Prayer Is Actually Bad for You

Millions of dollars have gone into studying the effects of prayer.  Most of this money comes from faith-based organizations such as the Templeton Foundation.

One interesting study actually shows that prayer is bad for you!  Specifically, if a sick or injured person is being prayed for and they are aware of that activity, their chances of recovery diminish by as much as 7%.

This may seem a contradiction with previous studies that show a positive correlation between recovery and some form of personal prayer or meditation, but there is a key, subtle difference between praying and having someone pray for you.  The former may only improve your chances, but the latter provides only a source of additional stress.

In other words: keep your faith to yourself!

The Little Old Lady Experiment, Revisited

Back when I wrote about the Little Old Lady Experiment, some folks were a bit skeptical.  Cynical, perhaps, or perhaps even correct.  After all, in a personal account in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, a Montreal police strike on October 17, 1969 resulted in robberies, murders, and riots within hours [Video], dispelling the author's own personal belief in anarchism.  It's hard to argue that our basic state is a moral one (not to mention what it says about a belief in anarchism and lack of authority as a sociological ideal).

And yet, how often is our world not one of violence, compared with the results of a single, specific event?  How often do we prefer such a world to a world without violence?

Furthermore, the Little Old Lady Experiment was only formulated as a thought experiment.  It's easy to dismiss something with a lack of evidence or empirical data to back it up.  My only source was the "Bagel Man" in Freakonomics, after all.  Such a queer title, indeed, makes it easy to toss it aside without further scrutiny.

But it turns out there have been similar studies.  I was surprised to come across this mention in Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion:

The Harvard biologist Marc Hauser, in his book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, has enlarged upon a fruitful line of thought experiments originally suggested by moral philosophers.

...

The message of Hauser's book, to anticipate it in his own words, is this: 'Driving our moral judgments is a universal moral grammar, a faculty of the mind that evolved over millions of years to include a set of principles for building a range of possible moral systems.  As with language, the principles that make up our moral grammar fly beneath the radar of our awareness.'

...

Ninety-seven per cent agreed that you should save the child...

...

Ninety-seven per cent of subjects agreed that it is morally forbidden...

These "ninety-seven percent" numbers refer to a series of trolley problems (in an interesting synchronicity, my previous post talks about trolley problems) and were conducted not only in Western culture, but in native Central American communities with culturally-appropriate substitutes.

Sadly, Mr. Hauser has very recently been accused of scientific misconduct related to falsifying data in another, unrelated study.  Hopefully this does not discredit his earlier academic work or methods in general.

In another validation of what I have been blogging, it tickles me to read in The God Delusion that reciprocal altruism is very real in the biological world and that its language is "often expressed in the mathematical language of game theory," though sadly it still does not include multiple payoffs despite what I consider to be obvious ("The hunter needs a spear and the smith wants meat.  The asymmetry brokers a deal").

Similarly, this study (pointed out by Mordicai) in the iterative two-person prisoner's dilemma raises attention to Dawkins' supposition that "mathematical models can be crafted to come up with special conditions under which group selection might be evolutionarily powerful" even if he thinks "these special conditions are usually unrealistic in nature."  If the prisoner's dilemma itself is common among competing organisms, there is no reason to assume group selection would not unconsciously evolve as an emerging property among individual organisms, especially sexually reproducing ones (see also koinophilia in reference to the supporting paper).

Bias and Skepticism

Special thanks to Blogger for eating the first draft of this post.  There is a special layer of hell reserved for people who like JavaScript.

A friend forwarded a link to an interesting blog post and a reference article [PDF].  While I find a few of the conclusions from the blog post a bit misleading, the original research article is thought-provoking.  Simply put, the more we know about something, the more we are biased towards it.  Our attitudes are only reinforced through knowledge.  It shouldn't be a big surprise that we spend more energy in the realm of the familiar--as I've already discussed, conformity is the strength of inertia and it is impossible to rebel against everything.  Our neurons work by forming associations between things, and that ability helps enable us to survive.  It is impossible for us to be truly objective, since we are all human and are stuck with the apparatus of the human brain.

So, should we reach the same conclusion, that more knowledge can only hurt us?  I find the notion a bit silly, because if that were the case, our attitudes would never change.  What causes us to change our minds about things, if not knowledge and experience?  Obviously the latter has more weight than the former, but we don't always have to experience jumping off a cliff in order to know that it may be bad for us.  Also, I don't find it unhealthy to put faith in experts.  The converse--putting idiots in charge of things--is simply dangerous.

One of my objectives in starting this blog is to promote what I call "healthy skepticism."  This is "healthy" in the sense that it doesn't mean to blindly question everything (until you end up in subjective reality / conspiracy theory / Philip K. Dick space), but to question enough in order to possibly reform attitudes and be open to new information that becomes available.  It means admitting when I may have been wrong or less informed about something at a prior time, which can be a difficult thing, especially for a stubborn guy like me.

Part of healthy skepticism involves becoming aware of logical fallacies.  This is especially important when reaching ethical positions (such as my position post on homosexuality).  Another part of healthy skepticism is to question my interior monologue--what is my real purpose behind a particular ethical position?  Is it about something that benefits me personally, or something much larger than myself?  Like anyone, I appreciate peer acceptance, but I do find it less important than arriving at the objective truth (contrast Nite Owl with Rorschach in Watchmen).  I also recognize that the objective truth is much larger than my own capabilities and requires a collective input--and a diversity of opinions.

The Kill Whitey Problem

My friend Matt, in his blog, posted a link to an interest article about the Trolley Problem.  Simply put, the experiment shows that we like to think of ourselves as having absolute morals, but, in practice, we have social biases and different value sets that cause us to be more consequentialist that we would like to believe.  In other words, though we may like to think the end does not justify the means--we often, even without thinking, will behave as if it does.

For those of us who like Battlestar Galactica, we may recognize the Trolley Problem as similar to the scenario with Lee "Apollo" Adama and the Olympic Carrier in the first episode of the first season, "33".  In order to save the fleet (tens of thousands), he is ordered to destroy a ship containing hundreds.  The decision is a hard one, but it has to be made and in a very short amount of time (a similar situation occurs in the Pilot Episode with Colonel Tigh and an engineering deck that has to be shut down).  Decide: you have to quickly choose between killing group X or group Y!  Mind you, in each of these situations in Battlestar Galactica, it's a more obvious choice because group X is a subset of group Y--kill a few, or everybody dies.

One interesting objection to the Trolley Experiment is that the obligation to participate.  Forcing someone to make the choice (a "mad philosopher" as the experiment likes to use) is the real immorality, not the actual choice.  When we are forced to choose, however, the way we make those decisions can be interesting.  The Kill Whitey experiment shows that our biases come into play whether we are liberals or conservatives (Chip Ellsworth III--what an asshole!)--in the case of the former, guilt, and in the case of the latter, fear of a black planet.

No surprise, we make choices according to our value systems--and this is abundantly clear when especially pressured to make a choice.  The greater the pressure, the more we will flock to the polar extremes.

I'd like to hope that the Gort project could yield some successful fruit.  If we could, say, successfully model our ethical systems and run them through different experiments.  People who live in war zones, areas of famine or corruption, or under great authoritarian pressure or stress, may have to live through iterative Trolley Experiments each and every day.  For those of us in the privileged world, we don't have to even think about it until a September 11 happens--and when it does, we tend to be less prepared to make good decisions as a result.  When is war "the right thing to do"?  To what extent can you hold people accountable for making bad decisions?  To what degree can you blame anyone for having "blind spots" in their thinking if they are in the throes of a Trolley Experiment?

Klaatu Barada Nikto!

In the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (sorry, Keanu, there is still only one version of this movie), the alien Klaatu, who suspiciously looks a lot like a human actor named Michael Rennie, trusts the heroine of film to say the magic words "Klaatu barada nikto" in order to save the people of our planet from destruction.  The film is an apt metaphor for fear of the unknown, our self-destructive and violent tendencies, and our ability to prejudge.  In the context of the film, the robot Gort acts as an overseer and enforcer.  Since we are so flawed, Klaatu's people built Gort and his like to keep us in check.

At the conclusion of my last three posts, I have proposed the concept of a multiple payoff game and the notion of a computer model or simulation whose purpose (unlike Gort, whose real purpose is to enforce--something that would be truly too dangerous to build) is to help us better understand the trade-offs and costs when exchanging one value for another.  Note that the language of multiple payoff games includes stochastic (random / probability) variables as well as well understood, deterministic ones.  I have also mentioned that, according to Sudipta Sarangi, such a model could not be used as an accurate predictor of events (no one has a crystal ball), but as a way for us to be able to understand the long reaching consequences of value choices.

It may sound like science fiction or technological gobbletygook, but these exact kinds of models are already being done by banks.  We already have multiple payoff models.  We like to think of the free market and business as being measured in terms of dollar bills, but the U. S. dollar (USD) is only one currency in a vast exchange that includes many currencies (GBP, AUD, EUR, etc.), commodities (gold, oil, pork bellies, etc.), equities (stocks), options and futures (the contract to buy or sell something at a specific price), loans (commercial paper, corporate loans, mortgages, government bonds, municipal bonds, etc.), and derivatives (insurance contracts such as CDS, structured products such as CMOs, etc.).

Each bank has its own private model of the financial world, and each bank keeps its methods secret, hoping to use it to its own financial benefit.  And yet, these models, which are part of what we call capitalism today, are absent of our other human values.  For all of their risk analysis, the payoff is still in terms of a single pure net gain.  If a bank has lots of USD and inflation risk is high, it performs a currency swap and expresses its wealth in another currency.  The collapsed Lehman Brothers, for instance, came under ethical fire for its Repo 105 tactic--taking a portion of its loss and "lending it out" overseas to be bought back later at 5 percent interest, removing it successfully from their balance sheet.  It's a bit like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, where the time-traveling protagonists realize that, while they don't have time to do all they need to do, they have time after they succeed to come back and fix it (so long as they remember to).

Most of us are unaware that these kinds of multiple payoff games exist.  We think in terms of dollars, because that is how we get paid.  We don't stop to think, "what if the same dollar tomorrow won't buy us the same loaf of bread?"  Unless we travel or do business in England, chances are that we never trade in "cable."  And many of us don't have the foggiest idea why we would ever want to buy a credit default swap--unless we are following the media's version of the credit crisis and thinking of it the bane of all evil (though it has a very legitimate role).

While many of the holes in banking have been plugged through legislation that got mostly unnoticed this year (due to more sensationalistic news, such as the Tea Party and Lady Gaga), the essence of banking is still there and the mathematics behind examining multiple payoffs is still the same (positioning and risk).

My approach is to adopt the same economic models that banks use, but adapt them to include new variables.  Carbon emissions is an easy to quantify example, but the Gini coefficient (economic "fairness"), political instability, etc., all play roles in the model.  It is not that different an idea than what technologies such as Palantir have attempted to do, only in a more public way.

The Myth of Enlightened Self Interest, Part Three

In Part One I formulated the hypothesis of self interest, and in Part Two I showed how it can be mathematically disproved.  As expected, this series has generated a bit of discussion, and I am glad to say that has been almost all constructive.

To add another disclaimer, I am not into disproving self interest because I advocate a particular political or ideological position.  If I have an agenda, hopefully it comes out as the "agenda of being adaptable."  I consider political parties to be little more than sports teams and look at positions based on ethical merits--and as political platforms shift, so does my ability to stay aligned with them.  My own views also shift, but only as new information becomes available--thus I am human, and consistent in my inconsistency, but adaptive in nature.

Now, to return to the subject at hand, which is that of what to make out of the disproved hypothesis.  As human beings we tend to find that the conclusions generated by game theory don't sit quite right with us.  When I first encountered it, I have to admit that I had a hard time accepting that the solution strategy to the Prisoner's dilemma was the "correct" one mathematically--and yet, there it is, unequivocally so.  The Tragedy of the Commons is a very real phenomenon despite what I would like to believe.  To paraphrase Al Gore, it is an "inconvenient truth," only in our case a mathematical one.

Let's take a look at another important game called the Centipede game.  By analysis, the "correct" solution is to defect on the first turn.  And yet, as humans we recognize that our payoff is much higher if we wait a number of rounds.  It is as if the hypothesis of self interest is telling us that it flies in the face of our own (human) common sense!  As humans, we "recognize" that something is missing--a "lack of information," as my friend Taliver Heath put it.  And yet:

• The system is mathematically sound and contains no contradictions.
• It assumes perfect information by all players.
• It incorporates strategies, not just short term responses to goals.

The mathematician Kurt Gödel once famously formulated that any mathematical system must either contain contradictions (which ours does not) or rely on information that must exist outside of the system in order for its definition.

This "lost information," in our case, is that bridge between the sheer mathematical element and what our human responses are.  Once we recognize a Prisoner's dilemma, for instance, our human inclination is to want to fix it.  Unfortunately, the language of single payoff game theory does not allow us to do that.

What we are really itching to do requires us to value something differently.  For instance, the Prisoner's dilemma does not have any language to incorporate "best result for both players" as an outcome.  The Centipede game does not have the language that gives us the patience or hope to wait for a bigger payoff later--because it might not come.  The Tragedy of the Commons does not have the language to allow "long term survival" as a different, achievable goal.  In order for us to value something differently, what we need to add to the language is multiple payoffs.

The idea of multiple payoffs isn't a new one.  It was first examined by Blackwell in 1956 and Contini in 1966.  In a May, 1974 paper by M. Zeleny, the language of vector payoffs (including randomness) was described in terms of matrices and the hypothetical optimal solution (lambda) was shown that it could be achieved through "linear multiobjective programming."  In that same paper, M. Zeleny showed how cooperation between players can, in fact, achieve better utilitarian results than traditional competitive game theory strategies (though, of course, this depends on the nature of the game).

The bridge between multiple payoffs and the "human element" is explored thoroughly in a July, 2000 paper [PDF] by Sudipta Sarangi.  The conclusions show that there is an implicit lack of predictive power and that "experimentation" is required to produce more optimal games.

If I am going anywhere in this series of posts, it is to show that self interest alone isn't enough for an ethical ideology.  In fact, it is in many cases either counterproductive (as in the Centipede game) or self destructive (as in the Prisoner's dilemma).  Any practical set of human ethics requires an adaptive set of both competitive and cooperative strategies, an awareness of information and a capacity to learn.

The Myth of Enlightened Self Interest, Part Two

To recap from my previous post, the hypothesis of individual self interest is stated as:

"Society works best as a whole when individuals are acting entirely within their own self interest."

And I closed the post promising to disprove the hypothesis, at least in part, using game theory.

I have to confess that I feel a bit like the Great Gonzo from The Muppet Show, promising an incredible but ridiculous stunt.  But I assure everyone, I am dead serious in this endeavor.  For the non-geeks out there, I will start from the practical side of things and delve into the math as it becomes necessary for the proof.

In 1968, the ecologist Garrett Hardin discovered an alarming pattern in nature called the Tragedy of the Commons.  Simply put, individuals acting purely out of self interest can, and will, deplete resources to the point of extinction.  The result is an irrecoverable state.  This pattern has been observed, for example, in the fishing industry, where certain species of fish have been depleted to the point where their stocks cannot recover.  With non-renewable resources, such as fossil fuels, there is no possibility of recovery at all.  Fossil fuels have an additional penalty because they emit greenhouse gases--a second Tragedy of the Commons that will lead to an atmosphere too high in carbon dioxide if not consumed in a guided manner.

OK, now here is the math part for the geeks.  It is easy to model the Tragedy of the Commons using game theory.  Some of the more common isomorphic games are the Diner's dilemma and the Prisoner's dilemma.  Simply put, the optimal solution to the game, if people are behaving out of pure self interest, is for everyone to lose.  For those not familiar with game theory terminology, in order for the isomorphism to work, we have to assume that something called a Nash equilibrium represents the state of all solutions if everyone is behaving rationally and wants to maximize their own gain (payoff).  The way to arrive at a Nash equilibrium is by eliminating all strongly dominated strategies. In other words, if the most you can gain by adopting a particular strategy is lower than the least you would gain by adopting a different strategy, you discard that strategy.  As you keep iterating through, assuming that each player is doing the same thing, you eventually arrive at the minimum set of strategies that would be taken in a "rational" game.  Once you are there, the strategies that provide the maximum payoff for each player with full knowledge of the other players' possible choices are the Nash equilibria.

Obviously, simply because you can model X as Y, it doesn't mean that it is necessarily so.  However, game theory has proven itself to be quite accurate in describing many other naturally occurring phenomena, and there is no reason to assume that a Prisoner's dilemma is only a fictitious thing.  I can't, for example, prove that the Hand of God won't suddenly appear and give us more oil just as we run out, or that He won't show up with a giant squeegee when the atmosphere is looking a little grimy.  I only put it outside of the realm of probability from what we can observe.

For people who think that the threat of environmental damage is overblown or that the consumption of natural resources is not a particularly big issue, I have another example of the Prisoner's dilemma that is a bit more familiar, at least in my own personal experience.  As many people may know, I dislike driving.  I call this one the Commuter's dilemma.

Mr. Peter Gibbons is a programmer at Initech.  Every morning he has to commute to work.  Each day is a grueling challenge, as he finds that traffic reaches a bottleneck where his drive slows to a crawl.  Suppose that he is on a two lane highway, with lanes A (the fast lane) and B (the slow lane).  Mr. Gibbons notices that while he is stuck in lane B, the traffic appears to be moving in lane A.  Looking for an opportunity, he swerves out from B into A.  In a short amount of time, lane A, too, slows down, while lane B starts moving.  So Mr. Gibbons waits for the opportunity, and goes back into lane B.  The result is a very frustrated Mr. Gibbons!  But, nevertheless, we realize that he is maximizing his potential by switching lanes when he can.  Let's say he has saved 10 seconds in his overall commute by adopting the changing lanes strategy.  Not bad, Mr. Gibbons!  Only, now we discover something.  Each time Mr. Gibbons switches lanes, the person behind him, Mr. Michael Bolton (not the singer) is slowed down by 10 seconds in his commute.  He, too, can adopt the same lane-changing strategy, but if he does so, both he and Mr. Gibbons will be slowed down by 15 seconds, making it a net loss for the both of them.  If Mr. Gibbons stayed in his lane but Mr. Bolton decided to adopt the lane-changing strategy, it is a net gain for Mr. Bolton, but Mr. Gibbons is slowed down by 10 seconds!  And yet, let's assume that neither is penalized or rewarded by any amount of time (0) if neither one changes lanes through their commute.

Very good, now that I have thoroughly depressed everyone by showing how self interest is both hopeless and unavoidable at the same time, in my next post I will show how nothing is really hopeless, enlightenment and progress are really possible, and even how the biggest problems can be solved once we get rid of a slight amount of defeatism, denial, and negativity.

The Myth of Enlightened Self Interest, Part One

Before I dive back into the ethical position discussion on the topic of abortion, I've decided to jump the gun on something slightly more wide-reaching in scope (in fact, it is an important pattern occurring in ethics and human behavior).

As a disclaimer, this post may be likely to generate the most amount of noise, if for no other reason that my viewpoint differs from a number of my peers--or at least it may appear to on the surface.  If so, I hope that the noise it generates is constructive.  If it does not generate noise, I will at least consider that it is a success in that either a) nobody cares strongly enough about any differences in opinion, b) I've articulated my point of view well enough that it appears "self-evident" without reaching tautology (i.e., has something useful to say), or c) nobody actually really reads this blog, in which case I've successfully articulated my viewpoint to myself (hi there!).

Over the course of my life, I've either said some of the following statements or encountered them said by others:

• "I'm an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist."
• "I'm a libertarian."
• "I believe in small government."
• "I believe in deregulation."
• "I'm pro-capitalism. (or free market, laissez faire, etc.)"
• "I believe in individual rights, or privacy."
• "I'm an objectivist (or I read lots of Ayn Rand)."

One thing that these statements have in common is a specific aspect I will call individual self interest.  To best articulate or define this concept, I will distill it into the following statement:

• "Society works best as a whole when individuals are acting entirely within their own self interest."

For the sake of abbreviation, I will call this the statement the hypothesis of individual self interest.

Once established, lots of things logically fall from this premise.  The free market, for instance, in theory touts the benefit of creating better products through competition.  We can conclude that things only get better when individuals are free to do what they would like, that things have either 1) only gotten better over time, or 2) that the only reasons things have gotten worse is due to government regulation or intervention.

I can't deny the appeal of the premise.  It is easy (and in my own self-interest, natural) to conclude that individual self interest is where it's at.  It's especially easy to make fun of ideologies such as communism (the collapse Soviet Communism as an often cited example), that demonstrate (or at least appear to demonstrate) how impractical ideas are that are not based on individual self interest.  Communism, in particular, falls into demagoguery, in which individual self interest is at the root of its own power structure!  The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once famously stated "Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under communism, it's just the opposite."

The hypothesis of individual self interest is no mere straw man.  It is at the heart of so many ideologies, the influences of which can be seen and felt all around us.  Apologists of a particular ideology may amend the hypothesis to be restated as:

• "Society works best as a whole when individuals are acting entirely within their own enlightened self interest."

The definition of the word in bold, however, is severely lacking.  By stretching the hypothesis to include things outside of the scope of self interest, it is no longer representative of self interest, and has rendered the hypothesis itself meaningless.  Why draw attention to self interest, if it requires some form of enlightenment in order to be ethically valid?  Wouldn't the enlightenment part be the relevant bit?  If one is to say, "self interest is one variable in helping society," that isn't a bad statement to make, but that's a bit like saying "I like oxygen because it enables us to breathe," or "food is good."  It is an admission of its own lack of specificity.  If you didn't want us to pay attention to the self interest part, then it should, by Occam's razor, not mentioned in the hypothesis at all.

No, I think we have no choice but to take the hypothesis of self interest on face value.  Now, here comes the devilish part: in my next post, I am going to disprove the hypothesis of self interest by counterexample, using game theory.

Homosexuality

Note: Apologies for the inactivity over the last week or so.  I got hit with a bad cold that left me in bed for two days.

The first of two relevant modern ethical positions I have promised to take on is the topic of homosexuality. Naturally, I can't get to every taboo under the sun.  I have chosen homosexuality and abortion because they are two areas where Western attitudes have shifted from traditional Catholic values, in part due to new scientific information that has become readily available.  I have pointed out that there are ethical ways to judge taboos and logical traps that one can fall into when discussing them.

Starting in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality from its status as a mental disorder.  The main reason for this is that there was found to be no causal link between homosexuality and harmful behavior.  Many scientists have been curious about the cause of homosexuality.  Modern science has concluded that it is caused by a variety of genetic, prenatal, and environmental factors, but, importantly, sexual orientation is most often not a "choice," and attempts to alter one's sexual orientation have proven harmful to the subject.

The taboo against homosexuality is common in human history and has not been exclusively a Western one, but it is true that there are many cultures that have not developed a taboo against sexual orientation.  In our case, the taboo is backed by religion.  From the point of view of Halakha, under the book of Leviticus, lying with another man is "an abomination."  This passage has been interpreted in many ways to mean very specific acts, but as an impartial observer, one cannot help but wonder why it has been given so much attention and remained in observance, while other taboo laws have fallen by the wayside or relaxed (laws about shaving, not being able to eat pork and shellfish, how much you are supposed to get in exchange for selling your sister into a brothel, why you aren't ever supposed to touch "unclean" women, etc.).

Regardless of the history of the taboo, the correct way to look at it is from a modern set of eyes.  If sexual orientation is not a choice, then is it not wholly unethical to deprive a percentage of the population some rights to property, survivorship, citizenship, etc., based on some factor that is outside of their agency?  If it is not harmful behavior, then is there some reason for it to be denigrated or shunned?  I have found no argument in support of keeping the taboo that does not appeal to tradition, religion, or fear.

Taboo

Often at the heart of conflict between the Ugly American or Rebel vs. the Conformist or Chameleon is the taboo.  Simply put, a taboo is a social prohibition on a specific behavior.  Any type of behavior can be considered taboo to a segment or group.  In this blog, one early example I used was anthropophagy, since it is one of the most universal of taboos (even though it is not entirely universal, as we've discovered).

Halakha, or Jewish law, is one system with a complex structure of taboos and rich set of ethics.  It is a good example to use, because it was the origin of modern Western law (for better or worse), even though it has gone through millennia of changes and several large cultural shifts.  Among other things, one important aspect is the "self-correcting" mechanism that allows laws to be interpreted not according to the literal word, but through modern interpretations ("consult your local rabbi" being the universal answer).  This has allowed for symptoms such as the Parable of the Roast to get "filtered out" as time marches forward.  Unfortunately, the legacy of the original legal code (in this case, the Ten Commandments--which ten were those anyway?  there weren't originally ten) is broad, intolerant of other religions, simplistic, and probably a bit too mass marketed to be of any real use to us today as a legal or moral framework.  There is an old joke--and I probably shouldn't tell it for risk of sounding anti-Semitic--that if you start out with ten Jews on a desert island, you end up with eleven synagogues (because nobody goes to that one).  The challenge facing modern day Jews is no different than of any other generation: having intelligent, thoughtful rabbis who are aware of modern attitudes and can make all the difficult decisions based on a wealth of information.  With the internet as a tool, this may not be implausible, but human infallibility is a very difficult problem to overcome.

As time marches on, our taboos shift.  As in my previous post, my hope is that taboos serve a utilitarian purpose rather than a more arbitrary one that labels a specific segment of the population as "unmutual."  True democracy results in a tyranny of the majority, and it is easy to see why: taboos can be little more than fads.

I've mentioned two specific examples of taboos that I have promised to address: homosexuality, which is a sexual taboo, and abortion, which is a medical taboo.  Both of these are complex topics.

I am going to point out one logical fallacy that is frequently applied to both taboos: the slippery slope argument.  It is logically invalid to point out one taboo as some kind of gateway towards other taboos.  A change in the acceptance of one taboo does not in any way lead to the acceptance of others (more often than not, the acceptance of one taboo actually creates a backlash against other taboos).  How one feels about homosexuality, for instance, is rather different from that of bestiality.  How one feels about abortion is very different from how one feels about capital punishment.  Acceptance of one taboo over another does not make one a hypocrite, it only makes one human.

Before I continue, I want to construct a framework in which to talk about the ethics of taboos.  Here are a few questions to ask when judging a taboo:

• Is there any physical harm or risk to a human being in this behavior?
• Is any human being denied a choice or voice in this behavior?
• Is there any permanent damage to the environment resulting from this behavior?
• Is there any non-utilitarian cost or inefficiency resulting from this behavior?
• What are the long-term consequences of this behavior?
• What are the facts about this behavior?

These are questions that are invalid (or at least incomplete) when judging a taboo:

• What does tradition, family, religion, or leadership say about this behavior?
• What does the majority say about this behavior?
• Is accepting this behavior a "gateway" to other taboos?
• Will I gain more money, support, or power if I have a particular opinion of this behavior?
• Will a behavior result in any immaterial, not measurable, spiritual cost or benefit (e.g., roasting for all eternity in Hell)?

In the United States, appeals to divinity are not admissible in a court of law (ethics is by, for, and about human beings--not deities, prophets, or saviors).  Any appeal to tradition is an ethical deadlock: a refusal to accept anything outside of a particular interpretation of the past (and a parable of the roast).

I am sure there are other questions to put on either list, which I hope generates a discussion.  I am going to proceed, without further ado, into the topics themselves.

Politeness

While I am eager to jump back into the fold of my mental outline for this blog (taboo being the next category I've been promising to get to), I had an experience this morning that led me to thinking about politeness, cultural standards, and how to define what is "right" and "wrong."

Naturally, like anyone else, I have my own cultural biases.  Some of these serve me well ("don't talk out loud during a movie"), while others may seem a little obscure ("take off your hat when entering a room").  Still, there are moments where I feel my cultural biases serve an ethical, utilitarian purpose.  In this case, the Conformist in me was quite angry at the Ugly American in a group of other people.

I take the BART to commute each day.  This morning, on a moderately crowded, but not overly crowded train, I witnessed both a man with a cane and a venerable man go through the same experience.  Specifically, no one got up from their seats to let either of them sit down.  This was particularly troubling in the section that is specifically designated as priority seating for these passengers.

Now, before I get all "Miss Manners", I did notice something that made the situation tricky: just about everyone sitting down was Indian (from India), and everyone seated was from some kind of Asian culture.  Having been to India, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, I know that there is a cultural difference at work.  In many crowded Asian cultures, everything is treated as a "first come, first served" situation.  I'll never forget my first experience on a plane landing in India.  Before the plane was even safely landed and at the gate, people had not only taken off their seat belts, but had crowded immediately to the doors.  This immediacy, the lack of following structure, and the (perceived) inefficiencies and safety problems they cause, seemed to permeate into virtually every aspect of life in India, from driving (who actually follows the lines in the road?) to getting back on the plane (queues? who needs those?).

I found myself in a bit of a quandary.  What should I do?  Should I tell someone, "hey, get up, let this person sit down, please"?  I've seen someone do exactly that before (a black woman--one thing I will say about black American culture is that it is very similar to my own, Southern background).  Should I let people be assertive on their own (if they need to sit down, maybe they should say something)?  At some point, the moment is passed for me to have any impact or interference without it seeming rude or condescending.

Our cultural standard is to do as BART indicates: let senior citizens, disabled passengers, pregnant women (or women in general--sometimes I offer to let anyone sit down) take your seat.  It is politeness, as our culture has defined it.  Still, I can't help but claim a certain bias that this form of politeness suits a utilitarian purpose.  Simply put, you are keeping someone from having to endure unnecessary stress and potential pain.  That seems a greater gain than keeping to our own selfish need of enduring a slight amount of discomfort.

The Rebel in me also sees room for improvement in our cultural standards, following the same utilitarian logic.  Why can't we automate cars, eliminating most auto accidents and drunk driving (not to mention reduce the cost of auto insurance to near zero)?  Why do we insist that subsidies are inherently "bad" ideas (the rich subsidizing the poor, the healthy subsidizing the sick, etc.) until the day when we find ourselves in need of said subsidies?  Does capitalism always lead to "better" technology--or does the cost of competition outweigh the benefits?

Politeness: it's contagious.  Please pass it around.

The Grand Design

Within 24 hours of its release, I've already purchased and read Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design.  Call me a bit of an eager beaver, but I've been quite excited about it, as indicated in a previous post.  No doubt that Stephen Hawking is an expert in the fields of physics and astrophysics, but more importantly he serves the role as an educator through the medium of popular science.

It is a good read, though I find some of the assumptions slightly short on detail.  Perhaps this lack of detail is a good thing, though: any explanation of M-Theory takes very complicated math and makes my head hurt.  In The Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking explored some of these ideas more thoroughly.  Instead, The Grand Design focuses specifically on questions concerning the existence of the universe.  Specifically:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Why do we exist?
• Why this particular set of laws and not some other?

His assertion is that "it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings."

Without ruining too much of the surprise, the answer lies in something called the strong anthropic principle.  In essence, the set of laws for the universe happen to exist because the conditions for this universe happen to be favorable to them.  The Big Bang, for instance, is not an event, but a coordinate in space-time called the no-boundary condition--no different than asking yourself, if you are on the South Pole, to head "further south," which would be a meaningless designation.

Since this is an ethics and philosophy blog, these new theories are relevant in the following way:

• As Hawking points out, religion has held a traditional role in attempting to explain the mysteries of things.  Over time, these models for the universe have proven themselves less useful than newer models.  For example, the Ptolemaic view of the universe was replaced with the Copernican theory.
• Beliefs such as Creationism, though they cannot necessarily be falsified, require a great deal more effort to explain (fossils--"were they put there to fool us?").
• Hawking asserts "philosophy is dead.  Philosophy has not caught up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.  Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."  I disagree, at least in one sense: knowledge alone does not constitute ethics.  Without ethical progress, a search for meaning is meaningless.  I would agree that it has not caught up with science, yet the fault lies within our cultural priorities.  But more on this subject later.

Given that the universe is agnostic, there is a lot of ground to cover in the realm of the human experience.  How do we define ethical behavior?  How far do we have the right to exert ourselves?  When is the correct time to intervene, or not intervene?  Science alone cannot answer these questions.

The Ugly American

The last of the four archetypes that I've taken to look at I call the Ugly American.  No, I didn't come up with the name because I "hate America" or some other such nonsense (how dare you question my patriotism!  how unpatriotic of you!).  The epithet comes from a book written during the 1950s about Vietnam.  Abroad, the epithet has been used as a term of discrimination specifically against Americans, but I use it solely for the purpose of the archetype in describing a situation where a foreigner takes his or her values with them while operating in a culture with different values.

In his book Values for a New Millennium, the late author Robert L. Humphrey identifies one key factor in his research of anti-American hostility: not treating locals with respect as equals.  Now, I may take issue with some of his methods (and you may wonder if asking the question was condescending in the first place), it is indicative of a very real problem that was (and still is) plaguing this great, fantastic, all-amazing and all powerful nation that is vastly superior to everyone else on the planet (especially the French).  Namely, why doesn't everybody on the planet just learn English?  Huh?

It is human to take our own values (and culture) with us.  Naturally, the more proud or privileged we are, the more entitled we feel to expressing those values.  In other words, with great power comes great responsibility.  Part of the problem with privilege is that frequently it is a form of power we don't even realize is there.  It we argue about the toppings on yesterday's pizza, it can be a bit insensitive to have the discussion in front of a starving child.  The way to overcome these positions of power is through learning--and frequently this means making many mistakes before getting it right.

We may not have to share values with our surrounding environment, but it is our duty to respect them when we can.  I make a distinction between the Ugly American and the Rebel because the notion of one's community and home (our comfort zone) has a logically separate place from traveling outside it.  In a post about the Chameleon, I reflected about Star Trek's "prime directive" and Westphalian sovereignty.  And yet, as John Lennon so succinctly put it:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

In other words, the boundaries that separate us from each other are all artificial layers of structure.  Each structure is in place as a form of legacy that has been built up for social and geographical reasons.  Because of ease of travel and communications, the boundaries between ourselves and our surroundings have become much more social and much less geographical--the word community itself is being used to describe social, not geographical strata.

Something from Nothing

"Nothing?" asks an incredulous King Lear.  "Nothing will come from nothing.  Speak again."

As it turns out, like Cordelia's response to her father, the creation of the universe does not need...a creator.  In other words, if there is a god (or gods), those deities are very likely to be (or have been) agnostic.

Now before believers of various sorts start to cry "foul," this does not mean that you have to give up whatever gives your life meaning for you.  But it does mean that you will have to stop insisting that there is a direct chain of command between belief and science.  In other words, to quote Pierre-Simon Laplace, 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là'--"I had no need of that hypothesis."

There is no scientific need to put a deity in charge of lighting the fuse to create the universe.  It can, and simply does, happen.  The physical laws of the universe, the swirling chaos of the cosmos, even our perception of beauty and the awe we feel--these are in the eye of the beholder.

Part of the beauty--the beauty that I perceive--is that this system does not require anything but pure deductive and inductive reasoning at every level, from the smallest sub-particle to the largest galaxy.  The laws that control individual human behaviors, while certainly complex, are not so complex as to be eternally elusive.  Such as it is with every science, even the social sciences.

And yet...is there any reason to get defensive about such knowledge?  Why should it cause anyone to doubt their beliefs?  It would put into question certain assumptions, perhaps, but faith?  Hey, you might need that faith later.  It may help you survive on days when you feel your life is meaningless or if a close friend or relative dies.  Those feelings may be important.

Just, well, there are a few places your faith no longer belongs:

• The creation of the universe. NEW!
• Causality and determinism.
• Evolution (CHANGE) of species.  Get that hunching over to upright-walking diagram OUT of your head.  Thank you.
• Matter and energy.
• Probability.
• "Free will" (very sorry about this one, really, I don't like it either, but there you have it).
• "Intelligent design" or any comprehensive "plan."
• The shape and structure of the universe.
• Quantum mechanics.
• Biological structures and physiology.
• Animal behavior.
• Natural healing and disease.
• The causes of floods, hurricanes, droughts, famines, or other natural disasters.

I apologize for any redundancy in the above list, as well as anything I may have left out.  I was tempted to put "my bedroom" up there, but realized that it isn't particularly scientific and not everyone is equally thrilled about imagining it.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.  And my poor fool is hanged...


Edit: Just as a follow-up, the comments on slashdot are rather entertaining.

Karma, Chameleon

SILVIA: What, angry, Sir Thurio?  Do you change color?
VALENTINE: Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon.
THURIO: That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your air.

--William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

In exploring ethical behavior, the next pattern of conflict is the Chameleon.  Specifically, what I call the Chameleon is that behavior that occurs when one is upholding the ethical standards of a surrounding, foreign environment while going against one's own upbringing.  Like the Conformist and the Rebel, the Chameleon is a complicated condition with no easy answers.

A Chameleon can be something as innocent as trying to fit in, or it can be as sinister as using a difference of culture to exploit it.  The Bhopal disaster, for instance, was a direct result of corporate negligence--the company Union Carbide operating in India to exploit cheap labor and substandard safety conditions.

Not all fitting in is bad, as discussed more thoroughly in the posts on the Conformist.  But there is a subtle distinction between operating within one's own background and outside of it.  In the latter, there is an acknowledged, separate community of ethical standards.  You can think of the two ethical systems in terms of a Venn diagram.  In the area of intersection, the Conformist and the Chameleon are one and the same.  Where they diverge is slightly more complex.  The Chameleon is the specific case where one operates outside of one's own background ethics but still within the ethics of a surrounding (but foreign) community.  A good example may be smoking pot in Amsterdam, or Tobias Schneebaum's anthropophage experiences in Keep the River on Your Right.

Like it or not, we carry our cultural ethical upbringing with us.  It is a bias that is difficult to shed.  When we step out of our ethical comfort zones, we do so at a risk.  Sometimes we discover that our own cultural assumptions and biases are incorrect, and that there are other ways of thinking about things that feel "superior."  In other cases, we feel as if there are "backwards" or difficult to understand behaviors, which make us feel that our own culture is "superior."

Though we may want human rights to be universal, there are significant cultural hurdles.  The so-called "prime directive" in Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek is a futuristic version of Westphalian sovereignty--that which establishes the boundaries of nation states and allows non-interference in other cultures.  And yet, the world of today is linked at the speed of the Internet and globalization.

If we ignore our own cultural values, we can find ourselves in uncomfortable or dangerous situations.  If we project them, we can find ourselves at risk of insulting the culture we are in.  It is a very fine line, based on the value of mutual respect.

The Prisoner and the Rebel

Like the Conformist, the theme of the Rebel has been explored at great length in the allegorical TV show "The Prisoner."  During a 1977 interview (original link, currently dead) with Warner Troyer, the series' star and creator, Patrick McGoohan explains a bit of the meaning behind the show:

Troyer: For the Village, what was the purpose, the goal?
McGoohan: I think it's going on every day all around us. I had to sign in to get into this joint!
Troyer: (Uh-huh) Downstairs, yeah.
Troyer: Made you angry, too? (Chuckle.)
McGoohan: Slightly, yeah. Pass-keys and, you know, let's go down to the basement and all this. That's Prisonership as far as I'm concerned,and that makes me mad! And that makes me rebel! And that's what the Prisoner was doing, was rebelling against that type of thing!
Troyer: But can you, in everyday life, summon the will and the energy to rebel every time any indignity occurs?
McGoohan: You can't, otherwise you go crazy! You have to live with it. That's what makes us prisoners! You can't totally rebel, otherwise you have to go live on your own, on a desert island. It's as simple as that.

In the final episode, "Fall Out," another young member of the Village, Number 48 (played by Alexis Kanner), is on trial for the simple rebellion of "youth."  Without revealing too much about the controversial ending of the series, we are confronted with the reality that too much rebellion is perhaps as difficult as too much conformity.  Number 6, when asked to address the assembly, can only mutter "I feel..." before he is interrupted by everyone else speaking simultaneously.  The apocalyptic destruction of the Village itself is a vision of the consequences of unchecked rebellion.  In the TV interview, McGoohan says:

McGoohan: I think progress is the biggest enemy on earth, apart from oneself, and that goes with oneself, a two-handed pair with oneself and progress. I think we're gonna take good care of this planet shortly. They're making bigger and better bombs, faster planes, and all this stuff one day, I hate to say it, there's never been a weapon created yet on the face of the Earth that hadn't been used and that thing is gonna be used unless...I don't know how we're gonna stop it, no[w] it's too late, I think.

These themes are nothing new, though technology has made the stakes much higher.  The movement of Romanticism, placing an emphasis on the aesthetic experience, regardless of the consequences, led to a darker counter-Romanticist movement.  Quite possibly, the most famous or archetypal example of this movement is Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.  The warning is stark: with every new technology (or, in Spider-Man's case, super-power), there are consequences.  Responsibility has to evolve in tandem.  Who can resist the lure of the Ring of Gyges?  Can it be tamed, like Boromir and other characters wish (in vain), in Lord of the Rings?  Or does all new power have to be thrust into the fires of Mount Doom, never to be used again?  Like the Invisible Man, will we all simply go mad with its power?


If the Rebel is thrust into the center of these questions, the consequences can be truly disastrous.  And yet, the Rebel is usually at the center of progress in the first place.  Imagine if we all thought the same thoughts, behaved the same way, and reacted the same way to everything we encountered.  Like the Parable of the Roast, we would never recognize an inefficiency, let alone seek out a way to improve it.  It was only the questioning of the Church's spiritual monopoly and earthly authority during the Renaissance that led to the Enlightenment (in contrast to Pope Benedict XVI's view of history), resulting in a new age of science and technology.  J. Robert Oppenheimer's innovations into the atomic bomb resulted in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led him to reverse his personal stance and lobby against its future use.

I feel

Parable of the Roast

Another example of the dangerous side of the Conformist can be illustrated in a hand-me-down tale that I like to call "The Parable of the Roast."  I have heard several variants of this tale, so do not be surprised if it sounds familiar.

A young mother is preparing a roast for dinner.  Her daughter asks her, "mommy, why do you cut the ends off the roast before sticking it into the oven?"  The mother is flabbergasted.  "Gee, I don't know why, but my mother always did it that way."  They decide to ask the little girl's grandmother.  "Grandmother, in preparing a roast, why do we cut off the ends before sticking it into the oven?"  "I don't know," the grandmother replies, "but my mother always did it that way."  They decide to ask the venerable great-grandmother.  "Great-grandmother, why do we cut off the ends of the roast before putting it into the oven?"  "I don't know why you cut off the ends of your roasts," she replies, "but in my day, we had much smaller ovens and had to cut the ends off in order for it to fit."

The TV show "The Prisoner" shows how the Conformist and the dangers of a conformist society can lead to destructive behavior, as featured prominently in the excellent episode "A Change of Mind."

The Conformist

"Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air."

In the 1960's, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a now famous experiment.  The motivation behind the experiment was to test the limits of conformity, though it led to a more serious discussion of the ethics of deception in psychology experiments.  Subjects were told to administer electric shocks to a (unreal) patient who is taking a test.  The results were that 65% of the subjects (ages 26 to 40) administered shocks that they knew were fatal.

"You'd better watch out!
There may be dogs about"

In another experiment, psychologist Solomon Asch found that 75% of subjects would give an incorrect answer in a test if it was acknowledged by a larger group as the "correct" one.

"I looked over Jordan, and I've seen
Things are not what they seem."

As a young student on the streets of Boston, I would watch in horror as pedestrians would cross an intersection against the light, simply because another person in front of them did so--sometimes putting themselves in considerable danger without even paying much attention.  I began to wonder, are people sheep, as George Orwell has generally suggested?  And if so, is the controversial "Nuremburg Defense" ethically valid? 

"That's what you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel."

And yet, some element of conformity is in all of us.  Most of us don't wear clown suits to work because it would attract unwanted attention.  Even for the freethinking individual, there are some aspects of our lives that we surrender to the overwhelming herd.

"What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes."

It takes a great deal of social energy not to conform.  And yet, clearly a great deal of unethical behavior can arise from accepting the status quo.  In a previous post, I presented the hypothetical Culture 1 as a culture that tolerates lying.  And yet, lying is widely regarded as unethical behavior.  Still, there are real world cultures that tolerate certain kinds of lying and consider it unwise not to lie.  Do we have the right to criticize that behavior as unethical?

"Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is not a bad dream."

Spider-Man's famous mantra "with great power comes great responsibility" and his tragic origin demonstrate that some level of awareness and participation in ethics is required of all of us--especially by those who wield the most power.

And yet, a certain level of compassion is also required for judging those who do conform.

Lyrics: Pink Floyd, "Sheep"

Nihilism and Nature

When praying mantises mate, the female bites off the head of the male and consumes him.  Some research has shown that this may even be a strategy that helps with fertilization.  While the late Stephen Jay Gould considers sexual cannibalism to be statistically insignificant in prevalence in nature, one cannot ignore that it is an existing pattern.  If nature is defined by its least common denominator, everything about it is as brutally violent as violence can be.

So how does one consider the end of the slippery slope in nature, where violence is an end to itself?

I recall one conversation I had with a family member.  "Everything has a purpose in nature," that family member said.  "Everything...except war.  War serves no purpose whatsoever."

Had I been a bit more enlightened, I would have recognized that the family member was baiting me.  "War does serve a purpose," I said.  "It happens in nature."  Suddenly I was Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and George W. Bush all rolled into one.  I was looked upon with such horror and incredulity.  I am an evil man, evidently, simply because I think war has a purpose.  Many species of animals go to war.  Ants.  Chimpanzees.  And, of course, humans.  Even at the time of this discussion, I identified as a humanist and anti-war.  What I failed to realize was that the discussion was baited as to leave no room to distinguish between what has a purpose in nature and what has a utility for humanist ends--a linguistic trap.

Simple, black-and-white terms leave little room for the gray area known as real life.  Unfortunately, it is much easier to follow simple black-and-white rules most of the time than to channel individual thought all of the time.  Structure and order, simplicity and anti-intellectualism are ways in which the Conformist (discussed later) lives in harmony within the surrounding environment and conserves energy.

Moral relativism, in the slippery slope, leads to some of the following possibilities:

1. Nihilism: "every man for himself, and God against all."
2. Humanism: humans as ends to themselves.
3. A point of stasis: an evolving, codified set of practical ethics based on science and prevailing views.

None of these seem particularly dictatorial; nor are these results mutually exclusive.  In fact, one can go so far as to believe them all at the same time.

Equal vs. Equitable

The tenets of many human -isms begin with a simple feel-good statement: all humans are created equal.  But, as George Orwell has infamously pointed out, this degenerates into "some animals are more equal than others."

Folks, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.  We were not created equal.  There is a reason why Michael Jordan plays basketball well and I don't.  Some people are smarter than others.  Some have more musical talent.  And so on.  There is not even an implied parity in nature.  Just because somebody is good at math, it doesn't mean they suck at sports.  Some people are superior in every way (physically, mentally, etc.) than other people.  Some people, for example, are born severely physically and mentally challenged.

Now before we start to go down the slippery slope of Darwin to Nietzsche down into the Third Reich, this inequality is no basis for an unfair treatment based on an existing condition.  In the eyes of an objective judge, we would all like to be given a fair shake.  Civil rights, for instance, is rooted in equal treatment regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender, or religion (to name a few categories).  We would like to see this courtesy extended to most other aspects of appearance (well, maybe not to personal hygiene--I'd hate to see a National Association for the Advancement of the Smelly).

I bring up this point not because I am a language nerd, but because the distinction is important when dealing with some limitations in Immanuel Kant's first formulation.  If I am comfortable in a world that tolerates stealing but punishes lies severely, while you come from a world where lies are acceptable but stealing is intolerable, it does not mean that we have "incorrect" or "inconsistent" moral systems.  It means that we have different cultural values.  What is troubling to one person is not going to be the same thing to someone else.  If we call the culture that tolerates stealing "Culture A" and the culture that tolerates lying "Culture 1," let's examine some of the possibilities of what happens when they interact:

1. Within the domain of Culture 1 (tolerates lying, not stealing), someone from Culture 1 lies. 
2. Within the domain of Culture 1, someone from Culture 1 steals.
3. Within the domain of Culture A (tolerates stealing, not lying), someone from Culture 1 steals.
4. Within the domain of Culture A, someone from Culture 1 lies.

Ignoring the reciprocal scenarios as mirror images of these four cases, let's take a look at them in more detail.

In the first case, you have someone operating consistently within their own culture.  In the second case, we have a person rebelling against their own culture.  In the third case, we have someone assimilating themselves into a foreign culture.  Finally, in the last case, we have someone upholding their own culture against the prevailing attitude of the foreign culture.  I call these scenarios "the Conformist", "the Rebel", "the Chameleon", and "the Ugly American."  Each case has its own set of issues, which I will delve into further.  In the search for Universal Human Rights, these scenarios emerge not only from geographically isolated peoples, but in the melting pot of the United States with its emphasis on individuality, between individuals.

As mentioned in previous posts, Pope Benedict XVI's condemnation of Western individuality as a "Dictatorship of Relativism" shows a lack of respect and understanding.   It also shows a lack of appreciation of the benefits it has long brought the world--benefits he claims were sprung from Christianity.  Although this demonstrates a clash of two different systems of values, he also has a valid point that I will also delve into further: fear and moral nihilism.  Hyper-individual cultures could ostensibly lead to complete anarchy, where every individual is allowed to set the moral and ethical standards for him or herself.  I have already demonstrated, through the Little Old Lady Experiment, just how the slippery slope argument fails to produce actual fruit.  Still, I believe I have much more ground to cover in nature's patterns, what human societies are capable of, and what leads cultures to anti-human behavior, violence, and terror.

One more about that Golden Rule thing...

Tolerance for other religions, which includes the category of non-believers as well, can only occur if there is a mutual respect for the other person's point of view.  But such a respect can only be established if the following conditions are met:

• No assumption of superiority.  This is, perhaps, the most difficult to overcome.  Herr Ratzinger, for instance, loses points when he insists that Christianity is the cause of the Enlightenment (it wasn't) or that Christian values are what exclusively hold society and families together (they aren't).  I may seem a bit of a hypocrite for being the one to point these out, but I do not do so under the assumption that Christianity is somehow inherently flawed as a religion or point of view.  It only takes a quick perusal at Veritatis Splendor, for instance, to see why its language shows a Christian-superior attitude that I do not abide.
• No recruitment drive.  It is a moral offense to try to recruit someone, whose soul or life is seen as in "dire peril" simply because they do not believe the same things that you do.  Of course, in order to even begin a recruitment drive, you have to start with an assumption of superiority in the first place.  If you want people to join your cause, lead by example, not through propaganda.  This goes for Christopher Hitchens as easily as it does for Jack Chick.  Tone it down a bit, and realize that we are all different people and that we are never going to recruit certain people to our cause, no matter how we try.
• Keep the supernatural personal, but consider that objective reality wins.  Even if you are the most die-hard atheist, you have to come to terms with the fact that the human brain is designed to pick up patterns and draw connections that may not be logical or have any rational basis.  For instance, something like this may not be easily explained by science, but perhaps it does not have to be in order for us all to draw individual, personal conclusions.  On the other hand, your personal faith is not going to help you overcome gravity enough to enable you to jump from the top of a skyscraper, nor would it help you argue your way out of a parking ticket.  There is a concrete universe with concrete laws, and human ethical systems that exist outside of the realm of personal faith.
• In the gray zone of ethical dilemmas, consider compassion for existing fellow human beings who have equal rights as the primary objective.  If possible, err on the side of caution.  But consider the difference between equal and equitable, as discussed in detail later.  The biological definition of human life not a single, easily explained binary state, and it is less than compassionate to condemn others for seeing it differently than you.  To the converse, one who is biologically human according to all science is an ethical end.

State of Organized Religion in the United States

There is usually a back and forth in the general trend in general, but my friend Kingtycoon shared an interesting article on the current state which indicates a decline in organized religion in the United States.

If any religion ceases to match human social needs, it ceases to be relevant.  Nevertheless, there are still other contributing factors to church attendance: the increasing isolation of the nuclear family, the formulation of other social communities, and, well, let's face it: church is boring.

All that aside, that crisis is for the churches to resolve.  They can no longer hold folks hostage with social or emotional blackmail, when perfectly acceptable social outlets exist elsewhere.  Openly advocating creationism or intelligent design, for instance, has put some sects at odds with science that has existed for over a hundred and fifty years.  Corruption, child molestation, and inequality within the clerical structure have caused divisions from within.  It should be no wonder that the younger generation looks elsewhere for spiritual guidance.

Again, I want to reiterate my own ethics here: I do not advocate against or in favor of any particular set of personal spiritual beliefs or deity.  However, I do want ethical progress to improve from both within and without organized religion.

An Ethical Dilemma

"Ethics," complains Caspar at the beginning of the Coen Brothers' movie Miller's Crossing.  "It's a wrong situation.  It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight.  Now if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?"  The irony is comical.  Later, Caspar's contradiction catches up with him.  "Bluepoint sayin' we should double-cross you.  You double-cross once, where's it all end?  An interesting ethical question."  Caspar is a man caught in his own web of hypocrisy: a violation of Kant's first formulation.

 In the same film, the main character Tom represents the voice of ethical enlightenment (according to Kant).  In the world of gritty Chicago gangsters, Tom takes responsibility for his actions.  He insists on settling his own debt when it would be easier to accept a handout.  He admits to his boss that he has been sleeping with his girlfriend, Verna, putting himself at considerable risk.  And he treats Bernie as a human end to himself, though it comes back to bite him later (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me).

And yet, surely none of us want to live a world of corruption, murder, and back-stabbing.  There is something deeply profound about Tom's hat floating away from him in a dream.  He yearns, perhaps, for a world in which people are ethically consistent; and yet, that world eludes him, and he is forced to treat a human being not as an end.  "Look into your heart," he is begged by Bernie.  "What heart?" Tom is forced to answer.

My sister, upon reading the start of this blog, has pointed out something missing that I have not yet gotten to: the role of judgment.  There is no moral right or wrong without judgment.  When Tom murders Bernie in Miller's Crossing, is the act justified?  We all may have different individual answers, and we all have to concur that the answer is complex, and not just a simple matter of a single act of violence.

It would not be right, or even feasible, to assume that one moral viewpoint can be used to address all complex moral situations.  The search for Universal Law seems fleeting--much like Tom's hat in Miller's Crossing.  And yet, still we have plenty of counterexamples of unquestionably immoral behavior.

Judgment is a process, not a simple set of rules.  It cannot be boiled down to a simple set of rules (ten commandments, one golden rule, etc.).  It has to built up based on practical, relevant social factors.  It has to be fair (not blind), and it has to consider individuals' human rights.

Humanism as a Positive End

In my previous post, I outlined a basis for moral action, based on a rather simplified alteration of Kant's first formulation.  I believe something similar happens to us all on an unconscious level.  We may return a lost item because it feels right to make the world a better place.  Like I've stated, I also believe that feeling comes from our evolution as a species and is codified in our DNA.  And yet, clearly there are still fundamental differences between what different people see as right and wrong in so many ways.

Take, for example, some of the issues relevant to our time: abortion and homosexuality.  I pick these to because 1) as previously mentioned, Ratzinger sees them both as morally wrong, 2) Western countries see them as largely morally defensible, and 3) science has, at least in part, been responsible for a shift in these values.  I will explore both of them in more detail later, but in the meantime I use them to illustrate how differing moral viewpoints can come about even in response to our gut instincts about what feels right.

What feels right is only a starting point.  Our DNA, our bestial natures, and our historical legacies are also only starting points.  Again, we have to consider that reshaping our attitudes is necessary when we have access to new information.  We also have to consider that we may still have immoral or amoral instincts, muscles that feel a need to flex even if we no longer (currently) need them.  Just because we have a gene for cannibalism, it doesn't mean we need to resort to it unless we are truly pressed for survival.

By contrast, no self-respecting deity would throw human beings into a world where adaptive nature is important, but restrict us from making necessary adaptations through difficult, if not impossible, sets of rules.  The food taboos of Kashrut or haram / halal, for instance, would suddenly cease to become relevant if pork were all that we had available to eat.  Conversely, if pork were all we had available to eat for a while, then other food resources were made available again, some people would choose to revert to the old taboos while others would retain it in their diet.  Some of the ones who had chosen to revert to the old taboos may even retain a feeling of guilt or shame for that period of time.

The tenets of Secular Humanism include:

• Building a better world.
• Fulfillment, growth, and creativity.
• A search for an objective truth.
• A commitment to ethics.
• Focus on this life as an immediate primary concern, not on an afterlife.
• Scientific method, observation, and empirical facts triumph over beliefs and gut feelings.

These principles that can be upheld independent of ones own personal religious or spiritual stance, without requiring any surrender or change of belief.  We all have gut feelings.  Even scientific method is useless without the ability to formulate a hypothesis--hypotheses can only be formed from a place of curiosity, creativity, and intuition.  Conversely, any religious stance can be pro-human or anti-human.  Today, fundamentalist Islam, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and many other major world religions are on a precipice, having taken a decidedly anti-humanist stance.  In Western culture, capitalism has become the wolf that is devouring its own young.  It is time to adopt our values to a pro-human agenda, lest we perpetuate the suffering that exists today.

Positive and Negative

I've deliberately tried to stay within the realm of relatively "easy to follow."  Compare and contrast with the nuances between positivism, antipositivism, logical positivism, rationalism, constructive empiricism, scientific realism, and postpositivism.  Within the realm of logical and rational philosophical discussion, there is even argument about how to argue.  For the majority of us who are not academics, philosophy seems unapproachable unless you have devoted years of study and have received a PhD. in a field that is going to guarantee eternal unemployment.

And yet, philosophy and ethics are at the center of all of our own personal experiences.

I am not an anti-intellectual and would encourage more, rather than less, reading about all of the above subjects.  However, I do believe that most of us lack practical ethics that be easily explained and rationalized.  It is no wonder that we rely on religious texts as a backup.  We do not need to justify our actions if we can claim it has already been said in print by an unquestionable authority, or if we can rely on a religious leader's selective interpretation of something in print.

In going back to Immanuel Kant's first formulation, here's how I think it can be constructively rephrased in a way that can appeal to intellectuals and practical people alike.

Imagine, even if you don't believe it, that you have unlimited free will.  You can choose to act morally or immorally according to your own inner compass.  Imagine that there is absolute moral relativism, and anything goes.

Now imagine that there are two possible worlds out there.  In one world, everyone acts like selfish animals.  We are beasts, fighting each other for survival.  We murder, steal, rape, pillage.  Nature shows that such scenarios do exist--when resources are low, or when there is the perception that resources are low, even if they are not.

Next, imagine that in the other world, people respect each other.  They hesitate before killing, stealing, littering, etc.  People generally treat each other kindly.  They cooperate in order to share resources, rather than hoard.  We are all caretakers of our environment, stewards in making our own existence sustainable and happy.  We live long, healthy lives.

Now assume that you are confronted with a moral choice: be moral, or don't.  Each time you make an immoral choice, you are moving the universe closer to the first universe.  Each time you make a constructive choice, you move the universe closer to the second.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility...

BBC News ran an article about superheroes and philosophy.  The intersection of pop culture and ethical progress is an interesting one, but it really shouldn't be any surprise that comic books, in particular, are closely tied (I also recommend the book Superheroes and Philosophy to anyone who may be further interested in the subject).  Comic books:

• Have long-standing geek appeal.
• Are closely tied to myth.
• Have been written by philosophically-minded writers.

These days, even the president of the United States is a comic book nerd.

I know this is a slight digression from the topic at hand, but I wanted to give everyone fair warning if I start to use comic books, Coen Brothers movies, or other pop culture elements in some of my posts.

"With great power comes great responsibility
Is the catch phrase of old Uncle Ben.
And in case you missed it, they'll say the line
Again and again and again."

--"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Ode to a Superhero"

The Little Old Lady Experiment

According to Herr Ratzinger, faith and hope are exactly the same thing.  In other words, Christianity specifically, and Catholicism in particular, has the monopoly on hope:

"Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were 'without hope and without God in the world' (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were 'without God' and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing)."

While he's rewriting history, he may as well go a bit further:

"From the beginning, Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the Logos, as the religion according to reason...It has always defined men, all men without distinction, as creatures and images of God, proclaiming for them...the same dignity. In this connection, the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith" [alexander drummer (29 July 2005). "Address on Christianity as the Religion according to Reason"].

So Christianity is now setting itself up as the religion of reason and the cause of the Enlightenment (wait--don't we use Arabic numerals, just to name one rather glaring counterexample).  Don't non-Christians have any say in this?  How would Galileo have felt about it?

The word preposterous has an interesting origin: putting what is normally first (pre) backwards (post).  As an adjective, I think it describes Benedict XVI's encyclical rather well.

So, all you other faiths of the world: please tell me there is some concept of hope that does not rely on the existence of a Christian deity.

I am going to demonstrate, through a rather crude hypothetical experiment, how hope requires no deity at all, but rather is an intrinsic part of human nature.  I call it the "Little Old Lady Experiment."

In today's world, it is hard not to be cynical.  We assume the worst about other people.  We even expect it.  But, really, just how common is evil?  Sure, we all have our dark sides, but haven't you ever wondered, what percentage of the human population is really out to get you?

Let's start by assuming the worst of everyone.  In order to test this hypothesis, we perform an interesting social experiment.  Let's assume that you can perform the same experiment using a cultural equivalent, just in case you feel there may be a cultural bias to the experiment itself.  Start with a little old lady, or the cultural equivalent of a little old lady.  Now let's imagine the worst neighborhood we can imagine: again, the same culture as the little old lady.  Put her there in the worst hour of the day, say, for example, the middle of the night.  Now, surrounded by random street people in that neighborhood, have her drop her purse.

How often, do you think, somebody will say: "hey, lady, you dropped your purse"?

Think about it hard enough, and I think you will find that the answers will probably surprise you.  Deep down you know that most of the time somebody, even the person you may think the worst of, will be compelled to do the right thing.

I would someday like to see this social experiment actually conducted.  But in the meantime, I will rely on similar experiments for data.  In Freakonomics, a bagel salesman modeled a business by knowing that customers will be honest 80 to 90 percent of the time.

In other words, hope isn't just a phenomenon that is tied to belief in a deity.  There is something within all of us that generally wants to do the right thing most of the time.  Biologically, we are all social creatures. We all want to be successful, and are programmed to try to be beneficial more often than not.  If anything, it feels alien to get something for nothing, or to take advantage of a helpless person or situation.  It feels sadistic to take advantage, and we all feel guilty when we do.  And when we do something immoral, we immediately seek approval from other human beings in order to justify it, out of insecurity.

I would argue that altruism is not motivated by personal choice, but is hardwired in our DNA.