BB3: Eudemonia Panel: Happiness

This is the eighth in a series of posts on presentations given at Beyond Belief 3: Candles in the Dark"

You can find a list of all Atheist Ethicist blog postings covering Beyond Belief 3 at the Introduction post

And I would like to encourage you to give a contribution to the Science Network, who makes these presentations available for free.

Even though the first session at the Beyond Belief conference had to do with Eudemonia, the panel discussion at the end of the session was mostly concerned with happiness. (See Panel Human Flourishing / Eudaimonics)

I mentioned how the conference members all seemed to share a common culture and a common language. As a result, they all seemed to be aware of and agree with a number of findings that showed that there are two major determinants to whether one is happy: (1) low expectations, and (2) religious convictions.

Pessimism

I have often said – often as a source of humor – that, contrary to public opinion, pessimists are the happiest people in the world, while optimists are the most glum. This is because the pessimist experiences a string of pleasant surprises as reality often turns out better than he feared it would. The optimist, on the other hand, faces a constant string of disappointments and unpleasant surprises.

It turns out, in following the panel discussion, that this might actually be true. Several speakers spoke to research that shows that people are happier in a society where things are turning out better than expected.

In other words, you can increase peoples’ happiness, not by changing the product, but by changing people’s expectations. If you can lower expectations first, and then give the people your product, they are happier than they would be with the same product received in an environment of high expectations.

In fact, even outside of this conference, I have heard a lot of discussion about the value of “managing expectations”. Consultants are now in the business of lowering expectations before they turn over a deliverable, so that the deliverable will exceed expectations. Presidential candidates before a debate adopt the policy of trying to lower expectations for their candidate and raise expectations for their opponent so that – without changing the quality of the presentation itself, they can raise or lower people’s evaluation of that presentation.

Currently, Presidential candidate Barak Obama is busy telling us that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Whenever I hear these comments, I have to ask myself if it is true, or if Obama is smart enough to know the value of managing expectations. If he tells us to expect a significant economic downturn, and it turns out to be less severe than people expect, he will be given credit. Yet, if Obama were to promise a rapid recovery with little pain, Obama would end up being seen as a failure, even though the economic conditions ended up identical to what they were under conditions of reduced expectations.

This is not a matter of valuing honesty. If we valued honesty, then we would prefer it if the President gave us an accurate assessment of the economy. Lowering expectations so that the economy can turn out “better than expected” would be condemned for its dishonesty. Yet, we seem to be wired so that we will reward the dishonest president or consultant who manipulates us by manipulating our expectations more than we reward the honest president or consultant.

In fact, we seem at risk of rewarding the person who lowers are expectations and gives us a product of quality Q more than we reward the person who gives us an honest appraisal and gives us a product of quality of Q + n. The first person has given us a product that “exceeds our expectations”, while the second merely “meets our expectations.” We then irrationally evaluate the first one as better than the second.

This is an example where the fact that we have a natural disposition to behave (or evaluate) something in a particular way does not imply that it actually makes sense to do so. This disposition to evaluate things as meeting or exceeding expectations is actually a disposition we should guard against – focusing more on the actual quality of the product on not the relationship between its quality and some set of easily manipulated expectations.

Happiness and Religious Experience

One of my objections to the idea that happiness is the most important (sole) value is that it fails to account for the low value of experience-machine happiness. This is the objection that Grayling made in his presentation. If happiness were the sole value than we can promote the good by feeding everybody a pill that gives them a feeling of happiness while they lie down and die – or hook them up to an experience machine that feeds them the illusion of being popular and successful while their body, in fact, lays in a puddle of goo and the agent does nothing real.

The problem with religious experience and happiness is not that religious experience fails to produce happiness. The problem is that religious experience produces experience-machine happiness; and empty and meaningless form of happiness where the agent only thinks (wrongly, as it turns out) that he has obtained something of value. It produces an illusion of success and accomplishment that is no more real than the success and accomplishments of the person hooked up to an experience machine.

In fact, many religious accomplishments are the opposite of what the agent thinks them to be. While they are made happy with the belief that they are doing good, they are actually doing harm.

Imagine being hooked up to an experience machine where you are fed images of being a successful doctor. You are made to believe that you are devoting your life to saving lives and promoting the health of others when, in fact, you are laying in a pool of goo being fed experiences by a machine. The machine makes you believe that you are the author of some miraculous cures and you are widely praised for your brilliance and success – with healthy patients more than happy to name their children after you.

However, in fact, you are hooked up to an experience machine that actually does harm to people proportional to the benefit that you are made to believe yourself to be providing. Whenever the machine makes you think you have saved a child’s life, it kills a child. Each time you are fed the belief that you have helped an injured or sick child, the machine injures or infects a real child. The harder you work to save lives and reduce suffering, the more death and suffering comes from your actions.

Meanwhile, you are kept blissfully ignorant of the harms that you are responsible for.

This is the situation that many people who find happiness in religion find themselves in.

For example, many of them cheer the “success” of passing Proposition 8 in California – the proposition that revoked the right of homosexuals to marriage. Their religion feeds them the belief that they have accomplished something meaningful and good – and they find personal happiness in their success. Instead, the real-world effect of their actions is to cause unnecessary and unjustified suffering.

. Their efforts and their success has made them happy. Yet, they merely believe that they have accomplished something meaningful. This is a belief that is fed to them by their religious experience machine, and it is a belief that produces great happiness.

However, the real-world effect of their actions has been to promote unnecessary, unjustified, real-world suffering – preventing real people from obtaining something that, to them, would have real value.

Conclusion

So, there are real dangers to focusing on happiness as the source and center of all value. Such a theory would actually justify the type of manipulation of expectations where we provide happiness, not by changing the actual facts of human existence, but by manipulating people’s expectations regarding those facts. It would justify the type of “experience machine” happiness where a person is made happy believing he is doing good when, in fact, he is doing great harm.

The alternative to both of these problems with a happiness theory of value is a theory that recognizes that truth has a certain amount of value. The facts of the matter of a given situation is more important than the expectations people have regarding those facts. The fact of the matter regarding the harms and benefits provided to people is more important than an agent’s beliefs about those facts.

In other words, the fact of the matter, in fact, matters.

Hate Speech and the Presumption of Innocence

In a recent comment to my posting on A Message of Hate, Jonathan Baker asked some questions about the distinction between raising honest objections versus hate speech.

He wrote:

For example: let us say that I think that smoking is unhealthy for the environment, for the smoker themselves, and for anyone who is subjected to the fumes. According to your definition I could argue for making smoking illegal provided I used honest research and was carefully and pointedly aiming my hostility at the smoke and not the smoker.

This is mostly true - except I would not necessarily have objections to aiming hostility at the smoker. A person who smokes under conditions where their smoking would do harm to others is somebody who can be condemned for their lack of consideration for the well-being of others.

When we use praise or condemnation to promote or inhibit certain desires, we praise or condemn the person who has the desires. To praise or condemn the desire itself is nonsense. What use does a desire have for our praise or condemnation? How does a desire itself act on our praise or condemnation? No, the desire itself is not our target. The person with the desire is our target.

Now, to compare this type of argument to gay marriage:

If I thought (and I have argued this elsewhere on this blog) that marriage between two persons of the opposite sex should be defended because of the potentiality of natural offspring and their protection, and that therefore homosexuals, no not even my homosexual friends, should be allowed to marry, is that hate speech?

It depends.

If there is good, solid evidence that there is harm done to the well-being of children by allowing homosexual marriage, then it is not hate-speech to mention that evidence.

I compare this situation to that of a prosecutor at a trial saying, "We intend to prove that the accused had a motive to murder the alleged victim, had an opportunity to murder the alleged victim, and did in fact murder the alleged victim."

Would this be hate speech?

It depends on the quality of the evidence. It depends on whether the speaker is somebody who was lead to believe that the accused committed a murder by the evidence. Or, instead, if the speaker was lead to believe that the evidence is evidence of murder because this is what he wants to believe.

When a desire to believe that somebody is guilty causes one to see "evidence" where none exists - causes a person to evaluate the evidence according to whether it supports the desired conclusion, rather than evaluate conclusions based on the available evidence, then we have evidence for an accusation of hate-speech.

Many of the arguments against gay marriage use "evidence" that fits this second category. There is no actual evidence to suggest that allowing homosexual marriage would be harmful to a society's capacity to raise children. There is simply a desire to believe that this is the case by those who are looking for an excuse - a rationalization - to make actions harmful to the interests of homosexuals seem legitimate.

One last point. Baker said:

Inciting violence or hostility is always wrong whether using lies or not.

This is false.

All we need to do is to note that criminal punishment is violence. Arresting a person and holding him in jail, or executing him, is a violent act, backed by people with guns.

It is not wrong to incite violence or hostility against, for example, rapists, murderers, thieves, embezzlers, con artists, and the like. We do it all the time.

What is wrong is inciting unjustified violence against these people - with assuming that they are guilty, rather than assuming that they are innocent unless and until the weight of the evidence proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Homosexuals have a right to the same type of consideration. They have a right to our assumption that homosexual marriage is not a threat to the quality of our institutions geared for raising children unless and until the weight of the evidence proves otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt.

And let us not forget . . . what is most often forgotten . . . that an important subset of those children whose interests we are supposed to be protecting are homosexuals.

BB3: George Koop: Addiction vs Flourishing

This is the seventh in a series of posts on presentations given at Beyond Belief 3: Candles in the Dark"

You can find a list of all Atheist Ethicist blog postings covering Beyond Belief 3 at the Introduction post

And I would like to encourage you to give a contribution to the Science Network, who makes these presentations available for free.

The last presenter in "eudemonia" group at the Beyond Belief conference was George Koob, Professor and Chair of the Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders at The Scripps Research Institute.

Koob was there to talk about the relationship between addiction and well-being. Specifically, he showed us a schematic of “the addiction cycle”

This is a presentation that drew heavily on the slides that the presenter used. Koob showed us a graphic of "the neurocircuitry of addiction" – the pathways through the brain that lead to addiction and that tell us what addiction is (in physiological terms).

The slides are difficult to read in the presentation. If a reader is interested, I found on the web a PowerPoint presentation from George Koob that covered the same material, only more deeply. See: The Neurobiology of Addiction

This presentation was actually of interest to me. One of the things I have faulted television for is its failure to provide us with useful information. With addictions being such an important part of the world around us, it would seem that it would pay us to have at least a layman's understanding of addiction, so that we can make effective policy choices. Yet, nowhere do I see anybody presenting the science of addiction to people in easy-to-understand terms. I believe we would benefit if this were changed.

In fact, if there were ever an atheist television network, one of the things that I would hope that it would provide is a scientific account of what is involved in socially relevant phenomena such as addiction.

Anyway, back to the presentation, Koob argued that, with respect to

Once [the] positive reward system is engaged, there is a payback time. There is no free ride in the brain hedonic circuits.

According to Koob, there is a negative reward system (an opponent process that is put there to limit reward. There is a reason why we are wired to in such a way that people suffer a hangover as a result of too much drinking, or a crash after taking certain types of drugs. These are not just unrelated side effects. These are a part of a negative reward system geared to keep people away from certain types of harmful behaviors.

Koob compares two different views of this opponent process.

The classic view, championed by Richard Solomon was that this opponent process got larger and larger over time.

Koop's view (that he presented at the conference without having time to defend it) is that the opponent process does not get larger but that, instead, the whole cycle of addiction is on a downward slope – so that peaks and valleys both decrease over time.

Ultimately, a drug addict, somebody who is hooked on drugs, is trying to claw their way back to a normal motivational state, and they never quite get there. And in the process – and this is the key point – in the process of getting back to this normal hedonic state they are making that hedonic state worse. They are digging themselves into a hole, and that’s called allostasis

On other words, when people begin an addiction they use the drug of abuse for the purpose of obtaining pleasure. However, over time, the use of the drug of abuse is used, not to obtain pleasure, but to avoid pain and discomfort. The drug 'high' aims to bring the biological system from a state of severe discomfort (withdraw) to a state of mild discomfort (high) – which is nonetheless valued because it is better than severe discomfort.

Koop then goes on to discuss "the philosophical implications of this" – which he called Hedonic Calvinism

A "hedonic Calvinistic" approach would be to restrict the use of the reward system within a homeostatic boundary (e.g., no development of negative affect)

The trick, according to Koob, is to avoid those types of behaviors that generate a negative aftereffect. If you have a hangover after drinking, this tells you that you have knocked your system out of its homeostatic range into an allostatic range – the body finds itself in a new state where one must overindulge in whatever triggered the opponent process.

If you wake up with a hangover, you are to use that information to decide never to drink as much again in the future. If you are uncomfortable as a result of over-eating, then you are to tell yourself not to eat so much again. Use this information to say, "This is the limit beyond which I should not go because, though it feels good at the moment, it will set off an opponent process, and that which sets off an opponent process is that which knocks my body out of a healthy equilibrium."

A part of my own philosophy is to pay attention to experts – particularly experts who can back up their claims by explaining and predicting events in controlled scientific conditions. This would be one of the key benefits of the Atheist Television Network I mentioned above. Would it not be nice to have a channel devoted to giving advice limited to that which is backed by peer-reviewed science, and just filter out of the garbage?

I will leave Koop's suggestion as a matter of practical advice.

Morality and Human Nature

Neuroskeptic wrote the following comment in response to a recent post, The Purpose of Morality.

Do we invent morality? I'm not sure who invented it and when - I always thought it was a natural expression of human nature. If someone says "X is wrong", it's not because they think saying it will bring about a desired outcome, it's generally because they feel that X is wrong.

We invent morality. Morality is a tool that we use to fulfill the most and strongest of our desires. Like all tools, it can be poorly designed, or well designed. And the quality of the design is determined for morality as it is for any other tool, by how efficiently it does the job for which it was invented.

It is true that people often appeal to their own feelings to determine if something is right or wrong. However, when they do so, they often come up with the wrong answer. It is probably the case that every hijacker on 9-11 felt that he was doing the right thing.

We have little reason to doubt that the vast majority of all slave owners, jihadists, crusaders, child abusers of all types, are comfortable with their actions. They use their feelings to judge right and wrong, and their feelings are mistaken.

It is very tempting to use one’s feelings to judge right and wrong. Your feelings will tell you what you want to hear. "Feelings" make the great atrocities of history that much easier, because "feelings" means that whatever one wants to do – whatever one is comfortable with – is right.

The very fact that a person can appeal to their feelings and come up with a wrong answer suggests that morality must be something other than what one feels is right or wrong. If feelings were the actual measure of what is right or wrong – if "what feels right" were identical to "what is right", then it would not make sense to ever say, "X feels right, but it is still wrong."

The very possibility of one's feelings giving a wrong answer means that morality must be "something else" – something that feelings have at least a possibility of not matching exactly.

Also, the idea that morality is some "natural expression of human nature" means that these greatest atrocities in human history might actually be permissible – even obligatory. Racism, for example, can well be a natural expression of human nature. We might have an innate disposition to favor those who look like us and to treat those who do not look like us with hostility. In which case, it would be morally permissible – even morally obligatory – to be racist.

It might be a natural part of a man's nature to engage in rape. It might be quite unnatural to encourage men to refrain from rape.

Morality is not an expression of our nature. Morality is a tool we use to keep our nature under control - to promote those parts of our nature that we have reason to promote, and to inhibit those parts of our nature we have reason to inhibit.

Morality is a tool that we use to take our nature, and to make it better.

Opportunity Costs of Doing Good

In a comment to a previous post, Doug S. pointed out that a call to contribute to some cause necessarily comes with opportunity costs that have to be weighed.

Specifically, in response to my call to readers to contribute to prosecuting a case of anti-atheist bigotry, Doug S. mentioned that one’s resources can be better spent saving a life in Africa. Specifically:

Well, I donated $25. I don't know if that made much of a difference. Considering that I could probably save the life of a random stranger in Africa for $1,000 by donating to Population Services International, I don't know if making a donation to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is a good use of my money.

I will wager that, if Doug S. were to review his finances for any given month, he would be able to find a large number of examples in which he spent $25, but where it did not go to saving a life in Africa. Nor did it go to fighting anti-atheist bigotry in America. Instead, it went to some substantially trivial form of personal entertainment, perhaps – like a movie, or tickets to a ball game, or a meal in a restaurant.

This is no criticism of Doug S. I do the same thing. While I devote a significant amount of time to my job and this blog, I can sometimes be seen as a hobbit battling pixilated evil in the land of Middle Earth in the game, "Lord of the Rings Online". Certainly, this time pales in moral significance not only against the saving of a life in Africa, but in fighting anti-atheist bigotry in America.

Even in a crisis situation - say, an airplane crash on an island - the most important task (assuming a hospitable climate) is to find fresh water. This does not imply that the survivors should put 100 percent of their effort into finding fresh water. Others can look for food - cook - and do other chores. Even those looking for fresh water can take a break from time to time.

When I suggest that a reader make a contribution to some effort – whether it is by contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about prosecuting a case of anti-atheist bigotry, or to write a letter to Dear Abbey, or to speak up against the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Motto, I am not asking them to take those resources away from projects like saving a life in Africa. I am asking them to take those resources away from such things as going to a sporting event, watching a sitcom, going to a movie, or eating out at an expensive restaurant.

It is reasonable ask whether morality grants you any free time to do the things that you like to do, like play a computer game or read a book. In fact, it does, in a tricky sort of way. At least, if desire utilitarianism is correct, what we aim at is people who enjoy doing that which tends to fulfill the desires of others, and is inhibited from doing that which thwarts the desires of others. Morality is perfectly consistent with giving a good person every opportunity to do what he enjoys – because what he enjoys is beneficial to others. Moral behavior, for such people, is not a chore. It's a hobby.

The rest of us, with less good desires (with desires fulfilled by actions that do not fulfill other desires) sometimes find that doing the right thing is more of a struggle. There is room for a little bit of improvement – for taking resources devoted to some project that fulfills desires that do not tend to fulfill the desires of others, and devoting them to something that does.

Why Fight Anti-Atheist Hate Speech?

Note: December 4 is the 1 year anniversary since the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on "under God" and "In God We Trust". We are still waiting for its opinion.

Meanwhile...

In a post, Mandatory Lesson: Atheists are the Enemy, I recommended that people contact the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to see how they can best contribute to the prosecution of those responsible for a mandatory lecture that painted atheists as America's enemies.

Doug S. responded:

Well, I donated $25. I don't know if that made much of a difference. Considering that I could probably save the life of a random stranger in Africa for $1,000 by donating to Population Services International, I don't know if making a donation to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is a good use of my money.

There are two points to make in response to this – which, in keeping with my new way of doing thing – will be presented in two (shorter) posts.

First, contributing to efforts such as this (if done right) is comparable to saving lives – even comparable to saving lives in Africa.

Morality is concerned with the specific application of general principles. The specific offense in this case is a lecture that air force officers were required to attend that preached that a life is not worth living unless it is spent helping "us" (those who believe that a god probably exists) fight "them" (those who deny that a god probably exists).

The general application is the promotion of in-group/out-group rivalries.

These rivalries are responsible for a great deal of death and suffering in the world, including the loss of lives among Africans. They are not only responsible for murders, they are responsible for the economic conditions that prevent people from getting enough food to eat or good medical care – the same types of concerns that Population Services International are concerned with.

We cannot distinguish between the need to fight the evils of tribalism abroad while we ignore them at home.

One of the greatest harms done when the Bush Administration embraced torture, rendition, indefinite confinement without a trial, and the use of secret evidence, is that he made a moral statement that anybody in the world should feel free to adopt these same tactics. He gave moral approval to every would-be dictator and tyrant in the world.

Similarly, our voice, when we condemn tribalism abroad, is a lot stronger when we are seen condemning tribalism at home as well. The message that the authority of a United States Air Force uniform will not be put into the service of preaching that a life is not worth living unless it is spent as a member of one tribe fighting against members of another tribe is a message that the world needs to hear.

That describes not only why, but how, as a moral issue, one should see to the punishment of those responsible for putting the authority of a U.S. Air Force uniform behind the message delivered in the presentation referenced in that previous post.

The Purpose of Morality

A couple of days ago, I said in reference to the violence in Mubai, India:

"We invent morality to protect us from these types of events."

In my re-assessment of this blog – my investigation into what the blog is or should be about – this is an important statement. I want to expand on that.

A moral recommendation is a recommendation that says, "If we promote a particular set of attitudes, people generally will be less inclined to do X. As a result, we and those we care about – which should include every innocent person - suffer less thwarting and more fulfillment of their own desires."

Failure to promote a moral society means putting oneself and others at risk of suffering the harms that immoral people impose on others.

This is one of the thoughts that I have going through my mind with every post that I write. The question is, "Am I directing peoples' attention against something that people generally have many and strong reasons to prevent through moral institutions?" The post itself, in the vast majority of cases, is merely my argument that the answer to such a question is "Yes." Or, if I am assessing a moral claim that somebody else has made, my post may be devoted to providing reasons to believe that the answer to that question is, "No" – that the person I am criticizing has her moral facts wrong.

On the view that I defend in this blog, the right act is the act that a person with good desires would perform – the person concerned with the well being of self, family, neighbors, and even unknown strangers.

Morality exists as a way of protecting us, we care about, and even strangers from murder, rape, theft, fraud, and even from harm due to callous negligence. We protect ourselves and others from these wrongs by promoting desires and aversions that will direct them to do something other than commit these types of moral crimes. The failure to promote morality is a failure to promote desires and aversions that would direct people to do things other than commit these types of moral crimes.

These are cases for which a term like "evil" was invented for. It is a flag, directing others to what the reader asserts is some set of attitudes that people generally have many and strong reasons to inhibit. A moral argument that sits behind a moral claim is the proof that those many and strong reasons actually exist.

Of course, if that moral argument makes an ineliminable reference to a God or an intrinsic value, then it makes a reference to a reason that does not exist, and the moral argument fails on that account.

So, this is one of the things that I am after in this blog – a set of arguments that relate objects of (moral) evaluation to reasons for action that do exist. Success means reducing the risk of harms that evil people do for innocent people generally. Failure (which includes any post in which I make a mistake in identifying what people generally have reason to promote or inhibit) means that they are at risk of suffering those harms.

A Message of Hate

Johnathan Baker, in a comment recently delivered to the post Pope Benedict XVI Markets Hate, made the following point.

We live in a basically relativistic society which unfortunately means that it is difficult to dialogue in a respectful manner - if you disagree with someone, you are a messenger of "hate". This is very sad.

I agree that it is sad. However, let us not go so far as to say that hate speech does not exist. Just as a lot of speech these days is currently mislabeled hate speech (by those who want to silence it), a lot of hate speech is currently mislabeled as legitimate and appropriate.

Where is the distinction?

First, let’s start with the position that a person is to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. In other words, it is the duty of the person who makes an accusation of "hate speech" to prove his case. A mere accusation is not sufficient or legitimate.

Second, the accuser must demonstrate that the accused has made false or misleading statements motivated by unfounded hostility towards the target group. Motivated, that is, out of unwarranted hatred and desire to promote unreasoned hatred in others.

This is hate speech:

It says that religion itself is responsible for 9-11. It invites the viewer to take the hostility deservedly attributed to those directly responsible to 9-11 and to apply it to a much larger target group, those who believe in one or more gods. It says, for example, "Think of the Amish with the same contempt that you have for the 9-11 hijackers."

The Pledge of Allegiance is hate speech – it invites people to adopt the same attitude towards those who do not support a nation under God that they would adopt to those who support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice for all.

So is the national motto: "Those who do not trust in God are not to be thought of as one of us."

This is not hate speech:

There is nothing in this that invites unreasoned hostility towards a target group. In fact, a religious person can look upon the sign and imagine a world of chaos and destruction as his "world without religion." When I see this message, I tend to imagine Mars. It is a world without religion, but not the type of world that want the Earth to become.

Neither is a T-shirt that says "Jesus Saves" or "What Would Jesus Do?" even though, if the speaker is not careful about what parts of the Bible he is pointing to, it may not be a useful moral guide.

In particular, it is not hate speech to say, "I believe that your proposition P is false for the following reasons." The morally challenged person in such a case is the person who points to the individual who said, "I think you are wrong for the following reason," and brands him a hate-monger without justification. This is the true hate-monger.

In all of this, the burden of proof rests with the accuser, not the accused. When the accuser cannot provide good reasons for his accusation, we have reason to suspect an ulterior motive – something driving the individual to grasp at anything that gives even the slightest glimmer of legitimacy to the hate he has for others.

Mandatory Lesson: Atheists are The Enemy

Speaking about incidents in which atheists allow themselves to suffer abuse without standing up to the abusers, the Daily Kos has a story of a presentation given to air force officers in England. This presentation was camouflaged as a talk on suicide prevention. It was, in fact, a propaganda lecture telling air force officers that a life is not worth living unless it is spent fighting against atheists, materialists (naturalists), and evolutionists.

(See: Daily Kos: Creationism: The Latest in Military Suicide Prevention.)

This slide tells the theme of the presentation:

This is a classic "us" verses "them" propaganda piece. Where "us", the "good guys", the ones who have lives worth living believe in God, and "them", "the enemy", "those the good guys are truly at war against", are those who do not believe in God.

The Daily Kos referenced above ends with a declaration that those who are responsible for this presentation should face trial.

This 'Purpose-Driven Airmen' mandatory presentation is the epitome of military-sanctioned 'hatred of the other' and those commanding its viewing must face trial by General Courts Martial."

They are entirely correct. If this were a story about an air force officer, not in uniform, expressing a private opinion – even if he does so before an audience as a guest speaker – then the only legitimate response would be in the form of words of condemnation and private actions – though both words and private actions should express the harshest condemnation.

As it stands, the people who used their air force authority to command attendance at this presentation should be treated no differently than if they had given a presentation in which "them" were the Jews and the nation of Israel, or "them" were blacks corrupting the pure and wholesome blood of the white race.

This case represents an abuse of authority and, unless it is punished, delivers the message that the official government position (the position that the government has the right to order those in uniform to learn) is that atheists are, in fact, the enemy, and deservedly regarded as such by all military officers.

We have a right to demand that the prestige and authority of the U.S. government not be put behind a message of hate such as this – and to punish those who use their authority as officers in the military to execute such a campaign of hate.

Yet, the question remains whether the people responsible for this presentation will get the punishment they deserve. It is a question about whether those concerned with right and wrong in this case care enough to demand punishment.

Please consider contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and ask them how you can best help them ensure that justice is done in this case.

Anger, Abuse, and Hate Speech

I am undergoing an evaluation of this blog - the things that I like about it, the things that I do not like, with an eye towards making some improvements.

I have wanted to use this blog motivate people into some sort of action, particularly against anti-atheist bigotry. However, several events in the past year have suggested that atheists are like the abused spouse sitting on the floor bruised and broken while the abuser tells her, "If you just wouldn't make me so angry, this wouldn’t happen." After which, the victim apologizes to the abuser, saying, "I'm sorry. I'll try not to make you angry again." And so we hear apologists condemning atheists any time atheists do something that makes others angry.

What types of things make them angry?

Well, as Hemant Mehta, (a.k.a. The Friendly Atheist) tells us, this:

is considered hate speech by some. This makes them angry.

(See: Friendly Atheist, Questioning God is Apparently Hate Speech)

It is, of course, useful to them to be angry at any attempt among atheists to form a community, and to do what they can to kill those communities before they have a chance to form. As long as atheists are separated and fragmented from each other, they (we) are politically impotent and socially weak. Furthermore, it gives them the opportunity to "sell" religion as the only provider of something that humans basically seem to have a strong longing for – a sense of community itself.

This usefulness does not imply that those Christians who get angry at the thought of atheist communities – who view them as a threat – are involved in a conscious attempt to stand in the way of allowing those communities to form. Instead, the usefulness of destroying the formation of those communities simply makes it "feel right" to do so. This understanding of the need to disrupt those communities is something that they feel on an emotional level, not something that they have reasoned out. It is, in this sense, a crime of passion – like the crimes of an abusive spouse.

The abusive spouse, when he strikes out in anger, truly is angry. What he says and does in order to control his victim has the effect of manipulating the victim into staying inside of that abusive relationship. However, it is not because the abuser has carefully worked out a plan to control and manipulate the situation. Rather, the abuser is simply going with what feels right – with what is comfortable – with what is useful.

I have wanted to put an end to this. Yet, here, too, like dealing with an abused spouse, the victim needs to recognize that a better world is not only possible, but that she has the right to take part in that better life. I have hoped, as a part of writing this blog, that I could provide some words of encouragement in that direction. I have not seen as much success as I would have liked, but I will keep trying.

Moral Theory without Moral Practice

As I mentioned previously, I am undergoing an assessment of the Atheist Ethicist blog with the hope of making some improvements. Db0 has provided me with my own site that I will be migrating to in the next month. I am trying to figure out what types of changes I should make.

One of my original motivations for creating this blog was to present some ideas I had in the realm of moral theory. I had wanted to leave the world a better place than it would have been if I had not existed. However, I needed to learn what 'better' consisted in. So, I went to college (and graduate school) to study moral philosophy. I picked up some ideas along the way – a set of ideas I rolled up and put under the title "desire utilitarianism".

However, I have always had a problem with studying moral theory. I have never had much of an interest in theory that does not find some form of expression in our moral practice.

In graduate school, I had the sense of academics sitting in the forum debating the subtle differences between the ancient Greek concept of "eudemonia" compared to the modern concepts of "happiness" and "flourishing" while gunmen went up and down the street slaughtering those around them.

Events over the last few days in Mumbai, India has called this old image vividly into mind once again. That event testifies to a failure of putting morality into practice, and depicts the costs of that type of failure.

We create morality to protect us from these types of events.

Yet, it is not the worst example of that failure. Gunfire, explosions, and burning buildings in an exotic setting makes for entertaining television, but this does not make it the greatest moral evil imaginable. More people will die . . . more people will be left sick and injured in the world as a result of the decision to inhibit embryonic stem-cell research than by the decision to shoot people on the streets and hotels in India.

Bigotry in America has decided to exclude same-sex and unmarried couples from adopting or being foster parents for children. This means, in some cases, children will be placed with inferior married couples where a superior married or gay couple is available.

Any nonsense of the form that the worst married couple is still better than the best unmarried or gay couple simply shows how learned bigotry and hatred can blind people from making reasonable, sensible decisions.

The number of children who will grow up harmed as a result of this bigotry – and the number of adults harmed by being deprived of something of potentially tremendous value (in raising a child) – will almost certainly be substantially larger than the harm done by 10 gunmen in India. It just isn't as entertaining.

Moral theory itself is mere entertainment if it tells us nothing about how to deal with real-world situations such as these, and then motivates us to make the changes it recommends. It has to tell us something about how to prevent real harms suffered by real people.

Rethinking the Atheist Ethicist Blog

Greeting, Reader:

I have been quiet this holiday weekend because I have been contemplating what I want to do with this blog. I think it is time to do some rebuilding.

A couple of months ago, Divided by Zero (a.k.a. db0) set me up with my own site. Then, at the time, my interest in the Presidential race picked up, so I did not want to switch horses in the middle of that particular political stream.

(See: Atheist Ethicist)

Now that the election is over, I have had an opportunity to step back a bit, look at what I have done and what I have wanted to do, and consider what I would do differently if I had a chance to start over.

I asked myself what I like about this blog and what I do not like. I also considered what others have said – their expressed likes and dislikes – over the years. And I have a list of likes and dislikes that I imagine that people have, even if they have not expressed them.

What do I think needs changing?

I think that I need to focus on writing smaller posts. My essays take require a substantial commitment on the part of the readers. A lot of people do not have time for that level of commitment. I need to figure out how to make a point at less cost to my readers.

I need to work on the quality of my posts. I typically finish up my writing late at night, when I am hardly awake enough to know what keys I am pressing, let alone whether I am making a coherent argument. This leads to too many mistakes. I want to reduce those mistakes.

If I write shorter posts, I want to do a better job of fitting those posts together. If somebody wants to put in a larger level of commitment, I need to make it easier for them to do so by pointing out other relevant articles – both here and elsewhere.

Db0’s work gives me an opportunity to start over and to try to do things better.

During the month of December, I will be looking at how I should conduct this migration – what I should include in it.

I would like to hear from you, if you don’t mind.

You can contact me through my contact page.

Feel free to let me know what you like and dislike about this site – what you think I should keep, and what you think I should change.

Together, we can make this a better place in 2009.

Piracy and the Paying of Ransoms

Any payment of a ransom to a kidnapper or pirate is entirely immoral. The person who does so deserves harsh moral criticism, up to and including actual punishment. (In other words, it should be illegal to pay a ransom.)

This post is inspired by the profitable criminal activity of pirating ships off of the coast of Africa, though it concerns a wider range of issues in fact.

That which we reward, we feed and nourish, is that which we get more of. And that which we condemn and starve, withers and (hopefully) dies. We certainly have no reason to see kidnapping and piracy become the status-quo as its practitioners gain wealth that isn’t available to people holding honest jobs. The proper policy is to starve this particular profession, to refuse to deal with it.

This is not a question of paying money to secure the health and well-being of a loved one. This is a question of buying something for oneself using methods that do harm to others. It's a matter of securing the health of one's own loved one by pushing an innocent person in front of a bus. Because, by paying ransom – by rewarding and promoting the business of kidnapping and extortion as useful business practices – one is funding for the kidnapping of the next person in line. The ransom-payer is the financier of the next kidnapping and, if the next kidnapping goes badly, should be considered an accessory to the murder.

In making this claim, I am not simply saying, "Do not pay a ransom." Hopefully, nobody within eyeshot of this blog will ever face the question of whether to pay a ransom or not.

I am saying that one should hold the person who pays a ransom up to the same condemnation and ridicule that one would give to the kidnappers themselves. We condemn the kidnappers because their dispositions make our lives (and the lives of other innocent people) less secure – subjecting us to thwartings of our desires that we have reason to avoid.

The ransom player does the same thing – showing the same disregard for our welfare that the kidnappers and pirates have shown – showing that our suffering is insignificant.

The ransom payer is like the person who invests in a factory that fills the air with a (social) poison that puts the health of others at risk. The risks created for others gives those others reason to condemn the activities that create the risk, to make the risk less common, and hopefully to eliminate it entirely.

Conflicting Duties

The issue brings up a feature of desire utilitarianism that I have not talked about much. Desire utilitarianism holds that there will be instances of moral conflict – where a person will have a moral duty to engage in or refrain from some action, and not like it.

I word has to be said about the possibility of a parent giving up a child, or anybody giving up some other member of the same family. These are particularly tough demands to be placed on people.

Desire utilitarianism argues for promoting certain desires that tend to fulfill other desires. It is quite possible to have two desires that tend to fulfill other desires on most circumstances. Yet, there can still be rare circumstances where two desires that a person ought to have – and ought to have in abundance – can come into conflict.

Consider the case of a parent who has had a child kidnapped and is being asked for a ransom. The desire to keep one's children safe and to sacrifice (particularly to sacrifice money) for their benefit is a worthy desire – one we have reason to promote. However, the aversion to put other people at risk – particularly other children at risk – is a desire we have reason to encourage as well. To the degree that others are averse to doing harm to children, to that degree our children are safer.

Nature clearly provides us with some natural disposition to care for our children. However, that which nature provides to us is (in desire utilitarian terms) outside of the realm of morality. It is something to which the concepts of praise and blame do not apply.

However, whatever our natural (non-moral) disposition to care for children happens to be, we have reason to ask whether this natural disposition needs to be augmented through social forces. It is here where the question of caring for the well-being of children becomes a moral question. If our natural disposition to care for children is too strong, then society needs to be engineered to inhibit this desire. If it is too week, then we have reason to use praise and condemnation to strengthen it.

So, even natural dispositions can have a moral dimension.

On the issue of caring for the welfare of (one’s) children, the physical evidence suggests that, while we have a natural disposition to care for children, that natural disposition needs some help. There are far too many instances of children being harmed to hold that our natural disposition is sufficiently strong and no moral element remains. We do real-world reason to add to the natural affection that parents have to care for their children.

The good person would find it difficult to be indifferent about whether or not to pay the ransom. The care that she has for her child would give her strong incentive to give in. At the same time, she should recognize that the people she is paying the ransom to will simply use it to secure some other victim. Here, the aversion to doing things that put others (particularly their children) at risk of great harm, even death.

The good person would be in a state of moral conflict. Any person who can blindly choose one or the other with without concern or regret does not fit the qualifications for a good person.

However, the existence of a moral conflict does not change the fact that people generally have more and stronger reasons to have the conflict resolved against paying the ransom. Even the person whose family member had been kidnapped has reason to condemn others who paid a ransom – others who made the type of crime of which he is now a victim more common (by making it more profitable) than it would have otherwise been.

External Prohibitions

As a result of the considerations given above, this becomes a type of case where we may need to focus our attention on external sanctions rather than internal sanctions in order to get people to behave the way we have reason to cause them to behave. Specifically, this implies that it may be a good idea to impose criminal penalties on those who pay ransom, or arrange for ransoms to be paid. Those people are creating a moral environment for the rest of us to live in where we have more reason to fear for our safety and those we care about than we would have if those who demanded ransom would never receive any.

Of course, there is still reason to condemn those who aid people in paying ransom. These agencies are creating a hazard for others, and this is reason enough to regulate the industry so as to protect the consumers from those costs.

The U.S. Government itself has an official policy that it will not negotiate with those who take hostages. I consider this a wise plan, and a plan that should be copied in the private sector. We all have reason to condemn the (leaders of the) country or company who give in and pay ransom to these types of people.

Preventing and Mitigating Harms

With the economy in turmoil, and people fearing about losing their homes, their jobs, and their retirement savings, the question of whether a god exists or whether to have a "Christmas tree" in the public square seems somewhat trivial. In fact, many will look on a fight over such an issue like somebody being denied the last small bit of enjoyment that might be available at the moment.

So, let’s focus on these "real concerns" for a moment, and on what we can say about addressing them.

Perhaps the most important lesson to get into the public consciousness about the current situation is the need for evidence-based thinking not only to get the country out of this mess, but to reduce the chance of falling back into it in the future.

One of the main characteristics of the Bush Administration was (is) its lack of respect – its utter contempt – for evidence-based thinking. Bush believed that he did not need to study. All he needed to do was to rely on his instincts – his "gut" – to tell him what to do. Somehow, his intestines, rather than his brain, was the seat of his thinking.

We have a stark contrast between the Bush way of "thinking" and the Obama way of thinking. When the financial problems hit in September, Obama's response to the problem was to get on the phone and to start calling experts. He asked them their opinions about the economy and how best to fix it. He did not call people who based their opinions on their "guts" (or on divine revelation through prayer). He called people who had studied the subject he wanted an opinion about – who was familiar with the evidence and what the evidence implied.

In the year 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, Texas. Six thousand people died.

This year, another hurricane hit Galveston, Texas. It literally erased whole communities, washing entire neighborhoods out to sea. About 33 people died.

The difference between 1900 and 2008 is the difference between decisions made as a result of blind ignorance and decisions made with a healthy respect for data and the ability to use the data to predict future events.

In a sense, the only thing that the people in Galveston in 1900 had available to predict the weather was their “gut” and a belief that a loving God would warn them of impending danger and care enough to try to save them. There was some news of a hurricane that hit Cuba, but no news on where he hurricane left after that. Both systems failed. The loving god was mysteriously silent – failing to give any type of reliable and easily recognizable sign that the people of Galveston should leave, And their "guts" proved poor weather predictors as well. As a result, over 6,000 people lost their lives.

Since then, people set up systems that would collect hard data on how the weather system functions, would take pictures of the Gulf of Mexico, would input data from every single hurricane into a computer which would then predict what would happen with the next hurricane, would take any errors in predictions generated with one hurricane to alter the program and make future predictions more reliable.

In 2008, the people of Galveston did not need to rely on their gut and a loving god to warn them of an impending storm. They relied on the National Hurricane Center, with eyes in space and a computer in the back room. Unlike the "loving God" of 1900, the National Hurricane Center was not mysteriously silent about the impending threat. Unlike the "loving God" of 1900, the National Hurricane Center sent out clear and unambiguous warnings of an impending storm. As a result, the National Hurricane Center proved more powerful and more capable of protecting people from harm than the loving God of 1900.

Look at the number of times that the Bush Administration was caught by surprise in his term in office in some very significant ways.

The Bush Administration was caught by surprise on 9-11, when evidence-based thinkers were warning him that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on the United States. And when Bush heard that the attacks were under-way, he was paralyzed. His “gut” was telling him to sit there, while his nation was under attack, and do nothing but stare like a deer caught in the headlights.

The Bush Administration was caught by surprise in the discovery that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's "gut" told him that the weapons were there. There was no evidence of weapons, but "guts" are better than evidence at discovering such things. Others believed in their guts that Saddam Hussein had such weapons, but others respected the notorious fallibility of guts over evidence and were waiting for the evidence.

The Bush Administration was caught by surprise when it announced that the war was over and had been won, only to see a five-year insurgency that cost over 4,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead and wounded, a generation of children grow up in an environment of violence, unable to attend school or to learn the skills that would make them productive workers in the world economy. All of this happened after the Mission Accomplished banner went up. All of this was a surprise.

The Bush Administration was caught by surprise by the financial meltdown that we are currently experiencing. In thinking with its "guts", the Bush Administration was as blind to the current economic storm as the people of Galveston were to the hurricane of 1900. With some warning, and a willingness to take action, the government and the people of the United States could have braced for this storm the way that the people of Galveston were able to brace for the storm of 2008.

The Bush Administration was caught in a state of denial on the issue of global warming. By allowing this problem to go unchecked, Bush has ensured that our children and their children will face a worse state of affairs than they would have otherwise endured if an evidence-based thinker had occupied the White House.

Ultimately, the question to be answered is, "How do we best defend ourselves from these types of crises in the future?" The answer is that we need a clear respect for evidence-based thinking, the establishment of institutions that are responsible for monitoring the evidence and using it to make reliable predictions, that engage in a constant practice of checking their predictions against reality and altering their models each time reality deviates from evidence-based predictions, and improving the quality of their predictions and their response to the data over time.

I am not talking about a specific policy recommendation here. I am talking about a cultural shift. I am talking about recognizing the very real public fact that people who embrace and celebrate stupidity as a virtue bring us a future in which we or our children or their children will suffer from policies selected by those blindfolded by ignorance.

In saying this, it is important to remember that evidence-based thinkers will not always get everything right. Nor is it the case that those who found policies on ignorance and gut feelings cannot get lucky from time to time. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 did not come when people were totally ignorant of science. It simply came before scientists had developed the tools and understanding that they needed.

Similarly, when it comes to addressing the types of issues that repeatedly and destructively blind-sided the Bush Administration, it will take time to build up the tools and the understanding that will best handle those problems. It is precisely because this project will take time that it is important to start the project – to create a culture that will support the practice of doing real-world research and using that research to explain and predict real-world events.

With those who research hurricanes in the example above, each new hurricane gives a chance for another set of predictions. Every error provides an opportunity to fine-tune our understanding so that we can be more accurate from that point on. Similarly, each economic downturn gives experts in the field of economics a better understanding of how economies work, making us better equipped to weather economic storms.

What we need is sufficient cultural backing for the institution and practice of evidence-based thinking that would allow us to invest in and to respect these systems.

BB3: Güven Güzeldere: Epistemological vs Social Atheism

This is the sixth in a series of posts on presentations given at Beyond Belief 3: Candles in the Dark"

You can find a list of all Atheist Ethicist blog postings covering Beyond Belief 3 at the Introduction post

And I would like to encourage you to give a contribution to the Science Network, who makes these presentations available for free.

Our forth presenter at Beyond Belief3, Güven Güzeldere, came to discuss what he saw was two distinct and related problems regarding human flourishing. Specifically, ((Name)) was concerned with atheistic flourishing – flourishing in the context of beliefs that there is no disembodied cognition, and no disembodied after-life.

Güzeldere reports that the issue that caused his students the most anxiety was the issue of "disembodied vs. embodied cognition" – the idea that it is not possible to have thought without a functioning brain. It was the idea that when the brain ceases to function, all thought ends.

Eighty percent of his students, he reported, shared a belief that some sort of disembodied cognition (and disembodied after-life) was possible, and were quite disturbed about the possibility that this might not be true.

In dealing with this fact, Güzeldere suggested that there were two distinct but related projects. One project, currently being executed by people such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, targeted the epistemological foundations for this belief in disembodied cognition.

The second project concerned social institutions that, for the most part, were built around and founded upon beliefs in the possibility of disembodied cognition. This is a criticism of atheists and atheism that we have heard before – that it offers no sense of community with all of the benefits that communities bring with them.

One of the claims that Güzeldere said was often made, but which he argued against, was the claim that attacks on religion do a poor job of addressing the second concern – the sense of an atheist community (or, what would make more sense, a collection of atheist communities). While these authors argue that the community that the theists have constructed is built on a fiction, the authors do nothing to build an alternative community based on science.

Güven Güzeldere says that this criticism is unfair. He says that the elements of a community are grounded in and dependent on the underlying epistemological claims. An atheist community will be built on a collection of shared assumptions, where spelling out those shared assumptions is a part of the process of building a community.

For the most part, Güzeldere suggests that he is interested in the project of building a community of those who hold that there is no such thing as disembodied cognition. However, he does not offer any suggestions. In fact, his approach to the issue seems to be that of the impartial observer, standing outside of the community looking down upon it and studying how it works. He does not speak about it on the level of participation.

From the participation perspective, I would argue that we are in the process of forming one such a community – an online community. What we see online, with respect to blogs such as this and those who participate through comments and other actions (e.g., PZ Myers informal project of manipulating online polls) is a group of people who get together on a regular basis (more than once a week on Sunday morning, as it turns out), who share common values, who help each other when others are in need (e.g., Possum Mama).

One of the things that struck me while I attended the Beyond Belief conference, and listened to people talk when they were away of the microphone, is the substantial number of shared experiences. The participants had, to a large degree, read the same books, talked to the same people, attended the same conferences. They spoke a common language where they could use certain words with fluent ease that many people outside of their community would not understand.

This community had certain shared values. For example, with the conference taking place in early October, the one politician’s name that was most frequently used (within the presentations and outside of them) was that of Governor Palin. She was the token representative of that which was the opposite of the things that this community most valued.

These are two communities that already exist and that are in the process of being built. The idea that atheists do not have a community is simply mistaken.

I do hold that our communities are fragile. I attribute much of that to social factors. Specifically, I attribute it to the fact that so many Americans (in particular) carry the emotional baggage of learning as children that those who do not believe in God are inferior to those who do.

On this issue, I would like to direct your attention to the article Does Religion Make You Nice? Does atheism make you mean?. This article argues how atheists, where they are able to form communities, are generous and peaceful individuals. Whereas atheism, where it exists in a culture that denigrates and alienates atheists, tend to be less generous.

In short, one of the barriers to atheist flourishing, at least in America, is the problem of dealing with a culture in which they are taught, and learn at an emotional level beyond the reach of reason, their own inferiority to and alienation from what Sarah Palin called "real America".

Even though, as adults, the reasoning part of their brain denies the claim that atheists are bad, the emotional part of their brain programmed in childhood triggers a wave of social anxiety any time the atheist identifies himself as somebody who does not belief in God. There is still the learned emotional twinge that, "This means that I am bad. This means that I am unacceptable to others." This, un turn, causes atheists to shun communities that actually embrace that which the person is emotionally uncomfortable with.

On the positive side, there is a wide variety of atheists. There is a small number who are comfortable with their atheism – who reject the idea that atheists are bad not only on the intellectual level, but also on the emotional level. These people do not confront the psychological barriers of joining or forming an atheist community. They end up forming the cores of those communities, around which those with some measure of anxiety orbit at a distance proportionate to their felt anxiety over atheism.

The Pledge Project: Dear Abby and Standing for the Pledge

Dear Abby devoted her whole column on November 20 to the thesis that all people must stand for the Pledge of Allegiance as a sign of respect.

(See, for example, Standing for the Pledge a Sign of Respect)

Of course, I disagree. A person has no obligation to stand and show respect for others while those others insult and denigrate him in public. The Pledge equates seclarism and atheism with rebellion, tyranny, and injustice for all. It is used as a tool to reduce the status of those who do not support a nation 'under God' in this society, and as a social filter, 99.99% successful, for keeping atheists out of public office.

I wrote the book A Perspective on the Pledge, an expansion on the blog posting More Perspective on the Pledge

You can also find a link to more arguments against this project at The Pledge Projct: Table of Contents

And I say this as somebody who is proud of his father, who became 100% disabled while serving in the U.S. Military. Equating my father to those who support rebellion, tyranny, and injustice is one of the most offensive aspects of the current Pledge. I am supposed to stand and show respect for the government's practice of insulting people like my father and other atheists who gave up so much in its defense? That is not going to happen.

Given the very public forum that Dear Abbey represents, I would like to request that people provide her with a better understanding of what she is asking.

The article I linked to provides an address for Dear Abby: P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, Calif. 90069.

And see if you can encourage a few others to send their comments in as well. The more the better.

Change, Traditions, and the Inertia of Plans

Here is a puzzle from the field of economics.

Opportunity Costs

Imagine that there is a particular concert that you want to go to with a friend of yours. The concert is expected to be very popular, and concert goers can only purchase tickets at a particular location. So, you go to that location with enough money to buy the tickets, only to discover that the line is already extremely long. Still, you get in line. When the ticket stand opens, the line starts to move, and, before you get to the ticket stand, they hang a “Sold Out” sign on the window and close up the stand.

Your next option is to go onto the computer and see who is selling tickets. You see that the tickets are being offered for $1000 each on-line. That’s $2000 for you and your friend. That’s too expensive, you decide, and you decline to buy the tickets.

Then, you pass somebody on the street who is visibly upset. Perhaps he had just had a fight with his girlfriend or something. He puts two concert tickets in your hand and says, “Do whatever you want with them,” and walks off.

Do you then go to the concert?

Most people answer, “Yes.”

However, traditional decision theory suggests that this is the wrong answer.

When you went online to buy the tickets and saw what they were selling for, you decided that $2000 was worth more to you than 2 tickets. Given a decision between keeping $2000 and exchanging it for two tickets, you selected to keep the $2000.

Here, again, you are put in a position where you can decide between having two tickets to the concert and having $2000. You know that you could go online and put the tickets up for sale and get $2000 for them. Yet, most people choose the tickets (and going to the concert) over the $2000 they could otherwise get.

These are the very same people who, earlier, choose to have $2000 rather than the tickets.

What is going on here?

If you take the model that I have been defending in this blog – that people always choose that which fulfills the most and strongest of their desires, given their beliefs – then this type of decision making is a problem. Why is it that the state that “I have $2000” the one that fulfills the most and strongest desires in the first case, but the state, “I have 2 tickets to the concert” the state that fulfills the most and strongest desires in the second?

Do these types of examples disprove the type of action theory I have been defending?

Probably.

Inertia in Decision Making

What these types of situations argue for is that our decision making has a certain type of inertia – and that it takes a extra energy, in a sense – an extra benefit - to overcome that inertia and to get us to move along a different course than the one we are on.

In the first case, where a person has the option of buying tickets online for $1000 each, the agent would have to spend $2000 that the agent did not plan to spend. Inertia says to keep the money where it is and forego the concert.

In the second case, where one is suddenly given the tickets, inertia says to go to the concert. This is what the agent had already planned – before the “sold out” sign put a roadblock across those plans. When suddenly given a pair of tickets, those plans become viable again, so the agent goes to the concert.

What this tells us more generally is that people make plans and they have some sort of inclination or tendency to follow those plans to their completion. These plans create barriers to anything that would result in a change of course, that would result in changing those plans.

Furthermore, I suspect that observations would show that people have different degrees of reluctance to changing their plans. Some will scrap a plan the instant they see a benefit in doing so, while others will knowingly follow a plan to its painful end even when they fully see the disaster that waits for them. For these people, the costs of leaving the channel that is their plan is greater than the cost of the cost of the disaster, at least in present terms.

The Belief-Desire Model

We can actually incorporate this phenomena into the belief-desire model that I generally defend in this blog. We can incorporate it by saying that people have an aversion to altering a plan. This aversion is stronger in some people and weaker in others. It is probably malleable (subject to social forces), meaning that it makes sense for us to argue, “To what degree should people be averse to altering a plan?”

There is a moral argument to be made to promoting some aversion to changing plans at the last minute. People who stick to their plans are easier to predict. Because they are easier to predict, this makes it easier for others to make their plans. I create a number of plans every day that depend on what other people do. It is far easier for me to create successful plans when I am able to reliably predict the actions of others.

On the other hand, too much devotion to a plan generates the type of problems I wrote about above. It means that the agent will not change course even when the current course is heading towards a disaster. The aversion that we have to those disastrous states argues for promoting in people some disposition to consider where they are going, and to change course.

This concept of inertia in decision making is relevant to a great many of our social policies.

The problem with global warming is that a great many of our plans carry with them a certain amount of inertia. This inertia tells us to keep to our old habits with respect to driving, heating our homes, and our use of electricity. It takes more than the fact that there are benefits to be captured by altering the way we live. Those benefits have to be so much greater that they can overcome inertia – that they can overcome the aversion to changing plans.

Bigotry and prejudice are also subject to inertia. The difficulty in getting institutions to give up on slavery, segregation, or ‘traditional marriage’, on rituals involving pledges to ‘under God’, all rest with the fact that those ‘traditions had inertia, and inertia favors the preservation of traditions.

In fact, we can easily fit the social concept of a ‘tradition’ into this discussion of the existence of and the value of inertia in decision making. I argued above that there are certain benefits to having people stuck in a plan, to a certain extent; this makes it easier for people to make plans. One way to promote this virtue of sticking with a plan is to attach the term ‘tradition’ to certain plans, and to promote a desire to preserve tradition (or an aversion to violating traditions).

The value . . . the virtue . . . of tradition (as captured in some conservative values) does have some merit. The value . . . the virtue . . . of change also has merit where tradition and keeping to a path is destructive of the self and others. It is permissible to argue to preserve tradition for tradition’s sake as long as the cost of doing so is not so great. However, the value of preserving tradition – in the minds of a good person – should be weaker than the aversion to causing great harm to others. When these values come into conflict, the desire to preserve tradition should give way to the desire to avoid doing harm.

Conclusion

In general, our decisions are grounded at least somewhat on the preservation of plans – the preservation of traditions. To the degree that we can promote in others an aversion to changing plans or shunning tradition, to that degree they become more predictable, and we can better fulfill our own goals (including our own aversions to violating certain traditions). The liberal is wrong to dismiss too easily the value of tradition.

At the same time, the conservative is wrong to attach too much value to tradition. The value of tradition is that it adds certain efficiencies to our daily decision making. It is not some sacred, inviolable law that must always be followed regardless of the consequences (the harm done to others).

There is a balance here to be maintained, and it will often be difficult to know where that balance should be struck. These, then, are circumstances where different people can disagree without mocking or denigrating others who they disagree with, within certain limits.

Morally Relevant Considerations for Auto Industry Bailout

It would take some sound economic study, and a specific knowledge of the automobile industry, to determine the value of saving General Motors versus allowing the company to go bankrupt. However, there are a few arguments that are not strictly speaking economic arguments that seem to be missing from the debate. They are arguments about the effects that decisions such as a decision to bail out General Motors will have on the types of decisions people make.

Bailouts and Expectations

A few years ago, I purchased some bonds that General Motors was selling. I purchased them while thinking that there is no way the government would ever allow GM to fail – to declare bankruptcy. If General Motors was near failure, the government would rush in and save the day, giving the company extra cash that it could then use to make sure that I continued to be paid the interest on those bonds.

Now, we get to see if my prediction back then was a good prediction.

However, the way I made that decision suggests that there is at least one good reason to allow General Motors to fail. That would teach people like me, people who invested in anticipation of a government rescue, a lesson. It would teach people to look at the quality of a company rather than its political connections, investing in the best companies rather than the best connected.

Expecting government bailouts generates bad business practices. If a person is thinking, "No matter how badly I screw up, the government will step in and rescue me," then he has no incentive not to screw up. He has no incentive to collect the data he needs in order to make wise decisions. He has no incentive to double-check his logic to see if what he thinks will happen is actually supported by the evidence. He has every incentive to be reckless – and recklessness is costly.

While we are being fed scare stories about how the loss of General Motors will cause the entire economy to collapse (the way we were told that a failure to invade Iraq will result in a mushroom cloud over New York, or a failure to give $700 billion to treasury secretary Paulson would result in total economic collapse. Now, we are being told that the economy will collapse if we do not bail out General Motors.

General Motors' History of Manipulation

Of course, it is worthwhile for General Motors to try to get us to believe this, regardless if whether or not it is true. Plus, this would not be the first time that the company has launched a campaign to lie to and manipulate us for its own benefit. In fact, this campaign of fiction is relatively trivial – doing far less harm – than the last campaign that General Motors took an interest in.

As a manufacturer of gas-guzzling vehicles, General Motors recognized that any steps the country (or the world) took to combat global warming would require a costly change in how they did business. Therefore, they decided to invest in a disinformation campaign. They decided to confuse and muddle public thinking on this issue in order to cause the American people to act in ways that they found currently beneficial, at a potential serious cost to future generations.

For all practical purposes, General Motors (or, more specifically, its leadership) is willing to see the potential destruction of whole cities if it would bring about some marginal increase in profits. For all practical purposes, General Motors (or, more specifically, its leadership) think that it is perfectly permissible to manipulate us into taking action (or not taking action) to avoid states of affairs harmful to the well-being of our children for the sake of a few dollars in their pockets.

As it turns out, GM did not succeed in making enough money with these tactics to stay in business. However, the fact remains that the company performed a significant public disservice. They have, in fact, made our children's and grand children’s lives worse off than they would have been in order to secure fatter bank accounts for themselves in the present. Now, they want a favor from us. Now, it is telling us to trust the people who say that great economic harm would follow their downfall.

Given its history, I am not willing to trust anything that comes out on behalf of this company. As I see it, GM is probably just launching another disinformation campaign to manipulate us into making ourselves worse off for its benefit. These are the types of people who would do such things. Look at the harms they were willing to inflict on our children and grand children.

If the company had shown an interest in the public well-being, then I would have had reason to argue, "We need to have companies like this around. We need to show the world that honesty and concern for others is a virtue, and we recognize the value in rewarding such virtue."

However, as it stands, the most sensible claim to make at this point is, "We do not need to be doing favors for companies what are willing to manipulate us into doing things harmful to ourselves for their benefit. We need to show the world that dishonesty and disregard for the well-being of others, particularly our children, has a price that is best avoided. The price is that we will show the same concern with your well-being and your future as you showed for ours."

Let that lesson settle into the consciousness of the international business community, and we might begin to see businesses investing a bit less money in lies and distortions to manipulate us into doing things harmful to ourselves but profitable for them. We certainly have reason to prefer that world than the current world where lying and manipulating the public to secure a profit is “business as usual”

The Employees

In saying this, it would be wrong to argue that the workers should be left out in the cold to fend for themselves. I am not an advocate of the cold and heartless institution of the capitalist purist that says that governments should never interfere with markets.

I support capitalist solutions when they promise to better fulfill human desires, and easily switch to some other system where pure capitalism seems to fail. I have argued in the past about the effects of great differences of wealth – that people with a lot of money have the luxury of wasting it on things of little value, where others with less money would use it on things of great value. So, I have little problem with the idea of transferring wealth from those who have to those who have not.

If there is a bailout to be had, then that bailout should not be directed towards the executives with their multi-million dollar bank accounts, but towards the workers with their mortgages and their kids that they want to see get to college. These people will need to be transitioned into other jobs – jobs that produce things that actually have some measure of social utility. We need to change these workers from having careers where they are a net drain on the overall economy, and transfer them into jobs that produce a net economic benefit.

This is best accomplished by allowing General Motors to fail, while investing money in those industries that are best positioned to pick up this labor force.

The Republican Road to Power

At the recent Republican Governors' Conference we saw the beginnings of a debate within the Republican Party as to the best course to take to get back into power. (See: New York Times: Among Republicans, a Debate Over the Party's Road Map Back to Power)

As expected, this debate had everything to do with what works, and nothing to do with what is right. The question being asked is not, "What direction should the country go in?" but "What options on the political smorgasbord will get us a majority of the votes?"

I say that this is "as expected" because it is the way it must be. In 2000 and 2002, the Democratic Party, serving as the minority in all branches of government, asked itself the same question. Then, like now, the question was not answered by looking at "what is right" but at "what works."

One of the theories that the Democrats put forth was that the party needed to become more friendly to people of faith. Its apparent "anti-religion" stance was turning off too many voters – a majority of whom not only believed in God but believe that a religious foundation was necessary for good social policy. In a country where a majority of the voters will not vote for a person of faith, it is absurd for a party to put forth candidates that did not openly assert (whether it was true or not) that they are people of faith.

Indeed, one of the rising stars of that debate was Illinois legislator Barak Obama – somebody who typified the new faith-friendly Democratic party.

And it did work. The Democrats are now back in power.

For all practical purposes, 2002 was the year that secular America ended. It is no longer possible to argue for a policy on the basis of separation of church and state, because the idea of separation of church and state no longer has any political value. The Republican Party gave up that principle decades ago; and the Democratic Party surrendered that issue in the early part of this century as a part of its plan to get back in power.

The success of that decision means that it has now been set in concrete, and will remain an important part of the campaign landscape unless and until a movement comes along that changes the public mind on this issue. Until a majority of the voters are willing to vote for secular principles, it would be political suicide for any politician to endorse those principles.

So, as the Republican Party begins the task of re-inventing itself into a majority party, it is time to ask whether that new majority will adopt policies that are actually right, or are they going to go with "wrong but popular"?

We have a voice in that decision, because we help to determine what our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and co-club members vote for and against. We get to have an influence on what they will demand from the next Republican majority.

For example, in an article on this subject in the New York Times (See: NYT: Among Republicans, a Debate Over the Road Map Back to Power.)

One of the alternatives being discussed in this debate was reported as:

Some called for keeping focused on social issues. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who praised Ms. Palin's 'unashamed embrace of bedrock conservative principles' and said she was 'just getting started,' pointed to the success of ballot measures opposing same-sex marriage to show the continued potency of the such issues. 'The defense-of-marriage initiative that voters supported in California, Arizona and here in Florida ought to be proof enough that conservative values still matter to the American people and are worthy of our party’s attention,' he said.

This is an option – but it is an option that is much like the Democratic Party’s embrace of segregation and even its refusal to speak up against lynching in the 1930s. The Democratic Party of that era could have well argued (and did argue) that these segregationist values still matter to the American people. However, that did not make them right.

The Democratic Party did not give up these policies until they ceased to matter to the American people (or, more accurately, until the American people were convinced through civil-rights marches and similar actions) to support true equality. When it became more politically useful to support civil rights over segregation, the Democratic Party shifted from being a party of segregation to a party of civil rights.

As I said, we have a choice in the direction that the Republican Party will take in its struggle to return to power. That choice comes from the influence that we have over what others in our community find acceptable. The fact that the measures spoken about above – in California, Arizona, and Florida – passed, this means that they are an acceptable part of the Republican Party’s roadmap back to power. To the degree that we can reverse this trend, to that degree these forms of segregation, discrimination, and bigotry will not find a home in either party’s roadmap to victory.

There is also no doubt that Palin's nomination as the vice-Presidential candidate energized the Republican base. It brought in millions of dollars in contributions and millions of volunteer labor-hours into not only the Presidential campaign, but the Republican campaign. It would be foolish for us to deny the fact that these contributions did not have a spill-over effect into other Republican projects.

Palin – or someone like her (someone who can at least answer questions without appearing as a complete idiot) – will be a part of the Republican roadmap unless and until we continue to make it clear that this is not an option. We have to make this an ineffective route to political power if we are to convince the Republicans that this is territory best avoided, rather than best driven through, on their way back to power.

There are things that the Republicans get right – options for them to put into their roadmap back to power that it would benefit all of us for them to include. The Republican distrust of government is not without merit. A great many of the regulations that we face are written by special interest groups to benefit them at our expense. A great deal of our tax money is wasted. The government ought to practice fiscal responsibility, and it would serve the Republican Party to become champions of that particular cause in fact, rather than simply using it as a rhetorical sound bite that they preach without having any interest in practicing.

One group that is going to have a lot to say about the direction that the Republican Party will take to get back into power are those people whose votes are available – those who are willing to say, "Okay, Republicans, what are you willing to offer me in exchange for my vote?" It would make no sense for the Republican to try to change anything that would appeal to those who vote Democratic no matter what. It only makes sense for the Republicans to ask after the interests and concerns of those who might vote Republican.

For those who fit this mold (and I am one of them), this includes using the opportunity to tell the Democratic Party what they are doing wrong, and what they should change if they want to "keep my vote".

It is an opportunity for those who are not being well served or well represented by either partner to have their say. It is an opportunity well worth keeping in mind.

The Pledge Project: The Moral Irrelevance of Location

A constitutional right to engage in some action does not imply that it is right to engage in that action.

You have a constitutional right to write a book denouncing Jews and arguing that they should be rounded up and shipped off to Israel. However, the fact that you have this right does not imply that there is nothing wrong with making such a claim. The fact that something is not unconstitutional does not imply that it is not immoral.

Slavery was once a constitutional right. One would be hard pressed to argue that this implied that slavery was morally permissible. Indeed, a great many people in the period before the civil war argued that slavery was immoral irrespective of what the Constitution said on the matter. Eventually, they got enough political support to make slavery unconstitutional as well; though it had always been immoral.

In Woodbury Vermont, the school officials there are resisting attempts to have the Pledge of Allegiance said in the classroom. (See: Detroit Free Press: Vermont town feuds over where schoolkids say pledge) Their argument was that the Pledge invites students to look upon non-participants with scorn, and that this is not an appropriate atmosphere for any child to be put in at school. So, those officials have looked at ways of taking the stigma out of not saying the Pledge – by giving those students who want to do so the opportunity to go to the Gym and say so, while other students remain behind.

However, there is a segment of the population that is not happy with this option. It denies them the opportunity to practice what they truly value in having the Pledge of Allegiance said in a public school, a chance to clearly communicate that those who do not say the Pledge are inferior creatures. They continue to fight to have the Pledge recited in the classroom.

In response to this protest, the school changed its policies and brought the whole school into one room to say the Pledge.

I agree that this second option is subject to the same objection as the first option. It is not a compromise, it is a surrender on principle – much of the way that McCain surrendered the argument that inexperience disqualifies a person for the White House when he selected Sarah Palin as his vice-Presidential candidate.

This is not the point, however. The point is that, the real problem with the Pledge is in its content, and the content cannot be changed by changing its location.

Imagine a school having a debate over where to hold a "black people suck" rally. The school administration, sensitive to the fact that this rally might make black students in the classroom (or students being raised by black parents or who had black friends) feel like they are being singled out for scorn and ridicule. So, they decide that they will hold their "black people suck" rally in the school gym instead. At the appointed time, a student goes around and collects those who want to participate in the "black people suck rally", who all go off to the school gym and have their rally, while the other students stay in the classroom with their friends.

The Pledge of Allegiance, with the words, "under God", is, literally, an "atheists suck rally." More specifically, it is an "atheists, rebels, tyrants, and the unjust suck rally," but "atheists suck" is clearly a part of the equation, and clearly the part of the equation that a large majority of those who defend this ritual has the strongest affection for. For a school to have a debate on where to hold this "atheists suck rally" is as absurd as a school having a debate on where to hold its "black people suck" rally.

If we look at the arguments being advanced by those who want the "atheists suck rally" held in the classrooms rather than in a common room in the school, they do not say anything to answer the objections raised against the practice. The people who oppose having the "atheists suck rally" in the classroom have some sense that there is something wrong with this practice – though they do not grasp the issue well enough to realize that moving the "atheists suck rally" to a common room does not solve the problem. The people in favor of holding the "atheists suck rally" in the classroom ignore even those minor moral concerns that the opponents raise.

For example, according to the article:

"Saying the pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and traditional," Tedesco said. "Asking kindergarten through sixth-graders who want to say the pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither convenient nor traditional."

Note that, 150 years ago, exactly the same argument could be made in terms of slavery. This, too, was legal (in fact, a constitutionally protected right), convenient (for the slave owner), and traditional. Slavery had been around for thousands of years and was only recently being questioned on a large scale.

But none of this makes it right. None of this argues that, as a result, the country should legalize the practice of slavery again – to return to the customs and traditions of our founding fathers.

An important point here is that, in the same way that slavery was convenient only for the slave owner, holding the "atheists suck rally" in the classroom is convenient only for those who support "atheists suck rallies". It is not so convenient for the targets of such a rally – and that targeting of others who do not deserve it is exactly what the school officials are showing a sensitivity towards. They are not showing sufficient sensitivity – but at least they recognize that "there is something going on there that just isn’t right."

Beth Shaw, at Rightpundits.com, has another argument. (See Rightspundits.com: Vermont Pledge of Allegiance Controversy).

Here’s the deal. This is the United States of America. Vermont is one of the United States. Therefore, it is expected that someone going to school in a Vermont town is a citizen of the United States of America. Considering all those factors, it is reasonable to expect that the citizens of Woodbury, Vermont would have an allegiance to the country in which they live. It is therefore reasonable for the children to learn the Pledge of Allegiance as part of their schooling. It is, after all, their country.

By this argument, if we write a little bit of patriotism into a "black students suck" rally – if we make it an, "I love my country where we hold that black people suck" rally, then this alone would obligate schools and teachers to hold the rally inside of the classroom. Yet, this simply ignores the moral argument – the argument that schools should not be having "black people suck" rallies no matter how many flags are present or how much the rally also promotes patriotism. Indeed, it would (or should) soil the patriotic aspect to link such bigotry with patriotism so closely.

The controversial part of this, of course, is the claim that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance counts as an "atheists suck rally", morally equivalent to holding a "black people suck rally."

But is it not the case that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is a "rebellion sucks category"? The word "indivisible" was put into the pledge, which was created 30 years after the Civil War, precisely to teach the lesson that no good American would support rebellion.

And is it not the case that the Pledge of Allegiance is a "tyranny and injustice sucks rally"? Again, it is absolutely absurd to deny that a part of the purpose of the Pledge was and is to teach children that good Americans value liberty and justice for all, and that nobody who supports tyranny and injustice can count as a good American.

And so it follows that the words "under God" added to the original pledge – changing its "rebellion, tyranny, and injustice sucks rally" into an "atheism, rebellion, tyranny, and injustice sucks rally."

Except, holding an "atheists sucks rally" in a public classroom is as morally objectionable as holding a "black people suck" rally.

Moving the rally into a public room in the school and saying, "Those students who want to participate in the ‘black people suck’ please assemble in the auditorium," does not answer the basic moral objection.