I think this is a strong contender for my favorite thing I've read here. This seems so incredibly obvious in hindsight that I'm almost embarrassed I wasn't able to put the idea into words myself.
Also an extremely motivating post in terms of encouraging people to donate.
I think this is a fundamentally misguided way of thinking about human morality though it is historically dominant. For me a good human being does not behave as an alien angel but as a fundamentally human person who shows human virtues.
Most humans don’t think it’s wrong to kill animals for their meat but do think it’s wrong to torture them. However many have a hazy belief that if it was really unnecessary torture the government wouldn’t allow it (and there are governments with laws trying to make treatment humane) and believe when companies claim humane treatment (surely if it was lying it wouldn’t be allowed?) Additionally people look at the popularity of veganism and realize their personal sacrifice will not move the needle in any way and decline to make a long term constant sacrifice for a non measurable benefit, support for a movement that doesn’t seem able to win for generations if ever.
Similarly, most people don’t think that a small monetary donation will meaningfully change anything for anyone abroad and that’s a sensible position. It might save a life from X just for that life to then end one month later from Y. We have no deep knowledge of the circumstances of these people in deep poverty far away and so no way to know the effectiveness or long term outcomes. Proximity matters for morality. Sacrifice for no measurable convincing benefit.
The electric shocks scenario (and Rawanda genocide) is much more interesting to me. Though I’m more generous in interpreting the distress people exhibit as real and a sign of a moral struggle that’s meaningful.
Given a room of such people and one person who stops the experiment… would others stop as well? Lots of interesting side questions. People are very social animals and it’s hard for many people to deviate from the norm, this is true. Sometimes this means people will do evil things to each other. But given debate and freedom to set standards not to do evil to others… many people will do that!
I need to get back to work on my own essays on these topics.
I agree that many people think eating animals is alright. But I was discussing, in the essay, the large class of people who think it is not alright but do it anyways.
I agree that many people don't think taht giving a small monetary donation will do much good. I was discussing those who do think it does good. I doubt that the reason people don't save lives for ten dollars is that they deny that it's good to save lives.
Is there really a large class of people who think eating animals is wrong? Or rather that they might agree with a watered down statement of some kind that implies it without thinking it through much?
Similarly for the small monetary donation - I don’t deny that it does some good just that it’s complicated and uncertain - and I think that’s people’s intuition wether they can articulate all the reasons why it’s logical to be somewhat skeptical or not.
I used to frequently have conversations with people about eating factory farmed animals and almost all of the agreed after a few minutes that it was either wrong or evil and then the other conversation would end when they would said they just don’t care.
"For me a good human being does not behave as an alien angel but as a fundamentally human person who shows human virtues".
To me this seems somewhat circular. It's like saying that "being a good human is doing the types of things that humans do", which sets the bar far too low. If we define virtue as "human virtue" which takes into account the way humans behave de facto, we're removing any independent idea of morality (this is fine if you're a moral relativist, of course, but given that you're commenting on a BB post, I will assume that that's not the case).
I think what this post is trying to point out is that there as an uncomfortably large gap between "human virtues" (the way people behave or what they think is good at a surface level about actual situations they find themselves in) and "true virtue" (either some objective moral metric, or what people themselves would think is good if they were thinking abstractly, removed from all stakes). I don't think this can be defended by appeal to some sort of platonic ideal of human virtue, which puts at its centre the empirical question of what humans were "designed" to do in tough moral situations.
You'll note that the ability and inclination to think abstractly varies a ton across humans past and present, with Bentham's Bulldog being at the very top of that distribution. Defining virtue in a way where only people who have that capacity can truly achieve it seems to me a mistake.
I think that's exactly the point! To any moral objectivist, there is already a definition of virtue, and we define people as virtuous insofar as they adhere to the "true objective virtue". This article is arguing that the vast majority of people fail to meet the standard, and are thus not virtuous.
Of course, there is a separate problem of how to "market" virtue in a way that makes it seem attainable so people will pursue it. I am reminded of the excellent Scott Alexander article "nobody is perfect, everything is commensurable". But in a philosophical sense, I think BB is (correctly) arguing that most people are not genuinely virtuous (or at least that they're virtue succumbs quite easily to external forces).
I don't think that is what the article is getting at. If it was, he could simply say:
- Most people eat meat
- Eating meat is bad
- QED
He seems to be getting at some other point that involves motivations (e.g. discussion about people's justifications of their actions in the Milgram experiment) - I don't think that part is well thought through
Fair enough, that's a better interpretation. I think his point is that the judgment of most humans as un-virtuous withstands the objection that "they don't know better", or the point that it's setting the bar too high. Because even if we judge people by what they themselves think is virtuous, they still fail by that metric (as evidenced by Milgram, Dictator etc).
It's two points really:
a) People like to think that they would be better if they were put in a morally challenging situation. This is probably false, given psychology.
b) If it's genuinely important to you to get this right, one way to measure yourself is by noticing that your actions don't adhere to your conception of virtue, and change them. The fact that people don't do this indicates a large gap, not only between true virtue and actions, but between each person's subjective virtue and their actions.
To the extent that people would defend their actions as not against their moral code (e.g. saying animals don't matter), this is presumably because they feel the need to justify themselves about things they already do; I think BB takes for granted that most people, removed from any personal stakes, would think it's obvious that it's better to (for example) donate a few hundred dollars to save lives.
Yes I agree with that read and think you correctly identified earlier that (b) requires a person to be able to reason abstractly to really apply to themselves. That doesn't invalidate the point, and I certainly think that humans' ability to reason about morality IS an important virtue.
But it's not the only virtue, and someone can be moral without being entirely consistent.
"To me this seems somewhat circular. It's like saying that "being a good human is doing the types of things that humans do", which sets the bar far too low."
If you allow that the types of things humans do includes genocide, then saying "it's not evil to do genocide because humans do genocide" definitely sounds like a lower than ideal bar for goodness to me.
Sure, but having established that, "doing the things humans do" might be a low bar for virtue if the things that humans do are arbitrarily bad, it seems the point might generalize even to things that are _typically_ done by humans. After all, if genocide were to become more typical, I don't think that would make it _more_ virtuous.
One of which is on the concept that as humans we have the right to pursue and experience happiness and that’s incompatible with doing your own research on 1/10th of the horrible things that happen in the world and trying to fix them all.
I had a Bible teacher tell me once that he wanted to be so close to Jesus when he died that it would be no large step to be in His presence. It's a romantic way of looking at death, but most of us probably wouldn't have the luxury of deciding that gentle moment.
Still, I can not see myself hurting someone, torturing someone just because I was ordered to do that. The sheer contemplation of doing something like that seems ludicrous. I'm more likely to refuse because I am stubborn.
Don't order me to be evil. Could I be threatened to be evil? Bribed? Coerced, with words like “if you don't torture him, we will kill your baby”? I would probably succumb. But the pure evil of something like that? Is death in itself.
We are told in Scripture that no greater thing exists than to lay down your life for another. I would like to think I would choose that option.
But, again, I just don't know. And that is very unsettling to my heart.
And BB's winding discovery of the truth of Christianity continues.., :)
I kid, of course, but yes--this is what separates Christianity from other religions and worldviews (that, and the Jesus thing).
(Even Judaism--many of the verses in the Bible that speak to man's total depravity come from the OT, but it is central to the Jewish self-conception that the Jews are perfectable, that through the Law they become a "nation of priests" and light to the Gentiles.
Jesus (through Paul) says no, the Law reveals your depravity, you have no hope to save yourself, you need a Savior. Short version, please excuse simplicity).
But I do want to play devil's advocate on some of your examples (vegan, EA). In sales, there is a concept of the "unspoken objection". The couple agreed with you that the car was perfect; the best; the most affordable; yet didn't buy it, and didn’t give you a true reason. It means that they did not want to reveal the REAL reason. Usually, money, but are too proud to admit it.
So, in your examples, I would ask you to consider whether the people who agree with you but take no action don't REALLY agree with you, but are too conformist, or don't want to argue, or know that they lack the details to do so "on your turf". I ignore conspiracy theorists, b/c to argue with them is to lose--they are on their turf--so better to "yes" them along.
When it comes to veganism, or animal welfare broadly, I do think social cues are most of it, but I think there is a better chance that they simply do not agree. Call it denial if you want.
When it comes to saving lives overseas, I think the "unspoken objection", one I share, is that most people do not value those lives as highly...but would never admit it, or even say it out loud. We don't REALLY believe in human equality, for the reason that, other than the platitude that "all men are created equal", all the evidence runs against it.
I, for one, disregard everything you write on shrimp welfare. Just delete those posts. It's obviously ridiculous (cue the outrage!)...to someone like me. So I don't engage, which is different from actively agreeing on the harm, then acting in evil ways.
Great article though, great points. We should all take stock not just of how this applies to PEOPLE, but to ME, and you. How much of my "moral conviction" or commitment is real, and how much is mirroring?
"There is none that is good, no, not even one"--the Bible, somewhere
BB has established the power of social norms in this article. Judaism and its laws aim to establish social norms so that human nature is directed in a positive direction and so the Jews can be a light unto the gentiles.
I haven't read the original paper, so it's very possible they addressed this in some clever way. But when I read studies like the "share or don't share $10" study, my respect for social science just declines.
First of all, $10 is a trivial amount of money. It's not actually the case that I'm going to make somebody else's life meaningfully better, or for that matter my own, by keeping it or giving it away. To make it $10 makes it feel like a game.
And as soon as it feels like a game, then what I'm going to be focusing on is how to play it well. Maybe I'll think, "This study is about whether humans are rational game players. I'll show that they are by keeping the whole $10." And, I might very well change my evaluation of what the study was about if the rules changed (e.g., by letting people see what I gave).
"But you shouldn't be trying to game the study." Well, humans will. They should do a study about that.
Maybe, as I say, all of this was amply addressed in the study design. It's possible. But I've looked them up enough times and seen such things not addressed that it bothers me.
That's not to say I disagree with everything you say. Your historical examples are certainly enough to sober anyone. I think anyone who really thinks about the holocaust will never totally stop thinking about it.
hey great essay. I agree with your overall thesis and its worthy of being said but I think it misses on a few marks in a way that would rub against people that don't already agree with you.
I don't think your thesis is strengthened by the inclusion of the milgram experiment. trying to extrapolate to human behavior in this way is really messy and ignores a lot of the very extensive critique of this type of work outside of replicability. the historical examples are far far stronger and adding some less extreme examples would actually help your argument in my view. The same thing is true of the inclusion of game theory. There are examples that run counter to your thesis in which people are altruistic, this doesn't disprove your general thesis, just adds nuance and depth.
the other part I think misses the mark is people believing the arguments against factory farming and persisting nonetheless in eating meat (I don't eat meat). People verbalizing they agree with a logical argument is somewhat different than 'belief.' You could even flip your own argument around and argue that they just agree in conversation to align with social norms because disagreeing with it would be costly, but in their hearts they just still believe animals don't have rights/can't suffer/their suffering doesn't matter/etc.). I've felt this in numerous conversations myself.
I could go more in depth here but my point in both cases is that there's complexity to human behavior and ethics that's not easily mapped to game theory and the laboratory.
I think if you asked most people if they have any duty to worry about factory farmed animals they would just say no. Perhaps there are some people you speak to that believe they have a duty and are falling short, but most people just don't care.
Throughout the essay you seem to indicate that evil is knowing that something you are doing is wrong and doing it anyway... I just don't think that applies to most people. In fact, humans clearly have pretty sophisticated cognitive tools to avoid developing the belief that things they have done are wrong.
Now you clearly think that these people are doing evil things and the fact that they are rationalizing them doesn't change anything. But then you are just back to saying that your morality is vastly different than most people's in terms of veganism, effective altruism, etc. I think that's true, but not saying anything interesting about the nature of people. They just disagree with you -- it's not that deep!
At least in the context of the goals of veganism, most people do seem to agree with BB here. Surveys very consistently show that factory farming is wildly unpopular.
I don't know how people would respond to being asked if they have a duty to worry about factory farmed animals, but I suspect a lot of people would say no just because of the word "duty" and not because they aren't concerned about animal welfare. As a vegan myself, even I'm not sure if I would agree to saying I have "duty" here.
> Throughout the essay you seem to indicate that evil is knowing that something you are doing is wrong and doing it anyway... I just don't think that applies to most people. In fact, humans clearly have pretty sophisticated cognitive tools to avoid developing the belief that things they have done are wrong.
I don't see these ideas as mutually exclusive. Rationalizing moral inconsistencies away is definitely the default when someone does something they think is wrong. However, there are times when people CAN'T find a way to convincingly rationalize an action but still continue to do it anyway. I found myself very convinced by arguments for veganism, believed it was morally correct (insofar as its possible for something to be morally correct), but didn't actually commit to it for over a year. A huge part of that is that even if I thought I was doing something wrong by eating factory farmed meat, I didn't FEEL like I was doing something wrong. I know a few "flexitarians" in a similar boat where they try to avoid meat but clearly don't actually experience any sense of wrongdoing when they eat it.
In general, social stigma seems to be pretty strongly correlated in my mind with how wrong a specific action intuitively "feels." I can rationalize things and over time make specific actions feel more or less wrong, but social stigma is clearly a major factor in what makes them feel wrong in the first place.
I feel like you are writing only about high decouplers here. You and BB have these two levels of experience: what you abstractly think it right and what you feel on your gut level is right, where the gut level is determined by social norms and stigma.
Most people really just pin their values to what their in group thinks and have a lot less cognitive dissonance. Ex. I've spoken to libs who laugh if you mention animal welfare as a reason for not eating meat but take environmentalism much more seriously.
Maybe you think that's bad, but I don't think you can get very far in terms of reasoning about human morality if you are only thinking about a very specific type of mind.
Great essay. As someone who was later diagnosed ASD1 in later life but was selectively mute during my childhood, I listened to the rationalisations people made for doing evil things, sometimes even to me, because they thought i was an idiot. Just one query on veganism: yes I know the industrial meat trade is cruel. But paradoxically, its the lefts acceptance of other cultures which has stalled ethical slaughter. Also, thinking about unintended consequences, what's the cost benefit analysis of enforcing vegans for the good of animals vs the malnutrition it will cause in humans? Not saying you're proposing this, but as a thought experiment.
Han Kang's novel *Human Acts*, though self-consciously resistant to being used in discussions like this, was what I happened to be reading today, and a grisly confrontation with your subject. This is from the closing chapter, which is in the author's own voice:
> There were soldiers who were especially cruel.
> When I first started poring over the documents, what had proved most incomprehensible was that this bloodhsed had been committed again and again, and with no attempt to bring the perpetrators before the authorities. Acts of violence committed in broad daylight, without hesitation and without regret. Commanding officers who would have encouraged, no, even demanded such displays of brutality.
> In autumn 1979, when the democratic uprising in the southern cities of Busan and Masan was being supressed, President Park Chung-hee's chief bodyguard Cha-Ji-cheol said to him: *The Cambodian government's killed another 2 million of theirs. There's nothing stopping us from doing the same.* In May 1980, when the demonstrations were gathering force in Gwangju, the army used flamethrowers against unarmed citizens. The soldiers were provided with lead bullets, despite these having been banned by the international court of law on humanitarian grounds. Chun Doo-hwan, who had been so much in Park Chung-hee's confidence that he was known as the former president's adopted son, was looking into sending in Special Forces and subjecting the city to aerial bombardment in the unlikely event of the Provincial Office holding out. On the morning of 21 May, not long before the army opened fire on the massed crowds, he was seen arriving in a military helicopter and stepping out onto the ground of Gwangju. I saw him on the news: the young general with his air of self-possession. Striding briskly forwards from the helicopter, greeting the officer who came forward to meet him with a firm handshake.
...
> Just as there were some soldiers who were especially cruel, so there were others who were especially non-aggressive.
> There were paratroopers who carried the wounded on their abcks all the way to the hospital and set them down on the steps before hastening back to their posts. There were soldiers who, when the order was given to fire on the crowd, pointed the barrels of their guns up into the air so they wouldn't hit anyone. When the soldiers formed a wall in front of the corpses lined up outside the Provincial Office, blocking them from view of the foreign news cameras, and gave a rousing chorus of an army song, there was one of their number who kept his mouth conspicuously shut.
> Even the civil militia, the ones who stayed behind in the Provincial Office, displayed an attitude that wasn't dissimilar. The majority of them were willing to carry guns but, when push came to shove, couldn't actually bring themselves to fire them. When asked why they stayed behind when they knew that they were staring defeat in the face, the surviving witnesses all gave the same answer: *I'm not sure. It just seemed like something we had to do*
I think people are torn in two different directions by evolutionary incentives. We strongly select for people who are altruistic via plentiful social rewards, and we heavily punish naked greed or amoral behavior. It's good to be in a group of altruists, so we want to surround ourselves with altruists. There is very real value to people thinking you're moral.
But amoral behavior is often optimal. It's evolutionarily beneficial to switch up your principles, abandon old relationships that are no longer useful, and generally engage with people only so long as you can extract value from them.
The winning strategy is to try to get the best of both worlds, have people think you're altruistic while actually being amoral. That's why we're disproportionately altruistic to people nearby us, and to people who are useful. We're optimizing for signal, particularly signal amongst people we want to build relationships with.
This goes even to the point of self-deception. We do bad things then reframe context and rewrite history until we're convinced we're good people, because this helps us dupe people in the future.
This is all just conjecture, but it's the best explanation I have for this. I mean, we're clearly optimized for something related to altruism, but it's definitely not altruism. Even in small-group settings I've seen people abandon their principles entirely and turn on socially weaker members of the group just to prioritize their relationships with comparatively more valuable people.
"Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat."
I'm in agreement. For what it's worth, it seems to me that ordinary experience, with ordinary people, shows that most of them will "fold" incredibly easily. Make doing the right thing--even by their own lights--mildly difficult, and they will often not do it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen--and I'm talking about decent, friendly, generous people.
Then again, life is full of people going out of their way, and making huge sacrifices, in order to do what they think is right.
C.S. Lewis argued that moral behavior is much more a matter of what is in your heart than what is in your head. When push comes to shove, your intellectual beliefs—however correct—are not going to govern what you do.
Do you not differentiate between being responsible for causing harm and preventing harm that you yourself are not responsible for? In the animal factory farming case I think there is an obligation there to stop contributing to it if one believes it to be wrong. But in some altruistic case the impact on personal wellbeing relative to the contribution to positive outcome should probably be factored in. I think people being ignorant of their own contribution to evil is generally much worse than them being ignorant of evil that is not related to them.
I think this is a strong contender for my favorite thing I've read here. This seems so incredibly obvious in hindsight that I'm almost embarrassed I wasn't able to put the idea into words myself.
Also an extremely motivating post in terms of encouraging people to donate.
I think this is a fundamentally misguided way of thinking about human morality though it is historically dominant. For me a good human being does not behave as an alien angel but as a fundamentally human person who shows human virtues.
Most humans don’t think it’s wrong to kill animals for their meat but do think it’s wrong to torture them. However many have a hazy belief that if it was really unnecessary torture the government wouldn’t allow it (and there are governments with laws trying to make treatment humane) and believe when companies claim humane treatment (surely if it was lying it wouldn’t be allowed?) Additionally people look at the popularity of veganism and realize their personal sacrifice will not move the needle in any way and decline to make a long term constant sacrifice for a non measurable benefit, support for a movement that doesn’t seem able to win for generations if ever.
Similarly, most people don’t think that a small monetary donation will meaningfully change anything for anyone abroad and that’s a sensible position. It might save a life from X just for that life to then end one month later from Y. We have no deep knowledge of the circumstances of these people in deep poverty far away and so no way to know the effectiveness or long term outcomes. Proximity matters for morality. Sacrifice for no measurable convincing benefit.
The electric shocks scenario (and Rawanda genocide) is much more interesting to me. Though I’m more generous in interpreting the distress people exhibit as real and a sign of a moral struggle that’s meaningful.
Given a room of such people and one person who stops the experiment… would others stop as well? Lots of interesting side questions. People are very social animals and it’s hard for many people to deviate from the norm, this is true. Sometimes this means people will do evil things to each other. But given debate and freedom to set standards not to do evil to others… many people will do that!
I need to get back to work on my own essays on these topics.
I agree that many people think eating animals is alright. But I was discussing, in the essay, the large class of people who think it is not alright but do it anyways.
I agree that many people don't think taht giving a small monetary donation will do much good. I was discussing those who do think it does good. I doubt that the reason people don't save lives for ten dollars is that they deny that it's good to save lives.
Is there really a large class of people who think eating animals is wrong? Or rather that they might agree with a watered down statement of some kind that implies it without thinking it through much?
Similarly for the small monetary donation - I don’t deny that it does some good just that it’s complicated and uncertain - and I think that’s people’s intuition wether they can articulate all the reasons why it’s logical to be somewhat skeptical or not.
I used to frequently have conversations with people about eating factory farmed animals and almost all of the agreed after a few minutes that it was either wrong or evil and then the other conversation would end when they would said they just don’t care.
"For me a good human being does not behave as an alien angel but as a fundamentally human person who shows human virtues".
To me this seems somewhat circular. It's like saying that "being a good human is doing the types of things that humans do", which sets the bar far too low. If we define virtue as "human virtue" which takes into account the way humans behave de facto, we're removing any independent idea of morality (this is fine if you're a moral relativist, of course, but given that you're commenting on a BB post, I will assume that that's not the case).
I think what this post is trying to point out is that there as an uncomfortably large gap between "human virtues" (the way people behave or what they think is good at a surface level about actual situations they find themselves in) and "true virtue" (either some objective moral metric, or what people themselves would think is good if they were thinking abstractly, removed from all stakes). I don't think this can be defended by appeal to some sort of platonic ideal of human virtue, which puts at its centre the empirical question of what humans were "designed" to do in tough moral situations.
You'll note that the ability and inclination to think abstractly varies a ton across humans past and present, with Bentham's Bulldog being at the very top of that distribution. Defining virtue in a way where only people who have that capacity can truly achieve it seems to me a mistake.
I think that's exactly the point! To any moral objectivist, there is already a definition of virtue, and we define people as virtuous insofar as they adhere to the "true objective virtue". This article is arguing that the vast majority of people fail to meet the standard, and are thus not virtuous.
Of course, there is a separate problem of how to "market" virtue in a way that makes it seem attainable so people will pursue it. I am reminded of the excellent Scott Alexander article "nobody is perfect, everything is commensurable". But in a philosophical sense, I think BB is (correctly) arguing that most people are not genuinely virtuous (or at least that they're virtue succumbs quite easily to external forces).
I don't think that is what the article is getting at. If it was, he could simply say:
- Most people eat meat
- Eating meat is bad
- QED
He seems to be getting at some other point that involves motivations (e.g. discussion about people's justifications of their actions in the Milgram experiment) - I don't think that part is well thought through
Fair enough, that's a better interpretation. I think his point is that the judgment of most humans as un-virtuous withstands the objection that "they don't know better", or the point that it's setting the bar too high. Because even if we judge people by what they themselves think is virtuous, they still fail by that metric (as evidenced by Milgram, Dictator etc).
It's two points really:
a) People like to think that they would be better if they were put in a morally challenging situation. This is probably false, given psychology.
b) If it's genuinely important to you to get this right, one way to measure yourself is by noticing that your actions don't adhere to your conception of virtue, and change them. The fact that people don't do this indicates a large gap, not only between true virtue and actions, but between each person's subjective virtue and their actions.
To the extent that people would defend their actions as not against their moral code (e.g. saying animals don't matter), this is presumably because they feel the need to justify themselves about things they already do; I think BB takes for granted that most people, removed from any personal stakes, would think it's obvious that it's better to (for example) donate a few hundred dollars to save lives.
Yes I agree with that read and think you correctly identified earlier that (b) requires a person to be able to reason abstractly to really apply to themselves. That doesn't invalidate the point, and I certainly think that humans' ability to reason about morality IS an important virtue.
But it's not the only virtue, and someone can be moral without being entirely consistent.
"To me this seems somewhat circular. It's like saying that "being a good human is doing the types of things that humans do", which sets the bar far too low."
How does it set the bar "far too low"?
If you allow that the types of things humans do includes genocide, then saying "it's not evil to do genocide because humans do genocide" definitely sounds like a lower than ideal bar for goodness to me.
Also how did you get "anything humans do" from human VIRTUES?
That wasn't me, that was EK--but your response didn't dispute the point, so I think my comment was a fair response.
It's something humans do but it's also not a very typical behavior.
Sure, but having established that, "doing the things humans do" might be a low bar for virtue if the things that humans do are arbitrarily bad, it seems the point might generalize even to things that are _typically_ done by humans. After all, if genocide were to become more typical, I don't think that would make it _more_ virtuous.
One of which is on the concept that as humans we have the right to pursue and experience happiness and that’s incompatible with doing your own research on 1/10th of the horrible things that happen in the world and trying to fix them all.
I had a Bible teacher tell me once that he wanted to be so close to Jesus when he died that it would be no large step to be in His presence. It's a romantic way of looking at death, but most of us probably wouldn't have the luxury of deciding that gentle moment.
Still, I can not see myself hurting someone, torturing someone just because I was ordered to do that. The sheer contemplation of doing something like that seems ludicrous. I'm more likely to refuse because I am stubborn.
Don't order me to be evil. Could I be threatened to be evil? Bribed? Coerced, with words like “if you don't torture him, we will kill your baby”? I would probably succumb. But the pure evil of something like that? Is death in itself.
We are told in Scripture that no greater thing exists than to lay down your life for another. I would like to think I would choose that option.
But, again, I just don't know. And that is very unsettling to my heart.
And BB's winding discovery of the truth of Christianity continues.., :)
I kid, of course, but yes--this is what separates Christianity from other religions and worldviews (that, and the Jesus thing).
(Even Judaism--many of the verses in the Bible that speak to man's total depravity come from the OT, but it is central to the Jewish self-conception that the Jews are perfectable, that through the Law they become a "nation of priests" and light to the Gentiles.
Jesus (through Paul) says no, the Law reveals your depravity, you have no hope to save yourself, you need a Savior. Short version, please excuse simplicity).
But I do want to play devil's advocate on some of your examples (vegan, EA). In sales, there is a concept of the "unspoken objection". The couple agreed with you that the car was perfect; the best; the most affordable; yet didn't buy it, and didn’t give you a true reason. It means that they did not want to reveal the REAL reason. Usually, money, but are too proud to admit it.
So, in your examples, I would ask you to consider whether the people who agree with you but take no action don't REALLY agree with you, but are too conformist, or don't want to argue, or know that they lack the details to do so "on your turf". I ignore conspiracy theorists, b/c to argue with them is to lose--they are on their turf--so better to "yes" them along.
When it comes to veganism, or animal welfare broadly, I do think social cues are most of it, but I think there is a better chance that they simply do not agree. Call it denial if you want.
When it comes to saving lives overseas, I think the "unspoken objection", one I share, is that most people do not value those lives as highly...but would never admit it, or even say it out loud. We don't REALLY believe in human equality, for the reason that, other than the platitude that "all men are created equal", all the evidence runs against it.
I, for one, disregard everything you write on shrimp welfare. Just delete those posts. It's obviously ridiculous (cue the outrage!)...to someone like me. So I don't engage, which is different from actively agreeing on the harm, then acting in evil ways.
Great article though, great points. We should all take stock not just of how this applies to PEOPLE, but to ME, and you. How much of my "moral conviction" or commitment is real, and how much is mirroring?
"There is none that is good, no, not even one"--the Bible, somewhere
BB has established the power of social norms in this article. Judaism and its laws aim to establish social norms so that human nature is directed in a positive direction and so the Jews can be a light unto the gentiles.
'tis said that Total Depravity is the only emprically verifiable theological doctrine, and rightly so.
I haven't read the original paper, so it's very possible they addressed this in some clever way. But when I read studies like the "share or don't share $10" study, my respect for social science just declines.
First of all, $10 is a trivial amount of money. It's not actually the case that I'm going to make somebody else's life meaningfully better, or for that matter my own, by keeping it or giving it away. To make it $10 makes it feel like a game.
And as soon as it feels like a game, then what I'm going to be focusing on is how to play it well. Maybe I'll think, "This study is about whether humans are rational game players. I'll show that they are by keeping the whole $10." And, I might very well change my evaluation of what the study was about if the rules changed (e.g., by letting people see what I gave).
"But you shouldn't be trying to game the study." Well, humans will. They should do a study about that.
Maybe, as I say, all of this was amply addressed in the study design. It's possible. But I've looked them up enough times and seen such things not addressed that it bothers me.
That's not to say I disagree with everything you say. Your historical examples are certainly enough to sober anyone. I think anyone who really thinks about the holocaust will never totally stop thinking about it.
hey great essay. I agree with your overall thesis and its worthy of being said but I think it misses on a few marks in a way that would rub against people that don't already agree with you.
I don't think your thesis is strengthened by the inclusion of the milgram experiment. trying to extrapolate to human behavior in this way is really messy and ignores a lot of the very extensive critique of this type of work outside of replicability. the historical examples are far far stronger and adding some less extreme examples would actually help your argument in my view. The same thing is true of the inclusion of game theory. There are examples that run counter to your thesis in which people are altruistic, this doesn't disprove your general thesis, just adds nuance and depth.
the other part I think misses the mark is people believing the arguments against factory farming and persisting nonetheless in eating meat (I don't eat meat). People verbalizing they agree with a logical argument is somewhat different than 'belief.' You could even flip your own argument around and argue that they just agree in conversation to align with social norms because disagreeing with it would be costly, but in their hearts they just still believe animals don't have rights/can't suffer/their suffering doesn't matter/etc.). I've felt this in numerous conversations myself.
I could go more in depth here but my point in both cases is that there's complexity to human behavior and ethics that's not easily mapped to game theory and the laboratory.
Thanks!
I addressed a bunch of criticisms of Milgram.
I think you believe something if you think it is true. In many cases, peopel think it is true that eating meat is very bad, but they do it anyways.
I think if you asked most people if they have any duty to worry about factory farmed animals they would just say no. Perhaps there are some people you speak to that believe they have a duty and are falling short, but most people just don't care.
Throughout the essay you seem to indicate that evil is knowing that something you are doing is wrong and doing it anyway... I just don't think that applies to most people. In fact, humans clearly have pretty sophisticated cognitive tools to avoid developing the belief that things they have done are wrong.
Now you clearly think that these people are doing evil things and the fact that they are rationalizing them doesn't change anything. But then you are just back to saying that your morality is vastly different than most people's in terms of veganism, effective altruism, etc. I think that's true, but not saying anything interesting about the nature of people. They just disagree with you -- it's not that deep!
At least in the context of the goals of veganism, most people do seem to agree with BB here. Surveys very consistently show that factory farming is wildly unpopular.
I don't know how people would respond to being asked if they have a duty to worry about factory farmed animals, but I suspect a lot of people would say no just because of the word "duty" and not because they aren't concerned about animal welfare. As a vegan myself, even I'm not sure if I would agree to saying I have "duty" here.
> Throughout the essay you seem to indicate that evil is knowing that something you are doing is wrong and doing it anyway... I just don't think that applies to most people. In fact, humans clearly have pretty sophisticated cognitive tools to avoid developing the belief that things they have done are wrong.
I don't see these ideas as mutually exclusive. Rationalizing moral inconsistencies away is definitely the default when someone does something they think is wrong. However, there are times when people CAN'T find a way to convincingly rationalize an action but still continue to do it anyway. I found myself very convinced by arguments for veganism, believed it was morally correct (insofar as its possible for something to be morally correct), but didn't actually commit to it for over a year. A huge part of that is that even if I thought I was doing something wrong by eating factory farmed meat, I didn't FEEL like I was doing something wrong. I know a few "flexitarians" in a similar boat where they try to avoid meat but clearly don't actually experience any sense of wrongdoing when they eat it.
In general, social stigma seems to be pretty strongly correlated in my mind with how wrong a specific action intuitively "feels." I can rationalize things and over time make specific actions feel more or less wrong, but social stigma is clearly a major factor in what makes them feel wrong in the first place.
I feel like you are writing only about high decouplers here. You and BB have these two levels of experience: what you abstractly think it right and what you feel on your gut level is right, where the gut level is determined by social norms and stigma.
Most people really just pin their values to what their in group thinks and have a lot less cognitive dissonance. Ex. I've spoken to libs who laugh if you mention animal welfare as a reason for not eating meat but take environmentalism much more seriously.
Maybe you think that's bad, but I don't think you can get very far in terms of reasoning about human morality if you are only thinking about a very specific type of mind.
Great essay. As someone who was later diagnosed ASD1 in later life but was selectively mute during my childhood, I listened to the rationalisations people made for doing evil things, sometimes even to me, because they thought i was an idiot. Just one query on veganism: yes I know the industrial meat trade is cruel. But paradoxically, its the lefts acceptance of other cultures which has stalled ethical slaughter. Also, thinking about unintended consequences, what's the cost benefit analysis of enforcing vegans for the good of animals vs the malnutrition it will cause in humans? Not saying you're proposing this, but as a thought experiment.
I do not think it causes malnutrition, but in fact seems to improve health outcomes. https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est
"paradoxically, its the lefts acceptance of other cultures which has stalled ethical slaughter."
I just don't see what this has to do with whether it's alright to eat meat.
Han Kang's novel *Human Acts*, though self-consciously resistant to being used in discussions like this, was what I happened to be reading today, and a grisly confrontation with your subject. This is from the closing chapter, which is in the author's own voice:
> There were soldiers who were especially cruel.
> When I first started poring over the documents, what had proved most incomprehensible was that this bloodhsed had been committed again and again, and with no attempt to bring the perpetrators before the authorities. Acts of violence committed in broad daylight, without hesitation and without regret. Commanding officers who would have encouraged, no, even demanded such displays of brutality.
> In autumn 1979, when the democratic uprising in the southern cities of Busan and Masan was being supressed, President Park Chung-hee's chief bodyguard Cha-Ji-cheol said to him: *The Cambodian government's killed another 2 million of theirs. There's nothing stopping us from doing the same.* In May 1980, when the demonstrations were gathering force in Gwangju, the army used flamethrowers against unarmed citizens. The soldiers were provided with lead bullets, despite these having been banned by the international court of law on humanitarian grounds. Chun Doo-hwan, who had been so much in Park Chung-hee's confidence that he was known as the former president's adopted son, was looking into sending in Special Forces and subjecting the city to aerial bombardment in the unlikely event of the Provincial Office holding out. On the morning of 21 May, not long before the army opened fire on the massed crowds, he was seen arriving in a military helicopter and stepping out onto the ground of Gwangju. I saw him on the news: the young general with his air of self-possession. Striding briskly forwards from the helicopter, greeting the officer who came forward to meet him with a firm handshake.
...
> Just as there were some soldiers who were especially cruel, so there were others who were especially non-aggressive.
> There were paratroopers who carried the wounded on their abcks all the way to the hospital and set them down on the steps before hastening back to their posts. There were soldiers who, when the order was given to fire on the crowd, pointed the barrels of their guns up into the air so they wouldn't hit anyone. When the soldiers formed a wall in front of the corpses lined up outside the Provincial Office, blocking them from view of the foreign news cameras, and gave a rousing chorus of an army song, there was one of their number who kept his mouth conspicuously shut.
> Even the civil militia, the ones who stayed behind in the Provincial Office, displayed an attitude that wasn't dissimilar. The majority of them were willing to carry guns but, when push came to shove, couldn't actually bring themselves to fire them. When asked why they stayed behind when they knew that they were staring defeat in the face, the surviving witnesses all gave the same answer: *I'm not sure. It just seemed like something we had to do*
I think people are torn in two different directions by evolutionary incentives. We strongly select for people who are altruistic via plentiful social rewards, and we heavily punish naked greed or amoral behavior. It's good to be in a group of altruists, so we want to surround ourselves with altruists. There is very real value to people thinking you're moral.
But amoral behavior is often optimal. It's evolutionarily beneficial to switch up your principles, abandon old relationships that are no longer useful, and generally engage with people only so long as you can extract value from them.
The winning strategy is to try to get the best of both worlds, have people think you're altruistic while actually being amoral. That's why we're disproportionately altruistic to people nearby us, and to people who are useful. We're optimizing for signal, particularly signal amongst people we want to build relationships with.
This goes even to the point of self-deception. We do bad things then reframe context and rewrite history until we're convinced we're good people, because this helps us dupe people in the future.
This is all just conjecture, but it's the best explanation I have for this. I mean, we're clearly optimized for something related to altruism, but it's definitely not altruism. Even in small-group settings I've seen people abandon their principles entirely and turn on socially weaker members of the group just to prioritize their relationships with comparatively more valuable people.
Reminds me of a quote from Chesterton:
"Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat."
I'm in agreement. For what it's worth, it seems to me that ordinary experience, with ordinary people, shows that most of them will "fold" incredibly easily. Make doing the right thing--even by their own lights--mildly difficult, and they will often not do it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen--and I'm talking about decent, friendly, generous people.
Then again, life is full of people going out of their way, and making huge sacrifices, in order to do what they think is right.
The lesson is that people are messed up.
https://budolfson.github.io/files/BudolfsonSpearsHiddenZero.pdf What do you think about this?
C.S. Lewis argued that moral behavior is much more a matter of what is in your heart than what is in your head. When push comes to shove, your intellectual beliefs—however correct—are not going to govern what you do.
Do you not differentiate between being responsible for causing harm and preventing harm that you yourself are not responsible for? In the animal factory farming case I think there is an obligation there to stop contributing to it if one believes it to be wrong. But in some altruistic case the impact on personal wellbeing relative to the contribution to positive outcome should probably be factored in. I think people being ignorant of their own contribution to evil is generally much worse than them being ignorant of evil that is not related to them.