How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 27: The Exaggerated Benefits of Moral Rules

This is Chapter 27 of my advice to a hypothetical baby. I'm using this website to act out my time-travel fantasy of going back give myself pointers on how to avoid some of Life’s potholes. If I only knew what I now know . . . All of these chapters (soon to be 100) can be found here.

Today I’m here to warn you to watch out for those who cast about moral rules when they try to get you to obey them. Our most popular moral rules include these:

  • The Golden Rule
  • Utilitarianism
  • The Categorical Imperative

These rules do a very bad job of telling you what to do with your life. They don't even do a good job of telling you what to do next.

Let’s assume that you are Hitler trying tact in accordance with any of these rules. Imagine Hitler hearing about the Golden Rule of “Do Unto Others” at the peak of his tyrannical reign. Sure, he would think. “If I were any other intelligent person, then I would want me to run Germany exactly how I am running Germany!” If you think that Hitler would be applying the rule incorrectly, he would disagree. Further, there are no rules on how to apply the Golden Rule.

Utilitarianism has the same problem. It rule requires you to maximize well being by doing the thing that is the greatest good for the greatest number. Hitler would say: “I’m doing everything I can to bring the greatest good to the greatest number! You won’t believe how good this empire will be when I’m finished building it.” Again, you might disagree with Hitler here, but the way you apply utilitarianism depends on how you define “good,” and even reasonable people disagree intensely about what is “good.” Even massively dysfunctional and dangerous people like Hitler think they know what it means to be "good."

Kant’s Categorical Imperative demands that we take the maxim by which we propose to act and ask ourselves whether we could make that maxim a universally applicable maxim. Hitler would say that he was doing great things for Germany so, absolutely yes, everyone should act in accordance Hitler’s personal maxims of conduct. BTW, Kant famously declared that a proper maxim is to refrain from lying. He concluded that if a madman with a weapon asked you to tell him where your friend was (so he could kill him), you should not lie.

I'm not done kicking around our simplistic moral rules. People cavalierly state that we need to properly “apply” our moral rules as though “applying is a simple action akin to "applying" a band aid to a paper cut. It's clearly not that simple. There are many ways for people to consciously (and unconsciously) interpret our simple moral rules. They must:

• Decide what particular words of rule means.

• Distinguish the connotation from the denotation.

• Decide whether to read the rule narrowly or broadly.

• Decide whether the rule is persuasive and thus applicable in this particular case.

The bottom line is that our moral rules are hopelessly vague. They would never pass Constitutional muster. “Your Honor, we have alleged that the Defendant failed to act in such a way to result in the greatest good for the greatest number.” Although such a rule would tell us that we shouldn't set a forest on fire because we are bored and cold, we already knew that without the rule. [More . . . ]

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How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 25: Five Things Everybody Wants

Here is another chapter in this series of how to be a human animal. This is Chapter 25, which is a nice time to stop and invite a guest, so to speak. I want to feature musician Daryl Davis, who is one of my heroes. You'll find a more detailed version of his story here.  A few days ago, Daryl appeared on Joe Rogan's show. Here is an excerpt from the conversation, where Daryl lists five things every human being seeks, no matter who they are and no matter what they look like:

Joe Rogan:

You're a brilliant musician. And you have personally converted a number -- more than 200 -- Ku Klux Klan members, Neo Nazis. I mean, we talked about these guys giving you their their clan outfits and retiring because they met you. And just because you had reasonable conversations and made them realize how stupid these ideologies are that they had somehow or another been captivated by,

Daryl Davis:

I mean, at the end of the day, you know, a missed opportunity for dialogue is a missed opportunity for conflict resolution. It's as simple as that. But it's not just having a dialogue or a conversation or debate. It's the way that we communicate that makes it effective. For example, I've been to 61 countries on six continents I've played in all 50 states. All that is to say that I've been exposed to a multitude of skin colors, ethnicities, religions, cultures, ideologies, etc. And all of that has shaped who I've become.

Now, all that travel does not make me a better human being than somebody else. It just gives me a better perspective of the mass of humanity. And what I've learned is that no matter how far I've gone from our own country, right next door to Canada or Mexico, or halfway around the globe, no matter how different the people I encounter may be--they don't look like me, they don't speak my language, they don't worship as I do, or whatever. I always conclude, at the end of the day, that we all are human beings. And as such, we all want the same five core values in our lives. Everybody wants to be loved. Everybody wants to be respected. Everybody wants to be heard. We all want to be treated fairly. And we all basically want the same things for our family as anybody else wants for their family.

And if we learn to apply those five core values, when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation, or a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar, I can guarantee you that the navigation will be a lot more smoother.

Daryl Davis is now a member of the board of the Foundation Against Tolerance and Racism.

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How to be a Human Animal, Chapter 24: You are a Big Intuitive Elephant Attached to a Tiny Squawky PR Department

Hello again, Hypothetical Baby! I'm back to offer you yet another chapter with a simple lesson. As you grow up, people will question you about some of the decisions you make on “moral.” Issues. By the way, “Moral” is an ambiguous word. We tend to pull it out most often when we are talking about sex, death and distribution of food and the other things you need to stay alive. That reminds me. Someday we will have some good discussions about sex that will consist mostly of letting you watch selected David Attenborough Nature Videos featuring animal sex. You'll find that most human talk about sex is confusing and unhelpful except to let you know that most other people are as awkward discussing it as you will be. I'll give you a one sentence preview. Bank on this: human animal sex is a lot like the sex of other mammals, even though it does not much resemble the exotic sex of snails.

Before we go further on moral decision making, here's a short reminder that I’m trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons here.

Now, back to your moral decision-making. After people challenge why you made a particular “moral” decision, you will try to give reasons and words will actually come out of your mouth, but much of the time (to quote "My Cousin Vinny," it will be a bunch of bullshit.

Jonathan Haidt has shown that, for the most part, we don’t make moral decisions using our ability to reason methodically. Moral decision-making is not like math; there is no metric for making moral decisions. Nor does our ability to decide moral issues make use of emotions (which are intricately tied up with our sense of reason, as we discussed in Chapter 11). Most of our moral decision-making is intuitive. Based on sophisticated and entertaining experiments, Haidt has shown that our moral judgements are instantaneous and based on intuitions (akin to what Daniel Kahneman describes as thinking fast). After you’ve made your quick and dirty moral decision, you will employ your slow difficult thinking to concoct excuses that you will publicly present as “reasons” for your decisions.

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How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 23: What Are You Supposed to Do with Your Life on Planet Earth?

Even though you are a hypothetical baby, you will need to start figuring out what you are going to do with your presumably long hypothetical life. That is today's topic.

Louis CK has a bit where he says that older people like me have it easy, because we have most of our life behind us—maybe I’ll only need to buy one more coat in my last 25 years or so. A youngster like you, however has a ton of decisions to make over a period of decades, so how will you make use of this life you have been given? I'm trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up, but I’m out of my league here. This will totally be your life, not mine at all. I’m only here to offer some navigation tools, not a purpose, not a “meaning of life” for you. By the way, all of these lessons (soon to be 100) can be found here.

But, again, we need to focus on your personal challenge: what you should do with your life. Perhaps this will remain a nonstop question until you reach old age and look backwards. Yes. I'm sure of it. It would be too damned hard to answer this question when you are young, even when you are a young adult, because you will have no basis for making even a wild guess. You’ve barely started out and the rate of change of culture and technology has reached dizzying speeds lately. And it's really not fair to ask this question to someone who has never before lived a life. But people will ask you over and over and you'll probably say something. What will you say? Cat Stevens asked the question in a song that I love:

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time?

You're only dancing on this Earth for a short while

Oh very young,

What will you leave us this time?

The Cat's song made it sound like Life will be happy travels, but it might not be happy at all. You’ll find out, of course, but only by taking one step after another. And another and another, and then you’ll look back. And you’ll look in your mirror. And you’ll squint as you look forward. And you’ll look back again and again and it might or might not make any sense. You might love your life or you might hate it. You might even commit suicide. I wish you the best, of course, but this is not a rehearsal. You are now using live ammunition. As Shakespeare wrote in MacBeth, this is a tale told over and over. It's only fair that I tell you that life can be wonderful or dangerous (or some combination) and it has sad endings for many of us:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

If you are lucky enough to get old and if you then look back at your life, you still might not understand why you did the things you did. Writer Harlan Ellison arrived at no such insights:

[My] fourth marriage just sort of happened: It seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact—and this is the core of all my wisdom about love—whenever we try to explain why we have done any particular thing, whether it’s buying T-bills or why we would live in a house in the mountains or why we took the trip to Lake Ronkonkoma, or whatever it was, the only rationale that ever rings with honesty is: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” We’re really no smarter than cactus or wolverines or plankton; and the things we do, we always like to justify them, find logical reasons for them; and then you go to court later and the judge says, “Well, didn’t you know that it was doomed from the start?” I’m waiting for someone to say to the judge, “Because, schmuck, I’m no smarter than you."

From A Curmudgeon’s Garden of Love, Compiled and edited by Jon Winokur, p. 50 (1991).

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How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 20: Good and Bad and Certainty

Chapter 20 - Good and Bad and Certainty

I have returned to challenge your tiny baby brain and not a moment too soon because you are already twenty chapters old! Yes, I admit, you actually a hypothetical baby and I am using this platform to confess that I did not know these things while I was growing up. I learned all of these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons in one convenient place: Here.

Today's Warning: Please be careful when you hear human animals talking about things that are “good” and “bad.” Most often, when human animals say something is “good,” they are telling you that something  made/makes them happy regardless of whether A) it makes other people unhappy or B) whether it will ultimately make you incredibly sad. We are such a myopic species (Remember WYSIATI).

Except for low-lying fruit on the Maslovian Pyramid, things like having food and shelter and avoiding unwanted physical pain and death, people constantly disagree about what is good and bad. The subjects of these disagreements are everywhere. They include such things as good and bad food, cities, politicians, cars, jobs, art, children, pets, technology, habits, websites, books, moral choices, friends and romantic partners.

Here's another important lesson about “good” and “bad” things, my little pal. You will grow up in a complex adaptive system (your environment) and you yourself are a complex adaptive system. This double-complexity means that crazy-seeming things will often happen to you out of the blue. And to everyone else you know too. Yet we are incredibly arrogant in our ignorance.  Despite all of our ignorance, we continue to put human brains on extremely high and privileged pedestals. In the end, though, "A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms."

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