I'm glad we agree that Option A is ultimately the best option. I do think that this is arguable though and am surprised you agreed with me without a fight .

Quote Originally Posted by kiwiMark

1) Can that level of comprehension actually be accomplished? I understand that my university classes are beneficial to me, but when I wake up on a cold winter's morning it's disappointingly often that the temptation to stay in bed wins.
This is why I said I think I'm an idealist. But whether its achievable or not, I do like the idea that we people would be moving towards a high level of comprehension of the world!


2) What of choices where the long-term consequences don't affect the individual. In your river example, if we imagine the river to be the only source of the town's drinking water, and the level of pollution to be enough that the water would remain drinkable for longer than Jim's lifetime but shortly after that would become unusable, thus killing the future inhabitants of the town. (This example is slightly flawed because their comes a point where the continued pollution is being done by people who will be affected by it, and being long-term-thinkers they'll stop. However it's probably not too hard to imagine something this generation could do, like cutting down every forest, which would be done solely by us, wouldn't damage us in our lifetime, but would have a profound negative effect x years down the track). How long-term are the consequences we need to take into account? Only ones which could affect us? Affect our offspring? Affect the offspring of our species, life on our planet, etc. etc.

I'll leave it there for now as I don't want to ramble on for thousands of words when you might have a point regarding something in the first sentence which would send the discussion somewhere else!
Again, I feel like people polluting the water are not valuing the future in this case. I think its hard to argue here because I'm not really arguing whether or not someone should be interested in the future. I'm arguing that the future should only be good if the actions and values of people today are creating that future.

I think if you believe in absolute values my argument becomes harder, but I still feel its correct. If people are capable of learning than those absolute values will be achieved without forcing them to do anything. If you believe that people are incapable of learning and doing the things necessary to create the best life for themselves and others, than I suppose you should give them laws and force them to live a certain way. But I'd really hate life if that was the case.