Sure, but try to cope with the dilemma as best you can. If you can think of a better example, great! If not, try to imagine a situation where being a gangster would be pragmatic. Maybe you’re the godfather’s favorite child, recently returned from the military and otherwise unskilled. Maybe you live in a dome on a colony planet that is essentially one big corrupt city, and ordinary entrepreneurship doesn’t pay off properly. Maybe you’re a member of a despised or even outlawed ethnicity in medieval times, and no one will sit still to listen to your brilliant ideas about how to build better water mills and eradicate plague unless you first establish yourself as a powerful and wealthy fringe figure.
In general, when trying to evaluate an argument that you’re initially inclined to disagree with, you should try to place your self in The Least Convenient Possible World for refuting that argument. That way, if you still manage to refute the argument, you’ll at least have learned something. If you stop thinking when the ordinary world doesn’t seem to validate a hypothesis that you didn’t believe in to begin with, you don’t really learn anything.
Sure, but try to cope with the dilemma as best you can. If you can think of a better example, great! If not, try to imagine a situation where being a gangster would be pragmatic. Maybe you’re the godfather’s favorite child, recently returned from the military and otherwise unskilled. Maybe you live in a dome on a colony planet that is essentially one big corrupt city, and ordinary entrepreneurship doesn’t pay off properly. Maybe you’re a member of a despised or even outlawed ethnicity in medieval times, and no one will sit still to listen to your brilliant ideas about how to build better water mills and eradicate plague unless you first establish yourself as a powerful and wealthy fringe figure.
In general, when trying to evaluate an argument that you’re initially inclined to disagree with, you should try to place your self in The Least Convenient Possible World for refuting that argument. That way, if you still manage to refute the argument, you’ll at least have learned something. If you stop thinking when the ordinary world doesn’t seem to validate a hypothesis that you didn’t believe in to begin with, you don’t really learn anything.