Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts

Thursday, September 5, 2019

What's in the Box?

I've been watching the German series Dark (2017), which is fantastic. [Update: Season 3 was terrible, but the first two seasons were excellent.] It helped inspire the following thoughts: 

Momentum, if aided by unaccountability, can become destiny. Making a u-turn becomes increasingly difficult as possibilities (aka potential timelines) are eliminated, which then increases the signal/information from reduced numbers of sources, driving outcomes favoring whichever ideas and cultures have the most momentum--regardless of the best long-term strategy. Paradoxically, momentum can lead to inertia. Such inertia (as well as momentum) has become worse as human beings create ways of living that prioritize the visual over the abstract. 

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but over time, if it's disconnected from abstract ideas, it will not lead us--or our children--to the truth. In short, information without context dooms humanity to historical loops. Globalization should have increased both the signal and the fidelity of information but has done the opposite, requiring us to determine how to reverse course--before it's too late. 


Bonus, Tom Griffiths, in edge.org: "There are cases where you can tie this very directly to AI... Nick Bostrom has this thought experiment where you make an AI whose goal is to manufacture paperclips, and then it consumes the entire earth manufacturing paperclips... It gets better and better at consuming... until we've paper-clipped ourselves."

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

A Land without a Crucible: How to Appropriate Cultural Collapse

In Trump's America, liberals have been reduced to 1) begging for money from the government, blind to the military-industrial complex's willingness to give them as much or as little money to keep them occupied as long as defense expenditures grow (one dollar for you, ten dollars for me); and 2) antagonizing every different-minded man, woman, and child on their quest to save the country

Warren Hinckle's characterization of American liberals has never been more apt: in 1973, he called them "horror[s]" because of their tendencies towards "self-righteousness and self-importance." (Another Hinckle gem: asked why he worked in conservative bars frequented by police officers, he responded if anyone could find a good liberal bar, he'd visit one.) 

Today's liberals can tell you about the Gulf of Tonkin but not why such an incident would be allowed to occur, or why otherwise intelligent people would feel compelled to engage in such maneuvers. Some might know about "domino theory" but not why it--and laying down dead body after dead body--would be considered reasonable in light of all available intelligence. I've heard the best minds of my generation rail against biased media (aka propaganda) using the terms "collateral damage" and "cultural misappropriation" without irony, captaining the English language to advance misunderstandings down empty harbors. Modern-day radicals are more likely to go apoplectic over a friend's recycling habits than wedding diamonds that, even if not bloody, destroy the earth while tilting local economies into de facto slavery. (Yes, Australia has done well with mining--it's the lack of economic diversification without proper safeguards that's the issue.)

Banally, America's intellectual malaise isn't intentional, making it harder to identify villains and vanquish them. 
I recently attended a Berkeley, California event celebrating books and, one might assume, critical thinking. Yet, every interview was the equivalent of a slow pitch softball game (no offense to softball players, some of the toughest athletes out there), as if organizers believed their primary job was to ensure audience members wouldn't face foul balls of complexity. Lesson: never choose interviewers who are friends or colleagues of the speaker. There's a reason journalism exists (existed?) as a profession--to create independence and therefore more freedom to ask difficult questions. Perhaps sponsors believed if they weren't nice, speakers wouldn't return, but anyone incapable of discussing potential deficiencies in his or her ideas isn't worth inviting back. 

Another lesson: whether intentional or unintentional, the result is the same. (Bonus, on war: "What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?") None of the book festival's inanity was by design, or rather, everything was done to maximize happiness and to promote ideas. (At least they didn't require people to submit questions on index cards or limit themselves to two minutes.) 

At one booth, I discovered a book selling for 17.95 USD available for 9.99 USD online and asked for a discount. The vendor said he couldn't compete with Amazon because "we can't lose money on every book we sell." I responded that after building the online infrastructure, including the delivery infrastructure (initially subsidized by consumers paying for shipping), Amazon and publishers were both making money pursuant to an agreed-upon price split. It's true Amazon's R&D expenditures and forays into new areas (e.g., a mobile phone) cause it to report losses, but Amazon is no longer losing money on most book sales, especially not on the Kindle. (It does take a loss on some books like Harry Potter but gains brand loyalty as a result of its discounts and events.) Hoping to engage on a difficult question, I wondered out loud how brick and mortar bookstores could compete in a modern capitalist economy. Devoid of ideas, the vendor shrugged his shoulders and gave me a curt goodbye as his final rebuttal. At no point did he reveal any shame in opening the conversation with a misrepresentation. If we are living in a post-truth society, the cause is our post-humility culture
Former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg in National Geographic.
At another event, cultural appropriation was mentioned negatively, inspiring a well-meaning African-American audience member to explain the issue was rooted in economics. Meanwhile, none of London's black or brown residents would think to complain about their city's most popular food, the colorful chicken tikka masala. (It's as if the British have bigger fish and chips to fry.) Unbeknownst to most Americans and Europeans surrounded by dozens of foreign restaurants is a real-life government conspiracy: stealing the best people and ideas from other countries by any means necessary. Such a plot has existed since humans realized it was easier to steal than to invent, to build, or even to maintain the infrastructure--both physical and abstract--necessary to accept change gracefully. 

Stealing and appropriation occur because they allow Country A to gain the benefits of Country B's inventions with as little displacement or sacrifice as possible--at least for Country A. Immigration, something I've heard liberals support, is literally cultural appropriation personified. Unless the goal is to build walls or ghettos--something I've heard liberals oppose--the main reason different people should enter your hamlet or megapolis is so you can discover the best they have to offer until you're the lovely country of Indonesia but without the pollution, traffic congestion, and banking crises. 

Any other philosophy means you support using people for labor without any meaningful exchange of ideas, something Immanuel Kant warned us about in 1781: "So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means." (I remember when liberals told us melting pots and mixing were good for society, then they told us they meant we should be like salad bowls (healthy, with distinct colors), and now I think they're saying we shouldn't mix at all unless everyone pays for every idea they stole. I can't predict the next iteration, but I suspect lasagna will be involved.) 

Why we are discussing imposing informal or formal rules on what people should do or say rather than a more equitable process to capture or spur innovation, I don't know. Such discourse would require complex knowledge of different disciplines, along with sustainable funding mechanisms for new ideas that protect the displaced. To this end, I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Philosophy. There's a great future in it. Will you think about it?

© Matthew Rafat (2018)

"Our drones will never be called terrorists, and our guns will never defeat nationalism. We change the world by how we look at it." -- Pico Iyer 

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Travel Lessons: Blind Spots and Distractions

One travel benefit is seeing how others view your "home" country. Mexico is particularly interesting because trade agreements and the strong U.S. dollar have made many Mexican cities (León, Irapuato, etc.) into de facto American and European economic satellites. Within one minute of entering any decent-sized Mexican city, even a one-eyed tourist will notice Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Ibis everywhere, usually with an American restaurant attached--and that's before you visit any major shopping mall. 
When shopping malls are legally-approved, only old buildings will be interesting. Wait...
Despite such Americanization, Mexicans tend to have blind spots about fundamental American facts--a revelation that initially seemed strange until I realized most Americans have similar blind spots about other countries, even ones they've visited. For Americans and Europeans, part of this phenomenon involves the desire to be well-liked, and part of it is writers' need to adapt to average attention spans. For instance, a very smart, well-traveled colleague recently wrote about Cuba's "first class" healthcare system. However, anyone who has actually visited Cuba as an ordinary tourist and ventured into any pharmacy (shelves are almost bare or sell mostly vitamins, though one anti-cholesterol drug seems effective) or seen anyone with hearing aids (they're usually analog, not digital, and similar to ones worn by Americans 25 years ago) will realize nothing is first-class about Cuban medical care above a pediatric or basic level. 

Suppose you're an older, affluent traveler and writer. Which is the easier path? An offhand reference to "first class" healthcare or spending vacation time investigating whether a country's healthcare system matches the hype? Not only is one clearly much easier, but the other option risks the ire of immigration officials as well as nationalistic residents and influential expats. Somehow, modern society has created a situation where telling the truth has massive downside with no clear benefit and taking a simplistic and conformist approach has only upside. Humanity's new religion is optimism, and few people seem to mind that controversy is rarely an optimist's preferred bailiwick.

In any case, Mexican history is incredibly complex--two revolutions in one century will do that--but most people agree true democracy hasn't existed in Mexico very long. Indeed, until recently, Mexico was a one-party state where corruption was assumed unless otherwise proven. Yet, most Mexicans are optimistic about their country's future because they argue they've only had democracy for a short while, whereas Americans have had it for centuries. In spite of Trump's election, Mexicans believe true democracy is the way forward, and America's success is based in large part on giving every member of its society a voice in government affairs. This analysis contains numerous blind spots, but it has captured the public's imagination even though many Americans couldn't vote until 1920, when women finally won the right to vote; minorities were often disenfranchised at the polls (poll taxes, voter registration issues, etc.) until the 1970s; and individual votes are often trumped by groups such as unions, which are more effective at influencing elections as 40+% of Americans have stopped voting, especially in primaries. Such cognitive dissonance got me thinking: what if every single zeitgeist is wrong? What if human beings prefer to eschew simple ideas in favor of delusions of grandeur?

Imagination is a double-edged sword. It allows me to write the previous sentence but also strives towards complexity, even if only to distract ourselves from the ordinary. Mexico's optimism is probably better understood as a function of higher oil prices, currency devaluations making its exports more attractive in an increasingly globalized economy, and family values (who doesn't love Mexican grandmothers or want one?). While no Mexican individual can influence oil prices or force families to stay together, democracy allows everyone to believe and to feel as if they have more choices in creating the future than they actually do. In short, fallacies exist because humanity's need to feel in control allows imagination to run amok, creating distraction after distraction that eventually evolves into something "pack mentality" lifts up and makes into "truth."


Think about why we are inherently suspicious of artificial intelligence and why we talk about love and souls as if they are the most important elements in our lives. We have or think we can have control over finding love and improving our souls, and our imagination generates these abstractions in ways similar to computer code generating virtual reality, but no human being feels as if artificial intelligence programming has a soul, even if it passes the Turing Test. The reason is simple: every single abstraction generated by humanity's imagination is designed to give us the feeling of more control, even if hijacked in negative ways in the real world. Yet, because humanity cannot strip away its imagination's need to strive for greater control even when interests hostile to the original purpose of an abstraction dominate, humanity's instinct is always to maintain the original idea--at any cost

If the aforementioned hypothesis is true, it explains why outlaws, artists, and rebels are so valued--in the abstract--by human beings: buried deep in our software, our source code knows we need them as check and balances on programming's tendency to build around bugs rather than eliminate them. If humanity's most salient feature is its ability to generate distractions, then everything--phrenology, social media, nonviolence, sports, Nazism, capitalism, socialism, racism, etc.--is our attempt to understand the bugs we've generated in this journey we call life--and to pass time. Remarkably, this process of passing time tends to improve conditions for most, as long as imagination and physical mobility are allowed to prosper, and they usually do, whether in Vaclav Havel's plays under Soviet occupation, in Iranian cinema under express censorship, and in America under military veteran and Democratic Governor George Wallace's cries for segregation. Seen this way, my optimistic friend who called Cuba's healthcare "first class" is as right as I am when I demand accuracy and context. If everything is a distraction, why not turn our mind's eye to the pleasant possibilities--and hope to direct humanity's collective imagination towards resolving the gap between reality and the better angels of our imagination? After all, it's just a matter of time--as long as we balance short-term desires with long-term goals. 

Dedicated to Jim Quillinan, who introduced me to Harold and Maude (1971) and many other wonderful distractions

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Prague, Czech Republic: Deservedly Weird

The Czechs are weird. My first day, a college student took pity on me, a confused-looking tourist on the tram (I should have downloaded the Jizdni rady IDOS app earlier), and invited me to a show. The show turned out to be one of the trip's highlights and better than the 300 koruna performance at a fancy Prague museum. 
How did I get into this small gathering? Through a revolving door filled with heavy books. Why a revolving door? Because this is where the Czech intellectuals met, in secret rooms, to plot against their Soviet occupiers. 

Like much of Europe, the Czechs were occupied by Nazis. Just three years after the end of WWII, the Czechs, having expelled Nazis and fascists, had to battle Communism, which included the Soviet re-taking of property that had been returned to their rightful Czech owners in 1945. The three-years' bout of independence wasn't forgotten when the Soviets came; if anything, the sight of the sickle and hammer reinvigorated the Czech spirit. 

Consider the (pre-Soviet) heroic but ultimately tragic Heydrich assassination attempt, memorialized in the National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror. Short version: the British helped a small team of Czechs successfully assassinate the local Nazi police chief, then received cooperation from local church leaders to hide the Czech shooters in an underground crypt below a small church. The way to the crypt requires pushing through an inconspicuously heavy, half-revolving door. (See a pattern?) Unlike visitors today, the Czech shooters had to hide in darkness, armed only with candles for light. (I didn't see a toilet, by the way.) 

Unfortunately, one of the parties involved in the assassination split after things didn't go exactly according to plan, and it's unclear whether he knew the Heydrich hit had worked. He eventually betrayed his colleagues, but the fact remains: the Czechs, unlike other Europeans, resisted. 
Tales from the Crypt
Adolf Kajpr, a Jesuit priest, attracted the Gestapo's attention because of his anti-Third-Reich writings and was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Yet, he never wavered in his faith and published still relevant thoughts, such as the idea that liberal capitalism leads to atheistic humanism, but Communism promotes oppression and injustice, especially against religious adherents. Why? "[P]ure religious truths were regarded as a form of resistance against those who claimed to possess the entire truth, freedom, and power." (Note to self: totalitarians hate competition.) 
Incredibly, Czech nonconformity can be traced back to the first President of Czechoslovakia, Tomas G. Masaryk. He was expelled from Catholic school, married a rich French-American woman from Brooklyn, took her last name as his middle name, and as a matter of principle, refused to honor convention. (Politicians matter, folks. For better or worse, they help shape a country's image and ability to credibly claim a particular value in the future.) 
If this isn't available online when I get back to California, I'm gonna be disappointed.

Other Czech iconoclasts include playwright and eventual President Vaclav Havel. Below are two of my favorite passages from perhaps the Czech Republic's greatest citizen: 
From Disturbing the Peace (1990)
Imagine meeting in secret café rooms with a playwright and plotting to drive the law-and-order Soviets so insane, they'd give up and leave. It actually happened. The Czechs managed to resist non-violently and in crazy enough ways to make a report sent to Moscow impossible or incomprehensible. For example, when the Soviets first came, Czech resisters removed all the street signs. In a non-GPS, non-GNSS era, this action rendered the efficient Soviet machine slow, making navigation and mapping impossible. 

The Czechs were just getting started. Try to envision a 22 year-old Soviet soldier patrolling the streets of Prague with a Kalashnikov. He doesn't know where he's going because there are no street signs. When he walks around, trying to maintain order, he sees this: 
"What's going on?" he thinks. No one is attacking him, so he can't shoot. The artist cleans up after the performance, so there's no litter. It's not against the law to "crow." Does he just stand there, looking like an idiot? How does he explain this incident to his local superiors, who then have to report to straitlaced Moscow? If you're the 40 years-old local military commander, and you receive a call describing this performance--and others like it--do you even write a report? If you don't, you'll be accused of hiding information from Moscow, but if you do, you'll look like you've lost your mind, and you might lose your job. What do you do? What do you do?
Suffice to say, Vaclav Havel and his band of misfits prevailed--but only after college students, who so often sacrifice themselves to shame adults and the Establishment into doing what should be done, set themselves on fire. Remember these names: Jan Palach, Jan Zajíc, and Evžen Plocek--they are heroes and better men than you and me. 
Memorial at Charles University
When women today make the popular V-sign in photos, they may not know its full history. It was in Wenceslas Square where President Vaclav Havel, a poet and playwright, made the V-for-victory sign to thousands of Czechs who had finally won their freedom from Soviet occupation. 
At Wenceslas Square, the site of Palach's self-immolation in 1969.

After I left Prague, I read a delightful book by an Australian woman who moved there in search of a more interesting life. The passages below are from Rachael Weiss's book Me, Myself, and Prague (2008), but I recommend you start with her more polished and recent work, The Thing about Prague (2014). Her insights are spot-on about the Czechs, whom she politely calls "eccentric." 
Weiss correctly describes the Czechs as rude by Western standards, but one must also remember much of the world thinks Westerners are idiots for walking around smiling all the time for no reason. Me, I say the Czechs have earned the right to be any way they like. If they want to be eccentric, rude, and notorious for having affairs, more power to them. Anyone repelling armed soldiers using art, nonviolence, and sheer confusion ought to be able to put a man on an upside-down horse in the middle of a bazaar and act as if that's perfectly normal. 
Your eyes do not deceive you. It is what is is.

If you visit Prague, try Medovnik (honey cake), and think of the Czechs as perpetually drunk Germans. Czechs are usually blunt, so it often feels like you're getting yelled at or ignored with no middle ground. I'm no linguistics expert, but the way Czechs speak English indicates their language prefers to be precise and concise when possible. 

Just don't take anything too personally, whether it's the museum employee trying to be helpful by warning you not to buy a ticket because it's too late ("Why did you wait until you only had one hour left? You come tomorrow." I bought the ticket after realizing she wasn't actually giving me an order); to the sitting newspaper stand owner loudly demanding to know why you're standing in front of his stall (an American would just ignore the potential customer); to the waiter who ignores you even when you wave your hand trying to catch his attention. 

Despite the occasional rudeness and weirdness, you'll be pleased to know the Czechs, unlike most of Eastern Europe, have successfully integrated about 60,000 to 80,000 immigrants and made about half of them citizens. These Vietnamese immigrants weren't necessarily fleeing the North Vietnamese military--some relocated voluntarily as part of a later Communist alliance between Chinese-backed North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, which is why Vietnamese food in Prague is different from Vietnamese food in America. 

Besides excellent restaurants and cafés, Prague has too many tourist sights to list, but you should try the following: Charles Bridge, 
Basilica of St. James (aka Church of St James the Greater), 
I don't read Dan Brown's books, but look closely.

Church of St. Nicholas (in Old Town), the Dancing House, 
St. Vitus Cathedral (in Prague Castle aka Prazsky Hrad), the Franz Kafka Monument, 
Yes, the guy who wrote a weird story about a man who turns into an insect is Czech.

National Gallery aka Narodni galerie v Praze (with permanent and changing exhibitions in different locations--I enjoyed Julian Rosefeldt's "Manifesto," starring Cate Blanchett), Wenceslas Square (for its historical value--it's just a shopping area now), National Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror, and Lobkowicz Palace. Five nights is sufficient. 

Lastly, here's a photo of dogs in the aforementioned royal palace. 
As you can see, you will never, ever be as weird as the Czechs. They are the original hipsters, and others will always be poor imitators. Unlike most artists today, their art and nonconformity had purpose, bravery, and substance, helping the Czechs achieve independence. The next time someone asks whether art and philosophy are useful, you can respond affirmatively--as long as you thank the Czechs. 

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Unified Theorem

Many philosophers better than I have walked this earth.  I don't have any illusions that I can add substantively to the greats before me, but I have been able to travel more than they have, so perhaps others may discover a few diamonds in the sand of my thoughts.

Unified Theorem

Part 1

All issues originate first from personal relationships, which permeate outwards to form societal structures and norms. Consequently, how men and women interact together form the quality of life we create. We are somewhat restricted by gender roles and sexual norms, but all personal relationships seek a natural release and maximizing endorphins, which requires compatibility and then sustained effort to maintain such emotions as they experience an inevitable decline.

Opposites attract in terms of the willingness to confront others against harm (i.e., styles of protecting each other and complementing regular gaps or inefficiencies), but goals and quality of life preferences must be aligned in the same bandwidth to lessen substantive conflicts. From these everyday interactions, which build or reduce goodwill among individuals (and thus increase or decrease the likelihood of empathy), we can create economic rules to maximize chances and opportunities to think long-term and seek happiness.

The key is not to let economic rules dictate societal structures, but to bend economics to society's will. To do that, to perform such dismal alchemy, one must first understand economics and what not to do, for the most correct path often lies in not taking the wrong one. 

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Random Thoughts: Inflation, Housing, and Marriage

A.

1. The more government spends, the higher the risk of inflation.
2. The higher the risk of inflation, the more likely that prices go up.
3. When prices go up, essential items such as food and housing cost more.
4. When housing costs more, it becomes more difficult for an individual to buy a home.
5. Most individuals prefer to own a home before having children.
6. Most individuals prefer to own a home soon after getting married.
7. When the government makes it more difficult for single adults to buy a home, the most responsible ones among them will delay marriage and children.

[#7 assumes that most individual adults will have either little or no parental financial support when buying a home. It may be more defensible to change "single adults" and "individuals" to "single immigrants," who are probably less likely to be able to rely on parental financial support.]

B.

1. When prices go up, various items may become unaffordable for many families.
2. When prices go up, many families will have to use credit to finance a purchase.
3. The more expensive a product, the more likely a person will rely on credit.
4. Wall Street relies on credit. Without credit, Wall Street would probably have very little influence over the average person's daily life.
5. If you are against Wall Street and big banks, you should also be against credit.
6. If you want to minimize the use of credit, you should oppose rising prices.
7. When any large entity distributes large amounts of money to any area, it tends to increase prices in that area.
8. Government is a large entity that distributes large amounts of money to various areas.
9. The less government spends, the less likely it is to cause inflation and therefore rising prices.
10. Therefore, people who are against Wall Street and big banks ought to oppose increases in government spending.

Update: see link HERE for more on this topic. 

Monday, October 4, 2010

Social Rights v. Economic Rights

I had a very long debate about social rights and economic rights. It involved a philosophical debate about whether social rights--such as being able to call your relationship a "marriage"--and economic rights--such as a job--are equally important.

Me: I got a very smart liberal Democrat to say that letting a child die was the same thing as denying gay couples the right to call their union a "marriage." I asked him, "If you had to choose between a job and feeding your kids (economic rights) and gay marriage (social rights), does one trump the other?" He said they were equally important--even after I explained that one scenario would cause a child to die.

For many so-called liberals, human beings and property rights are mere obstacles to their version of a more fair and just society.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasions of their liberty--by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis

Alicia: Everyone thinks they're right.

Me: except that the point of being a true conservative or classic liberal is that you cannot trample someone else's property rights or right-to-life to get a desired result (assuming the person has achieved his property legally and you are not acting in self-defense).

Ivie: your analogy is flawed!

Me: flawed how? I understand that the choice offered is not ideal, and in an ideal world, we should have both social and economic rights; however, this is a philosophical exercise. The whole point of a philosophical exercise is to present tough choices to determine a person's values.

Alicia: What are the rates of child deaths by hunger in the United States? Would job creation really stop the problem of hunger in the US? Would the same children at risk of dying of hunger before jobs are created still be at risk after job are created? Is the issue of hunger in the US more important than it is in other countries? Does the severity of the issue in developing nations make it more pressing to deal with the problem there, first?

Me: you are injecting several other factors into the question, which was originally intended to force someone to choose between two clearly defined choices that involve different values.

Alicia: Life doesn't work like that, though. What's the point in having to pick between two clearly defined choices when that's never the case?

Me: to determine someone's value system and to determine a baseline to analyze more complex issues. We live in an imperfect world, and sometimes we must choose between two imperfect or non-ideal scenarios.

Alicia: There's this exercise we do a lot with the group I work with where you figure out what element (Thai people use animals) you are. I still haven't decided what I think of the activity, but it kind of seems like you just end up putting yourself in a box. I'm not sure if I agree with activities that involve strict yes or no, you are this or you aren't. I think analyzing more complex issues would give you a pretty good baseline, too.

Me: think about Kant and the categorical imperative. You have to analyze different situations and tough either/or scenarios to arrive at a consistent baseline.

Alicia: Why is there a need to come to a consistent baseline? Why do I have to always think that one thing is better than the other? Why wouldn't someone be able to call themselves a liberal without subscribing to all its ideologies? What's the measure of what's right and wrong? Is there anything that's truly good or bad, true or false? I think there's a big difference between sitting around and intellectualizing things and real life. You can consistently hold opinions that point to non violence and an aversion to killing, but if it comes down to a real life situation where you might have to kill someone (for whatever reason), then who really knows what you'd do. The Milgram experiment shows that what people think they'd do, want to do is different than what they'd actually do.

Just as not having a job MIGHT end in the death of a child, not helping to promote inclusion through policies like allowing gay marriage MIGHT end in death as well.

Me: except that your two scenarios are not at all similar, and therefore you miss the point of my original question. If you do not have a job, you cannot earn a living, and you cannot typically feed your child. It is true that perhaps welfare will allow your child to survive, but some countries lack welfare programs and food stamps. To determine a universal set of values, you cannot require that your child will be born in a first world country, b/c you would be imposing a random, lucky element in a discussion about universal values.

Once you apply Rawls' "veil of ignorance," and agree that you cannot predict whether you will be in California or Uganda, the possibility of welfare and other avenues of survival become less certain. But whether in CA or Uganda, someone with a job and source of income has a much higher (tho not 100%) chance of improving his/her child's chances of survival. It should be obvious that jobs require money and money requires goods, and goods involve food, etc. In other words, the existence of jobs requires a minimum level of infrastructure, and once you admit the existence of infrastructure, jobs have a direct value on survival.

At the same time, one can easily argue that gay marriage, whether in California or Uganda, will have little impact on being able to feed a child. This is b/c whether in California or Uganda, one does not have to be married to a man or a woman to feed a child. Thus, the presence or absence of gay or heterosexual marriage is irrelevant when it comes to feeding a child in California or Uganda. In contrast, a job presumes infrastructure and certainly improves the chances of buying food, whether in CA or Uganda.

Therefore, the situations are obviously different, and the attempt to make them appear similar is incorrect. Social values tend to be emphasized by rich, affluent people (if you are American, you are richer than 99% of the world). Poor people care about survival, not social values. If you want more social values, you have to give people jobs first, and the social values follow. In short, economic values are a good indicator of social values, and I believe that economic values are the foundation for social values--and not the other way around.

That is the point of the question: to test whether someone believes that gay marriage, by itself and in the abstract, creates stability and infrastructure--which of course it does not. In contrast, a job and money require certain basic infrastructure. Assuming basic infrastructure, a person with a job has a directly improved chance of improving his progeny's survival, whereas the abstract value of (gay) marriage is an idea that bears no direct relationship to survival or childbearing. In fact, once you realize marriage itself--whether hetero or gay--has little direct bearing on a child's survival, it is easy to see that economic values are more important than social values.

Maris: Wow. As a liberal parent, even I have to say there is definitely a hierarchy in democratic causes. Geesh.

Me: Maris, you have (indirectly) hit the nail on the head. I have found that the main difference on various issues is the presence of children. People with kids tend to have more common sense on these issues, perhaps because they must think about the future. My hypothesis is that the greatest danger to civilization is childless humans, b/c to them, it is easier to see society as a vehicle for advancing social causes instead of a unique, fragile infrastructure.

Maris: Perhaps it's the job. It's pounded into us "life over property" over and over and over again. By chance does this friend have kids?

Me: all the people in the room who said that social values were equal to economic values were child-less. The two people who had children did not answer my question.

Alicia: I think if you're going to answer this question straight, the only way to answer it is in terms of the United States. The policies of different countries are far too different to be able to compare them. The topic of gay marriage in the U.S. is far different than in Uganda. I don't think you can say that because looking at economic needs in Uganda is more important, that the same could be said in the US. There are different priorities and different needs. It would be like looking at a school in a impoverished area and one in a rich area and saying that because the poor school needs computers, so does the rich school.

Also, I think that a child's survival does have something to do with marriage. By furthering the cause of gay marriage, then you're indirectly furthering the cause of gay adoption, allowing children access to home and survival they might not have had otherwise. By putting children into loving homes, you're helping to end the cycle of poverty that would end up putting more children in danger of starvation.

But, that's not to say I think that one is more important than the other. It's to say that different situations deserve different thought, and that, for me, the situation can't be clean cut. There are a million different ways to look at that question, and I personally wouldn't want to look at it terms of only have one right answer.

I also think that it's not so much about having children as it is about looking outside of yourself. I think having children helps people to realize the need to protect more than themselves. However, I think it's just as bad to think about just your family as it is to think about yourself. Never said it wasn't understandable, but shouldn't be the goal.

Me: as far as I know, you don't need to be married to adopt in California. See California Family Code 297.5.

Also, I will accept your "American" restriction. Please answer the following question: an American adult is malnourished. Which is more important to him? Gay marriage or a job that will allow him to make money and buy food? (Economic infrastructure that allows him to get food from welfare programs, or the abstract right to get married as a gay or straight person?)

Alicia: But, it's not legal for gay couples to adopt children in all US states. The question wasn't asked in terms of California.

And, of course, to someone directly affected by poverty, their most important issue is going to be getting food. But that doesn't mean that gay marriage issues aren't valid in their own right. The point I'm trying to make is that both issues are valid. And in certain instances, they both take a more important role. I don't believe that one is always more correct than the other.

I think more important than economic or social reform is educational reform, as it has an effect on all areas of society. By improving education, you're not only creating a less impoverished society, but one that is more willing to accept all types of lifestyles.

Me: you said, "And, of course, to someone directly affected by poverty, their most important issue is going to be getting food."

I was getting worried there :-) Of course in an ideal world, we want both social and economic rights--but no one in their right mind thinks that economic rights are the same as social rights in every instance. Even though it took about ten tries, you've passed the test of common sense, and you don't even have any kids :-)

And I agree with you re: educational reform, but that's a topic for another time.

Me: 1. Who voted for Prop 8? Most affluent Bay Area DINKs, or most poorer Central Valley folks?

2. Who cares more about gay marriage? Affluent Swedes (who have wonderful infrastructure) or members of the Taliban (who are located in areas without economic infrastructure)?

3. Please cite a single place without economic infrastructure and/or affluence that has advanced or supported gay rights.

4. Whom amongst you is willing to say that a poor Somali or American who lacks food believes that jobs and economic infrastructure are equal in importance to the idea of gay marriage?

Patrick: ‎"this is a philosophical exercise. The whole point of a philosophical exercise is to present tough choices to determine a person's values."

So is the question, "would you rather be burned alive, or frozen in a block of ice?" a philosophical question?

Why would I have to make this choice? Why must a child die in order that same sex couples might wed?

The only scenario in which this sequence might come true is a terrorist's demand: Criminalize same sex marriage, or this child gets in the head. In that event, my choice would be for a SWAT team to shoot the terrorist in the head.

Me: except that both your scenarios involve death--a tangible, real thing with the same end result. As a result, there is no real choice. In contrast, my question involves a real choice between an abstract right vs. a tangible right.

By setting up a question that involves two tangible results that are exactly the same, you've missed the whole point of the question--to differentiate between tangible rights leading to a better economic position, and abstract rights leading perhaps nowhere.

Patrick: Your point's ridiculous. But to play your game, suppose the Ku Klux Klan announced that if America does not return to segregation and Jim Crow, the Klan will hijack multiple airliners and fly them into the Empire State Building and the Washington Monument. So we must choose between loss of intangible rights and loss of tangible rights, according to the Klan.

My response would be that this is a stupid choice. Arrest the Klan.

And WHY would rejecting Proposition 8 kill a child?

Peter: I think the laws pertaining to the death of children are pretty well hammered out, whilst the laws pertaining to gay marriage are not, hence the unequal amount of attention one gets over the other. I'm not sure exactly what basis you are using to equate the two things, except that there are laws which oversee them.

Me: @Patrick and @Peter: you've missed the entire point of the exercise. Let's try again.

My scenario involves an attempt to differentiate between economic rights and social rights. We are attempting to gauge the value of a job, which leads to money and increased chances of survival vs. the abstract value of having two men or women get married. It is obvious that almost anywhere in America or elsewhere, a single person who is unmarried has similar chances of survival than a married couple (whether gay or straight). It is also obvious that marriage has little direct relevance on survival, b/c in most places, someone need not get married to have a job or to survive, even if it means stealing food.

It is also obvious that assuming basic infrastructure, having a job has direct relevance on a person's survival. Namely, a person with a job or money (tangible goods) has an increased chance of attaining food and shelter when compared to someone without a job or money.

It therefore follows that in almost all instances, someone who had to choose between a job and money vs. marriage (whether gay or straight) would rationally choose a job and money if survival were at issue.

Again, my scenario sets up a contrast between economic rights impacting survival and non-economic rights that may or may not have any impact on a person's survival. If you want to create an analogy, you must stay within those guidelines.

Your example fails to set up a situation similar to mine. Instead, you have created a situation where someone must choose between death and segregation--both of which involve tangible property/economic rights. The reason segregation was immoral and harmful to Africans wasn't because of some abstract idea--it was because segregation and Jim Crow prevented Africans from gaining the same property rights, police protection, and economic rights as white Americans. So your example compares two economic rights, one direct (right to life) and one indirect (property rights). It is not similar to my scenario and is therefore inapplicable to this discussion.

Alicia: Also, you're making the assumption that economic reform would lead to positive change. And I'm sure there were plenty of people who questioned whether the social reform of the 1910s and 60s would make a change, but I'm pretty happy that happened.

Me: Last time I checked, we were relatively affluent in the 1960's. Also, b/c we didn't have to worry about fulfilling our basic survival needs, we were able to focus on improving social ideals and social values. Which proves my point: economic values and affluence typically precede broader social values and acceptance.

Think about it: how willing were most Americans pre-WWII to accept broader social values and change? Why do Americans, even today, go anti-immigrant whenever there's a recession? Why are more affluent areas in America more open to immigrants and diverse lifestyles than poorer areas?

Me: @Patrick: there's another issue you've missing: most Americans today don't care much about marriage as they used to. Therefore, a married person, whether gay or straight, has little advantage over an unmarried person in modern-day America. Which, of course, makes your refusal to see the difference between a job--necessary for survival and basic needs--and marriage--unnecessary for survival and basic needs--very, very troubling.

In the old days, segregation caused serious problems economically and also psychologically, because de jure segregation makes the side imposing segregation superior to the side subject to segregation. This superiority manifests itself in substantive, tangible ways that restrict economic rights.

If we were arguing about whether gay people had to attend separate schools, work in limited professions, buy houses only in specific neighborhoods, etc. this would be a completely different conversation. But we're not--we are discussing an abstract right that may have no economic impact on a person during the time he or she is alive. If you don't believe me, go outside and see if it makes any difference whether you wear your marriage ring or do not wear your marriage ring.

It should be obvious that the failure to allow (gay) marriage--which doesn't restrict most people from basic survival or a high quality of life--and the active imposition of segregation--which does harm a person's chances of affluence and a high quality of life--are completely different.

(P.S. By using scenarios that involve two economic rights rather than one abstract social right and one economic right, you implicitly accept that I am correct. In other words, you cannot even pose a question similar to mine without imposing scenarios that involve two economic rights. Therefore, you intuitively understand that a social right is worth less than an economic right...which is the entire point of this discussion.)

Peter: Well, there's a lot of ways you can look at this, but my view is pretty simple.

If you look at a married couple as an economic unit, then compare the survivability of the two people working together vs. the one person working by themselves, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a situation in which the single person has an advantage.

That being the case, and all child rearing being equal (which in reality it is of course not, but this is a thought exercise), then it would seem obvious that the couple would create a higher chance for survival of children, regardless of sex or orientation, hence a relation between economic and social rights.

Now, lets look at the other side of things. What would be the benefit, economically, of disallowing marriage between an arbitrary set of two people, based on any criteria which would exclude some portion of the population? If someone can answer that, then please do, as I cannot.

So, lets apply these values to your scenario: 1) Jobs lead to survival; 2) Gay marriage leads to social freedom. I come out with: two people with two jobs have a better chance of survival than one person with one job, and any person reliant on those people's survival will therefore have a greater chance of survival if they rely on two people rather than one.

By that reasoning, allowing any two people to get married and rear a child increases the survival rate of children, so it would seem that convincing multiple people to work as a single economic production unit has more economic benefit than denying certain people from forming such units.

I think this pretty creates a link, at least in this instance, between social liberty and economic viability.

Me: I was waiting for someone to link marriage to economic values. By creating the link, we are no longer comparing an abstract right vs. an economic right--we are comparing two economic rights.

I agree that marriage's value is only relevant to this discussion if it is linked to economic gain or loss. No sane person would equally compare an economic right to an abstract social right. You've now proved my point: abstract social rights are worth less than economic/tangible rights. Thus, in California, which already guarantees substantive equal rights to gay couples (see Family Code above) to the greatest extent possible, economic rights take precedence over abstract social rights. Remember this discussion if some misinformed person tells you s/he's voting for Candidate A over Candidate B for a California state office based on the right to gay marriage in California.

The only rational argument for social rights being equal to economic rights is if those social rights impact property rights or the right to life. That was my whole point. Why did it take this long to get here?

Tahir: Who cares more about cartoons of Mohammed published in Denmark? Affluent Swedes (who have wonderful infrastructure) or members of the Taliban (who are located in areas without economic infrastructure)? In fact, wasn't the Taliban the ones who squandered time and resources on shelling ancient statues documenting that at least some of their ancestors were Buddhists? Why weren't those shells sold in exchange for food?

Me: you've sort of helped prove my point--by disrespecting all property rights (such as the statutes they destroyed, as well as women's property rights), the Taliban demonstrates that destitute people tend not to care about social rights or economic rights. In other words, the Taliban is willing to destroy everything opposed to them, whether abstract or tangible, because their lack of an economic or social infrastructure allows them to be completely destructive without having to suffer any negative consequences. Inject religion into it, which has allowed them to make their right to life abstract, and they now have nothing to lose. The Taliban has no respect for economic or social rights, and part of their savagery is based on having no infrastructure or tangible rights, period.

The reason tangible rights mean more than abstract rights is b/c tangible economic rights give people something to lose. People with something to lose tend to care more about social rights that help preserve their property.

Tahir: Well no, the Taliban justified the action on the basis of a social right, furthering their particular set of religious beliefs despite their economic destitution.

Me: I disagree. The so-called "social rights" advanced by the Taliban involve destruction of everyone else's property and social rights. I don't think any reasonable person would argue that the right to destroy everything is a social right. That's sort of the point--the reason economic rights are superior to abstract social rights is b/c people with something tangible to lose tend to create more affluent and open societies than people with nothing tangible to lose. The basis for civilization is property and tangible economic rights, not abstract rights divorced from economic rights.

Tahir: So-called to you, established to them. You need to back up the distinction with universally applicable reasoning rather than an abstract plea of what a "reasonable person" would argue. And the Taliban certainly do not believe in destroying any one else's social rights any more than those who want to deny gay marriage to others. Where is the distinction between the two?

The starting point of a civil society is a respect for individual liberty limited to the extent it unreasonably interferes with another's liberty to arrange their social and economic affairs as they see fit.

Defining "unreasonable" is where us lawyers come in. And of course, if your "choice" is to have real world relevance, I would expect some reference to child deaths in Massachusetts that are linked to gay marriage in that state. One argument at a time no doubt.

Me: You said, "And the Taliban certainly do not believe in destroying any one else's social rights any more than those who want to deny gay marriage to others. Where is the distinction between the two?"

You're comparing people who voted for Prop 8 [to deny gay marriage] with the Taliban? You lose automatically.

Tahir: you've abandoned argument for conclusory statements. Do better and show me the steps of your reasoning.

Me: I already did explain my reasoning. The Taliban believe in nothing, and to them, even life is abstract. The Taliban show what happens when people deem abstract values the same as tangible economic values, namely, total destruction. This is b/c abstract values--when divorced from tangible economic consequences--are of course subjective. Once something is subjective, there is no basis for objective protection of tangible property rights. In contrast, a society that values tangible property rights over abstract social rights creates the necessary framework for social values.

Tahir: No, the Taliban do not "believe in nothing' and they certainly for a time created a framework for their social values (and you and I find common ground on disagreeing with those social values). Take time to think. This statement is a non-sequitur: "Once something is subjective, there is no basis for objective protection of tangible property rights." Consider instead that the absence of gay marriage bars gays from adding their partners to their health insurance. Are you trying to say that the denial of marriage to some on the basis of a subjective decision that one pair of humans should be able to cover each other on their health insurance and another pair of humans should not is a denial of a tangible economic benefit? Careful where your reasoning takes you.

Me: you just linked economic rights to social rights. That's my whole point. Social rights, in the abstract and divorced from economic rights, are inferior to tangible economic rights.

My statement re: social rights being subjective meant that social rights, in the abstract, are subjective. Which they are, of course. It is only by linking them to economic rights do they gain tangible form and equal priority with economic rights.

Tahir: Tangible economic rights are certainly of more consequence in the real world, but then I take it that if I put to you the question you posed to your smart liberal friend and explained to you in turn that the denial of gay marriage would kill another human being who could not thereby obtain employer-provided health insurance through his/her spouse that you would agree the two situations you posit are equivalent?

Me: now we're getting somewhere. First, in California, your scenario is void and inapplicable because of Family Code 297.5. But let's pretend we are in Wyoming. In that case, your analogy still isn't applicable, because American hospitals are legally required to treat everyone, regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. But let's keep going, because you're onto something here.

If you could show that the failure to obtain health insurance would definitely lead to a person's death in Wyoming, then yes, we are comparing two deaths, which implicates two economic rights. Consequently, the two situations would be equivalent. But for reasons stated above, your example doesn't apply in the United States. And if you notice, the issue, as you've now drafted it, isn't about marriage per se or the ability to call a couple "married," but the availability of health insurance to all persons--an economic issue.

You've merely linked a social right--marriage in some states--to the right to receive privately-subsidized health care. Now that we have universal health care, it's also unclear whether your analogy applies, but I do not want to be too uncharitable, b/c you have implicated an equivalent economic right--the right to life--and in doing so, have proved my point: that abstract social rights, without being linked to economic rights, are inferior to economic rights. How many times must we go around the same mulberry bush? :-)

Peter: I was only speaking to this particular scenario, in which there is a clear link between a social and economic function. I certainly would not use the same reasoning if this were two other arbitrary issues, one purely social, the other purely economic. It seems to me that society and economy are very strongly linked, especially if you consider food production to be relevant to the economy. I think from a governance perspective that you can make laws to govern economy quite easily, where laws which govern social behavior with no seeming direct impact on economy should be handled with much greater care, or in other words, there should be less of them.

This does not in any way confer a graded value system on either social or economic rights, simply on my faith in the legal system to govern those rights and ensure equality. It's easy to split a dollar in half, not so much a human.

So, I believe I can be consistent with my views on economic rights, and my views on social rights by saying there should never have been a law made which limited anyone's right to be "married" or to call it whatever they want, nor should any entity have a right to discriminate against those who are married, unless the marriage in some way impedes the rights of the entity. In other words, there should be no difference between any marriage anywhere as it applies to the state, the federal government, or any private entity operating within those boundaries. There should also be no law forcing people to accept that what they call marriage and what someone else calls marriage may not agree.

Basically, at home you can yell whatever you want at your four walls, but when you go outside of your home you have to accept that everyone has the same rights.

Alicia: I think it's definitely more of an issue than just "the right to call a relationship a marriage." There's a reason that people don't want gay marriage to be legal. It's not arbitrary. By not allowing gay people to get married, you're telling an entire group of people that they aren't allowed to do something that other people are allowed to do. If you subscribe to the belief that homosexuality isn't a choice (as I do), then it's like saying blond people can't get married. Even if you believe it's a choice and think it's immoral, it would be like saying that anyone outside of your religion couldn't get married. How do you think people would react if suddenly everyone decided Muslim people couldn't have a valid marriage in the United States?

I don't think anyone would disagree that economic issues are important. I think everyone one is trying to say that economic AND social issues are important. That you can't just abandon social reform because there are situations in which the need for economic reform might be more dire. It's not "this or that"--it's everything.

One of my favorite Buddhist ideas asks the question: What do you see when you look at a piece of paper? Buddhist belief says that it's not just a piece of paper. It's the sky, the rain, the tree, the ground, the people who cultivated it. It's everything, because everything in our world is interconnected in some way. Nothing is ever just one thing.

Me: First, please keep in mind I've already said that both social and economic rights are important. Second, we live in an imperfect world that can force us to make decisions between two inflexible scenarios, and sometimes neither scenario is ideal.

The question is what do we do when we must choose between two imperfect candidates? If Politician A has better economic ideas than Politician B, but Politician A is against gay marriage, for whom should you vote? Obviously, there are other issues besides economics and gay marriage, but we can characterize most issues as either economic or social.

My argument is that in an imperfect world--i.e., until we get a mainstream candidate who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal--we must give precedence to economic rights. In other words, when forced into a box with imperfect options, one must give precedence to economic issues, not social issues. I've shown that economic rights are superior to social rights if one must make a choice between them. Of course, whether Candidate A does indeed have superior economic ideas than Candidate B is an entirely different discussion, but it is the discussion we ought to be having.

Jon: The question itself is not designed to spur debate or evaluate the relative merits of each position on the topic you supposedly wanted to address. It's a set up so that no matter the answer, you can declare victory. Hence the only way to have a chance in the debate, logically, is to change the rules by forcing a new question so there can be real debate. Now if you had asked something like:

You are a California senator and you are late for two votes on which yours is the deciding factor, but you only have time to cast one. A bill that will cap government spending equal to inflation thus curbing tax increases, or one that will overturn prop 8 and allow gay marriage, which do you vote for thus ensuring it passes?

This is open for real debate, real support of your position etc. As neither choice is clearly right, but one is economic and one is social, it's actually a test of which you would choose.

Getting someone to admit they would rather save a baby than allow gays to marry says nothing about economic or social values, it says they aren't a psychopath.

Me:
kudos on coming up with an interesting question/scenario. The point of our discussion is that the Senator should vote for or against the economic issue b/c it takes precedence over the social issue. (I actually have no problem with gay marriage, but I'm troubled by the idea of letting a court overrule the initiative process unless fundamental rights are involved. Hence, the dilemma in California, where we have FC 297.5.)
Sometimes, you are stuck with two imperfect scenarios and you have to make a choice. The issue is how we choose between two imperfect scenarios, which is similar to voting for GOP or Dem candidates, neither of whom are perfect.

So one benchmark is whether we go by social rights or economic rights. Are they equivalent, or is one superior to the other? The point of this discussion is that economic rights should trump social rights in a head-to-head collision b/c economic rights are the foundation for most social rights.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Thought Experiment: Utilitarianism

I am borrowing the following hypothetical from Slawek W.:

John invents a cure for cancer. It is a pill, very easily made, in fact, one could make it with ingredients found in every household. He successfully demonstrates the effectiveness of this cure on several volunteers, after which he announces to the world that he has no intention of ever releasing any information about this cure. He further announces that the instructions to produce this cure have been implanted somewhere in his body in a soluble capsule which will completely dissolve in a week along with the instructions.

Let's suppose that a surgical search for this implant would end John's life.

Let's further suppose that there is absolutely no way that you can reason with John to change his mind, and you cannot reverse engineer the cure by studying the cured patients.

Now, the general population is asked what the best course of action is in this situation. John has the knowledge to eradicate cancer forever but he has no intention of sharing this information for whatever reason. Also, there is no way to forcefully retrieve this information without causing John's death in the process.

What would you propose should be done and why? Would it matter if John was your 16 years old son?

__________

My exchange with Slawek is below:

Me: I am going to assume your scenario refers to all cancers, not just one strain of cancer. Why am I getting visions of Howard Roark and his architecture plans? Actually, that's the problem with your scenario: we're not talking about architecture--we're talking about someone unreasonably withholding vital information that we know will save millions of lives. Again, the key tipping point is the fact that we know that John has the cure for cancer. Thus, this isn't like torture, where we must question the validity of the information or whether the source has the information. Here, we know the cure for cancer exists within this man and will save millions of lives. At some point, shouldn't individual liberty give way to assured benefits for all of humankind--assuming all other avenues have been exhausted completely? Your situation is extremely complex because we are taking a human life, so we are not discussing liberty per se, but a man's life. My answer? I don't know.

Slawek: You needlessly see a dilemma here. Let me simplify this for you: John is your 16 year old son. Are you still unsure of what course of action is to be taken?

Me: Yes, because I cannot envision a scenario where my son would withhold life-sustaining medicine from the public when threatened with death. The more likely scenario is that I would represent him and demand billions of dollars in exchange for the cure. Private property is not always sacred--that's why we allow condemnation proceedings, as long as the government pays proper compensation.

Your hypothetical is complex because we're not talking about property, but about guaranteed results affecting human lives. Your scenario is an offshoot of the age-old question of whether you would shoot one person to save a thousand. When I first saw that question, I thought two things: 1) I wouldn't personally shoot anyone; 2) it wouldn't matter anyway, because someone cruel enough to offer that kind of Catch-22 choice would probably kill everyone regardless of my decision. So, what's my answer to your hypothetical? There is no good answer. That's my answer.

Slawek:
Let me further constrain this scenario: nobody cruel or crazy can do anything to John. Whatever you decide will be done. What do you decide should be done?

If you have a solid foundation of morals and virtues, which is applied to every single individual in the same way then the answer is simple: nothing should be done. You cannot decide to deprive a man of his life (his property) for another man's benefit, unless you agree that another man can deprive you of yours. To agree to this is to reject your life.

If you cannot decide what you would do in this situation then your moral foundation is convoluted and contradictory. The test of your morality is the ability to apply it to every situation without making concessions or creating exceptions for certain situations. Whatever applies to another man, applies in the same way to you.

What if the subject in question would be me? The answer is clear unless you lack the basic instinct of the will to live.

Me:
It isn't that simple, because under your scenario, all options lead to at least one guaranteed death. Overall, I do believe a person may act so unreasonably as to forfeit his right to live; however, your scenario is complex, because John isn't interfering in another person's life. He's holding back progress, but that's not interference per se--it's unreasonable unselfishness. Thus, the simplified question is whether unreasonable unselfishness may result in a justified loss of life. I will give you the lawyer's answer: "It depends."

Slawek:
Your analysis is wrong. One option leads to murder, the other option leaves everything unchanged. The scenario is anything but complex. It poses simple questions: would you have your son killed to help millions of people? would you want people to kill you to help millions of people?

My answer is simple: no. I would not have anyone killed for the benefit of another man. no exceptions.

I could have also thrown in that your other son is dying of cancer which would really have made for an awkward scenario. The right answer in that case would have been the same: you don't take one man's property (life) to benefit another.

Me: Do you agree that not doing something may result in death? Here, not sharing the cure will result in either a) the guaranteed deaths of millions of people; or b) the guaranteed death of one person. Again, there is no dispute that all options lead to at least one death where action or inaction is the proximate cause of the death(s). Thus, to label one option"murder" and another "the refusal to sustain life" is splitting hairs. Overall, the question is whether unreasonable selfishness may cause a man to forfeit his right to life when his death will save millions of lives.

Let me throw the question back to you: would you shoot Hitler if you had the chance?

Slawek: Doing nothing does not result in anyone's death, it leaves the situation unchanged. Not helping someone is not the same thing as hurting them. It is not hair splitting, these are entirely different things.

The intentional murder of a person is an entirely different affair from not helping someone. You prosecute a man for murder, you don't prosecute a doctor who was on vacation when a man died of a heart attack.

Also, are you metaphorically comparing Hitler, a man who directed the murder of millions of innocent people, to John who did absolutely nothing?"

You can only decide to kill John for the benefit of other if you accept the premise that his life does not belong to him. By accepting this, you must also accept that your life does not belong to you. There cannot be a functioning society based on this premise.

Me: There is a difference between someone who lacks the power to save lives and someone who voluntarily refuses to save lives based on irrational and unreasonable selfishness.

In any case, if you wanted to prove a point about universal healthcare, you've used an ineffective hypothetical. The real issues with universal healthcare are cost control and levels of coverage, not a mad scientist's unreasonable refusal to save lives.

Slawek: Irrational and unreasonable? We'll never come to a conclusion if you start injecting subjectivity into this. Don't you find it irrational and unreasonably selfish for a heart surgeon to go on a 6 month vacation? He could be saving lives instead. How irrational and unreasonably selfish of him.

This has got nothing to do with universal health care. Not a single thing. I wanted for people who care to read it to realize that their moral framework is flawed and weak. It is in fact so weak that everyone that read this note would refuse to answer. Not give the wrong answer, mind you, but simply refuse to answer. You were intrigued enough to try to find flaws in the scenario, but still, you didn't answer. You've done every single thing not to answer so far.

You won't decide what to do in John's case because you'd see a contradiction in your actions. You don't want to kill John, but you do want millions of people to be saved from a terminal disease. But why do you just not say: kill John?

Bonus: more thought-provoking questions here.