I am always surprised when people say they believe that humans are capable
of intuitively making correct decisions. The thinking seems to be that the
human instinct, your "gut feeling" is usually right, and that second-guessing
it by actually trying to use the reasoning capabilities of your brain will
result in a less pure and less correct way of thinking.
  In other words, it is the belief that thinking with your heart rather than
with your head is better. I suppose there are many people in the world who
have long believed this, but even so, it always seems like an amazingly
misguided philosophy to my mind. The concept that people have the right idea
in their hearts has led to more grief than people can imagine.
  This way of thinking was most recently presented to me as I was browsing an
opinion on why people can learn ethics by owning guns, written by Eric
Raymond, a well-known figure in certain computer circles. The final (and
apparently, most important) ethical lesson put forth in this essay is "that
right choices are possible, and the ordinary judgement of ordinary (wo)men is
sufficient to make them." That someone can sincerely believe this is true
absolutely boggles my mind.
  If the right decisions can be made using the judgement of ordinary people
and this is a justification for people owning guns, then why do people kill
with guns? Why have several cold-blooded murders been committed with guns,
used by people who judged that killing was the right decision to make?
  Taking a step back and looking at a much larger picture, why is the world
still besieged by war? Perhaps a few cases of people killing with guns could
be dismissed as statistically insignificant when you compare it to how many
people actually own guns in the world; Indeed, Mr. Raymond notes that the
people who use guns to kill other humans tend to be deviants, the exception
rather than the rule. But if people can make the right decisions regarding
their weapons, then why has the specter of nuclear war not faded? Why is it
that even in this day and age, whole countries use arsenals of destruction
that go far beyond mere bullets to kill thousands of innocent people? Is this
the correct decision to make, made by the everyday judgement of
right-thinking people?
  Mr. Raymond declares that to deny one's own judgement is to declare oneself
a "moral coward", a state lacking in "the dignity of a free man". This
thought would carry more weight if there were such a thing as pure freedom,
but I have long held that no person is truly free of everything that might
enslave them, and one of the things that will never leave a person is their
own desires and temptations. There is no human being who is free from the
nature of their own body, which is to kill and destroy. People who have
suppressed these desires for many years tend to be less vulnerable to them,
but subconsciously, everybody still loves the feeling of power that comes
from harming someone else. This is something that cannot be expunged from the
human character; It can only be controlled. And while controlling it is
actually not that difficult, it *does* require one to deny the supposed
supremacy of their own human judgement.
  This is not to say that humans are incapable of making right decisions. It
is merely that each person's judgement is flawed, and nobody can make the
right decisions all the time if they rely solely on their intuition. Indeed,
nobody can make all the right decisions even if they use their head, since
many people have skewed judgement that is based on incorrect principles that
already exist in their minds. What I'm saying is that while the human will
and the human mind are amazing wonders that can do great things, they are not
perfect, and to trust in them as capable of supreme judgement is not only
misguided, but terribly dangerous to my way of thinking.
  Unfortunately, most people don't have much else to go on, since anything
non-human is usually not likely to give great advice either. And so,
ultimately, humans must rely on their flawed judgement. It has long been so,
and will continue to be so; And that's why the world has so many problems.