[xpe]

Regarding your last two questions: I don’t care for the binary framing. By framing these prescriptive questions as a matter of degree, we can get a lot further. I’d ask it this way:

To what degree is it reasonable to hold people to prescriptive standards given the presence of imperfect conscious awareness, limited volition, and constrained rationality?

When one keep these realities things in mind, it can challenge us to better talk about what we mean wrt accountability.

Some might suggest that “the buck stops” where free will begins. Such a statement requires a lot of unpacking.

I don’t have room to unpack even a small fraction of the ideas in play here. So I think I’ll end with a few things.

1. In the United States popular culture (for example) there is an assumed but unexamined belief in conscious free will. This does not hold up to philosophical nor scientific scrutiny.

2. Unfortunately, simplistic moral claims have a tendency to shift our thinking away from good analysis towards judgmentalism. Many people here on HN know how to reason under uncertainty wrt debugging or attack trees. That same level of rigor needs to be used when analyzing human behavior and ethics.

3. When I say accountability, I think analyzing it in a consequentialist way might be the most useful.

For example, if someone drives particularly dangerously and puts others at risk, some interventions are justified. The calculus can be very complicated, and some of the key data may not be known with sufficient confidence. But I do think there are core principles that apply. I would say the dangerous driver might “deserve” a license suspension, for example, not because they had the free will to do otherwise, but because of the consequences.

There are lots of interesting ways to understand dangerous driver scenarios.

A. Take the exact same person and compare their behavior while seated in 150 hp vehicle as compared to a 400 hp vehicle. The latter environment provides more temptation and more opportunity for dangerous driving. Is an individual who opts for the quicker car thus morally culpable to some degree? Or does does it depend upon their levelheadedness and driving skills?

B. In some sense, our entire infrastructure in history that led up to incentivizing automobiles is a huge factor in predicting behavior patterns, vehicle and pedestrian accidents and deaths, inefficient land use, and more. How much blame should we “dole out” particular individuals over the course of history that led us here?

C. In some situations, it could be argued that driving is immoral, particularly when you have other options for transportation. This is kind of a raw deal for the individual who had nothing to do with how we got stuck in such a situation. But it also demonstrates that some people may hold individuals morally responsible even though one person are only a tiny part of the situation. This highlights how individualism run amok and unscientific views of free will can sometimes sabotage comprehensive rational thinking about ethics. To speak very loosely when I see an accident on the road, it is easy to point to the proximate causes such as a distracted driver or worn out tires. But we must not overlook the deeper systemic causal factors. If we want to progress as a society, we need to solve problems, not scapegoat.

## My Take

An unexpected benefit of dispensing with free will is that judgmentalism doesn’t get in the way of solving problems.

In this view, we justly lock up criminals not because they could’ve done otherwise. We lock them up for the exact opposite reason: their brains and bodies make the unacceptable behavior a predictable pattern at some level.

[brutusborn]

I respect the detail you give your answers, but I feel like they are avoiding the essence of the questions I posed.

I didn’t mean to frame them as a binary, I interpreted your premises as binary and just wanted to better understand them.

You say it’s a matter of degree, but I fail to see to what degree you think the individual is ‘responsible.’ You are happy to lock up a criminal because ‘their brain and bodies’ make a predictably bad behaviour, so it seems like you do think the individual is ‘responsible.’ In the same way I think we should allow people’s ‘brain and body’ to put themselves in harms way if it doesn’t predictably harm anyone else, thus we essentially hold them ‘responsible.’ I don’t think this is ‘judgementalism’ but rather just the best way to approach a complex situation (as you have shown). I cannot see any good alternatives.

At some point all this complexity needs to be discarded and we need to make a decision either way. We could write tomes about how complex this all is, but it doesn’t change the simplicity of how those intangible arguments become a tangible policy.

Fundamentally everything is a binary when it comes to behaviour, you either take a risk or you don’t. The complexity is fun to unpack but doesn’t fundamentally matter to what our behaviour is. In this case I think our behaviour should be to allow people to make risky personal decisions and accept the consequences for those decisions. It is unworkable to think society can or should hold everyone’s hand all the time.

[xpe]

> Fundamentally everything is a binary when it comes to behaviour, you either take a risk or you don’t.

You can apply binary categorization if you want, but that’s not what’s happening with the human body acting in the universe. Human actions have many degrees of freedom.

As one example, consider a cop deciding on how to respond to a vehicle stop. There are conservatively dozens of ways in which his response might vary. Does he call in for backup? How does he characterize the situation? How does approach the vehicle? What does he say to the driver? Does he place a hand on his gun? Does he draw a weapon?

As another example, consider a manager breaking some bad news to her employee. The possibilities for the human interaction are vast.

Why is it important to you to frame human actions or risk-taking as binary? Is it necessary for your argument? I struggle to see how.

But I’m also struggling to make sense of the moral philosophy you are outlining.

[brutusborn]

Aren’t all those things binary? The cop either (calls/doesn’t call) for backup. He says x or doesn’t say x (and says y or doesn’t say y). The whole spectrum is just a superposition of binary decisions.

And my moral philosophy isn’t comprehensive or consistent, essentially I think there are some useful moral standards (eg golden rule) but when it comes to details I’m a relativist, we can choose what we want, there is no true right or wrong.

[xpe]

> And my moral philosophy isn’t comprehensive or consistent, essentially I think there are some useful moral standards (eg golden rule) but when it comes to details I’m a relativist, we can choose what we want, there is no true right or wrong.

Which kind of moral relativism? There is quite a big difference between the various flavors...

> Descriptive moral relativism holds only that people do, in fact, disagree fundamentally about what is moral, with no judgment being expressed on the desirability of this.

> Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong.

> Normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when large disagreements about morality exist.

> Said concepts of the different intellectual movements involve considerable nuance and aren't absolute descriptions.

Quotes from Wikipedia [1], even though I prefer the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [2] for more detailed explanations.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/#ForArg

[brutusborn]

I don’t see much practical difference between the different flavours. I think you can judge morals only from the perspective of within a moral system. Thus tolerating other moral systems or not is arbitrarily determined by the moral system you choose.

[xpe]

Your statements about moral relativism are still confusing to me. I can’t tell how your personal preferences, such as valuing the golden rule, interact with some of the relativistic concepts here.

You are technically correct that to apply a set of morals you have to use a set of morals. This tautological reasoning of course is obvious, but this reasoning does not get at the key parts of these different kinds of moral relativism.

Let’s take normative moral relativism. Do you accept this as a valid position? Is it consistent with your beliefs? Why?

…

Thanks for discussing. I think there are probably better forums for us to unpack these ideas. I think we disagree enough to make it interesting yet are clear and patient enough to make discussion possible. LMW if this subject area or another would be something that you would like to unpack further. I’m prototyping some unusual discussion UIs.

[xpe]

> Aren’t all those things binary? The cop either (calls/doesn’t call) for backup. He says x or doesn’t say x (and says y or doesn’t say y). The whole spectrum is just a superposition of binary decisions.

We can label these actions in many ways, such as analog or discrete.

To revisit my earlier question: Does it matter to your philosophy how we label them? Why?

[brutusborn]

I guess it doesn’t matter, but it is the simplest way to look at the situation and so most useful. I would say it’s the most accurate for your consequentialist approach: certain binary actions lead to certain binary consequences.

In this case the binary action is getting in the sub or not. The outcome is dying or not. There is no analogue aspect of either. You can’t half enter a submarine or half die.

Decomposing things down to a binary is fundamentally how things work. We can analyse things to death and add our own mental/idealistic layers of continuity (like probabilities of outcomes or degrees of truthiness of statements), but the decisions that come from the analysis are always binary.

[xpe]

Sorry if I didn’t answer your questions, I’ll try again. There’s a chance that I’m not answering the questions in a way you like because I frame the questions differently.

> You are happy to lock up a criminal because ‘their brain and bodies’ make a predictably bad behaviour, so it seems like you do think the individual is ‘responsible.’

I suppose we need to unpack various meaning(s) of “responsible” then.

To clarify, I don’t hold a person ‘responsible’ in the way most people do; e.g. many people will suggest someone deserves a punishment because they had the freedom to do otherwise. I reject the idea that people have conscious free will. The universe just unfolds; individual decisions flow from the laws of the universe.

To clarify my argument: incarceration is just when the other options don’t work; i.e. the consequences are undesirable.

So, for example, if it were possible to take a dangerous person and guarantee that they would not be in an environment or situation where they would be a danger again, I don’t see the point of judging or punishing them based solely on some (mistaken) notion that they could’ve done anything differently.

That said, punishment may be just to the extent that it dissuades future lawbreaking.

Yes, there are consequences to one’s actions, especially in a society that strives for mutual respect and the rule of law. I think this is what you mean by ‘responsibility’?

I don’t care for how many people use ‘responsibility’.

(1) Too often such a meaning is so skewed towards individualism that it almost by definition rules out exploring collective action or systematic failures.

(2) It is easy to find the last proximate thing that “went wrong” and hold the person who did it “responsible”. But what about the more significant factors?

In so many cases, I think people expect people to be ‘responsible’ in ways that defy statistics. We need to stop “blaming” individuals and instead focus on solving problems.

Look at the number of car crashes. Are we really going blame the individuals? It seems awfully predictable that this many people are going to die. I touched on this issue in my above comment. It is much smarter to treat this as a system. Singling out particular people doesn’t solve the problem.

Another example. The phrase “don’t drink and drive” is good advice, but if you look at the number of times that drunk people get behind the wheel, it is clear that we can’t rely on individual responsibility to get the job done. Hence social movements for designated drivers, rules for people who serve alcohol, and more.

Judgmentalism is tricky to pin down. I try to distinguish an assessment from a judgment; an assessment is about facts whereas a judgment is about values. So when I talk about judgmentalism, I’m talking about this tendency of people to look at other people’s mistakes, and say/think “they should have known better and acted differently”.

I think I understand your perspective. Just to check: what is your stance on seatbelt laws and why?

I think it is in society’s interest to dissuade people from doing idiotic things. Of course, there is value in individual freedom too.

How often do completely victimless crimes occur?. The person who doesn’t wear their seatbelt ends up going to the hospital. That requires money and resources. Due to insurance and/or public funding, that person is not going to pay the full cost of that visit. Even if they paid the full cost, it still would have an effect on other people wanting to use the service around the same time.

> In this case I think our behaviour should be to allow people to make risky personal decisions and accept the consequences for those decisions.

Except that society likes having people around that are, well, alive, unmaimed, etc. for many reasons — for intrinsic value and also to contribute to society.

I’m not sure I have a comprehensive theory about the morality protecting people from themselves. But e.g. we know that humans are susceptible to alcoholism, so we try some things. I don’t think anyone thinks it is ethical to just let someone drink themselves to death — at least not until all other feasible options have been exhausted. Defining feasibility is not obvious. At some point we might say that the alcoholic’s life is not worth saving given the treatment cost.

> It is unworkable to think society can or should hold everyone’s hand all the time.

Loaded language again.

This is obvious but narrow. I grant that we don’t have unlimited money to do everything that we might want. But that has no bearing on what we should do with the money we have.

So I would ask you specify a principle that guides you.

When it comes to ethics, many thinkers define one or more or the following: principles, objectives, or ideal future states.

Most sensible ethical systems care about human flourishing and reducing human suffering. To those ends, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with getting help from a friend or a government. Whether or not social programs make sense is a calculation not a statement of first principles.

We should not put individualism on a pedestal. Nor should we put conformity on a pedestal. Human flourishing cannot be maximized by single-mindedly pursuing one narrow -ism.

[brutusborn]

I think I understand you now, and your position sounds sort of utilitarian / consequentialist? You don’t believe in free will so you don’t want to ‘blame’ or assume the individual is ‘responsible’ in any actionable way.

I agree with seatbelt laws since it is simple to regulate, doesn’t change driving very much and saves a huge number of lives and resources. Most people don’t understand how dangerous driving truly is.

There are a lot of differences between that and the minisub situation. One is scale, this doesn’t harm many people; another is relative danger, submarining is an incredibly dangerous activity (even naval vessels have major accidents). I think the main reason I don’t like suggestions to heavily regulate exploration is that it would basically prevent the activity occurring. We could ban all extreme sports and save many lives, but at what cost? I value the joy and excitement these things bring people, even with the massive danger.

Apologies for the loaded language, it probably doesn’t help the discussion. Sometimes I just can’t help myself (but I’m not responsible :P). Thanks for the interesting discussion.