I don’t see this exercise as being so much about rationality as it is about our relationship with dissonance. People in my community (context-driven software testers) are expected to treat confusion or controversy as itself evidence of a potentially serious problem. For the responsible tester, such evidence must be investigated and probably raised as an issue to the client.
In short, in the situation given in the exercise, I would not answer the question, but rather raise some questions.
I drive telephone surveyors nuts in this way. They just don’t know what to do with a guy who answers “no opinion” or “I don’t know” or “can’t answer” to every single question in their poorly worded and context-non-specific questionnaires.
as being so much about rationality as it is about our relationship with dissonance
It seems to me that most of rationality is about our relationship with dissonance. Though in most cases that dissonance is implicit while here it is obvious.
I don’t see this exercise as being so much about rationality as it is about our relationship with dissonance. People in my community (context-driven software testers) are expected to treat confusion or controversy as itself evidence of a potentially serious problem. For the responsible tester, such evidence must be investigated and probably raised as an issue to the client.
In short, in the situation given in the exercise, I would not answer the question, but rather raise some questions.
I drive telephone surveyors nuts in this way. They just don’t know what to do with a guy who answers “no opinion” or “I don’t know” or “can’t answer” to every single question in their poorly worded and context-non-specific questionnaires.
It seems to me that most of rationality is about our relationship with dissonance. Though in most cases that dissonance is implicit while here it is obvious.