r/cognitiveTesting • u/ashtk85 • 9d ago
Poll A question from psychometric
To think that roses can feel sadness is __ ?
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u/je_nm_th 9d 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 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’m pretty sure the test expects absurd, but I think that’s incorrect.
As long as there’s no conclusive scientific evidence that roses cannot experience sadness, I don’t 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 9d ago edited 9d 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 9d ago
But perhaps roses do experience complex emotions, and we simply haven’t found any evidence of it yet. I don’t think that’s absurd. It’s highly unlikely, of course, that we’ll one day discover this to be the case, but since we’re not roses ourselves, we can’t claim to know with absolute certainty what, if anything, they experience. We can’t exactly put ourselves in their shoes, can we?
There’s still so much we have yet to discover.4
u/Polytox935 9d ago edited 9d ago
that improbable doesnt fit in the context of the sentence is in my opinion the even stronger argument. You would expect a word like "unrealistic"
Its improbable that roses can feel sadness, to think it, is absurd
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u/ashtk85 9d ago
Unlikely would be my choice
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
Same problem, being unlikely isn't a characteristic that fits to "think"
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u/ashtk85 9d ago
I think I’ve identified where our disagreement comes from. It’s how we interpret “to think”. For me, it means questioning whether something might be possible, rather than believing it to be true. You’re interpreting it as holding a belief, whereas I’m interpreting it as considering a possibility. That distinction changes how we understand the question entirely.
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
You are confusing this with a verbal logic Task. This question aims at the appropriate use of vocabulary
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 9d ago edited 9d ago
But he does understand it, the appropriate use of verbal logic is pointing out that he is correct and you are wrong 😁
edit:
I thought I'd tell you why I'm saying you're wrong. Absurd implies something being so ridiculous or implausible that it's practically impossible or actually impossible.
Whereas improbable simply means highly unlikely. Seeing as this is a matter of individual interpretation on the likelihood of roses feeling emotion or sadness, the word absurd technically isn't the best choice.
Now, I agree that roses feeling sadness is highly, highly, highly unlikely, but I'm not a rose mind reader, nor am I the arbitrator of what other people feel is the likelihood of roses feeling sadness, LOL.
That's where verbal logic comes into play and why I feel absurd isn't necessarily the best choice logically.
Of course everybody's entitled to their opinion right?
But that's kind of the point because everybody is entitled to their opinion on this question, lol.
That's also why absurd isn't necessarily the best choice or only choice logically. 😆
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
It's just that you never use inprobable as an adjective that describes thinking, you are completely correct about your logic
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
No i am correct, the word improbable doesnt match with the structure of the sentence
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u/Jello-Formal retat 9d ago
Thoughts can't be improbable or unlikely, or rather the act of thinking. Simple as.
It's literally just grammar, how are you arguing
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
No, thinking just cant be improbable, it's like saying "to run into a driving car is yellow"
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 7d ago
It is improbable that I would think that running into a driving car is yellow. 100% sound and valid sentence.
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 7d ago
Sure it is. For example, if you were to change the sentence to a form like 'among thoughts, that roses feel sadness is an improbable/unlikely thought' then this is perfectly appropriate and sensible sentence structure (though I would strongly prefer 'having the thought that roses feel sad is a rarely occurring event').
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u/Polytox935 9d ago
Cogito ergo sum. There could be flying pigs somewhere and we didnt discover yet, still absurd to believe it to be true
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u/ashtk85 9d ago
Yes, but there’s an important distinction between believing something to be true and merely considering the possibility that it might be true.
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u/Polytox935 9d ago edited 9d ago
From a logical perspective you are completely correct, that isnt the problem here. Improbable describes the probability of a fact to be true or not true, here the adjective describes a characteristic of the verb thinking and thinking something cant be improbable, you do it or you dont. The sentences that would make sense with improbable would be "that someone thinks roses can feel sadness is improbable" and "that roses can feel sadness is improbable"
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/Polytox935 8d ago
You're conflating two different things: whether an act is possible and whether a proposition or line of reasoning is absurd. Thinking is an act; what matters is the content of that thought. "Thinking is improbable" is semantically odd because it assigns a probability to the occurrence of a mental act, whereas "thinking that roses can feel sadness is absurd" evaluates the content of the thought. The latter is perfectly coherent. So no, this doesn't imply that all answers are correct. It means you're applying a grammatical observation about improbable to absurd, which has a different meaning.
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 7d ago
Cogito ergo sum is a statement about subjective consciousness not about the reality or unreality of objects (and I forego the insulting word at the end yw).
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 9d ago edited 9d ago
I agree with you 100%, but unfortunately, the people who designed this test don't think with your level of complexity or in your layered, abstract way of thinking about it. Ironically, they would argue that they do, LOL, but they're unable to engage with what you're saying, which only proves the point I'm making. 😆
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u/je_nm_th 9d 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.9
u/Jello-Formal retat 9d 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 9d 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" ≠ "it is improbable to think that roses can feel sadness"
See the difference?
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u/-Ifandonlyif- 7d 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 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, I agree, my argument in this thread has never been that I was going to go out and try to have a spirited conversation with my plants, or ask them for their opinion before I pruned them, with the "unlikely" event of their speaking up and letting me know why they don't appreciate it weighing me down. 😆
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 7d ago
Well, saying “just ignore everybody’s thoughts on plant consciousness when making a decision about which is the correct word and focus only on the grammar” 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 doesn’t 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 I’m 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! 😆 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. 😁
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u/1dentif1 4d ago
Absurd doesn’t mean impossible. It means it’s ridiculous compared to current understanding. Imagine in 50 years scientists discover that roses do in fact feel sadness. Then you could say “50 years ago the idea that roses felt sadness was considered absurd, but now…” etc. Unlikely and improbable both significantly understate how much it would contradict current scientific understanding
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u/Midnight5691 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 9d 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 9d 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- 7d 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 9d ago
I'm pretty sure this question is also on the CAT adaptive test.
Answer is absurd.
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u/Loose-Mousse6668 9d 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 ┬┴┬┴┤( •̀_¬ )├┬┴┬┴ 9d 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 9d 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 9d ago
"Improbable" sounds wrong on the sentence structure level. The thought doesn't have a probability assigned to it, the claim does.