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A fair proportion of the suffering in the world can be laid at the feet of binary thinking.
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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That’s an interesting thought. Thinking doesn’t have to be binary, but ultimately an action is: you either do it or you don’t. There could be 5 possible actions (including inaction) but whichever one you choose is a binary action (you either do it, or you don’t)
I think you're falsely categorizing action as binary thinking and supporting OP's thought. Say I want to help people with some extra money - I have $100 (in singles) to give and 5 people in need. I'm not locked into "giving or not giving" or stuck giving to 1 person and not giving to 4 people. I can give everyone $20 evenly. I can $10 to one and $90 to another. I can give $5, $15, $25, $25, and $30 to them based on apparent need. I can give $0. Dividing this up into 5 individual binary actions... Actually, 100 individual actions (each dollar), dishonestly represents the overall opportunity and outcome.
And that's just for one case where it's a zero-sum game with my limited pot of $100. That's a prime type of case where some majority groups would beleive anything not directly given to them is, effectively, taken from them - more binary thinking. That doesn't account for status change, further income, and understand that social welfare budgets are insanely smaller than the gratuitous budgets of other departments.
You just proved what I was saying though. The thought doesn’t have to be binary. You have a multitude of choices. But the moment you make an action, that is binary. You either do that specific action or not.
You sound like someone I know who insists that the probability of anything happening is always 50/50, because "either it happens or it doesn't".