Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Incomprehensible ...

"People do a poor job of predicting their preferences in
situations they have never experienced."

Rebecca Dresser, Precommitment: A Misguided Strategy for
Securing Death with Dignity, 81 Tex. L. Rev. 1823 (2003).

(Finding that a line about medical directives -- living wills -- can be basically be applied to the human experience as a whole.)

3 comments:

Di said...

Based on recent personal experiences, this is one thousand kinds of true.

jdust said...

That is great.

Madame Palmkey said...

I'm TAing in a history course about the Holocaust and we end up having to talk about this a lot. Not about preferences exactly -- more that you don't know how you would act if put under a specific series of pressures in a set of situations. You just don't. It is upsetting and unpleasant to think you could be a perpetrator of atrocities, but the fact is the majority of people asked to participate did so. Who knows what sadist lies within? I know that wasn't exactly the theme of your comment, but it is true nonetheless.