12/01/2025
Today, we explore the boundaries of rationality and their implications for a life well lived. But be warned—you’ll need to put your thinking cap on for this one.☝️🤓
Let’s start simple with the classic ethical dilemma of the trolley problem. A runaway train is on course to end the lives of five people tied to its tracks. You stand by a lever that can divert the train onto another track, where only one person is tied. The outcomes are certain: pulling the lever will result in one death; doing nothing will result in five. What do you do? Surveys indicate that a significant majority (about 90%) would choose to pull the lever, favoring the utilitarian approach of minimizing total harm.
Now, consider what’s known as the “fat man” scenario. Here, you are on a footbridge above the tracks, and the only way to stop the trolley is to push a large man off the bridge onto the tracks, sacrificing him to save the five. Despite the identical consequences, surveys show that this number turns on its head, with as much as 90% opposing this action.
Finally, imagine yourself as a doctor with five patients, each dying from organ failure and each needing a different organ to survive. A healthy individual with the right blood type comes in for a routine checkup. You know that if you harvest their organs, you can save the five. There is no risk of being discovered. Yet this scenario feels even less acceptable, doesn’t it?
These examples reveal the complexities and limitations of purely rational ethics. Logic alone can lead to morally questionable conclusions when applied without consideration for human values and emotions. History is littered with instances where utilitarian reasoning justified unethical practices, such as eugenics or sacrificing civilian lives under the guise of achieving the “greater good.”
Beyond ethics, logic reveals its limitations through many of our logical frameworks. Consider this question from set theory, a branch of mathematics: Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself? If it does, it contradicts its definition by including itself. If it does not, it still contradicts its definition by excluding itself. Known as Russell’s paradox, this contradiction exposes a fundamental flaw in our logical models, demonstrating how self-referential systems can collapse into incoherence.
Though abstract, such paradoxes have the potential to manifest in the real-world. Imagine a town where the barber is required to shave all men who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself? If he does, he violates the rule; if he doesn’t, he still violates the rule. These examples highlight the fragility of logic as a foundation for understanding, suggesting that not all truths are accessible through purely rational methods.
Even probability theory, a cornerstone of contemporary society, reveals its limitations when applied to the nature of reality. Consider two mutually exclusive hypotheses: the Boltzmann Brain and the Simulation Argument.
The Boltzmann Brain hypothesis posits that in an infinite universe, it is statistically more probable for a single self-aware consciousness, containing the conception of our universe—a “Boltzmann brain”—to spontaneously arise in a vacuum than for the ordered complexity of our entire universe, teeming with self-aware beings with that same conception, to emerge. This conclusion rests on the disparity in complexity: the configuration of a disembodied mind requires fewer improbable conditions than the arrangement of an entire cosmos filled with life and order. As unsettling as it may seem, the hypothesis suggests that what we perceive as reality might be no more than a fleeting illusion, experienced by a disembodied consciousness imagining a universe it does not inhabit.
The Simulation Argument, on the other hand, posits three mutually exclusive possibilities, one of which must be true:
1. Advanced civilizations never develop the capability to simulate conscious beings—yet this seems unlikely as we seem to be on the trajectory toward this very ability ourselves.
2. Such civilizations develop the capability but choose not to run simulations—but how likely is it that they might all avoid it?
3. Or, if advanced civilizations run simulations, it is overwhelmingly likely that we are living in one, as simulated realities would vastly outnumber base reality due to simulations simulating simulations.
These two hypotheses, though logically sound, are mutually exclusive, presenting radically different explanations for the nature of existence. Their coexistence underscores the limitations of rationality in resolving fundamental questions about reality.
So, why are we going on about all these paradoxes and hypotheses? Rationality, while a powerful tool, has its boundaries. An overreliance on logic and reason—especially when detached from intuition and ethical considerations—leads to conclusions that undermine morality, contentment, and meaning.
Though logic offers the illusion of certainty, it often reduces life to something cold and detached from the consciousness we inhabit, prioritizing efficiency and outcomes while neglecting the richness of human experience. A purely logical life risks becoming blind to the spontaneity and warmth that make existence worthwhile, perhaps even the kind of right action which only presents itself in the here and now.
To live well, we must rely on something beyond logic—something greater. This is not a call to abandon reason but to balance it with humility, intuition, an openness to the unknown, and an understanding of reason as a tool to act upon the material, but a mere sliver of our exchange and dance with the universe. Such an approach allows us to embrace life fully, not as a problem to be solved but as a mystery to be lived.
Logic has its place, but life cannot be reduced to it or understood through it. Such an attempt is like trying to measure weight with a ruler. We are not meant to optimize existence, we might not even be meant to fully understand it; we are meant to live it. When we surrender our fixation on certainty and outcomes, embracing the moment intuitively, we find contentment, freedom, and action that logic alone will not instill. Logic and reason only take us so far; they do not inherently guide us to happiness or meaning. Let us remember that rationality is a tool, not a master—and life’s greatest truths lie just beyond its reach.
