Insofar as people are acting rationally, they all avoid the harms unless they have an adequate reason not to avoid them. For example, in any thing like normal circumstances it is irrational not to jump out of the way of a speeding truck to win a bet of a dollar, but it is not irrational to jump in front at that truck in order to save the life of a child. Unless one has a reason, evils or harms require action to avoid them, but we don’t need reasons not to seek goods. If someone tries to persuade you to go to a funny movie, it is not irrational to say simply that you do not feel like it. This point is even clearer when someone tries to persuade you to go to the gym to improve your abilities. It is not irrational to simply say that you don’t feel like going. A person can have enough of a good so that he doesn’t feel like doing anything to get any more, but it is irrational to avoid the goods without a reason, that is, to make an effort to avoid the good. Evils or harms motivate rational persons far more than goods or benefits, which is why morality is far more concerned with harms or evils than with goods or benefits.

Since all of you in the audience are rational, I expect that, unless you have adequate reasons, all of you avoid harms for yourself and do not avoid benefits for yourself. From what I have said so far rationality seems related solely to self-interest. I have not said that it is irrational to harm others for no reason, only that it is irrational not to avoid harm for yourself. If you are not harming yourself, you do not need any reasons to make your action rational. In fact, to talk about an adequate reason means a reason that is adequate to make an otherwise irrational action, one that causes harm to oneself, rational. It does not even make any sense to talk about an adequate reason except when one’s action would be irrational without that reason.  This has the disconcerting result that if vandals are sure that they will not be caught, it is not irrational to harm others for no reason. So rationality does not have any hidden moral content hidden inside of it.