In some sense, yes, since I take doing good to be, intrinsically, for the long-term benefit of everyone. However, I think your point may be that people sometimes do bad things for the benefit of some subset of 'everyone' which is not coextensive with (or even inclusive of) themselves; if so, then you have a point. However, I still consider that form of decision-making to be crazy.BloodHenge wrote:It lookes like you assumed that people only do bad things for themselves, and for benefits the short term.
That was the point of my philosophical caveat. When we talk about "rationality" we're not usually talking just about observing strict formal logical relations, but about properly justifying our beliefs and actions; but there is an open question as to what constitutes "proper" justification. Espistemically, we have a general consensus, outside of a few fringe groups, that properly justified beliefs are justified by objective empirical observations - that is, grounded in the senses, but in no particular person's senses, rather in what is objectively sensible by anyone; and we call beliefs held contrary to such objective empiricism "irrational". Ethically, there is no consensus so broad as that which the scientific method has achieved in epistemology, but my particular take on it is that actions are justified by a sort of altruistic hedonism, analogous to the objective empiricism of the scientific method. If I am correct about that, then yes, intentionally making someone else's life worse is irrational and insane.BloodHenge wrote: But then, we've strayed a bit from my point. Is doing something bad necessarily insane? Do you really think it's unilaterally impossible to rationally choose to intentionally make someone else's life worse?
However, as I said, there is an open question as to whether altruistic hedonism really is the ultimate justification for actions - but there's also an open question as to whether objective empiricism is the ultimate justification for beliefs. Maybe our senses constantly lie, and the truth is imperceptible, or maybe my particular sensations are the only truth, and the world vanishes when I sleep or die; maybe pleasure leads us only into sin, and good comes from suffering, or maybe my own personal pleasure is all that matters. But those kinds of ideas lead to nihilism and solipsism; and I can't really say anything against those kinds of positions other than "that sounds crazy to me". Which is my point; we call someone crazy when they disagree with what we take to be the ultimate justifications for thoughts and actions, and we are correct in calling someone crazy when we are correct about what are those ultimate justifications. But how can we know if we are correct?
But backing up some: more generally, "doing something bad" is insane in the same sense that "believing something false" is insane. Mistakenly holding false beliefs despite your best efforts to hold true beliefs is not insane, but if your whole approach to deciding what to believe or not is completely out of whack with reality, then we call you crazy. Likewise, doing bad things despite your best efforts to do good is not insane, but if your whole approach to deciding what to do is completely out of whack with morality, then you're crazy. The remaining questions, then, are "how do we decide what is ultimately real?" and "how do we decide what is ultimately moral?". And that's the open question problem I was just talking about above.
(Postscript: the clinical psychological establishment seems to agree somewhat that not caring about others is mentally unhealthy; that's why we have a diagnosis of sociopathy).