Imagine I have a goal of running a marathon. To do that, I run every day to increase my endurance. One day, I trip and fall, twisting my ankle. My doctor tells me that if I run on the ankle, I will cause myself permanent injury. Using my powers of rationality, I decide to stop running until my ankle has healing, to avoid the permanent injury that would prevent me from achieving my goal of running a marathon.
Is my decision to stop training for the marathon, which inevitably moves my goal of running in a marathon further away, “rationally irrational”? Or is there something wrong with my example?
No, your example is fine, but I would say it is the most elementary use of this idea. When faced with a serious threat to health it is relatively easy and obvious to realign goal-orientation. It is harder to make such realignments prior to facing serious damage or threats. In your example, a more sophisticated application of this idea would theoretically remove the possibility of twisting an ankle during training, excluding any extreme circumstances.
I imagine this might raise a lot of questions so let me explain a little more.
Training is not serious. The purpose of training is to prepare for a race, but the purpose of training is subsumed over the larger purpose of personal health, happiness, and survival. Therefore, any training one does should always be taken with the context of being trivial in light of these overarching goals. Having this mindset, I do not see how a runner could sprain their ankle, barring extreme circumstances.
A real runner, taking these overarching values into account would
Prior to running build knowledge about safe running style and practices
During running be primarily concerned with safety and developing positive running habits rather than meeting some short term goal.
To me, someone who has integrated my idea would never prioritize a race to the point that they risk spraining their ankle in training. Of course there are bizarre situations that are hard/ impossible to plan for. But tripping and twisting your ankle does not seem to be one of these.
Let’s play this out with an example.
Imagine I have a goal of running a marathon. To do that, I run every day to increase my endurance. One day, I trip and fall, twisting my ankle. My doctor tells me that if I run on the ankle, I will cause myself permanent injury. Using my powers of rationality, I decide to stop running until my ankle has healing, to avoid the permanent injury that would prevent me from achieving my goal of running a marathon.
Is my decision to stop training for the marathon, which inevitably moves my goal of running in a marathon further away, “rationally irrational”? Or is there something wrong with my example?
No, your example is fine, but I would say it is the most elementary use of this idea. When faced with a serious threat to health it is relatively easy and obvious to realign goal-orientation. It is harder to make such realignments prior to facing serious damage or threats. In your example, a more sophisticated application of this idea would theoretically remove the possibility of twisting an ankle during training, excluding any extreme circumstances.
I imagine this might raise a lot of questions so let me explain a little more.
Training is not serious. The purpose of training is to prepare for a race, but the purpose of training is subsumed over the larger purpose of personal health, happiness, and survival. Therefore, any training one does should always be taken with the context of being trivial in light of these overarching goals. Having this mindset, I do not see how a runner could sprain their ankle, barring extreme circumstances.
A real runner, taking these overarching values into account would
Prior to running build knowledge about safe running style and practices
During running be primarily concerned with safety and developing positive running habits rather than meeting some short term goal.
To me, someone who has integrated my idea would never prioritize a race to the point that they risk spraining their ankle in training. Of course there are bizarre situations that are hard/ impossible to plan for. But tripping and twisting your ankle does not seem to be one of these.