as equal human beings, but we must put into consideration the fact that they are usually in no state to make legal decisions on their own. If they are asking for their life to end, you will know that the sickness has affected their mind to the point where you can no longer trust their decisions to be completley sane/logical.

What are the implications of that? well, is suppose you would have to refer to their next of kin for legal decisions, which brings us back to the oldest argument against legal euthanasia: You can't always trust the relatives and friends of an old and sick person to have the sick person's best interest in mind. Why? Money, personal disputes and other factors have been proven to lead people to seek out the death of others for personal benefit. You can't know that the dying old lady's nephew, to whom most of her inheritance goes to, doesn't want/need her to die as quickly as possible in order to get a hold of his inheritance.

But this is a very traditional argument against euthanasia, and doesn't have very much to do with logic/ethics. It's more about statistics, probability, circumstance, and good ol' fashioned "you can't trust people's intention".

 

[DanielDeFig]

10. There exists an all-powerful, loving and good God

I'm agnostic. I cannot answer this ;___; Oh well. *closes eyes and points*

You don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but I answered no because in my version of agnosticism, if a god like the Christian one exists, then he's a fucking asshole because of all the innocent/good people who are going to hell because they just happened not to hear about Jesus.

Lulz. I like that.
Different version (or rather, how i saw it when i read your comment):

Since it's practically impossible for a person to learn of EVERY religion in the world, and they all have the same probability of being true, they are all probably/hopefully incorrect.


Me? Completely atheistic. I compare the probability of the existence of a divine creator (because nothing is impossible, and nothing is certain) with the probability of my head turning into a cabbage. Not impossible, but so improbable, that for practicality's sake, we use the word "impossible" (because otherwise we would never get to use that word).

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I do not see how this implies tension in my beliefs:

You disagreed that:
It is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence
But agreed that:
Atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God

I think it unreasonable (in the literal sense) that people believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of proof (in the sense that such a belief could not be based on reason not that such beliefs are impossible to arrive at). By the same token, since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of a God, to arrive at a belief that asserts there is no god is exactly as unreasonable as to arrive at the conclusion that there is.

 

[iDoom46]

This test is stupid.
The questions are worded vaguely and are really just baiting the answerer into answering in certain ways.

Frankly, I could see what they were trying to do throughout the entire quiz, and I was able to answer the questions accordingly. I found it rather insulting that they would use such general statements to then form such complex arguments about ones character.

 

[Thomiroth]

Well, I got that same bit of tension, and that was basically exactly what I said to myself. This is the problem with testing. Answers are often too solid and one dimensional without the ability to clarify what you mean.
It's all very well saying I have certain points of tension in my beliefs, but I spotted the ones it would pick before I picked them, simply because I had to consider them more since I wouldn't get an opportunity to explain.
All in all, interesting, but I had a severe problem with my lack of ability to clarify.