The Story of Bob does have an adequate answer in the “vocabulary of harms”. The implicit claim that it does not echoes claims of Jonathan Haidt in much of his work on morality, especially his “five pillars” theory and subsequent extrapolations which have been eagerly seized upon by conservative proponents as evidence that liberals are narrow-minded.
It therefore irritates me a great deal when I see such claims going unchallenged, despite their (to me, anyway) obvious inaccuracy.
Here, then, is my “harm/care-based moral system” take on The Sacrifice of Bob:
I’m going to presume that the fictional culture in the story is reasonably happy and prosperous, otherwise we would have been talking about how terrible their culture is even before the sacrifice had taken place.
(1) Given that this fictional culture and its president have a good track record at keeping the peace (in diametric opposition to certain other presidents whose similar but much less moral actions are implicitly being referred to), and that Bob’s sacrifice probably saved millions of lives, there is nothing wrong with the President’s action—certainly nothing worse than that of a general sending a soldier into a known death trap.
(2) Given that this culture seems to achieve goals we value (reasonably happy, prosperous people) while using morals we find questionable (highly authoritarian), I should think that we would want to study them intently to see how they do it. Perhaps we can learn some things—or perhaps the appearance of happiness and prosperity will turn out to have hidden costs.
Having now played a turn by the rules, I have a bone to pick with the basic concept.
The problem with such examples is that you are basing an implicit conclusion—“harm-based morality is limited”—on a fiction, a lie. It’s a complex form of circular reasoning: “Imagine a world in which this particular form of morality inexplicably produces positive results. Don’t you feel silly trying to defend your morality now?” or even “Imagine a universe in which the earth is a flat disc riding on the back of 4 elephants. How can you stick to your narrow-minded idea that Earth is a spheroid orbiting the sun when in some other universe it might not be?”
All that said, I think I agree with the ground ground rules you propose at the end. I have always said that inability to explain one’s reasoning doesn’t prove one wrong, and that science needs to pay more attention to intuition (reasoning based on summed data for which complete records were not kept) -- but there do need to be guidelines, because intuition should no more trump science unilaterally than the other way round.
My impression of the thought experiment is that there’s suppose to be no implication that their side winning the war would be any better than the other side winning. Their side winning is explicitly about maintaining social status and authority. “Keep harm at a low level” might mean “lower than a Hobbesian war of all against all”, not necessarily low by our standards.
It seems like maybe the thought experiment could be improved by explicitly rephrasing it to make their nation be a pretty terrible place by our standards and winning the war be bad overall. That would rather complicate things though when the point is Bob being tortured and killed.
So maybe it should be the country is at peace and “The president feels much more relaxed and it able to work better at crafting his new anti-homosexuality legislation” or something like that?
However, I do on an unrelated note really like your comment about “Imagine a world in which this particular form of morality inexplicably produces positive results. Don’t you feel silly trying to defend your morality now?”. I’ve noticed (...although I have trouble thinking of actual examples, but I’m sure I’ve seen some) that in a fair amount of fiction there’s a tendency to have Utilitarian villains with plans that will clearly bring about terrible results, as a result of them having made a very obvious error which the heroes are for some reason able to spot, which when used as an argument against Utilitarianism is pretty much literally “this particular form of morality inexplicably produces negative results”.
(obviously it’s entirely possible for Utilitarians to make mistakes which have horrendous consequences. It’s just that as a rule, on average, Utilitarianism will get you better consequences from a Utilitarian standpoint than non-consequential Hollywood Morality. Which is exactly why it’s such an appealing argument to use in fiction, because it’s a plausible scenario which leads to obviously incorrect conclusions if generalized.)
I would take Bob’s deal if either adequately compensated or convinced that the premise was true. I already have done work for pay that was so unpleasant I’d rather be tortured for a short time than do that sort of work again, and time wasted is partial death anyway.
As for our culture in general, this deal is very very common. Many people watch someone from another universe, a ‘fictional person’ being tortured to death for their entertainment, and there isn’t any proof that the characters in, say, Saw, aren’t real people somewhere. Now, before we come down hard on horror fans, note that every fan of the Dark Knight movie with Heath Ledger is watching entertainment that killed someone. Every person who relaxes by reading history or war …. everyone who reads the Bible or watches most entertainment based on it. At least Eliezer’s example President is honest enough to say that he needs to watch this to refresh his spirit; people (like me!) who go and refresh their spirit by looking at past sufferings of people, animals, etc are at least ‘guilty’ of encouraging that type of suffering
in much the same way that hamburger buyers (in a modern farm economy) are guilty of causing animal suffering.
Note that /I do not think suffering is bad/ in and of itself. Sometimes it /is/ necessary. Bob and the President might just be doing something sensible.
Considering that IRL we have had a series of leaders who make themselves feel better by /torturing people non-consensually/, I’d rather live in Bob’s world where it’s Bradley Manning, or some random Afghan goat farmer whose neighbor wanted to graze on their land, who is getting tortured, in some cases to death, so that Great Leader can feel better.
Many people watch someone from another universe, a ‘fictional person’ being tortured to death for their entertainment, and there isn’t any proof that the characters in, say, Saw, aren’t real people somewhere.
Likewise, if you watch fiction where people are happy, there isn’t any proof that the existence of a happy character in your fiction isn’t associated with a real person somewhere who is suffering.
Thinking about the possibility that there’s a suffering person who corresponds to fiction about a suffering fictional character, but not thinking about the possibility that there’s a suffering person who corresponds to a happy fictional character, or for that matter the possibility that there’s a suffering person (created by a perverse Omega) who comes into existence whenever you eat a slice of pizza is a form of availability bias. It’s easier to imagine the former since your mind is processing the concept of suffering at the time, but there’s no actual reason to expect that that pair is any more closely connected than any other arbitrary pair.
The Story of Bob does have an adequate answer in the “vocabulary of harms”. The implicit claim that it does not echoes claims of Jonathan Haidt in much of his work on morality, especially his “five pillars” theory and subsequent extrapolations which have been eagerly seized upon by conservative proponents as evidence that liberals are narrow-minded.
It therefore irritates me a great deal when I see such claims going unchallenged, despite their (to me, anyway) obvious inaccuracy.
Here, then, is my “harm/care-based moral system” take on The Sacrifice of Bob:
I’m going to presume that the fictional culture in the story is reasonably happy and prosperous, otherwise we would have been talking about how terrible their culture is even before the sacrifice had taken place.
(1) Given that this fictional culture and its president have a good track record at keeping the peace (in diametric opposition to certain other presidents whose similar but much less moral actions are implicitly being referred to), and that Bob’s sacrifice probably saved millions of lives, there is nothing wrong with the President’s action—certainly nothing worse than that of a general sending a soldier into a known death trap.
(2) Given that this culture seems to achieve goals we value (reasonably happy, prosperous people) while using morals we find questionable (highly authoritarian), I should think that we would want to study them intently to see how they do it. Perhaps we can learn some things—or perhaps the appearance of happiness and prosperity will turn out to have hidden costs.
Having now played a turn by the rules, I have a bone to pick with the basic concept.
The problem with such examples is that you are basing an implicit conclusion—“harm-based morality is limited”—on a fiction, a lie. It’s a complex form of circular reasoning: “Imagine a world in which this particular form of morality inexplicably produces positive results. Don’t you feel silly trying to defend your morality now?” or even “Imagine a universe in which the earth is a flat disc riding on the back of 4 elephants. How can you stick to your narrow-minded idea that Earth is a spheroid orbiting the sun when in some other universe it might not be?”
All that said, I think I agree with the ground ground rules you propose at the end. I have always said that inability to explain one’s reasoning doesn’t prove one wrong, and that science needs to pay more attention to intuition (reasoning based on summed data for which complete records were not kept) -- but there do need to be guidelines, because intuition should no more trump science unilaterally than the other way round.
My impression of the thought experiment is that there’s suppose to be no implication that their side winning the war would be any better than the other side winning. Their side winning is explicitly about maintaining social status and authority. “Keep harm at a low level” might mean “lower than a Hobbesian war of all against all”, not necessarily low by our standards. It seems like maybe the thought experiment could be improved by explicitly rephrasing it to make their nation be a pretty terrible place by our standards and winning the war be bad overall. That would rather complicate things though when the point is Bob being tortured and killed. So maybe it should be the country is at peace and “The president feels much more relaxed and it able to work better at crafting his new anti-homosexuality legislation” or something like that?
However, I do on an unrelated note really like your comment about “Imagine a world in which this particular form of morality inexplicably produces positive results. Don’t you feel silly trying to defend your morality now?”. I’ve noticed (...although I have trouble thinking of actual examples, but I’m sure I’ve seen some) that in a fair amount of fiction there’s a tendency to have Utilitarian villains with plans that will clearly bring about terrible results, as a result of them having made a very obvious error which the heroes are for some reason able to spot, which when used as an argument against Utilitarianism is pretty much literally “this particular form of morality inexplicably produces negative results”. (obviously it’s entirely possible for Utilitarians to make mistakes which have horrendous consequences. It’s just that as a rule, on average, Utilitarianism will get you better consequences from a Utilitarian standpoint than non-consequential Hollywood Morality. Which is exactly why it’s such an appealing argument to use in fiction, because it’s a plausible scenario which leads to obviously incorrect conclusions if generalized.)
I would take Bob’s deal if either adequately compensated or convinced that the premise was true. I already have done work for pay that was so unpleasant I’d rather be tortured for a short time than do that sort of work again, and time wasted is partial death anyway.
As for our culture in general, this deal is very very common. Many people watch someone from another universe, a ‘fictional person’ being tortured to death for their entertainment, and there isn’t any proof that the characters in, say, Saw, aren’t real people somewhere. Now, before we come down hard on horror fans, note that every fan of the Dark Knight movie with Heath Ledger is watching entertainment that killed someone. Every person who relaxes by reading history or war …. everyone who reads the Bible or watches most entertainment based on it. At least Eliezer’s example President is honest enough to say that he needs to watch this to refresh his spirit; people (like me!) who go and refresh their spirit by looking at past sufferings of people, animals, etc are at least ‘guilty’ of encouraging that type of suffering in much the same way that hamburger buyers (in a modern farm economy) are guilty of causing animal suffering.
Note that /I do not think suffering is bad/ in and of itself. Sometimes it /is/ necessary. Bob and the President might just be doing something sensible.
Considering that IRL we have had a series of leaders who make themselves feel better by /torturing people non-consensually/, I’d rather live in Bob’s world where it’s Bradley Manning, or some random Afghan goat farmer whose neighbor wanted to graze on their land, who is getting tortured, in some cases to death, so that Great Leader can feel better.
Likewise, if you watch fiction where people are happy, there isn’t any proof that the existence of a happy character in your fiction isn’t associated with a real person somewhere who is suffering.
Thinking about the possibility that there’s a suffering person who corresponds to fiction about a suffering fictional character, but not thinking about the possibility that there’s a suffering person who corresponds to a happy fictional character, or for that matter the possibility that there’s a suffering person (created by a perverse Omega) who comes into existence whenever you eat a slice of pizza is a form of availability bias. It’s easier to imagine the former since your mind is processing the concept of suffering at the time, but there’s no actual reason to expect that that pair is any more closely connected than any other arbitrary pair.