Posted: Sep 12, 2018 9:50 pm
wisedupearly wrote:Thommo wrote:
And I expect you feel my reply was a touch on the flippant side, I'd suggest this might just be because "binge drinking" was included in the same list as "shooting people on the street" and that both served as a proxy for decisions which didn't maximise life expectancy. In reality there are lots of choices which have just as much rational basis but that do not maximise life expectancy. A pleasurable life of an average of 70 years may well be more "rational" than an abstemious life of 75.
Many alcoholics beat the statistical life expectancy. Are you going to claim that they had a pleasurable life?
Surely, you say, one bout of binge drinking is harmless. Maybe. Why would you consider binge drinking to yield desirable results? Because life is dark and depressing? Because we are all going to die and are just of organic sludge with no free will or control. Because your "friends" are doing it? Because they dare you to do it? Can't think of anything more rational to do?
I wouldn't. I would gently poke fun at the false dichotomy.
You should know this, because you're replying to a post where I explained that was what I was doing. You don't have to be an alcoholic to reduce your life expectancy through drink. If your point on this front actually breaks down to suggesting people are alcoholics because of Socrates and his legacy of intellectualism, then that is honestly, pretty silly. If your point reduces to saying that being an alcoholic doesn't make someone happy and often does harm, then ok, I'd agree, but that is an extremely trivial point, akcnowledged thoroughly by society and having little connection to any philosophy.
It seems like you're saying and have said a lot more, and that the questions about alcoholism are what sometimes gets called a "bait and switch", because you've advocated a strong claim (that any life expectancy reducing action is to be proscribed and is the result of Socratic Intellectualism) and defended a weak claim (that alcoholism is bad).
Binge drinking is having about 4-5 drinks or more. I'm not about to make any general claims about this other than to say that the amount of fun that people who have 4-5 drinks while on a date or out with friends have is reported to be non-zero by many individuals, and that the reduction in life expectancy for this is extremely small, although cumulative with greater density and frequency of binges. Different individuals may take a different stance on what the enjoyment to health trade off must be before it becomes a negative or positive.