Delays and stalling. Iran remembers how easily we spanked them when they damaged one of our cruisers with a mine.

They want time and with Putin outsmarting Zero, aka Obama this leaves our dear leader with only one nation with which to war against for nbc weapons. 0 clearly needs a popular war to help his destroyed reputation so Putin made them come to the table first.

The west has been hating on Persia for over 2000 years.
Must be some kind of collective mental defect.

How can a rational person believe or derive any sort of conclusions about anything from mainstream media sources anymore?  And non-mainstream sources?  Good luck weeding through those for anything useful. 

All a rational person without an ultra topic secret clearance can do is realise they can't have an informed opinion about anything regarding current events, politics, etc., other than, of course, that democracy is a sham, there is no freedom of the press, and humanity is held hostage to the whims of those in control of the real information.

All a rational person can do is embrace the irrational hope and unwarranted, undeserved trust that those people in control of the real information and facts won't use their power for malevolent purposes.

It's been a long time since a rational person posted on this forum yell, so I doubt we will get an answer to that question...

how can a rational person be deliberately irrational?

As I said:

"All a rational person can do is embrace the irrational hope and unwarranted, undeserved trust that those people in control of the real information and facts won't use their power for malevolent purposes."

Rational people recognize that their trust in those in control is unwarranted, undeserved, irrational, and yet necessary.

It is the same as having to cross a bridge:  Pure ration dictates that there is no reason to believe the bridge will not collapse, but in order to get to where you need to go, you trust that the bridge won't collapse.  This trust is reasonable, although irrational.

Modern democracy, however, is another matter.  It is like such a bridge as above  that we must cross every day on our way to work.   Now unlike the bridge above, this bridge is known to collapse every so often.  It is just a matter of fact that after workmen have repeatedly repaired it, the bridge tends to collapse.  Now, although we know the bridge could collapse at any moment, we nevertheless keep crossing the bridge every morning, expecting the bridge to collapse even every day.

We know it is risky for us to continue crossing that bridge every morning, but because it is the only bridge in town and we have to get to work, it is also reasonable for us to do so, and to lessen our angst every morning as we cross it, we believe against all rationality and reason that the bridge will certainly not collapse.  We intentionally delude ourselves, and this self-delusion is both unreasonable and irrational as well as reasonable and rational.

For without deluding ourselves as to the structural integrity of the bridge, we wouldn't cross it, wouldn't be able to get to work, wouldn't survive.  Society is structured in such a way as to ensure the survival of those with the capacity to would delude themselves, and thus it becomes reasonable for us to do so; self-delusion becomes rational!

If the only way we might provide for our survival in an unreasonable, irrational society is to delude ourselves, self-delusion becomes reasonable and rational coping mechanism.

Over history, we've sen the tendency for human beings to delude themselves when to do is perceived to further their interests or to ensure their survival.

And in contemporary democracies, the same occurs.

@Yell:

"if you think it necessary to be irrational you abandon rationality"

It is more complicated than that. As I have said, people hold things to be true irrationally all the time.  This tendency for them to do so is a survival mechanism.  And because it helps them survive, it is rational and justified then for them to hold such irrational beliefs.

"Truth
Main article: Truth

Whether someone's belief is true is not a prerequisite for (its) belief. On the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. For example, if a person believes that a bridge is safe enough to support him, and attempts to cross it, but the bridge then collapses under his weight, it could be said that he believed that the bridge was safe but that his belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself (by crossing it), he knows that it was safe."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

People cross the bridge every day believing it is safe because they have no choice.  They are not privy to the information, facts, or knowledge that would prove it is safe.  In almost every day-to-day decision, people believe something without knowing for sure whether or not it is actually true because they must believe it in order to function in society (cross the bridge).

In our world, people exploit this necessity for people to believe without knowing, politicians especially.  The knowledge that the responsible citizen of a democracy needs to know in order to be a responsible voter politicians are in the business of manipulating, keeping it locked away.  It is their currency: they release only portions of it (perhaps to give credence to their outright lies) and only insofar as to do so might manipulate public opinion in a way favorable to those the politician's interests.   

The same is done by anyone, mainstream media tycoons, government agencies, institutions, or even individuals etc..  Those in control of the information maintain their control of it by not making it available to others or accessible to the public.  In terms of legitimacy of democratic government, the key insights or analysis that would inform the voter sufficiently to provide legitimacy to the democratic process are inevitably lost amidst the foray misinformation and omissions.   

Despite this, people naturally continue to believe in the democratic process, continue to vote based on the 'facts' available to them and their conscience, knowing full well that such has been manipulated.   Politicians know this too, which is why they are able to get away with virtually anything they want.

It is perfectly rational and justifiable for people to maintain this irrational belief in the legitimacy of contemporary democracies' democratic processes, for holding on to such irrational belief furthers their chances of surviving and prospering.  The very design of the system exploits this.

because no one needs anything other than the largest guns to feel secure in jobs and well educated and healthy

Oh, and regarding Iran, yes, I believe they are just stalling.

Let's remember that no matter how the mainstream media and politicians on both sides try to spin it, the real reason for the conflict is the existential threat perceived by power brokers on both sides:

The US sees that if it does not retain its currency as the medium of exchange for global purchases of oil, its economy will collapse, while Russia, Iran, and China don't see that their economies and prosperity per capita can grow enough to ward-off mass social unrest and the collapse of their own regimes without trading oil in their own mediums of exchange.

It's the same old story - all about money, control, resistance to change, etc., surprise, surprise.

If that was the case, why would the US be buying the negotiation story?

"But the fact that I could gain some advantage by falsehood, does not relieve it of being false.  And a worldview built on falsehood cannot enjoy the term "rational"

Use the term epistemologically justifiable, then?

The fact that the US is trying to reassure Netanyahu, their closest ally on the "hardline against Iran" stance, and the first nation isolated by the recent political shift... the alternative is that the US is conducting an elaborate and counterproductive ruse solely for the purpose of being able to say "gotcha," particularly when the alternative would have been to dismiss Iran outright.

It just would have been too easy to dismiss Iran's diplomatic gestures as North Korea shennanigans unless they did something substantive that they would never do.  Hell, we could have just said that, historically, the Iranian President has been little more than a puppet of the Ayatollah, so the diplomatic overtures meant about as much as if a Yosemite National Park ranger started establishing US foreing policy.  Instead, the US broke literally 30 years of silence between it and Iran.

So yes, I do think the US is buying it.  The fact that the goals of your narrative could have been so easily achieved just by doing exactly what we've done for the past 30 years empirically denies the existence of your narrative's truth.

As for your second argument, the existence of contingency plans is just that... a contingency plan.  It means nothing unless a scenario, however unlikely, appears.  That doesn't mean it's a scenario we find likely, or even shapes goals.  It just means "if this happens to occur, we have a plan of action so we're not running around like chickens with our heads chopped off."

... Reply coming later, but I just had to note, regarding your quotations!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … copter.gif