Twisted Reasoning
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A curious incident happened today morning.
At the Mahalaxmi station, noticed a well-dressed (should be well-educated, middle class) person urinating on the railway tracks. As usual, couldn't stop myself and ended up accosting him...appealing to his education/value-system/sense of hygiene.
Generally have found that in such cases that if the person is from a decent background, he realises his mistake and the sense of shame ensures no further repitition.
But today's guy shot back with a curious reasoning. His explanation was this. Anyways at a railway station you have all these trains...and if a person were in a train and using a latrinal, it would amount to the same thing though then nobody would say anything.
By this time my train had arrived and I had to leave...hope I left him feeling sufficiently humiliated so that he wouldn't easily repeat the exploit.
Well the flaw in his reasoning was simple.
At any point in time, a system is designed such that the best case scenario can happen from among available alternatives.
On a moving train, given the alternatives possible, making a latrinal the way it is, is probably the best case scenario for the Railways.
For our guy at the station, with a public bathroom available nearby, urinating on the tracks isn't.
I wish I get to meet him again to explain the logic.
A curious incident happened today morning.
At the Mahalaxmi station, noticed a well-dressed (should be well-educated, middle class) person urinating on the railway tracks. As usual, couldn't stop myself and ended up accosting him...appealing to his education/value-system/sense of hygiene.
Generally have found that in such cases that if the person is from a decent background, he realises his mistake and the sense of shame ensures no further repitition.
But today's guy shot back with a curious reasoning. His explanation was this. Anyways at a railway station you have all these trains...and if a person were in a train and using a latrinal, it would amount to the same thing though then nobody would say anything.
By this time my train had arrived and I had to leave...hope I left him feeling sufficiently humiliated so that he wouldn't easily repeat the exploit.
Well the flaw in his reasoning was simple.
At any point in time, a system is designed such that the best case scenario can happen from among available alternatives.
On a moving train, given the alternatives possible, making a latrinal the way it is, is probably the best case scenario for the Railways.
For our guy at the station, with a public bathroom available nearby, urinating on the tracks isn't.
I wish I get to meet him again to explain the logic.
posted by Ayan Bhattacharya @ 09:35
1 Comments:
At 3:45 pm, November 02, 2008,
Anonymous said…
cudnt stop myself commenting in this one.
he is educated therefore u see he shot back. no where it says education brings sobriety rather it makes them prude with their contorted sense of reasoning in which they never give up proving themselves right always, your mission to knock sense wud have been far easier with some rustic becoz they r not educated...
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