Random thoughts about doomsday predictions, facts and beliefs, mother earth, and Santa Claus

I was at a Simon Fraser University philosopher's cafe recently where they discussed whether the world is heading towards a calamity with population growth, global warming etc.

A number of interesting points came out of the discussion for me.

1.  Fact versus beliefs.  Other than mathematics and logical problems that can be proved,  there are no known facts in this world.  The mathematical theorems themselves are theoretical and have little relevance to everyday living.  There are facts about the world but we never get to know for sure if we our current knowledge is the same as these facts.

Therefore, the only thing we have is beliefs.  A few hundred years ago, everyone believe the earth is flat and the sun revolve around the earth.  These were considered facts in those days until new information later on updated our beliefs.

So how do we know if some day, someone will prove that the earth is not round after all but some other shape?  It is unknowable and therefore we only have beliefs while the real facts are out there beyond our reach.

This is not as bad as it seems as our beliefs are close enough to the truth that predictions based on our beliefs are rather accurate and we manage quite well with it.

But we should not ever be so confident about "having the facts".  Knowing that we only have beliefs, even though they are very good beliefs leaves some room for us to accept the possibility that we can learn even from areas where we have expertise and "know" that "we know".

2.  Ideology oppresses.  This is nothing new and mention by Carl Marx. The general case of this extends to proponents of doomsday scenarios.  The arriving end of the world necessitates a change of our current priorities,  give no thought for tomorrow, give everything up and follow the wise man that enlighten us of our coming doom. At some point as the movement grows, the rest of us not believing in this are being oppressed by this thinking as we find our society hijacked by this priority which we do not believe in. This applies to social value systems such as capitalism versus socialism but also to "alternative" versus standard medical treatments, natural versus standard foods etc.

It in part explains why we want to win arguments as winning arguments establishes our ideology which makes us the powerful entity over others who end up being "oppressed" by our arguments.

3.  Religion and mother earth.  While most in the group agreed that religion tends to dampen proactive action by advocating giving up our fate to the supernatural, someone mentioned that he had known religious people who are very proactive in planning for the future.  He also know of atheists who nevertheless believe in going with nature, that mother nature has her way of dealing with things and not for us to interfere. In this sense, believing in mother nature is just as confining as believing in the supernatural.  It is our own attitude that matters.

4.  Hayek on social systems.  I always thought of Friedrich Hayek as an economist that believe in markets and against central planning.  Recently I realized that he also cautioned against making major changes to social rules and value systems that have been in place in our society for a long time. His believe is that long practiced rules in stable societies are tried and true practice from experience, not something theoretical.  This is crowd intelligence.  This resonates with me in looking at the recent wave of atheism in debunking religion.

Rational thinking can easily show that most religious text cannot stand up to scrutiny, but do we know the true effect of removing the all knowing supernatural from the daily lives of all of us?  Rationally, we should all continue to do good, but can we count on all of us to do that without the all knowing policeman in the heavens?

After all, parents routinely coerce and lie in the process of bringing up their children.  They tell their children that Santa will have no presents for children who do not listen to their parents. They plug up electrical outlets instead of logically educating their young about the hazards of sticking metal in those same outlets to see what happens.

If Santa Claus persists even if we all know it is not true,  should we maintain the religious myth to keep the less rational in our society in check?  

Dec 4 When is an incentive coercive?

This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing conditions when choices are made under coercion rather than free will.  Specifically, we will concentrate on incentives and whether we are always free to choose when an incentive is involved.

The topic came to me at Mano's philosophy cafe a week ago when we were discussing whether we know what is best for us. 

During the discussion, Mano put forward an example that to offer someone a million dollars to dance naked on the table in that room is coercive.

Do you think it is coercive?  After all, a million dollars is quite an incentive even if dancing naked on the table in front of a crowd is quite offensive to you. 

If you agree to do something that you would otherwise not do because the reward justifies it, is that coercion?

Or is it a free choice of being able to choose the money over the embarrassment of the act?  You are not forced to take the money,  you are merely offered the choice.

If you think this is a trivial example, consider the importance of defining coercion.

Our society depends on people making contracts with each other to perform task for a consideration of return in money or other goods and services. 

The underlying foundation is that we enter into these contracts of our own free will and not coerced.  Therefore, we are free and not oppressed.

So the sex worker freely decided to provide sexual services at a certain price because that is enough incentive to do so.  Or is the sexual worker coerced to do something she/he would rather not do if not for the sum offered?

Will most of us go to work if not for the money?  Are we coerced to work?

Are companies coerced by unions to sign "fair" contracts?

What if we now go back to the dancing naked on the table example and change the incentive from a million dollars to twenty dollars and offer it to someone who has not had a decent meal for a while for lack of money?

The incentive is not so great but the demand is more urgent.

If you think this is coercive, then how about the government's "fair" approach of choosing suppliers through competitive tender. 

Let the lowest price bidder get the job.  Good way to look after taxpayers value for money.

Should the buyer also look at the supplier to see if they are about to lay off employees if they do not get this contract?  We can see that the supplier is coerced to offer a lower contract bid in order to keep his employees employed.

Does the buyer have a duty to pay a higher price for what he need in order not to be coercive in his tendering practices?

Should all suppliers operate on the verge of bankruptcy so that they will get the next contract from "ethical" buyers?

What about suppliers who have a cost advantage over others?  If they can produce an item for a dollar and someone offers them two dollars for it,  are they coerced to take the two dollars rather than the one dollar?  Are they coerced to give up their honesty by not telling the buyer that the seller would have sold it for a dollar?

Should the buyer buy from another supplier that truly needed $2 to make the item instead of $1?

What about liquidation or "going out of business" sales.  Should be not participate? Help the business owner by buying his remaining stock?  Pay him regular price when he is offering the items at a discount?

What about "sweat shops" in developing countries? How far do we need to get into our supplier's situations when we buy something?  Should we refuse a supplier because his price offering is too low even if his employees "willingly" work for him at his labor rates?

What about the supplier's supplier?

Do we know how much of the extra money we pay for "fair trade" goods end up where?

Are we paying extra to feel good but negligent in follow up?

How much time do we have to do all this?

Meeting on "Duty"

We had our meeting on "duty" last night.  It was an interesting discussion.

We struggled a bit with the various notions of duty; those we gladly do, those we do to avoid penalties, then those we feel obliged to do.

Rafi pointed out that we are indoctrinated by our parents and other authority figures from a young age and this influenced us on what we feel is "proper".  It is difficult to change after that.

We also all feel obligated to keep in touch with our mother even though we may not enjoy the telephone calls with her, we know that she appreciates it and we want to do what brings pleasure to her. 

So a source of duty is to look after those we love.

The sense of duty also hit harder when one is in a position to make a difference.  One way to convince ourselves that it is not our duty to do something is to say that others will be doing it or that our action will not make a difference.

People who see a variety of perspectives and therefore are not so definite in their sense of right and wrong will also hesitate more before taking action, not sure that their action will help or hinder a cause.  This in turn lessens their sense of duty to act.

We form our ethics and moral compass in many ways.  Whether it is early indoctrination by parents, boy scouts, teachers, priests, etc.  The more clean cut these ethical standards are, the clearer we see where things "should" go.

Combine that with an occasion when we are thrust in a position to affect real change to correct or help events to move towards our ethical believes, and the sense of duty is heavy on us.

I was watching the Charlie Rose television interview program where he interviewed Clive Hill, the security agent on President Kennedy's limousine when the president was assassinated. Fifty years later, the agent still feels guilty that he did not perform his duty.  He was supposed to get above the president and take the bullet to protect the president.  His mission was clear, he was there where he could have done it and he felt the guilt for not doing his duty.  Only now, 50 years later and analyzing video and ballistics, is he beginning to accept that there is no possibility that he could have moved fast enough to protect the president and he is beginning to come out of his depression.

Crime bosses are powerful and they feel a sense of duty to be honorable in their own way for their community when they are looked upon to do something.  We may not agree with their ethics but duty also motivates them when their ethical standards are violated.

Bob said that the ability to act in a crisis is more a matter of training than analyzing.  There is no time to think.  Maybe it is a sense of duty or maybe it is just compassion but people act because something obviously needs to be done and they are on scene to do it.

So, very often it is the simple minded that take action while the thoughtful is assessing the situation.

Sometimes fast action save the drowning victim, sometimes the water is so violent the rescuer perishes with the victim.

It is not so simple to say we should just respond to the call of duty.

But we can always make a start by examining the origins of our ethical believe systems to make sure it is not just there because someone told us about it at an early age.

With a better founded ethical basis, our sense of duty will be that much better directed when the occasion calls on us.

Nov 27 Duty, how is it created and accepted?

Next Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing duty.

Is duty just a way of getting us to do what we otherwise will not do or want to do?

A justification when the action is counter intuitive to our self interest?

Let's examine the various ways in which duty is justified.

1.  As told by an authoritative figure.  Whether it is god, our parents, our government, or Confucius,  we are told that we have duties to perform and there are consequences if we don't.  There is little further explanation other than it just is the way it is.

2.  As part of a community or collective.  If we value the community that we are in, we have to play our part in protecting the community and help to make the community flourish.  Some of these activities may be counter to our self interest but our desire to better the community outweigh our self interests.  Duty to our community or the greater good of the collective becomes a simplified code towards this goal.

3.  Kantian morals. Logical frameworks such as Kant's imperative about not lying bind us to a "duty" not to lie so as to be consistent with our logic.  If one lie makes us a lair and we cannot trust a lair then logically it follows that we cannot ever lie.

4.   Accept consequence for our actions.  Parents have a duty to properly raise their children to adulthood since it is the parents that cause their children to be here in this world.  We have a duty to fulfill our promises and contracts. 

Of these justifications, the authoritative figure is the most questionable. 

Just because Confucius is reputed to be a great scholar, is that enough reason for us to accept his social code of deferring authority to age and family rank? His teachings are full of what one should do but little in why one should do it. 

It is a great way of maintaining social stability and the status quo, letting the powers to be continue and the less powerful looking forward to the day when they reach the age and rank to be powerful just through the passage of time.

Maybe that is the real reason for duty and that is to maintain social stability at all cost because the alternative of a chaotic society is so disruptive and unproductive.

Better to be in an ordered society even if the basis is somewhat questionable rather than chaos.

But dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are very ordered and they try hard to maintain that order and suppress chaos.  What is the difference?

In the Confucius social code case, there is a path for the duty bound to become the privileged someday.  Sons with duties to their parents become parents and there is the government exams allowing theoretically the possibility of anyone who study hard enough to become a government official and nobleman.

The members of the privileged class in a dictatorship are still in fear of the ultimate leader who can change the rules at any time.  The general public is cynical about ever getting a share of that privilege.

So it is a stabilizing social code with possible general participation that has the broad appeal, not just the order from chaos.

How does this explain the fascination with royalty?  When birthright bars most of us from being royals, why is there such support for royal families?  Are the royals a symbol of the community that we want to belong to? Or, are citizens simply ignorant of the various financial and social costs of having royal families?

As Jonathan Haidt, the author of "The Happiness Hypotheses" suggested, we are part individual and part bee in a bee hive.  We want our individual freedoms and pleasures but we also want to belong to a community with duties to the collective.

We need that queen bee?  but want our individual freedom?

Have our cake and eat it too?

I know what is best for me

I was at Mano's philosopher's cafe in New Westminster Wednesday night where the discussion was about the autonomy and freedom to make one's own decisions.

Mano challenges the contemporary idea that we are the best judge of our situation and therefore the best person to decide on matters pertaining to own well being.  There is no one else who knows what goes on in our minds and our true aspirations and therefore no one else can take that into consideration.

We then look at the situations where this may not be the case.

One possibility is that we do not know enough information of the outside world to make the decision.  We need specialists like doctors and other professionals to advise us of things we don't know that can be crucial to deciding.

Another is that we may not have the capacity or may be impaired at the time of decision making.  Young children may be too susceptible to outside influence like advertising to properly judge what is good for them. So is the case with persons whose mental capacity are compromised either temporarily through intoxication or more permanently through other causes.

From here, the examples slid down to more questionable shades of grey.

Is it really a free choice by a smoker to smoke?

Or is he influenced by his addiction resulting from trying smoking at an impressionable age when advertising convinced him that smoking is "cool"?

Our mothers generally have the best of intentions for our well being when giving us advice.  Given that she is also more experienced in life than we do, should we always follow our mother's advice?

When should we be paternalistic and take away someone's "free" choice because we know what is best for them?

Mano offered the example of the Canadian Government giving returning wounded war veterans a choice of a lump sum payment instead of their life time health and rehabilitation benefits. 

Those advocating free choice will say that it is an opportunity for the entrepreneurial among the veterans to use this to start a business, have a new life, and otherwise become independent of the rules of government health benefits.

Others will say that the veterans in their compromised health condition, especially those suffering mental effects from war, are in no position to make this decision and the temptation to take the lump sum and waste it is too great.

The discussion also moved to free choice versus choosing under coercion. 

Just when does incentive becomes coercive?

Mano felt that an offer to someone to dance naked on the table top for a million dollars is coercive as it is something that one normally will not do without the payment.

If you do not think that is coercive,  what if the payment is $50 and you want to use that money to buy food as you have not eaten for a while?

The definition of coercion is very difficult but important as it is crucial to whether decisions are made with "free" choice.

By philosophically stating that free choice is one made without coercion, we have not made any progress if coercion is just as hard to define as "free".

In the final analysis, the "goodness" of a decision depends on the value yardstick we use to measure whether a certain outcome is good or not. 

This value yardstick differs from person to person even though there may be broad social norms that heavily influence our value systems.

Our value yardstick is also influenced by others and changes with time.

We are the only one to know our value yardstick to apply it at decision making time.

We are also the one to live with the results of our decisions whether flawed or correct and to learn lessons to be applied to future decisions.

It can be easily argued that others know better than we do but it is not so easy to determine who these others are in any one situation and whether they know well enough to override our individual value yardsticks.

Then there is also the potentially scary scenario of being forced into a mental institution because society in general considers that we have lost our ability to decide but we think otherwise. 

Or that we are thought to be in a "coma" but we can actually hear what is going on but cannot physically move to indicate our consciousness to others.

Or the difficult decision to take children away from parents who the state decides is not fit to parent.

Messy business, less than ideal outcomes.

We can argue about whether advertising and lobbying special interest groups are skewing our decision making abilities but we have to be ever vigilant about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater when we start thinking that we know what is best for others.

Nov 13 - The Just War

This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing war.  Is there such a thing as a "just" war where killing and sacrifice is required?

Pacifist would say that nothing justifies the killing of another human being.

But what if it is the killing of a murderer that had the intention of killing many others if not stopped?

Coinciding with remembrance day and remembering the two world wars,  was defending against Germany, Italy, and Japan justified?  Would Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" agreement with Hitler a better approach than Churchill's "fight them everywhere" approach?

If it is justified to go to war in defense of our country, what about going to war in defense of our allies?

If that is justified, what about risking conflict to help some poor souls suffering under a dictatorship somewhere?

In defense of values such as equality and liberty that we value so highly but are often violated elsewhere with no prospect of changing without force?

What about disagreements that are cultural and religious based but infringing on what we believe are fundamental human rights? 

How do we balance human life versus principles?

Crusades and Jihads, are they not just fights against evil? Are our enemies really evil or are they just misguided, selfish, etc.  When do we give up trying to convince them of their misguided thinking?

Why do we resort to fighting when we can't agree?

Why do we want others to agree with us?

Are wars more based on emotional reaction to hatred and misunderstanding rather than differences in values?

Is an isolationist approach in building fences around one's state a realistic strategy to avoid war?

Does the study of history of wars invoke more hatred from past transgressions or promote more understanding towards forgiveness?