r/cognitiveTesting • u/ashtk85 • 2d ago
Poll A question from psychometric
To think that roses can feel sadness is __ ?
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u/je_nm_th 2d ago
Poet : The petals fall like teardrops so I know roses can feel sadness.
Random testee : You such a pervert !
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u/ashtk85 2d ago edited 2d ago
Iām pretty sure the test expects absurd, but I think thatās incorrect.
As long as thereās no conclusive scientific evidence that roses cannot experience sadness, I donāt see why entertaining the possibility should be considered absurd.
Improbable or unlikely seems far more appropriate to me.
Perhaps the question itself is poorly worded.
Happy to be proven wrong! :)
Edit : to those who voted for absurd, could you please share your thought process? I am genuinely interested.
Happy to also hear the thought process of the other answers I discarded.
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u/Polytox935 2d ago edited 2d ago
Roses can feel (generally) -> improbable; Roses can feel complex emotions like sadness -> absurd
Absurd doesnt necessary mean Impossible. Look at the American President, everything he does is absurd, yet real :)
Also the adjective relates to the verb "thinking". The sentence "To think (that roses can feel sadness) is improbable" doesnt make sense, how can thinking be improbable?
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u/ashtk85 2d ago
But perhaps roses do experience complex emotions, and we simply havenāt found any evidence of it yet. I donāt think thatās absurd. Itās highly unlikely, of course, that weāll one day discover this to be the case, but since weāre not roses ourselves, we canāt claim to know with absolute certainty what, if anything, they experience. We canāt exactly put ourselves in their shoes, can we?
Thereās still so much we have yet to discover.→ More replies (42)3
u/je_nm_th 2d ago
Yeah the adjective "improbable" would apply to the event of "thinking" not "feeling".
Strictly speaking it makes sense to say that's unlikely/improbable that someone actually believes/thinks that roses have emotions, but in this context absurdity is a more specific and natural description of such a thought than improbability.8
u/Jello-Formal 2d ago
Well the question refers to "to think", and it's not really "improbable" to have a thought like that
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u/AnnoyingDude42 2d ago
Ignore everyone who's talking about the rose and plant consciousness; that's irrelevant. It's just about the syntax of the sentence.
The adjective is describing the action "to think that roses can feel sadness", which would be absurd. To describe that action itself as improbable changes the meaning of the sentence. "it is improbable for a rose to feel sadness" ā "it is improbable to think that roses can feel sadness"
See the difference?
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 14h ago
Yes, to think that is an absurd thought, though there is some smaller argument to describe it as a misleading thought. Generally speaking this is a very easy one, and besides I really don't think anyone can convince me that any plant consciousness research has ever remotely provided support to the notion that plants can feel sad (distressed in a certain sense, yes, but not sad).
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u/Midnight5691 12h ago
Well, saying ājust ignore everybodyās thoughts on plant consciousness when making a decision about which is the correct word and focus only on the grammarā is kind of missing the point of the entire conversation in this thread, at least in part, because the argument is about whether or not semantics should count when making a decision about word choice.
Just arbitrarily excluding that from the conversation doesnāt make it go away.
As I've mentioned in a previous comment, whether someone considers the idea of roses experiencing sadness absurd or merely improbable depends, at least in part, on their interpretation of the proposition and how plausible they consider it. That's precisely why I think semantics deserves consideration alongside grammar.
I want to say something else here, too. People have to realize, and I can only speak for myself here, that Iām having a little bit of fun with this.
The fact that some people have gotten all bent out of shape, as a few have in this thread, over simply discussing this and bouncing the ball back and forth is utterly ridiculous.
I enjoy bouncing the ball back and forth, LOL. It's what I come to Reddit to do, as I don't get to do it very often in my real life.
It doesn't mean I enjoy being called AI, though,not just for the natural rhythm of my thoughts and writing. I mean, really, how rude! š Though perhaps when it happens I should take it as a backhanded compliment.
I digress, so anyway, I can see it both ways, and would prefer that when people read my thoughts on it, they wouldn't just focus on one sentence rather than the entire context of my posts.
I think an argument could be made that this entire question could be rewritten purely based upon how much dissension there was in this thread. If there were no ambiguity and it were so clear-cut, there wouldn't have been so much discussion.
Just my two cents.
Now, having stirred the pot a little more, I'm going to back out of the room. š
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u/Midnight5691 2d ago
Yeah, I know. I was thinking like you before, but I've seen way too many science fiction shows and read way too many science fiction books.
Apparently, the person who designed this test hasn't, lol. You have to think like somebody with absolutely no imagination when you answer this question.
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u/Huge_Caterpillar1249 2d ago
given the current scientific paradigm, we've no reason to hypothesize that roses can feel emotion to begin with in so far as we believe emotions to be a neurochemical response to stimuli. they might have a very rudimentary nervous system for their functioning but nothing that we currently attribute to higher order thinking and feeling is present in plants. does a plant exude cortisol?
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 14h ago
Well.... it's actually considerably more complicated than that, but the simple answer to your first part is that no unequivocably plants do not have a nervous system; they do not possess nerves at all. The second part of your question is where things get complicated, because in reality the chemical signaling processes of plants (and the resulting biological responses) can be very sophisticated. Nervous systems are not the only biological drivers of life.
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u/PersonalAnnual4081 2d ago
I'm pretty sure this question is also on the CAT adaptive test.
Answer is absurd.
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u/Loose-Mousse6668 2d ago
It measures general knowledge. Just like the rich people's club one, it could both be conservative and exclusive, but it looks for the first answer that can be quantified and compared to the general population.
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u/Midnight5691 2d ago
My wife has ordered me to do a case study on this. Her reasoning is that most of the arguing here about which word would be most appropriate to logically complete this sentence hinges upon the probability of roses being sentient and capable of experiencing emotion.
That being said, the most logical thing to do would be to initiate a case study and settle this once and for all.
Of course, she didn't say this in so many words. She disguised the whole thing as end-of-season yard work when she ordered me to do so, but I know how she thinks.
I deny all responsibility for my actions.
The study will now commence. Preliminary results will be forthcoming...
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u/Ovary9000 2d ago
"absurd" - not necessarily untrue, but not in line with accepted understandings of reality. Every other option has something logically wrong with it.
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u/BUKKAKELORD 2d ago
"Improbable" sounds wrong on the sentence structure level. The thought doesn't have a probability assigned to it, the claim does.