Moral Dilemmas and PDs

I've written before about a typical and famous moral dilemma (click here).  There has been a recent paper published called "The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas".  In this paper, the authors argue that instead of wondering why 90% of people make illogical decisions in moral dilemmas (choosing to let 5 people die instead of killing 1), we should be wondering why that 10% of people don't get drawn into an emotional decision.

They gave personality tests to a group of people and then gave them dilemmas and correlated their answers with their personalities.

The conclusion was stark; to quote the paper: "those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral".

This should not really surprise anyone, and I'm dumbfounded as to why the paper has become as well known as it has.

The addendum to the paper that they should have written is the further correlation between people who take logical decisions, and people in positions of power in politics and the military.  If an airplane over the ocean, heading towards a city, cuts communications and ignores emergency protocols then I hope the person who decides whether or not to shoot it down before it reaches land has 'immoral' psychological characteristics.

Dilemma

Imagine you are expecting a pay-rise at work, and then you open your wage slip and find that instead of the £3.5k raise you were expecting you got an increase of £12.5k per year.

This is obviously a mistake, and one that should be easily noticed at the next salary review...

Would you own up ASAP?  I think the key phrase here is "plausible deniability" - if it transpired you knew of the mistake and didn't say anything then that would probably be construed as gross misconduct.

Not quite sure if I could pull off the plausible deniability thing... my boss certainly knows I am not hanging on for pay-day and accounting for every penny, and I could stop opening my payslips from now on so if challenged I could show them unopened "except for the one I opened last night to verify I was getting too much".  Probably worth the risk - if I was suddenly asked to leave they'd be fucked anyway so the worst they could really do is get me to pay it back.

Changing Minds

Ten years ago in the USA 57% of the population opposed gay marriage, 35% were for it, and 8% were too dull/stupid to have an opinion.  Today it is pretty much neck and neck, at 46% vs 45%, with the dull rising to 9%.

I'd like to think that the swing is people changing their minds, but I suspect most of this change is simply bigots dying and being replaced in the polls by fresh young minds.

Politics is far too dominated by old twats set in their ways.  Democracy is fine for most things but on progressive issues of morality society has to wait for the young generation to grow up and become politicians before the 'right' policy is enacted.

I talked a bit about what the direction of law should be in my very first post, which TBH I'd like to get some comments on as it's an interesting topic!

I don't think I have a point, or a solution to this, so feel free to suggest one.

Life Worth

I've thought about suicide a lot.  Not so much doing it, though I have sometimes felt so bored of life that I've thought I may as well, but about why I or anyone else would do it.  When I've felt particularly bored of life - same ol shit, different day - I've essentially ended up chastising myself for being unimaginative or just downright lazy.  

Once someone contemplates suicide they essentially stop placing value on life, and when that happens the person is liberated to do anything.  A lone suicide means that the person values the life of others - they didn't use the terrible strength and freedom of that decision to go postal on their boss etc - and so from their lonely death arises the realisation of a value that may have justified their existence.

I don't feel that value.  I don't believe there is a god or any sort of afterlife/reincarnation punishment.  I believe that we are animals with instincts and when we die we cease to exist.  I don't believe in morals (right and wrong) but I do believe in a... malleable... sort of ethics - how to live your life.  I may not instinctively find worth in the lives of others but I would not have a better life myself if I showed this to the recurring characters in this drama we call life.

The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Critical to fully understanding the evolution of behavioural traits is understanding some basic game theory, such as the iterated prisoner's dilemma.

The basic prisoner's dilemma is as follows: two criminals are taken to the police station and interviewed separately. They went on a crime spree together and there is enough evidence to convict them of some of the minor offences. Imagine you are one of the prisoners and you are given a choice, which you assume your partner in crime has also been given: confess to everything and thereby grass up your partner for the major charges [defect]; or keep your mouth shut [cooperate]. If you talk and your partner doesn't, then you get a reduced sentence of 2 years in prison because of helping to convict your partner; and he gets 10 years. If he talks and you don't then obviously the reverse happens. If you both give a full confession then you both get 8 years, and if neither of you talk you both get 4 years. What do you do?

Now imagine that you and your partner can both live forever, and any time either of you are not in prison you go on another crime spree together and each time you get caught and face the same decision. You know your partner's previous responses, so this will obviously affect whether you cooperate or defect in the latest interview with the police. This situation is the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and occurs (in other forms!) every day in societal life (the social contract).

The various consequences to the options can be formalised into a pay-off matrix, and different weightings given to the possible outcomes. So long as all the options are sensible, for example the benefit to you for defecting when your partner cooperates should always be more than the benefit to you for cooperating when your partner cooperates, then it is possible to make some firm conclusions about the worth of different strategies.

Axelrod created a tournament in which different programs played against each other (200 iterations for one game) and then each program's total score was added up. Some of these programs had very sophisticated algorithms to predict whether the opponent would cooperate or defect, however the overall winner was a program called tit-for-tat which simply started out cooperating and then did whatever the opponent had done the previous move. In the second tournament the winner was called tit-for-2-tats, I don't think I need to explain that one's tactics!

It is important to note that in a population it isn't as simple as there being an optimum strategy that everyone should abide by. One of the founders of modern game theory, John Nash (of “A Beautiful Mind”), showed that strategies of cooperation and defection settle to a balance (the Nash equilibrium) – so long as the frequency of defection is low, then on average the cooperators gain by continuing to cooperate and the small number of defectors can take advantage.

Continuity of Self

What constitutes you.  Every day some of your cells die and others are created to replace them, some memories are lost (perhaps only temporarily) and new memories are formed, and over time our neuroplasticity shapes the very physiology of our brains.  Where is the you that you identify as a constant through all this change?

When I wake up I often have a few seconds of coherent intelligent thought before I remember what my life is like, where, and who I am.  During these few seconds I sometimes wonder about whether I am young or old, rich or poor, and I can revel in the simple state of being where I am unaware of pretty much everything.  A state where all my thoughts are occurring for the first time, devoid of context.  

A similar situation is invoked as  a plot device in Dark City, which is a shit film (much worse than its IMDB rating suggests)  but it does leave a lasting impression.  Each night, the memories and lives of all the inhabitants are swapped around and they all live the next day with a new husband/wife, a new job, new hobbies etc. and they are unaware of their previous/original lives.

The classic example of a thought experiment about continuity of self involves a star-trek transporter.  This device maps out all the atoms in your body and then simultaneously destroys the original and creates a duplicate elsewhere.  Is the transported you you?  What if the original weren't destroyed - which one would be you, or would both be?

The most common real life application of this concept is in drugs, especially ones that change personality.  If I took a pill that gave me empathy and turned me into a sensitive metrosexual man then I would not be me.  Whoever that person was may fit in better with society, and they may be happier than I am, but they would not be me.

I think we are more accepting of gradual changes in our self - if we go to therapy or just decide to work on an aspect of ourselves then we are changing our thought patterns; that can lead, slowly, to physical changes in the brain.  If it happens overnight then we are much more wary of it, but where is the logical difference?

You may find this interesting.

The 2 Envelope Problem

You are on a gameshow – a pilot episode, so you have no idea about the level of prizes likely to be offered.  You answer a couple of questions correctly and are told to chose one of two envelopes. Inside the envelope you chose is $300 and the host tells you that one of the two envelopes has twice the amount of money in it than the other one.  He asks you if you wish to swap for the other envelope – i.e. instead of $300 you could win $150 ($150 less than you currently have) or you could win $600 ($300 more than you currently have).  It would seem to be a 50:50 likelihood of either outcome.  50% chance of losing $150 and 50% chance of gaining $300 – anyone familiar with gambling, or mathematics, will tell you that on average you will make a profit if you take this gamble therefore you should swap to the other envelope.

The problem with this reasoning is that it would apply whichever envelope you picked – the odds of your picking the envelope with the higher amount in it is 50%. swapping envelopes should still give you 50% chance of getting the higher amount.  Is there any gain in swapping?

So far as I know, there is no consensus over a solution to this paradox.  The "Cover's Strategy" is obviously rubbish if given a little thought - of course it works as a strategy, but it does not explain the paradox.
If an explanation does not exist then which predicate is false?  This has troubled me for over 10 years.

Abortion and Animal Rights

Imagine that someone creates a computer algorithm that can evolve, and when left to evolve for a couple of months it becomes as intelligent and conscious as you.  In my opinion it then has as much right to existence as any human.

What if the algorithm were started again, on its way to creating a 2nd artificial life - would you have any moral qualms about erasing it after it had been running for one day?  I don't think anyone would.  

I think that the question of what a life-form could become in the future is irrelevant to the question of how it should be treated right now.  I see this as completely analogous to the question of abortion, however I recognise that most people wouldn't value a computer based life as equal to a human life.  That view is not logical, and is another example of people having an opinion hardwired in by evolution and then trying to find justification for it after they have committed to it.

If it is accepted that a life-form only has value [right now] if [right now] it has consciousness and sentience, then the abortion question is very simple.  Abortion is definitely fine up to the point that the foetus has these characteristics.  Current scientific evidence suggests that a foetus shows signs of a personality and emotions at about 6 weeks after conception.  There is then a grey area until the level of consciousness and intelligence reaches the same level as the highest life-form that you would kill because it is tasty – perhaps a pig (as intelligent as dogs by most tests!).  A baby's brain does not develop this level of awareness until it is about 2 years old.  

You may instinctively recoil in horror at this apparent suggestion that killing a baby isn't really that bad, but remember that it is simply impossible for a species to exist if it doesn't evolve a strong protective instinct towards its young – that doesn't mean the instinct is morally correct, only that it is an evolutionarily fit strategy.  What is the moral difference between killing a pig or a cow, and killing a baby or severely retarded human if you accept that there is no a-priori reason that a human life is worth more than any other (an instinctive, quasi-religious belief).

Positive Action Vs Action by Omission

You are standing on a railway bridge and see a runaway carriage on one side, around a bend, careering towards five workmen on the other side.

There is no chance that they will see it in time or hear it coming, or hear your warning cries, due to their hard work with loud tools.

A fat man is also leaning over the bridge shouting to the men, and you can see that his bulk would derail the carriage (you don't believe you are hefty enough) and save five lives if you just give him a bit of a push down onto the rails.

Do you do it? The vast majority of people would say no; that actively killing someone is far worse (x5 worse? x100..?) than passively allowing someone to die. If you do nothing and they die then it is fate and you can't be blamed, whereas you most definitely would be blamed if you pushed a fat bloke off a bridge!

Is it possible for an emotional person to decide that the 'right' thing to do would be to push, and yet still know they would feel guilty if they did?  If they then didn't push, would they feel guilty about not doing what they thought was 'right'?

What would I do?  If I could do it anonymously with no chance of society judging me for it (they aren't qualified to judge me!) and sending me to prison, then I would.