Variations on the Trolley Problem

I'm sure we've talked about the famous 'trolley problem' many times. Classically, there's no right answer to it, but it exists to expose the fact that moral intuitions differ. You ask a group of people to consider this problem:

There's an out of control trolley speeding toward a group of people. If it rushes in amongst them, it will kill a number of them and injure others. You are near a switch that would allow you to redirect the trolley away from those people, onto a track where there's only one person. Do you pull the switch?

What we learn from the problem is that some people feel very strongly that it would be wrong to pull the switch, because that implicates them in guilt for killing the one man. The world as they find it is not their fault, but electing to act means taking responsibility for the choice. Thus, they will let many people die to avoid being personally guilty for one death.

Others -- myself included -- feel that not acting is also a choice, and the desire to avoid responsibility is thus a false choice. Even here, moral intuitions differ. Some will pull the switch, believing it better to choose to save more lives. Others will refuse, believing that their chief duty is to refuse to commit murder. Roughly speaking, these choices break you out into the two leading contemporary schools of ethics, consequentialism (i.e., that morality means doing what has the best consequences for the most people) and deontology (i.e., that morality means doing your duty).

Now that I've told you all that, in case any readers weren't familiar with it, we can all enjoy the joke together.

UPDATE: Still more variations.

Unspeakable Adventures

The original classic.



Now, featuring David Hasselhoff!



No, I don't know how this happened.

Priorities

Well, it's good to know that the fine law enforcement folks in Minnesota are taking care of the most serious crimes facing their communities.

The Primary Mission and First Priority of the US Army

The commanding officer of the US Army ROTC program in Arizona has required his training battalion to wear their uniform in a manner violating regulations and the dignity of his cadets as part of a training exercise on sexual harassment. (I consider that it is a violation of dignity, even for female cadets who might otherwise wear these shoes of their own free will, to be required to wear sexualized attire with their service uniform.) The command's Facebook page describes this as a voluntary show of support for women by cadets. A little different story comes from the cadets themselves (brief harsh, but entirely deserved, language):



This commanding officer should be relieved and disciplined. Imagine what this does to the very recruitment of fine potential officers that is his chief responsibility. With the current leadership, however, it is as likely that he will be taken to be a good example. In addition to giving lip service (or foot service?) to the Army's new "primary mission," it's sure to be effective in the pursuit of the #2 priority of shrinking the Army.

Any other mission is harmed, if we still have any other missions. I can imagine Putin is distributing propaganda posters of US soldiers marching in drag even now.

Another Run at Moral Truths in Education

I didn't handle the previous post on this topic well, but I feel like there are some important issues at stake so I'm taking another run at it. In the last few years there have been a number of schools and school systems with mass cheating problems, most infamously in Atlanta where the teachers themselves were participating, and I believe that the incidences we know about are just the tip of the ice berg. There are almost certainly a number of factors at work in explaining the recent problems with cheating, but my chief concern is that rather than teaching critical thinking, our schools are destroying students' ability to think critically, that there are some terrible results of teaching this way, and that we as a society must do better.

I will again begin with professor of philosophy Justin P. McBrayer's New York Times article on the topic.

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from.

 He goes on to describe his discovery that his 2nd grade son was being taught the following definitions for 'fact' and 'opinion' and that part of learning critical thinking for his son's class meant sorting claims into the categories of either fact or opinion.

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

He did some research and found that this was standard across the Common Core curriculum, including in higher grades.

What does he claim is wrong about this? First, these definitions conflate truth with proof: truth is "a feature of the world" and proof is "a feature of our mental lives." Something can be true but unprovable, and sometimes we "prove" something that turns out to be false. Second, students are directed to sort claims into a list of either facts or opinions, but many claims are both: If you believe something that is true, then it is both a fact and an opinion.

How does this connect to the amorality or moral relativism of today's freshmen? According to McBrayer, schools that use Common Core spend 12 years indoctrinating students with the idea that claims are either fact or opinion but not both, and that all value statements fall into the opinion category. In doing so, they are thoroughly convincing students that there can be no moral truths. Thus, the idea that cheating or murder are wrong is just someone's opinion, and if someone has a different opinion, that's OK.

Additionally, this way of teaching critical thinking produces a powerful doublethink in students' minds. Schools do teach morality in their codes of conduct, such things as academic integrity, student rights, student responsibilities, etc. But according to their own critical thinking instruction, these are mere opinions, and many students see that. Many others, I believe, are taught not to see the difference at all and doublethink becomes normal for them.

What is the answer? As McBrayer points out, the actual Common Core standard is to sort things into facts, opinions, and reasoned judgments. However, apparently teaching 'reasoned judgment' is being left out, but that is exactly what we should be focusing on. He states:

We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.

While there are other factors at work in the recent glut of cheating scandals, I agree with McBrayer that this is one factor, and I think it's important that we be aware of this failure in our education system. To the extent that we can, we need to advocate for changing the way this is taught in our local schools. And, to the extent that we have the opportunity, we need to correct this idea in students, whether we are teachers or not.

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PS I'll make another run at whether there are moral truths or not, and if so whether we can ever prove them, in another post.

Scythe Beats Brushcutter

And a video that shows the scythe-work up close:

Captain Tagon is my Kind of Guy

There's a maxim in there somewhere.

Unfree Labor

Searching for the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” one that can “provide you with all the advantages” of domestic workers, but with “offshore prices”? Try prison labor!

That’s the message of Unicor, also known as Federal Prison Industries, a government-owned corporation that employs federal workers for as little as 23 cents an hour to manufacture military uniforms, furniture, electronics and other products.

Well, plus free room and board.

Yeoman Farmers

Kevin Williamson makes a point I agree with, though he credits it to Hayek instead of Jefferson.

Independent contractor? Quelle horreur!

F. A. Hayek worried (presciently, as it turns out) that the two faces of dependency—as public ward or as hireling—would encourage certain undesirable mental and political habits, a kind of deep-set servility born of the delegation of basic responsibilities from the individual and the family to large bureaucracies, public or private. The Company Man and the Obamaphone Lady have more in common than you’d think.

It's best to own one's own means of production. That way, you have the maximum ability to live with genuine liberty.

The Administration's Priorities for the Army

The headline says something important, although if you were paying attention you already knew it because Gen. Odierno said in 2013 that fighting sexual assault should be the "primary mission" of the Army. That would be most perfectly done by disbanding the Army, which would result in a 100% decrease in sexual assault within the service.

So it's interesting that the #2 priority is... shrinking the Army. This is described in terms of "balance" and "skillful transition," but explicitly it is about "declining budgets." (The other most effective thing we could do -- eliminating units in which people who are sexually attracted to each other serve together -- is a non-starter for this administration, which is running as hard as it can in the opposite direction for its last two years.)

It's curious that, with Middle East on fire, our Army's top two priorities are these two. But if we intend to pass the problem off to Iran by helping them expand their regional hegemony and erect their nuclear umbrella, I suppose we won't need an Army capable of going to the Middle East with any superior force. If we go at all, it'll be as partners with Iran. Indeed, in Iraq, that's already the role we are playing.

Iran "Deal" Grows Murkier

Iran releases its own fact sheet, claiming it will operate 10,000 centrifuges including in its underground bunker at Fordow.

The Virgin Mary Consoles Eve

From a church in Mississippi, I gather.

N'Awlins Got This Covered

May Have Been The Losing Side

Not convinced it wasn't the Viking one.

Results from a quiz:

Harald Hardrada (The vikings)

You would fight for Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, who is sometimes known as the “last Viking ruler.” You believe ambition and strength are excellent leadership qualities, and you value a vision of expansion and growth. Unfortunately, Harald will not achieve the level of power you think he should. He will be defeated by Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge in September 1066.

Inequality

Elizabeth Price Foley has a long post at Instapundit about the coming end to bans on prostitution and polygamy. Really, once you've legalized gay "marriage," you've already gone well beyond polygamy: any sort of union between reproductive couples/triples/whatever is less a violation of the principle of marriage than what you've already approved. There's no longer any reason to mind consensual unions between men and horses, if that's what they really want. We can wash our hands of it, once "gay marriage" is approved: go that far, and there is nothing beyond the Pale.

The funny thing is that all this is being done in the name of "equality." But as Foley recognizes, equality is the least likely result:

And the mother in me (which is inherently conservative) –with a teenage daughter– gets a little worried when I think of a world in which prostitution and polygamy are legal. The times, they are a-changin.’

Polygamy and prostitution are fine, as long as you don't care that much about your daughters.

I'm Sure This Is In There Somewhere

Uh-oh.

What genius decided this was a good idea?

Congress May Still Have a Foreign Policy Role After All

Unanimous vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to restrain the White House from pursuing the Iran deal without coming to Congress.

A Response To Tex's Priest

'You shall all get the same public shaming as that pizza place.'

I find it endlessly amusing that shame is the weapon of choice here. The whole force of this argument is that somehow gays are being made to feel as if they are shameful by being "denied" marriage or, now that SCOTUS seems prepared to set aside the laws and constitutions of a majority of states to help them overcome this shame, wedding cakes on demand. For a majority to use its size and voice to make a minority feel ashamed is such a positive evil that the world must be turned on its head to avoid it.

And if you don't agree, we'll show up en mass to shame you freaks.

A Corrupt Politician Runs For President

The advantages of being Hillary Clinton in the presidential race just starting are these:

1) Everyone knows you to be a corrupt, manipulative deceiver who is motivated solely by your own interest, and knows you so well that absolutely nothing you can do or say will surprise anyone. No scandal can derail you, because no one expects any better from you.

2) This corruption is a positive recommendation to the richest and most influential political factors: large banks, multinational corporations, and big Labor. They will be delighted to have a President whose administration can always be bought when there's a difficulty.

3) You stand astride a Democratic National Committee that will not dare to cross you. The nomination, at least, is yours unless your health should decline so suddenly that you cannot plausibly serve as President. It is "your turn," everyone agrees, and no one who might credibly challenge you is preparing to do so.

The disadvantages are these:

A) No actual citizens want you to be President.

(i) The true Left does not believe in you.

(ii) The Right doesn't like you either.

(iii) The moderate center tends to want honest, effective government at relatively low tax rates. No one thinks you will provide any of that: the corruption of Clintonworld is infamous, the ineffectiveness of the State Department under your leadership compellingly obvious, the failure of your signature health care proposals your other most famous 'achievement,' and your readiness to raise taxes assumed.

B) Machines can get votes lined up in spite of zero enthusiasm, but that only gets you the bluest states. You've got to be competitive in states where machines such as labor unions are much weaker, such as Florida.

So you'll have plenty of money, given (2), and an easy path to the nomination, given (3). You'll thus have tons of cash to focus on the general election, and you'll be running against a Republican who will be weakened by the primary -- with any luck, some of his flaws will have been exposed for your attack dogs.

Still, you've got to get people to show up and pull the lever for you. No one really wants to. The worst part of being 'inevitable' is that your forthcoming Presidency is seen as a sort of chore even by Democrats. Maybe it's just something they have to do, but it's not something they are at all looking forward to doing.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, that lack of enthusiasm is enough to prove her undoing.