Good, Evil, Morality, and Ethics

I’ve said a number of things about good and evil at Overcoming Bias, and I decided to gather my comments together in one place. I’ve extracted the following quotes out of their surrounding context. The full original discussion can be found in Rationality Quotes 7 and Morality Is Overrated. Arguments similar to mine appear in The Moral Void.

Excerpts from Rationality Quotes 7

Robert Bruce Thompson: The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil. Gandhi’s non-violent resistance against the British occupiers had some effect because Britain was wrong, but not Evil. The same is true of the success of non-violent civil rights resistance against de jure racism. Most people, including those in power, knew that what was being done was wrong. But Evil is an entirely different beast. Gandhi would have gone to the ovens had he attempted non-violent resistance against the Nazis. When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened. That’s all Evil understands.

Me: I believe that this quote is not rational, because thinking of human relations in terms of “good” and “evil” is not rational. I prefer to think in terms of the iterated prisoners’ dilemma; in terms of cooperation and defection. If you frame a conflict in terms of “good” and “evil”, you quickly reach violence. If you frame it in terms of “cooperation” and “defection”, you may be able to negotiate a cooperative agreement. Violence may be necessary in certain situations, but it represents a suboptimal solution to conflict.

In a blog that is dedicated to overcoming bias, the term “evil” should only be used to point out the bias and irrationality that is encouraged by the concept of “evil”.

“When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

This whole quote is sophistry. The capitalized word “Evil” is a metaphorical personification of an abstract concept. A standard definition of “evil” is “morally objectionable behavior”. Suppose we replace the personification “Evil” with “morally objectionable behavior”:

“When one encounters morally objectionable behavior, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

The result is absurd. Suppose we agree that shoplifting is morally objectionable behavior. Is it true that the only solution to shoplifting is violence or the threat of violence? I don’t think so. But “Evil” is an emotionally loaded term that triggers our biases and discourages careful, rational thought. So when we read, “When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened,” it is not quite so obviously false as, “When one encounters morally objectionable behavior, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

One problem with the term “evil” is that it is typically applied to a person, rather than to a person’s behavior. For example (see Rationality Quotes 7), “Kevin Giffhorn is Evil.” Compare this to, “Kevin Giffhorn has behaved in a way that is morally objectionable.” The first statement leads to the conclusion that an evil person must be punished. The second statement leads to asking what caused Kevin Giffhorn to behave as he did, and how can we address the cause? To say that he acted evilly because he is evil gets us nowhere.

Paul Gowder: The point is that some things are pre-analytically evil. No matter how much we worry at the concept, slavery and genocide are still evil — we know these things stronger than we know the preconditions for the reasoning process to the contrary — I submit that there is simply no argument sufficiently strong to overturn that judgment.

Me: In the American civil war, some people fought against slavery and others fought to continue slavery. If your statement above is correct, it would seem that everybody who fought to continue slavery was evil. Was their pre-analytical “sense of evil” somehow missing or damaged? If your statement above is correct, it would seem that there is no possible case in which a rational argument caused a person to change sides in the civil war. This seems highly unlikely to me.

Culture, including ethics, evolves over time. Actions that were once morally acceptable are no longer considered morally acceptable. I don’t claim to understand all the forces that govern the evolution of ethics, but it is plain to see that our ethical systems have evolved. Slavery was once accepted and considered ethical by many; now it is not accepted. Women were once not allowed to vote; now they can vote.

To say that something is “pre-analytically evil” seems to be an excuse for avoiding rational, scientific analysis of the epistemology and ontology of our ethical judgments.

DSG: The fact that there is a lot of emotional/inept-philosophical baggage to the word does not mean it is irrational to use it.

Me: If your goal is to engage another person in clear, careful, rational discussion, then it is not rational to use terminology that you know to have “a lot of emotional/inept-philosophical baggage”, because to do so would be counter-productive with respect to your goal. I assume that the purpose of a blog called “Overcoming Bias” is to engage in clear, careful, rational discussion.

Excerpts from Morality Is Overrated

Robin Hanson: Many people advise us on what to do. Some discuss personal actions, while others suggest how groups could better coordinate. And, crucially, some advise us on what we should do, while others advise us on how to get what we want.

At the personal level, parents, teachers, preachers, and activists tend to tell us what is morally right, while friends, mentors, lawyers, doctors, therapists, and financial planners tend to tell us what will achieve our ends. At the level of social policy, pundits and wonks give a mixture of rationales for their suggestions. Moral philosophers, for example, tend to emphasize policies we should pick, while economists tend to emphasize policies to better get us what we want.

All else equal, we may each prefer to do what is right, but when all else is not equal we often allow other considerations to weigh against morality. After all, morality is only one of the many ends we pursue. Yes we want to be moral, but we also want other things, and we each choose as if we often care about those other things more than morality. (Some say moral beliefs directly cause us to be moral even if we don’t want that, but I prefer to describe this as a revealed preference for moral ends, i.e., for “wanting” to be moral.)

Me: Morality is a means, not an end. Consider the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. We tend to view cooperation as morally superior to defecting. Many people believe that tit-for-tat is a good moral rule. Note that tit-for-tat is an algorithm — a means. Morality does not involve altering the payoff matrix in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma — it is not an end; it is not another value to put in the matrix.

Moral rules encode hard-won wisdom about how we should best go about getting what we want. Consider a few familiar moral rules: tit-for-tat, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, watch your karma, what goes around comes around. Moral algorithms are algorithms that work better than immoral algorithms in the long run, averaged over the long term. Immorality is about short-term thinking and ignoring probabilities and risks (gambling).

“some advise us on what we should do, while others advise us on how to get what we want”

Once you see that morality is a means, not an end, this false dichotomy dissolves. The best, wisest advice about how to get what you want is also moral advice on what you should do.

For more on this, see A Scientific Approach to Morals and Ethics.

Richard: Granted, there’s the phenomenon of “weakness of will”, whereby we act against our better judgment. But that seems to be a special case. Did you have something else in mind? (That is, do you endorse your divergent answer to the question “what to do” as your better judgment as to what act is warranted, or do you take yourself to be going wrong - by your own lights, even - in such a case?)

Robin Hanson: Richard, I’m not sure how I can be any more direct or clear about this: we all knowingly make choices contrary to what we “should” choose. Yes sometimes this is due to mistakes, but it mainly reflects the fact that we do not want only to be moral.

Me: I disagree. I believe that enlightened self-interest is a sufficient basis for morality. In this view, when we make choices contrary to what we “should” choose, it is always due to mistakes (lack of enlightenment). A fully enlightened being (if such a being could exist) would never knowingly make choices contrary to what “should” be chosen.

Sometimes we feel a conflict between what we want and what we know we should do. You seem to believe that this conflict must be due to competing values (wanting to do the moral thing versus wanting to do the immoral thing). I believe that the conflict is due to bugs in our algorithms for making decisions (lack of enlightenment).

What would it mean to want to be moral (to do the moral thing) purely for the sake of morality itself, rather than for the sake of something else? What could this possibly mean to a scientific materialistic atheist? What is this abstract, independent, pure morality? Where does it come from? How can we know it? I think we must conclude that morality is a means, not an end in itself.