I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over. Or killing him in childhood or letting his artistic career succeed better would probably suffice (maybe Germany would then have been taken over by different warmongers blaming their troubles on other groups, but is it really credible that in every such version of the world we get something as bad as Hitler?).
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something. But that’s an entirely different defence from the one we’re discussing here, and I can’t say it seems like a very credible one anyway. (If we really need those technological advances and the state of Israel, aren’t there cheaper ways for omnipotence to arrange for us to get them?)
I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over.
I, too, think that this is extremely likely. This would show that Hitler’s orders were necessary for the Holocaust, but it would not show that they were sufficient—there’s probably at least a half-dozen or so people whose orders were also necessary for the Holocaust, and then of course there’s a lot of ways to prevent the Holocaust by affecting more than one person in some or other manner.
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something.
I doubt the political ramifications had much to do with it. The effect of thousands of people being placed in difficult moral situations and having to decide what to do might have been a factor, though; a sort of a stress testing of thousands of peoples’ free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves (because they’re now well aware of how bad things get when others think for them).
It doesn’t need to. The more ways there are to prevent the Holocaust, the more morally unimpressive not doing so becomes. Or, at least, the better the countervailing reasons need to be.
a sort of a stress testing of thousands of people’s free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
(Or: It is very easy to think for yourself when you are dead because you have then transcended the confusions and temptations of this mortal life. But I don’t think anyone’s going to argue seriously that the Holocaust was a good thing because the people murdered in it were thereby enabled to make better decisions post mortem. The only reason for this paragraph is to forestall complaints that the one before it assumes atheism.)
So, um… to go back along this line of argument a few posts, then...
it wasn’t just Hitler; there were a whole lot of people working under his command whose free will was also involved.
...this means you’re in agreement with what I wrote here, right?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
And several million other people hid jews in their attics; attempted (at great personal risk) to smuggle jews to safe places; helped jews across the borders; or, on the other side, hunted jews down, deciding to obey evil orders; arrested people and sent them to death camps; ran or even built said camps… and were, in one or another way, put through the wringer.
I can’t find the reference now, but I do seem to recall reading—somewhere—that Holocaust survivors were significantly less likely to fall victim to the Milgram experiment or similar things.
(I’m not talking about the people who were killed at all.)
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
1. The Holocaust could probably have been prevented, with no extra adverse consequences of similar severity, by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will. 2. Therefore, a “free will” defence of (the compatibility of theism with) the world’s evil needs to consider that one person’s free will to be of comparable importance to all the suffering and death of the Holocaust. 3. If free will is that important, then in place of (or in addition to) the “problem of evil” we have a “problem of unfreedom”; we are all less free than we might have been, in many ways, and even if that unfreedom is only one millionth as severe as what it would have taken to stop the Holocaust, a billion people’s unfreedom is like a thousand Holocausts. 4. This seems to me to be a fatal objection to this sort of “free will” theodicy. (The real problem is clearly in step 2; we all know, really, that Hitler’s free will—or that of any of the other people whose different decisions would have sufficed to prevent the Holocaust—isn’t more important than millions of horrible deaths.)
And several million other people [...]
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million. And, please, actually think about this for a moment. Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil? And are you seriously suggesting that the fact that a whole lot of other Germans had the glorious opportunity to exercise their free will and decide to go along with the extermination of the Jews makes this better?
I think I recall reading of a Christian/atheist debate in which someone—Richard Swinburne? -- made a similar suggestion, and his opponent—Peter Atkins? Christopher Hitchens? -- was heard to growl “May you rot in hell”. I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian, but I agree with the overall sentiment.
...you know, a lot of what you’ve been saying over the past few days makes so much more sense now. In effect, you’re looking for the minimum intervention to prevent the Holocaust. (And it should have been possible to do that without taking control of Hitler’s actions; a sudden stroke, bolt of lightning, or well-timed meteor strike could have prevented Hitler from ever doing anything again without removing free will). Considering how much importance the universe seems to put on free will, this might be considered an even more minimal intervention (and no matter how much importance free will is assigned, one life is less than six million lives).
Which leads us directly to the question of why lightning doesn’t strike sufficiently evil people, preferably just before they do something sufficiently evil.
To which the answer, expressed in the simplest possible form, is “I don’t know”. (At best, I can theorise out loud, but it’s all going to end up circling back round to “I don’t know” in the end).
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million.
Well, if each one was helped by one person, refused help by one person, and arrested by one person, then that’s eighteen million moral dilemmas being faced. (Presumably one person could face several of these dilemmas).
Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil?
No. I don’t. I’m very sure that it’s nowhere near a complete picture of all the consequences of the Holocaust, but (2) is nowhere near (1).
...and neither (2) nor (1) (nor both of them together) are a complete accounting of all the consequences of the Holocaust.
I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian,
I have it on good authority (from a parish priests’ sermon, unfortunately he does not publish his sermons to the internet so I can’t link it) that the RCC agrees with you on this point.
by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will.
That implies the “great people” approach to human history (history is shaped by actions of individual great people, not by large and diffuse economic/social/political/etc. forces) -- are you willing to accept it?
I think it implies only a rather weak version of the “great people” approach: some things of historical significance are down to individual people. (Who might be “great” in some sense, but might instead simply have been in a critical place at a critical time.) And yes, I’m perfectly willing to accept that; is there a reason why you would expect me not to?
Without Hitler, Germany would still have been unstable and at risk of being swayed by some sort of extremist demagogue willing to blame its troubles on Someone Else. So I’d assign a reasonable probability to something not entirely unlike the Nazi regime arising even without Hitler. It might even have had the National Socialists in charge. But their rhetoric wouldn’t have been the same, their policies wouldn’t have been the same, their tactics in war (if a war happened) wouldn’t have been the same, and many things would accordingly have been different. The extermination of millions of Jews doesn’t seem particularly inevitable, and I would guess that in (so to speak) most possible worlds in which Hitler is somehow taken out of the picture early on, there isn’t anything very much like the Holocaust.
It’s not my fault if the nearest correct thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from my opinions happens not to be falsifiable. (It’s not even clear that strong forms of the “great people” theory are falsifiable, actually.)
Of course an opinion can be useful without being falsifiable. “Human life as we see it is not utterly worthless and meaningless,” is probably not falsifiable (how would you falsify it?), but believing it is very useful for avoiding suicide and the like.
Opinions are not falsifiable by their nature (well, maybe by revealed preferences). But, hopefully, core approaches to the study of history (e.g. “great people” vs “impersonal forces”) are more than mere opinions.
Quite possibly not. Is that a problem? (The way this conversation feels to me: You claim that X follows from my opinions. I say: no, only the much weaker X’ does. You then complain that X’ is unfalsifiable and useless. Quite possibly, but so what? I expect everyone has beliefs from which one can deduce unfalsifiable and useless things.)
A recap from my side: I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked if you subscribe to the theory. You said yes, to a weak version. I pointed out that the weak version is unfalsifiable and useless. You said “so what?”
I don’t think that a version of a theory that has been sufficiently diluted and hedged to be unfalsifiable and so useless can be said to be a meaningful version of a theory. It’s just generic mush.
I’m not trying to trap you. I was interested in whether you actually believe in the “great people” theory (homeopathic versions don’t count). It now seems that you don’t. That is perfectly fine.
I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked
Actually, you did both:
That implies the “great people” approach to human history [...] -- are you willing to accept it?
(An aside: where I come from, saying “Your opinion implies X; are you willing to accept X?” is a more adversarial move than simply saying “Your opinion implies X” since it carries at least a suggestion that maybe they believe things that imply X without accepting X, hence inconsistency or insincerity or something.)
It’s just generic mush.
My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that the nearest thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from anything I’ve said is what you are describing as “generic mush”. (Perhaps next time I will be less polite and just say “No, that’s bullshit, no such thing follows from anything I’ve said” rather than trying to find the nearest thing I can that does follow. I was hoping that you would either explain why it would be interesting if I accepted the “generic mush” or else explain why you think something stronger than the “generic mush” follows from what I wrote, and confess myself rather taken aback at the tack you have actually taken.)
As to the “great people” theory: I believe that some historical events are down to the actions of individuals (who may or may not be great in any other sense) while some are much more the result of large and diffuse phenomena involving many people. That isn’t a statement that has a lot of readily evaluable observable consequences, but it’s the best answer I can give to the question you asked. (As I said above, I’m not sure that the “great people” theory itself, even in strong forms, actually fares any better in terms of verifiability or falsifiability.)
I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over. Or killing him in childhood or letting his artistic career succeed better would probably suffice (maybe Germany would then have been taken over by different warmongers blaming their troubles on other groups, but is it really credible that in every such version of the world we get something as bad as Hitler?).
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something. But that’s an entirely different defence from the one we’re discussing here, and I can’t say it seems like a very credible one anyway. (If we really need those technological advances and the state of Israel, aren’t there cheaper ways for omnipotence to arrange for us to get them?)
I, too, think that this is extremely likely. This would show that Hitler’s orders were necessary for the Holocaust, but it would not show that they were sufficient—there’s probably at least a half-dozen or so people whose orders were also necessary for the Holocaust, and then of course there’s a lot of ways to prevent the Holocaust by affecting more than one person in some or other manner.
I doubt the political ramifications had much to do with it. The effect of thousands of people being placed in difficult moral situations and having to decide what to do might have been a factor, though; a sort of a stress testing of thousands of peoples’ free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves (because they’re now well aware of how bad things get when others think for them).
It doesn’t need to. The more ways there are to prevent the Holocaust, the more morally unimpressive not doing so becomes. Or, at least, the better the countervailing reasons need to be.
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
(Or: It is very easy to think for yourself when you are dead because you have then transcended the confusions and temptations of this mortal life. But I don’t think anyone’s going to argue seriously that the Holocaust was a good thing because the people murdered in it were thereby enabled to make better decisions post mortem. The only reason for this paragraph is to forestall complaints that the one before it assumes atheism.)
So, um… to go back along this line of argument a few posts, then...
...this means you’re in agreement with what I wrote here, right?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
And several million other people hid jews in their attics; attempted (at great personal risk) to smuggle jews to safe places; helped jews across the borders; or, on the other side, hunted jews down, deciding to obey evil orders; arrested people and sent them to death camps; ran or even built said camps… and were, in one or another way, put through the wringer.
I can’t find the reference now, but I do seem to recall reading—somewhere—that Holocaust survivors were significantly less likely to fall victim to the Milgram experiment or similar things.
(I’m not talking about the people who were killed at all.)
1. The Holocaust could probably have been prevented, with no extra adverse consequences of similar severity, by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will. 2. Therefore, a “free will” defence of (the compatibility of theism with) the world’s evil needs to consider that one person’s free will to be of comparable importance to all the suffering and death of the Holocaust. 3. If free will is that important, then in place of (or in addition to) the “problem of evil” we have a “problem of unfreedom”; we are all less free than we might have been, in many ways, and even if that unfreedom is only one millionth as severe as what it would have taken to stop the Holocaust, a billion people’s unfreedom is like a thousand Holocausts. 4. This seems to me to be a fatal objection to this sort of “free will” theodicy. (The real problem is clearly in step 2; we all know, really, that Hitler’s free will—or that of any of the other people whose different decisions would have sufficed to prevent the Holocaust—isn’t more important than millions of horrible deaths.)
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million. And, please, actually think about this for a moment. Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil? And are you seriously suggesting that the fact that a whole lot of other Germans had the glorious opportunity to exercise their free will and decide to go along with the extermination of the Jews makes this better?
I think I recall reading of a Christian/atheist debate in which someone—Richard Swinburne? -- made a similar suggestion, and his opponent—Peter Atkins? Christopher Hitchens? -- was heard to growl “May you rot in hell”. I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian, but I agree with the overall sentiment.
Oh.
...you know, a lot of what you’ve been saying over the past few days makes so much more sense now. In effect, you’re looking for the minimum intervention to prevent the Holocaust. (And it should have been possible to do that without taking control of Hitler’s actions; a sudden stroke, bolt of lightning, or well-timed meteor strike could have prevented Hitler from ever doing anything again without removing free will). Considering how much importance the universe seems to put on free will, this might be considered an even more minimal intervention (and no matter how much importance free will is assigned, one life is less than six million lives).
Which leads us directly to the question of why lightning doesn’t strike sufficiently evil people, preferably just before they do something sufficiently evil.
To which the answer, expressed in the simplest possible form, is “I don’t know”. (At best, I can theorise out loud, but it’s all going to end up circling back round to “I don’t know” in the end).
Well, if each one was helped by one person, refused help by one person, and arrested by one person, then that’s eighteen million moral dilemmas being faced. (Presumably one person could face several of these dilemmas).
No. I don’t. I’m very sure that it’s nowhere near a complete picture of all the consequences of the Holocaust, but (2) is nowhere near (1).
...and neither (2) nor (1) (nor both of them together) are a complete accounting of all the consequences of the Holocaust.
I have it on good authority (from a parish priests’ sermon, unfortunately he does not publish his sermons to the internet so I can’t link it) that the RCC agrees with you on this point.
That implies the “great people” approach to human history (history is shaped by actions of individual great people, not by large and diffuse economic/social/political/etc. forces) -- are you willing to accept it?
I think it implies only a rather weak version of the “great people” approach: some things of historical significance are down to individual people. (Who might be “great” in some sense, but might instead simply have been in a critical place at a critical time.) And yes, I’m perfectly willing to accept that; is there a reason why you would expect me not to?
Without Hitler, Germany would still have been unstable and at risk of being swayed by some sort of extremist demagogue willing to blame its troubles on Someone Else. So I’d assign a reasonable probability to something not entirely unlike the Nazi regime arising even without Hitler. It might even have had the National Socialists in charge. But their rhetoric wouldn’t have been the same, their policies wouldn’t have been the same, their tactics in war (if a war happened) wouldn’t have been the same, and many things would accordingly have been different. The extermination of millions of Jews doesn’t seem particularly inevitable, and I would guess that in (so to speak) most possible worlds in which Hitler is somehow taken out of the picture early on, there isn’t anything very much like the Holocaust.
That, of course, is not a falsifiable statement :-)
It’s not my fault if the nearest correct thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from my opinions happens not to be falsifiable. (It’s not even clear that strong forms of the “great people” theory are falsifiable, actually.)
I am not talking about faults, but if it’s not falsifiable, can it be of any use?
Of course an opinion can be useful without being falsifiable. “Human life as we see it is not utterly worthless and meaningless,” is probably not falsifiable (how would you falsify it?), but believing it is very useful for avoiding suicide and the like.
Opinions are not falsifiable by their nature (well, maybe by revealed preferences). But, hopefully, core approaches to the study of history (e.g. “great people” vs “impersonal forces”) are more than mere opinions.
Quite possibly not. Is that a problem? (The way this conversation feels to me: You claim that X follows from my opinions. I say: no, only the much weaker X’ does. You then complain that X’ is unfalsifiable and useless. Quite possibly, but so what? I expect everyone has beliefs from which one can deduce unfalsifiable and useless things.)
A recap from my side: I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked if you subscribe to the theory. You said yes, to a weak version. I pointed out that the weak version is unfalsifiable and useless. You said “so what?”
I don’t think that a version of a theory that has been sufficiently diluted and hedged to be unfalsifiable and so useless can be said to be a meaningful version of a theory. It’s just generic mush.
I’m not trying to trap you. I was interested in whether you actually believe in the “great people” theory (homeopathic versions don’t count). It now seems that you don’t. That is perfectly fine.
Actually, you did both:
(An aside: where I come from, saying “Your opinion implies X; are you willing to accept X?” is a more adversarial move than simply saying “Your opinion implies X” since it carries at least a suggestion that maybe they believe things that imply X without accepting X, hence inconsistency or insincerity or something.)
My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that the nearest thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from anything I’ve said is what you are describing as “generic mush”. (Perhaps next time I will be less polite and just say “No, that’s bullshit, no such thing follows from anything I’ve said” rather than trying to find the nearest thing I can that does follow. I was hoping that you would either explain why it would be interesting if I accepted the “generic mush” or else explain why you think something stronger than the “generic mush” follows from what I wrote, and confess myself rather taken aback at the tack you have actually taken.)
As to the “great people” theory: I believe that some historical events are down to the actions of individuals (who may or may not be great in any other sense) while some are much more the result of large and diffuse phenomena involving many people. That isn’t a statement that has a lot of readily evaluable observable consequences, but it’s the best answer I can give to the question you asked. (As I said above, I’m not sure that the “great people” theory itself, even in strong forms, actually fares any better in terms of verifiability or falsifiability.)