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In 1945, America supplied Japan with nuclear power. As a result, Japan experienced an economic miracle. During the economic boom from 1945 to 1991, Japan rapidly became the world's third-largest economy after the United States and Soviet Union.
Embrace nuclear power!
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Economics
Kagan got back to me. The questions I sent are in bold, followed by Kagan's reponses in plaintext.
1. What is your favorite color?
Alas! I do not have a favorite color.
2. What are the strongest arguments against the existence of a soul? Does general anesthetic prove that there is no soul and show that consciousness is solely dependent on the functioning of the brain?
Let's suppose that to believe in a soul is to believe that there is something nonphysical about us, something that is distinct from our physical bodies, something that thinks and decides, and feels and so on. The central argument against believing in the existence of a soul, I think, is that there is no compelling argument for believing in a soul! That is, the burden of proof, I think, falls in this case on someone who thinks that we should believe in such a thing. We don't normally go around positing things without good reason, so is there a good reason to believe in a soul? If not, then we should tentatively conclude there is no such thing. To be sure, there could be an argument for souls. It would be a different matter, for example, if we needed to posit a soul to explain something that we all agree needs explaining. (This is like positing atoms which we cannot see, so as to explain chemical reactions, and so on, which we can see.) And there are arguments that have been offered along these lines by various people. But I think the proposals are not convincing (we can explain the phenomena in question as well, or better, in strictly physical terms). And in the absence of good reason to posit the soul, we shouldn't do so. (This is the same sort of thing as saying that while there could be Martians, we have no good reason to believe in them, so shouldn't posit them until we have compelling reason to do so.)
Some think that explaining consciousness requires positing a soul. And I suppose I would agree that physicalists (who think we are merely physical beings) don't yet have an adequate account of consciousness (the fact that our mental life has a subjective qualitiave aspect, e.g., the ability to feel pain). But it isn't as though soul theorists have an alternative account either! Merely saying, "souls explain consciousness" isn't really offering any kind of explanation. So I don't think consciousness gives us a convincing reason to posit souls.
At the same time, I don't think that things like the fact that anesthetic can cause us to lose consciousness give us reason to deny the existence of a soul either! Dualists (people who posit nonphysical souls as well as physical bodies) have almost always been "interactionists," holding that the body and the soul interact with each other and can cause changes in the other. Thus, for example, they think that my soul can cause my body to do things (like type these words), and that my body can cause my soul to experience things (like seeing the tree outside my window). So the fact that anesthetic can cause the person to fall asleep won't trouble most dualists. They always thought there could be interactions of body and soul like this.
3. Do you believe that the p-zombie thought experiment has any plausibility to it? If so, then what separates a zombie from a non-zombie is metaphysical, since both have the same bodily equipment that, to our knowledge, enables consciousness, yet one lacks a "true first person perspective" anyway. If you and I are beings who exist on a metaphysical plane, then how is this distinguishable from having a soul?
I am guessing by a "p-zombie" you have in mind something that looks and acts just like us, but has no mental life, in the sense that it has no "consciousness"--feels no pain, doesn't experience the color blue, and so on. Most discussions of this sort of creature assume that they have beliefs and desires, just that it doesn't feel like anything "on the inside" to BE such a creature. (Why the name "p-zombie"? I am guessing this is meant to be short for what sometimes gets called a philosophical zombie, to distinguish it from the kinds of zombies shown in horror movies!) Can we imagine such things? Well, it sure seems so. (Although things immediately get tricky, because we aren't always imagining what we think we are imagining. So are we REALLY imagining such zombies, or just thinking we are?) I take it that we can do something that we think is imagining a body that behaves just like our bodies do (speaks, acts, etc.) but has no inner conscious mental life . That is, it feels no pain, and so on, though it behaves like us: it avoids flames and sharp objects, it knows that such things are dangerous and harmful, and it and will SAY that they are painful, and so on. If this is indeed what you mean by a p-zombie, then I think we can imagine such things existing (in some possible world or the other). The harder question is what follows from this mere conceptual possibility, the apparent ability of our mind to imagine such creatures, to conclusions about what is actually logically possible, and what is metaphysically possible, and what is physically possible, and so on. David Chalmers, who most famously argued on the basis of such thought experiments, thinks that we can derive all sorts of surprising conclusions from the intelligibility of such cases. I disagree, though getting into the details is beyond the scope of a short answer like this.
Of course, I do think the following: since I think WE are conscious, I take it that anything that has the VERY same physical components as we do, living in a world with the same laws of physics (and chemistry, and biology, and so on) as we do, WILL be conscious. But for my money, I don't see how this shows anything about the existence of a soul. (Neither did Chalmers.) It just shows that in a world where the laws of nature are the same as the ones in our world, physical things like us will be conscious. But I don't see any argument for a soul here. This might just be a fact about what physical things of a certain sort are like in a world with laws of nature like ours.
4. Do you believe that it is possible for there to be a universal set of ethics, a right and wrong without god existing, and if so, what would do you think it might look like?
I do think it possible for there to be a universal set of ethical rules, objectively true, valid for everyone, and so on, even if there is no God. I argued for this in a conversation I had once with William Lane Craig (who claimed that morality requires God), which can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm2wShHJ2iA I suppose this is another case where I would put the burden of proof on someone else. In particular, on someone (like Craig) who thought that we need God to have morality. I can't see why we should believe this. After all, one can have a reason to move one's hand from a hot stove, even if there is no God to make that true, right? But then, why can't we also have a reason to help someone ELSE move THEIR hand from a hot stove, even if there is no God? Obviously, a quick remark like this can't show very much, so someone who wants to hear me spell out the idea a bit more fully can check out the discussion I had with William Lane Craig. But my own view is that morality does NOT require the existence of God.
Of course, beyond this, there are any number of other worries one might have about the very possibility of an objective morality. I actually don't think the worry about God being required for morality (so what if there is no god?) is the most pressing. I discuss a number of other such worries in a book I published last fall, called Answering Moral Skepticism. One might wonder about what moral facts would look like, and how they could fit into a scientific world view, and whether belief in evolution gives us reason to be skeptical about our moral intuitions, and doesn't the extent of moral disagreement give us reason to be skeptical, and so on, and so forth. It took a book to state and respond to those worries, so sadly I don't have the time to try to lay out these arguments here.
As to what specific moral views I believe in, broadly speaking I accept what gets called a "consequentialist" morality, according to which the morally right act is a matter of bringing about the best possible outcome you can --roughly speaking, making people as happy as possible, and avoiding hurting them (counting everyone equally, indeed counting animals too). Of course there are a lot of details that need to get worked out, but that's the basic idea. However, I hope it is clear that one can accept quite different moral views from this consequentialist one, while still agreeing with me that morality doesn't require the existence of God. One could, for example, be a "deontologist" --thinking that some acts are wrong even though the results are good overall--that other features of actions are morally relevant besides the consequences of those actions--and still think that morality doesn't require the existence of God.
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Philosophy
Shelly Kagan is a Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is best known for his writings about moral philosophy and normative ethics. In 2007, Kagan's course about death was offered for free online. This led to him publishing a book on the subject in 2012. Kagan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. His lectures on death can be found here.
Kagan has generously offered to answer questions and to have his answers displayed publicly. Please be considerate and try not to ask surface-level questions that could be answered with a single google search.
I will stop accepting responses in 48 hours on April 30, 2024 at 5:20pm CST. When Kagan responds, I will post a follow-up thread with his answers.
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Philosophy
When polled on whether they would kill Hitler as a baby, only 42% of NYT readers said yes.
When polled on whether the atomic bombings of Japan were justified, 56% of Americans said yes.
Either people are really uncomfortable with messing up the timeline, or killing 200,000 people to end the war early is considered preferable to killing one person to stop the war entirely.
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History
Pick any letter in the English alphabet, and I'll guess how many syllables it has.
❄︎︎︎♒︎︎︎❒︎︎︎♏︎︎︎♏︎︎︎ ⬧︎︎︎⍓︎︎︎●︎︎︎●︎︎︎♋︎︎︎♌︎︎︎●︎︎︎♏︎︎︎⬧︎︎︎📬︎︎︎ ✋︎ ♌︎♏︎⧫︎ ⍓︎□︎︎︎◆︎︎︎ ◻︎︎︎♓︎︎︎♍︎︎︎🙵♏︎︎︎♎︎︎︎ 🕈︎︎︎📪︎︎︎ ⍓︎︎︎□︎︎︎◆︎︎︎ ♍︎︎︎□︎︎︎■︎︎︎■︎︎︎♓︎︎︎❖︎︎︎♓︎︎︎■︎︎︎♑︎︎︎ ⬧︎︎︎♍︎︎︎□︎︎︎◆︎︎︎■︎︎︎♎︎︎︎❒︎︎︎♏︎︎︎●︎︎︎📬︎︎︎ 🕆︎︎■︎︎●︎︎♏︎︎⬧︎︎⬧︎︎ ⍓︎︎□︎︎◆︎︎🕯︎︎❒︎︎♏︎︎ ✋︎︎■︎︎⧫︎︎♏︎︎●︎︎●︎︎♓︎︎♑︎︎♏︎︎■︎︎♍︎︎♏︎︎♉︎︎📁︎︎⌛︎︎📪︎︎ ♓︎︎■︎︎ ⬥︎︎♒︎︎♓︎︎♍︎︎♒︎︎ ♍︎︎♋︎︎⬧︎︎♏︎︎ ⍓︎︎□︎︎◆︎︎ ◻︎︎❒︎︎□︎︎♌︎︎♋︎︎♌︎︎●︎︎⍓︎︎ ⬧︎︎♋︎︎⬥︎︎ ⧫︎︎♒︎︎♏︎︎ ⧫︎︎❒︎︎♓︎︎♍︎︎🙵 ♍︎︎□︎︎❍︎︎♓︎︎■︎︎♑︎︎ ♋︎︎■︎︎♎︎︎ ◻︎︎♓︎︎♍︎︎🙵♏︎︎♎︎︎ ♋︎︎ ●︎︎♏︎︎⧫︎︎⧫︎︎♏︎︎❒︎︎ ⬥︎︎♓︎︎⧫︎︎♒︎︎ □︎︎■︎︎♏︎︎ ⬧︎︎⍓︎︎●︎︎●︎︎♋︎︎♌︎︎●︎︎♏︎︎📬︎︎
Once you've picked a letter, decode the prediction here by putting the symbols in the box on the right.
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Miscellaneous
The most well-known moral systems are deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics.
Deontology is simple to apply. It just requires that people follow the rules and do their duty. This approach tends to fit well with our natural intuition about what is or isn’t ethical.
Consequentialism holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.
Virtue ethics emphasizes certain ideals, such as excellence or dedication to the common good, toward which we should strive and which allow the full development of our humanity. These ideals are discovered through thoughtful reflection on what we as human beings have the potential to become.
According to PhilPapers, there's no clear consensus among philosophers on whether we should accept deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics. Hence, I propose a new moral system: best two out of three. It's exactly what it sounds like. You evaluate a moral dilemma using all three of these systems and take the best two out of three.
The neat thing about best two out of three is that you can resolve any moral dilemma and you have a 2/3 chance of being correct. I'm also hard-pressed to think of a case where our intuitions about what is moral and immoral conflict with the best two out of three system. An even better approach might be to add additional moral frameworks such as rights-based ethics, or dividing consequentialism into population utilitarianism and average utilitarianism. Then you can take best 6/11 or something.
The most accurate election predictors tend to use a weighted average of estimates from different sources rather than relying on one source alone. Best two out of three is to philosophy what 538 is to elections.
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Philosophy
A game based on this cartoon. The "customer" asks for something. The "analyst" designs something inferior to what the customer asked for. "Operations" installs something inferior to what the analyst described. Anyone can submit some version of this process or take the role of the customer and ask for something, allowing others to respond as the designer or as operations with inferior versions of what the previous player described. Similar to "we have [x] at home" or Google vs. Bing memes. Each example is a variation on the same punchline. The rules are not strict, so one can add additional steps to the process.
I'll give several more examples to start. Obviously, these are jokes:
What the customer asked for: Dune (2024)
What the analyst designed: Dune (1984)
What operations installed: The Rise of Skywalker
What the customer asked for: Return of the King
What the analyst designed: The Battle of Five Armies
What operations installed: Rings of Power
What the customer asked for: King David
What the analyst designed: King Solomon
What operations installed: Benjamin Netanyahu
What the customer asked for: John F. Kennedy
What the analyst designed: Bill Clinton
How the business consultant described it: Franklin D. Roosevelt
What operations installed: Joe Biden
What the customer asked for: Karl Marx
What the analyst designed: Vladimir Lenin
How the business consultant described it: John Maynard Keynes
What operations installed: Joseph Stalin
What the customer asked for: Milton Friedman
What the analyst designed: Ayn Rand
How the business consultant described it: Adam Smith
What operations installed: Ben Shapiro
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Forum games
Huemer got back to me. The questions I sent are in bold, followed by Huemer's reponses in plaintext.
1. In many common conceptions of an anarcho-capitalist society, people can act collectively if they choose to do so. They can create a community and agree on rules. They can pass that land to their kids under the condition that their kids follow those same rules. What is the difference between doing that on a micro-scale with a neighborhood and just at a nation-state level?
I am unsure what you mean by "the difference". Is the question about important differences between HOA's and governments?
HOA's are a real phenomenon, which has actually arisen voluntarily. Nation-sized HOA's, however, have not voluntarily arisen, nor is there any plausible way that that would happen. So that is one difference between HOA's and national governments.
Another interesting difference is that real HOA's face meaningful competition. If a person does not like the rules of one HOA, it is very easy to avoid that HOA and live in another neighborhood or housing complex. This does not require leaving behind one's family, friends, job, and culture; learning a new language; or getting the permission of some other nation-state. This makes competition among HOAs much more meaningful than competition among national governments.
I am not sure, but I think the question may have been suggesting that the people in one generation can create rules that restrict the use of their land for all future generations. I think this is not legitimate. I think any future generation would be free to alter the rules of the HOA or even to abolish the HOA, and earlier generations cannot do anything to prevent this.
2. What should (not does but should) stop individuals from committing crimes?
Every individual should voluntarily respect the rights of others due to their understanding of morality. However, if (as is the case in all known societies) some individuals refuse to respect the rights of others, then someone else (such as private protection agencies) should deploy force to stop the rights-violators.
3. If someone got sick from a meal or beverage, as it had different ingredients from what was displayed in the packaging, how (other than virtue signaling and boycotting) could they achieve retribution and deter companies from continuing this practice?
The individual could bring a lawsuit against the manufacturer. The plaintiff and the defendant would go to one of the private arbitration firms to have their dispute resolved. The private justice system is described at greater length in chapter 11 of The Problem of Political Authority, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1137281650/.
However, in real capitalist societies, lawsuits over product disputes are very rare, because companies almost always resolve customer complaints satisfactorily without a lawsuit (also because lawsuits in the current system are extremely expensive). I have virtually never had a company refuse to fix a problem. Indeed, empirically, companies bend over backwards to accommodate even unreasonable customer demands.
This particular scenario is also particularly improbable. Companies do not generally poison their customers. No business plan starts with, "Step 1: Feed our customers stuff that makes them vomit..."
4. Any given community would presumably have disputes with other communities, not only with lowlife criminals and small terrorist groups. So you'd need a standing army to defend your community, unless you first eradicated war entirely, which somehow sounds far more implausible than even anancap. Now then, having standing armies around, or else be occupied by the standing armies of other communities, what is going to prevent them from ending the anarchy by pulling out a little something called a military coup for their own benefit?
I have never had a dispute with another community. I have lived in several different neighborhoods in my life. None of them has ever had a dispute with another neighborhood. I am not sure what sort of dispute this question is imagining. However, if your HOA somehow has a dispute with another HOA, they would resolve that by going to arbitration, just as in the case of any other dispute. They would not raise an army and declare a war. If my HOA board somehow gets filled with crazy people and declares that we're going to attack the condominium building across the street, I am not joining that war. And neither, I believe, will any of my neighbors.
5. What are your thoughts on the brain drain that occurs by America stealing all of the brightest minds out of 3rd world locations? For example, if Javier Milie and his supporters had immigrated to the United States, they would currently not be in Argentina fixing their society.
Human beings own their own brains, and they have their own lives to live. They are not resources at the disposal of other people. You can't force someone to live somewhere they don't want to be just so that the people there can extract value from them. That's a form of slavery.
It's also extremely harmful to the world. If Sergei Brin had been forced to spend his life in Russia, Google would not exist. He would not have somehow overthrown Putin and converted Russia into a liberal, capitalist democracy; his life would just have been wasted. Of course, Brin is an outlier in terms of talent. But the qualitative point applies widely: the overwhelming majority of people can realize their potential vastly better in a society such as the U.S. than they can in a Third World nation. In some cases, the amount of value one can produce may be thousands of times greater.
6. How do asymmetric regimes affect the immigration issue? For example, the WTO makes free trade largely reciprocal and limits the scope of trade wars between member states. But there's no agreement of this kind for immigration. If Country A restricts the flow of migrants from Country B, is it acceptable for Country B to have an equivalent policy toward citizens of Country A?
If you learn that one of your neighbors recently beat up one of the neighborhood kids, is it okay for you to beat up another kid, in order to achieve symmetry? No; two wrongs don't make a right. If country A commits a rights-violation, this is not fixed by country B committing another rights violation against someone else.
In reality, immigration pressure between pairs of countries is mostly one-directional. It barely matters if Mexico prohibits Americans from migrating to Mexico, because hardly anyone would want to do so. It's still a rights-violation, but a relatively small one.
Taking into account, in addition, that immigration benefits the receiving country, the question is a little bit like: "If my neighbor shoots himself in the foot, should I shoot myself in the foot too?"
7. In regards to laws regarding immigration, there's been talks I've heard of a wall around the borders to strengthen that security just like having a fence up around perhaps your residential property in the name of security, why does this not suffice as an ethical justification?
Anyone may put a fence around their own property. But they may not put a fence around other people's property. Donald Trump doesn't own America, nor do the 535 clowns in Congress, nor does the government. So they may not put a fence around it. In general, you can choose not to interact with some group of people if you don't want to, but you cannot declare that no one else in your society may do so.
It seems, by the way, that many people are unaware that there is already fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, across all of the likely crossing points. That was built during the Bush administration, long ago.
8. Since 2019, literally all employment growth has gone to immigrants. Is this evidence that immigration reduces employment and saturates the US economy?
Oh no! Immigrants are doing productive work to support themselves? At the same time, more native-born Americans are sitting around in their parents' basements watching porn? Clearly this shows how diabolical the immigrants are.
In seriousness, no, there is no phenomenon of "saturating" an economy. There isn't a maximum amount of work that can be done; the amount of work increases with the population. That's why, when the population doubles, you don't wind up with 50% unemployment.
Concerns about employment are particularly misplaced at a time (like now) when the unemployment rate is within half a point of the lowest it has been in the last 70 years.
Granted, the people who just decided that they don't want to work aren't included (you have to be seeking work to count as "unemployed"). But if Americans don't want to work, that's hardly the fault of immigrants.
9. The universe: chance or purpose?
No one knows why the universe is here or why the Big Bang happened. If it has a purpose, that purpose isn't apparent (it doesn't act as if it has any purpose that we can discern), but that doesn't show that it doesn't have one.
It probably isn't merely chance, though. That is, there is probably some good explanation of why the universe is here, whether or not that involves someone's purpose.
10. I have seen your list of favorite bible verses. Do you have any favorite Quran verses you would like to share as well?
Here are three scary Quran quotes:
Sura 4:34: "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great."
5:38: "As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise."
9:5: "And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush."
11. What are your views on Uncle Ted (Kaczynski) being seen as a folk hero by many?
That shows the insanity of our culture.
12. Could animals be philosophical zombies? If possible, could this be used as an ethical justification for eating meat?
You can't conclusively prove that animals are conscious, so it's theoretically possible that they are zombies. You also can't conclusively prove that any other people are conscious, so it's theoretically possible that other people are zombies too. But this theoretical possibility doesn't make it morally permissible to torture a person; nor does it make it permissible to torture an animal.
13. You have argued that many current government restrictions, such as gun control, are unjustified. Many people on our platform would like to debate with you on this to understand your positions better. Would you be interested in a text-based debate on our platform with one of our top users? I understand that you are very busy and have many commitments, so we could set the time for each argument to 1 or 2 weeks so that there is less time pressure.
I'd rather not, as I feel that I've done enough for now.
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Politics
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and an anarcho-capitalist. He is the author of more than eighty academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. Most notably, Huemer has written a paper on immigration in which he argues that states are not ethically justified in preventing foreigners from entering their borders and a paper on gun rights in which he argues that gun ownership is a prima facie right that ought not be infringed on by a simple utilitarian calculus. Huemer has also written almost a dozen books.
Dr. Huemer has generously offered to answer questions and to have his answers displayed publicly. Please be considerate and try not to ask surface-level questions that could be answered with a single google search.
I will stop accepting responses in 48 hours on April 10, 2024 at 8:40pm CST. When Huemer responds, I will post a follow-up thread with his answers.
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Politics
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Politics
Context:
In the discussions surrounding the recent events in Israel and Gaza, there seems to be little agreement on how Israel is justified in responding to Hamas' recent actions, or to what extent Hamas was provoked in the first place. Even calling Israel's actions a "response to Hamas" could easily be taken as controversial. Beyond some agreement that the death of innocent civilians is undesirable, there seems to be little consensus on what justifies the killing of x number of civilians. Preventing more deaths and acting in self-defense are both generally agreed on as mitigating factors, and intentionally targeting civilians to send a message is generally frowned upon. The scale of death is often thought to be important as well—for example, killing a thousand civilians is worse than killing ten. But these few areas of agreement do not get us much closer to how each of these factors should be weighed against one another. I will detail two possible approaches below.
I will use a number of analogies, some from popular media. Spoilers for Death Note, Loki (2021), and ASoIaF follow. I did not expect to be using the Red Wedding as a metaphor for the philosophical debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but few things can be expected in 2023.
Human Rights Approach:
In a previous post, most people seemed to agree that human rights should govern morality. I suppose we should start with the human rights angle since it is the most straightforward. This approach begins with the assumption that all humans have inalienable rights, which can only be violated to protect some amount of other rights. These rights can be forfeited if a human violates the rights of someone else. The most important right, presumably, is the right not to be killed. Measuring civilian casualties, then, is a simple matter of measuring the ratio of innocent people killed to innocent people saved. Different thought experiments have attempted to quantify this, and I will give five scenarios that seem to give different answers.
The classical trolley problem involves redirecting a runaway trolley toward one person to save five people. Most people who are given this scenario choose to redirect the trolley. In a different version, individuals are asked whether they would push a large man in front of the trolley to prevent it from hitting five people. Most people refuse to push the large man. This discrepancy has largely been rationalized with the doctrine of double effect—according to this doctrine, using someone as a means rather than an end is always wrong, but it is justified to directly prevent a great evil, even if it will indirectly lead to the deaths of innocent people. Israel could argue that the citizens of Palestine are not being treated as a means and that civilian casualties are simply an indirect effect of their actions against Hamas. However, the threshold here still requires a 1:1 ratio. If Israel kills more civilians than it saves, on this doctrine, it would be like redirecting the runaway trolley to hit ten people in order to save five—presumably not justifiable. We would have to account for how many more Israelis would die if Israel did not take such extreme measures in the Gaza Strip.
Complicating this is another version of the thought experiment in which the trolley, if redirected, will derail and tumble down a hill, killing someone who is taking a walk. Most people offered this scenario without hearing the others choose not to redirect the trolley, considering the person walking to be less involved in the conflict, in contrast to the trolley workers. This could work against Israel's case since the second-best scenario might involve a ground invasion with soldiers who joined the army voluntarily. Theorists could argue that killing one civilian to save five soldiers who voluntarily joined the army is not justifiable, just like redirecting the trolley in this instance.
Another event we might consider is the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proponents of these attacks argue that while they killed about 200 thousand people, they saved even more (about 1 million). This presumes that directly killing one innocent person to save five is justifiable. Opponents typically argue that the bombs were not necessary, but it is rare to come across someone who argues that, even if the bombs were necessary, the United States should have bitten the bullet and let 1 million people die. It seems a rare point of agreement then, that in the context of war, killing 1 to save 5 is justifiable.
But on a strict human rights approach, that context should be irrelevant. Humans are individuals, and individuals do not become less innocent just because their leaders elect to declare war. So on a purist human rights approach, people's inclinations seem to have contradictory results. A final example is the anime series Death Note, in which Light Yagami saves about 20 times as many people as he kills, and saves about 200 times as many innocent people as he kills [source]. Most of Yagami's is almost universally condemned as evil, even the killings that were necessary to save a greater number (most of them). If that is the case, then this would seem to contradict the earlier consensus we saw with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would also seem to contradict the actions of his father and the other members of the Kira task force, involving handing over the Death Note to known terrorists. Kira (the antagonist) kills a small number of people to save a larger number, while the task force (the protagonists) risk thousands of lives to save one person. Perhaps a purist human rights approach is insufficient to account for people's feelings on this matter.
Principle Approach:
It was my initial assumption that the human right not to be killed outweighs most other moral values when weighted in a moral calculus. But what if that's not the case? In Loki (2021), Kang the Conqueror commits genocide on a massive scale in order to prevent a multiversal war, which would likely result (on average) in less deaths than his current approach. In terms of pure death count, the TVA status quo seems like the worst-case scenario already, so Kang is not saving lives on net. Is killing trillions of people to save a lesser number ever justified? In my readings on this, the consensus seems to be that Kang was justified in these killings because an alternate Kang would be a dictator, restricting freedom across the multiverse, even if this alternate version of Kang might kill less people. So perhaps the principle of having freedom outweighs a few trillion lives, even if protecting freedom requires killing those people directly.
It may also be assumed that if a particular war or conflict is provoked by another group, all blame for civilian casualties lies on them. At the Red Wedding, Catelyn Stark's killing of JB is often considered justified under the reasoning that even if killing an innocent person is morally worse than breaking a vow, Walder Frey has started the conflict and thus blame for the deaths of all innocents lies with him. Both Palestine and Israel would likely make this argument, with Israel in particular focusing on Hamas' decision to put bases inside of soft targets like hospitals.
Palestine often defends their actions with the principle of recovering land stolen from them. Israel often relies on the principle of non-responsibility, since Hamas often uses civilians as human shields, forcing Israel to choose between Palestinian casualties and the deaths of Israelis. Religion often factors into this war as well, although it plays a myriad of different roles and doesn't necessarily seem to be the main focus of the conflict. But it may affect how the principle approach is applied in many cases. Hamas would have to rely primarily on this approach since the killing of Israeli civilians is generally done for the sole purpose of sending a message, rather than to save others.
The hard thing about the principle approach is deciding how to weigh principles against each other. How many lives is freedom worth, and how can freedom even be measured? If we're not sure about how to weigh two moral factors, should we refrain from killing civilians just to be safe, or go with our emotions? And finally, when someone's homeland has been invaded and many of their fellow citizens killed, will their emotions be a reflection of accurate moral principles or cloud their judgment?
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Current events
Until the site owner creates an official fix, I propose that people creating rated debates (from now on) add the following rule:
"Legitimate votes must be cast at least two days before the official voting deadline. After this 'true' deadline, new voters should simply award all seven points to whomever the winner is as insurance against vote bombing. Votes that do not follow this rule should be removed."
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DebateArt.com
Scenario #1:
A trolley is on a track and on its way to hit five workers. Unfortunately, the people are too far away to hear you, so you cannot call to them. As it happens, someone has died, and you are transporting his body. If you throw the corpse on the track, the trolley will stop, but the body will be destroyed. Before he died, this person said not to let his corpse be harmed for any reason. Is it ethically permissible for you to throw his body onto the track?
Scenario #2:
You are a doctor who deals in organ transplants. A patient has died after adamantly refusing to become an organ donor. However, there is an organ shortage, and if you harvest his organs against his wishes, they can be used to save five people. Is it ethically permissible for you to do this?
I have a feeling that most people will answer yes to scenario 1 and no to scenario 2. In an attempt to reconcile these positions, we might turn to the doctrine of double effect, which holds that we should use people as an end but never as a mere means. But this does not effectively differentiate the two positions. In both scenarios, the dead body is being used as a means rather than an end.
Hence, I see 3 possible solutions:
1) Despite our intuitions, it is not morally permissible to throw the body onto the track.
2) Despite our intuitions, it is morally permissible to harvest the organs of the dead without consent.
3) There is some new moral framework that has not yet been developed, which reconciles the two positions.
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Philosophy
...or that everyone on earth had their lifespan reduced by a tenth of a second?
Consider the following two options: (1) Reduce one person's lifespan by 20 years or (2) Reduce two people's lifespans by 10 years each. To me, these seem relatively equivalent. We could value equality, but neither of these people is being treated equally to the rest of the population. In terms of preventing harm to people, both options seem equally bad.
But we could break down the problem even further. Suppose we are given the option to reduce ten people's lifespans by 2 years each, and then a hundred people's lifespans by 73 days each, and so on...we're given the option to reduce 10.5 million people's lifespans by a minute each (these are approximations) and finally the opportunity to reduce the lifespan of everyone on earth by a tenth of a second.
Anything less than 10 milliseconds should be unnoticeable, but 70 billion people having their lives reduced by a hundredth of a second is a greater decrease in lifespan than a single person having their lifespan reduced by 20 years. Unnoticeable does not mean nonexistent—years are just a lot of milliseconds, after all. I think most people would rather inconvenience everyone on earth than bite the bullet and kill one person, but that requires us to determine where the analogy breaks down. When does premature death become an inconvenience rather than a tragedy? If human life is sacred, are milliseconds of a human life sacred?
A utilitarian could argue this recursively: Reducing one person's lifespan by X amount is morally equivalent to reducing the lifespan of 2 people by X/2 amount...after enough iterations, we would have to conclude that reducing one person's lifespan by X amount is morally equivalent to reducing the lifespan of 2^999 people by X/(2^999) amount.
We're also not doing some action X to prevent some outcome Y, so this isn't strictly a question of whether the ends justify the means. We're choosing between two direct harms X and Y and deciding which is worse—should we use utility as a measurement here, or something else?
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Philosophy
What implications does game theory have for global charities? If a charity such as the Malaria Consortium broadcasted the following announcement on live television, what do you think the effect would be?
"The Charity Game"
If you could donate $50 and with that money save thousands of people, would you do it? We think that the answer is yes. Now consider a different question. If your decision to donate $50 inspired hundreds of thousands of others to donate, and your decision led to a chain effect that saved thousands of lives, would you donate? We think that you would.
We estimate that it will take $10,000,000 to eradicate malaria in Nigeria, saving 2,500 lives. But all it will take for you personally to eradicate malaria in this region is $50. In this game, every individual will have the opportunity to donate exactly $50 to a neutral arbiter. If we don't reach the 200,000 donations necessary to achieve the goal by 6pm tonight, all of the money is returned. If we do reach the number of donations necessary, all the money is delegated to eradicating malaria in South Africa. We estimate that after this announcement is made, the threshold will either barely be reached or barely be missed. Given expected donations and standard deviation in human behavior, it is predicted that if anyone listening convinces three people to donate while donating themselves, that action will have a 10% chance of causing the threshold to be met. Consider the following possibilities: (1) The threshold is met, in which case your decision to donate has a significant probability of saving 2,500 lives and definitely has some impact regardless, or (2) The threshold is not met, in which case your money is returned, and you've lost nothing anyway.
If exactly 200,000 people decide to donate, then each of those people has, with their donation, saved 2,500 lives. If 199,999 other people decide to donate, and you are not one of them, then your decision not to donate resulted in 2,500 preventable deaths. If that is the case by tonight, then will you regret your decision not to donate? If we do reach the number of donations necessary, and you are one of the donors, will you be happy that your donation caused 2,500 people to live? We think that the answer to each of these questions is yes.
Perhaps this is manipulative. Perhaps you think that by returning donations if they do not meet a certain threshold, we have become responsible for the deaths of these people. But even if that is true, it does not change the inescapable fact that your decision to donate has a significant chance of saving 2,500 people.
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Philosophy
I'll discuss two things here: (1) the conflict between human rights and national sovereignty, and (2) how it applies to Israel's current status as a nation.
Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government held that the legitimacy of a government depends on how it treats its citizens. It would seem to follow from this that a government that has existed for thousands of years has no moral justification to pass tyrannical laws, while a new government following a revolution does have a justification to rule via the consent of the governed, even if it hasn't existed for very long. This would seem consistent with almost every moral theory, including utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Not to mention that national sovereignty usually comes from one nation conquering another nation, and "might makes right" is generally looked down upon as a justification for tyranny. So on most widely-accepted ethical theories, the preservation of human rights is all that matters. Everything else is secondary.
Yet almost every time I've heard the Israel-Palestinian conflict or any other border dispute discussed, this issue rarely comes up. Both sides seem to rest their claims almost entirely on historical events and on which government controlled the land first. But if we accept what I established above, the only issue of relevance would be which government has a better track record on human rights. In that regard, I see little reason to side with Palestine. Even if I concede that Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip are unjustified, it's without question that Palestinians and citizens, in general, are treated better in Israel than they are in Palestine. Even if a two-state solution is best for human rights in the short run, I see no reason to support Palestine invading Israel based on historical claims (which has been advocated for). I'm not convinced of those historical claims in the first place, but even if I were, I don't see why we ought to care about them. I'm not contesting the rights of individual Palestinians to own and maintain land, but I am contesting the right of the current Palestinian government to rule current Israeli territory. You could give many examples of Israel getting its hands dirty, but I don't think you could possibly defend the Palestinian government as more humanitarian overall. I could go on about this, but even if you disagree with my assessment of the situation, it's tangential to my larger point.
If you go back far enough, you can make the case for the national sovereignty of almost any government that has ruled a particular area. But you either get to a government that has taken power by force (in which case, what gives them any justification to rule?) or one that took power via revolution by the people (in which case, why shouldn't we support the country that is more democratic today?) So national sovereignty is largely an appeal to the consent of the governed from many years ago or to might makes right. I'd much prefer a government that is treating its citizens fairly today to one that did many years ago.
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Society
Solipsism generally holds that only the self can be known to exist. But just because something is possible does not mean it is likely. If solipsism is false, it makes sense that the universe seems to have consistent laws and that past experiences are consistent with future experiences. Dreams, in contrast, barely make any sense and rarely remain consistent. So if humans were brains in a vat, I think the probability of our experiences being consistent with an outward reality would be very low.
I have the same doubts about the zombie theory. If your brain is generating consciousness, it seems unlikely that it would be the only brain to do so. It also seems unlikely that a non-conscious brain would lie and say that it was conscious, or be somehow programmed to act outwardly like a conscious mind. Even if this is a non-physicalist correlating effect, whatever external cause is putting minds into brains probably wouldn't stop with one individual.
You might be on the Truman Show, or the victim of some elaborate government conspiracy, but neither of those things is very likely. I'm not sure how solipsism is more significant than any other theory that is technically possible but very unlikely.
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Philosophy
Noam Chomsky is radically opposed to the concept of intellectual property:
"There’s a name for [intellectual property] in economic history. Friedrich List, famous German political economist in the 19th century, who was actually borrowing from Andrew Hamilton, called it “kicking away the ladder”. First you use state power and violence to develop, then you kick away those procedures so that other people can’t do it." - Chomsky
That seems like a very clear stance. But now let's see how Mr. Chomsky feels about his intellectual property:
Material on this site is copyrighted by Noam Chomsky and/or Noam Chomsky and his collaborators (with the exception of any third-party material used here by permission, copyright by the respective authors).
Copyright © Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 1988 Introduction © Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 2002 Afterword © Edward S. Herman 2008 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work
Copyright © 2017 by L. Valeria-Galvao-Wasserman-Chomsky
I'll give Chomsky supporters a chance to come to his defense here, but his position seems wildly inconsistent.
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Economics
If you ask most people whether they support having a universal DNA database, they will say “no,” even though such a system is likely to reduce crime. People rarely judge hypothetical government policies on the basis of utilitarianism, and they often have a strong bias toward the status quo. Yet I think that if a universal DNA database were to be implemented, it would eventually gain broad support. We accept all sorts of government programs that violate greater freedoms for lesser results. Any attempts to repeal this program would likely be met with scorn.
Now, why do I think this? Well, if you'd asked people ten years ago if people should be forced to wear masks or social distance in the event of a global pandemic with a relatively low death rate, I think that almost everyone would say no. Similarly, if you'd asked most people 400 years ago if the US government should implement the amount of taxation we have today, most of them would oppose it. When asked about a hypothetical government policy, almost everyone seems to think that the ends don't justify the means.
Take the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an example. If such a decision were being considered today, it would be extremely controversial, even if it was guaranteed to prevent a greater loss of life later on. People would be horrified at the prospect of killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Yet when these actions are judged retroactively, I've never heard anyone on either side advocate for a moral framework other than utilitarianism. Even those opposed to the bombings argue that they were unnecessary, not that killing some people to save a greater number is unjustified. Everyone seems to agree that if the bombings of these two cities was necessary to prevent a greater loss of life, then they were justified. Similarly, a draft order today would be very controversial, but no one seems to oppose the Civil War conscription order or any draft order that was historically successful in helping achieve some desirable outcome.
You've probably heard the phrase “Nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program.” Once high taxes and social distancing policies were implemented, no one was willing to accept the costs of removing these programs. It would likely be the same with any other sort of program that achieved a net benefit, so long as the benefits were very easy to observe.
So which standard should we use? Do the ends justify the means? I'm not sure that they always do or always don't, but I find it interesting that people judge policies retroactively by a different standard than they judge policy proposals.
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Politics