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PaperclipPerfector  8hr ago (text post)   236 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 21, 2026

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Interesting site:

https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/health/Default.aspx

It asks you 30 agree/disagree questions on a variety of "philosophical" topics, and then outputs a score calculating the inherent "tension" or cognitive dissonance in your answers.

The average score is 27% out of 100%, I score a pleasant 7%, but only because:

There are no objective moral standards; moral judgements are merely an expression of the values of particular cultures And also that: Acts of genocide stand as a testament to man's ability to do great evil

The tension between these two beliefs is that, on the one hand, you are saying that morality is just a matter of culture and convention, but on the other, you are prepared to condemn acts of genocide as 'evil'. But what does it mean to say 'genocide is evil'? To reconcile the tension, you could say that all you mean is that to say 'genocide is evil' is to express the values of your particular culture. It does not mean that genocide is evil for all cultures and for all times. However, are you really happy to say, for example, that the massacre of the Tutsi people in 1994 by the Hutu dominated Rwandan Army was evil from the point of view of your culture but not evil from the point of view of the Rwandan Army, and what is more, that there is no sense in which one moral judgement is superior to the other? If moral judgements really are 'merely the expression of the values of a particular culture', then how are the values which reject genocide and torture at all superior to those which don ot

I'm using a common-sense or consensus definition of evil, and I don't think this is an actual contradiction. So I'm pleased to say I have zero philosophical dissonance? Who knows.

I am disappointed tbh. I spend time answering those questions in the best way possible (and they are not written to make that easy, they are loaded with weasel words that make figuring out what they mean very elusive) and what they give me is "if God is good, why suffering exists?" Oh come on, that's weak sauce. No, I mean, theodicy is a real philosophical question, but not exactly a novel one worth spending time answering questions.

But at least it's real. The other "contradiction" is "these two beliefs are not strictly contradictory". Well, dudes, if they are not, why the heck are you listing them as contradictions then?

And the third one I got is a cheap trick on "will you be literally dead instantly if you don't get it? No? Then it's not "necessary"." Ugh. I wonder if that's the same definition of "necessary" that the philosophers use when applying for their next grant.

I got a score of 13 when compared to an average of 27. Interestingly, I correctly anticipated which of my responses it would say were in tension with each other. Obviously, I'm now required to pedantically justify myself as to why my responses are not really in tension with one another.

>So long as they do not harm others, individuals should be free to pursue their own ends vs. The possession of drugs for personal use should be decriminalised

I agree these are slightly in tension with one another. To justify myself, I would argue that many drugs cause harm to people other than the user (e.g. drug-induced psychosis causing people to behave violently) and also cause distributed harm to society as a whole. The comparison to legal alcohol and motor vehicles is a valid counter-argument to this line of reasoning, although I'm perfectly willing to argue that motor vehicles being legal passes a cost-benefit analysis. Does alcohol pass such an analysis? I don't think it's an obviously ridiculous question, but I concede that I may be falling victim to status quo bias in this particular instance.

>Judgements about works of art are purely matters of taste vs. Michaelangelo is indubitably one of history's finest artists

I feel on much firmer footing with this one. I don't believe that one artwork is "objectively" better than another (except, perhaps, in the sense that some art is unfalsifiable and some isn't). When I responded in the affirmative to the latter question, I simply meant that Michelangelo has widely been considered one of history's finest artists for centuries, without making any commentary on his "objective" merit as an artist. Accurately citing an opinion poll that found an approval rating of 60% for $Politician doesn't in any way imply that I personally approve of said politician, nor that the politician in question is "objectively" good at his job.

I got 7% with one disagreement. I'd say its more of a semantic conflict with their question.

Statements 22 and 15: What is the seat of the self?

Severe brain-damage can rob a person of all consciousness and selfhood vs On bodily death, a person continues to exist in a non-physical form.

I think the answer is pretty straightforward. A person doesn't have consciousness and selfhood after bodily death but they continue to exist in memories, impact, legacy as almost an egregore. It's encapsulated by the saying from the Havamal and my favorite song Helvengen: "Cattle die, kinsmen die, You yourself will also die; I know one thing that never dies The reputation of those who died" and “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.” - Hemingway

(I hate this spoiler formatting, I give up trying to get the last paragraph to be hidden)

I got one disagreement but once I saw it I changed my mind on one of the questions (an atheism one). So basically no disagreements. Maybe would have been more interesting to see more disagreements.

The "WW2 was a just war?" Also seemed like a bad question. I just answered it from Hitler's perspective. No he shouldn't have started WW2 for more living room for the Germans, or out of his weird race war ideology. For other countries defending themselves or acting in defense of others it seems like a just war though.

I'm using a common-sense or consensus definition of evil

What's that? Whence consensus?

I know it when I see it. I think it's not particularly controversial that genocide is generally considered to be, at the very least, in bad taste.

7% here too, well with some apparent tension in there to do with free will and determinism to which I'd say to the creator of the test: go read some quasi-realist philosophy and come back to me bro.

This is fun. My only tension was:

Statements 24 and 3: How much must I protect the environment? 61% of the people who have completed this activity have this tension in their beliefs. 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. The problem here is the word 'unnecessary'. Very few things are necessary, if by necessary it is meant essential to survival. But you might want to argue that much of your use of cars or aeroplanes is necessary, not for survival, but for a certain quality of life. The difficulty is that the consequence of this response is that it then becomes hard to be critical of others, for it seems that 'necessary' simply means what one judges to be important for oneself. A single plane journey may add more pollutants to the atmosphere than a year's use of a high-emission vehicle. Who is guilty of causing unnecessary environmental harm here?

My disagreement is that just because you can walk, cycle, or use transit, that doesn't mean that your ends are fully met in doing so. "I want to get there faster" or "I want to get there in peace and quiet" are legitimate desires which are generally worth the harm. I read "necessary" as meaning "necessary to the end sought", not "necessary to survival" (which would be a very silly position unless you're properly Tedpilled). They address this in their explanation, but fail to convince me.

I'm a simple creature. I think that the the conversion of Mercury into a Dyson swarm counts necessary damage to the environment. No issues there.

I got 13% with two tensions, yours and also

You agreed that:So long as they do not harm others, individuals should be free to pursue their own ends But disagreed that: The possession of drugs for personal use should be decriminalised

The explanation of this tension is an equally "duh" one. Perhaps The Motte is simply not a good audience for this test, we've been forced to admit or explain any contradictions in our reasoning for too long to be impressed by amateurish traps like these. Even AC: Odyssey did it better (and made me understand why the citizens of Athens condemned Socrates).

You inevitably lose nuance in a setup like this. I think I said agree to drug decriminalization, but I'm libertarian-adjacent and think that the harms are bounded. I still wouldn't advocate for fentanyl vending machines in malls.

It's less that the authors are trying to gotcha us (I didn't get that impression) and more that such a mass-market product caters to normies and thus becomes simplistic in places. I'm curious to know if someone has a more sophisticated offering.

Neat, but I sat there for too long debating if the statement "WWII was a Just War" is true or false, because there are like twenty ways I can frame that question and I'm not even sure which one I land on any given day like I'm spinning the philosophical equivalent of a wheel in twister.

They acknowledge that there's going to be some degree of subjectivity involved, both in the questions and interpreting the results, but you're better off not overthinking that hard.

Then they need a pass button for questions that aren't true or false.

Just the Jus in Bello and Jus Ad Bellum question is essentially unsolvable.

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