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Archives for April 2019

Opportunity Hoarding IV: Rules of the Game

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As noted in previous essays, competition over opportunities is almost certainly unavoidable and can even be desirable. However, this competition can do more harm than good. One example of this is opportunity hoarding.  Opportunity hoarding occurs when parents try to seek advantages for their children in ways that are harmful to others. As would be suspected, opportunity hoarding typically occurs when parents use morally problematic methods to secure advantages for their children at the expense of other children. An excellent example of this is the 2019 college admissions scandal and I will use this to set the stage for the discussion.

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As many writing about the scandal pointed out, the rich have many legal means of tipping the admission scales in favor of their children. These include methods that have nothing to do with the merit of the applicant, such as the use of legacy admissions and making financial contributions to the institutions. Other methods aim at improving the quality of the applicant (or at least the application). These methods include paid test preparation courses, paid counselors, paid tutors, and paid essay coaches. Because the rich have so many advantages already, the admission scandal seemed especially egregious and somewhat perplexing. From a philosophical perspective, the scandal raises an interesting general moral question about what methods are acceptable in the competition over opportunities and which are not.

While some might consider a state of nature approach to this competition (a war against all with no limit on the means), this would be clear violation of our moral intuitions. After all, while we might disagree on specific limits, we almost certainly agree that there are limits. To illustrate, the murder of competing children would seem to be obviously unacceptable as would other horrible things like blinding or maiming to weaken the competition. But once the obviously horrific is out of the way, there remains a very large area of possible dispute.

One approach favored by manner is to use the law as the guide. On this view, parents may use any legal means to restrict opportunities in favor of their children. While this might have some appeal, it suffers from an obvious defect: the law is whatever those in power make it, so evil (or at least unfair) things can become a matter of law. The usual extreme, but legitimate, example is the legality of slavery. As such, while it is often right to obey the law, it does not follow that what is legal is ethical.  So, if a parent justifies their actions by pointing to their legality, they merely prove they acted legally—they have not shown they have acted rightly. So, something is needed beyond mere legality to determine what the limits of the competition should be.

Since this is a question of ethics on a national scale, an appeal to utilitarianism seems sensible: the limits should be set in terms of what will be most likely to create the greatest benefit and least harm. This leads to the stock problem of sorting out what it means to create the greatest positive value and least negative value. It also requires sorting out the measure of worth.  For example, a set of limits might result in the children of the wealthy becoming even wealthier while the less wealthy were worse off than their parents might create more total wealth than a more equitable system in which everyone was reasonably well off. If what matters, as it does to some, is the overall wealth then these would be the right limits. However, if maximizing value is more about the impact on each person, then the more equitable division would be the moral choice: it would create more positive value for more people but would fail to create the most total positive value.

Since a utilitarian approach recognizes only the utilitarian calculation of value, some might find this approach problematic. Instead, they might favor a rights-based approach, or one based on a principle of fair competition. To illustrate, Americans profess to value competition, merit and fairness: the best competitors are supposed to win in a fair competition. This, obviously enough, just returns to the problem of fairness: what means are fair to use in the competition for opportunity?

One possible approach is to use a principle of relevance: a fair competition is one in which victory depends on the skills and abilities that are relevant to the nature of the competition. For example, if the competition is based on academic ability, then that should be the deciding factor—donating money should not influence the outcome of competition. This will, of course, lead to a debate about what should be considered relevant. For example, if it is argued that donating money is not relevant to determining college admissions because it is not relevant to academic ability, one might then argue that race or sex are also not relevant and thus should not be used. So, if relevance is used, it must be properly and consistently defined and applied.

While relevance, in general, seems like a reasonable consideration, there are also concerns about the preparation for the competitions. To illustrate, the children of the wealthy get a competitive edge because their parents can get them into good K-12 schools, pay for tutoring, pay for test preparation, pay for counseling, pay for help on essays and so on. That is, they can buy advantages that are relevant to the competition for college admissions and careers. On the one hand, these do seem to be unfair advantages because they are not available to the children of the poor simply because they are poor. On the other hand, they are relevant to the competition because they do improve the skills and abilities of the children. One possible solution, for those who value fair competition, would be balancing things out by providing the same support to all children—thus making the competition fair. This leads into the question of how far the quest for fairness should go.

At this point, some might be wondering if I will advocate forcing parents to only parent as well as the worst parents, so as to even things out. After all, a parent who can spend time engaging in activities with their kids, such as reading to them and helping with homework, confers an advantage. Since making parents do a worse job would obviously make things worse, this would be wrong to do. As such, I do not oppose (rather I fully support) parents being good parents. However, in many cases parents face the challenges of lacking time, resources and education to be better parents and these could be addressed. As such, I would advocate lifting parents up and utterly reject any notion to bring them down (something only those deranged by ideology would suggest).

The above is only a faint sketch of the matter—much more needs to be said about what the rules of competition for opportunity should be in our society. This is, obviously enough, a matter of values: are we just mouthing words like “fairness” , “opportunity for all”  and “merit-based competition” while embracing the practice of unfairly buying success? Or do we really believe these things?

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Opportunity Hoarding III: Positive, Neutral & Negative Competition

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Competition, by its very nature, yields winners and non-winners. For individuals and teams (individuals acting collectively) the results of a competition can be positive, neutral or negative for them. For example, a parent who leaks information about rival children to college admissions officers might get a positive outcome (her child is admitted over the competition) and the competing children might get a negative outcome (they are not admitted). While assessing from the perspective of an individual or team is one way to approach assessing the consequences of competition, it is also worth assessing competitions in terms of their consequences for all involved. This is especially important when the competition is occurring within a society and is under the control of that society. The competition for educational opportunities in the United States is an excellent example of this.

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When assessing the consequences of competitions for all involved, the results can be positive, neutral or negative. This is a spectrum rather than an absolute division and, of course, individual experiences can vary.

 A positive competition yields positive value (which must be defined) for all those involved (which must also be defined). In an ideal positive competition, everyone engaged in the competition is better off by competing than they would be without the competition. This would include being better off than if the distribution of benefits was done equally without competition.

Friendly sports and games provide a paradigm example of positive competition. For example, while there will be but winner of a game of Risk, everyone playing it can have fun and thus gain from the competition. As another example, a 5K race will have winners and non-winners, but everyone can have an enjoyable run and be better for the competition. As a final example, some claim that an Adam Smith style economy can be a positive competition: while some business will succeed and others fail, we will all be winners because of better goods/services at lower costs.

A neutral competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who gain nothing but suffer no harm from losing. While not everyone is better off from the competition, no one is worse off for competing. One example would be the sort of random drawing for prizes that occurs after races and other events. While some will win and others will not, not winning just means not getting a prize. It does not result in any harm.

A negative competition has winners who gain from the competition and non-winners who suffer harm or detrimental effect from their loss. In extreme cases, there might just be degrees of harm and winning only means being harmed less. For example, a liability lawsuit can be a negative competition in which the winner gains and the loser suffers a detrimental effect—such as being forced to pay a settlement.

In many cases a society can control whether the competition between its citizens will be positive, neutral or negative. It should never be forgotten that the nature of such competitions is a matter of decision. Deciding how these competitions will operate is a matter of values (ethical, economic, political, etc.). For example, a society can decide to make the competition for educational resources a positive competition: everyone gains, some are better off, but no one is harmed. A society could also make it a negative competition: the winners do very well indeed, the losers end up at terrible disadvantage and suffer because of it. This segues nicely into the overall theme of opportunity hoarding.

While a society will always have only a finite number of opportunities for children and there will be competition for them, the nature of these competitions can obviously be shaped by the collective choices of that society. This includes deciding whether each competition will be positive, neutral or negative. In general, making competitions positive will cost more resources, while neutral and negative competitions will incur less resource cost. To illustrate, making the competition for educational opportunities more positive would cost more than leaving it negative. As a specific example, the current model for K-12 public education is a negative competition: parents who can afford to live in wealthy neighborhoods give their children the advantage of better schools, while the children of the less wealthy often end up in poorly funded schools that hurt their opportunities in life. They often end up locked into poverty and all the harms that entails. Shifting this to a positive competition in which every child gets at least an adequate education would require expending more resources on the poorer schools, thus incurring greater cost. This would also entail that the better off would have less advantage over the poor in terms of education—they would still retain the advantage of better schools, but the gap would be smaller and thus the competition they face in other aspects of life could increase. This is one obvious reason for opportunity hoarding: the less capable the competition, the easier is victory.

This example could, of course, be challenged. One could argue that the education system in the United States is already a positive competition: even the poorest Americans are supposed to get free K-12 education and even the worst public education is better than nothing. While this does have some appeal, the same sort of reasoning would seem to lead to obviously absurd consequences. For example, imagine the competition between a person intent on date rape and their intended victim. It could be argued that the competition is positive: the victim could get a free dinner and drinks, although they are raped. While they did get some “benefit”, the harm is far greater—they would have been vastly better off without that “competition.” I do not deny there can be grounds for dispute over whether to cast a competition as positive or negative—there obviously can be. There is clearly a challenge in sorting out the classifications and there is also the matter of degree to consider.

As such, if someone wants to characterize the current education system as a positive competition, they can do so—as noted above, the students in the worst school in America do get more than nothing. In this case, one would need to recast the discussion in terms of degrees of positiveness in the competition—how the winners and losers fare relative to each other.

While each competition for opportunity would need to be assessed morally, I would suggest a general guiding principle. When our society is shaping the competition between our children for opportunities, the morally right thing to do is to make them at least neutral and there should be every effort to make them positive. After all, members of a society should strive to avoid harming each other and this is especially true when it comes to the children. We are, one would hope, friends and not enemies.

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Opportunity Hoarding II: What Should Be Competitive?

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Opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves,  occurs when parents act to give their children advantages in ways that are harmful to other children. In the previous essay I examined income mobility in the context of opportunity hoarding and I now turn to the ethics of competition.

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Before getting into this, I will try to pre-empt the obvious strawman attacks on what I will be arguing. I will not be arguing that parents should be generally forbidden from doing the best they can for their children. As a specific example, I will not be arguing in favor of anything like a ban on parents helping their children with homework. I will also not argue that the state should use its compulsive power to force, Harrison Bergeron style,  the equality of children. Nor will I argue for the elimination of competition. Now, on to the discussion—one that will afford plenty of opportunity for criticism.

From a moral standpoint, the matter of opportunity hoarding raises two important moral concerns. The first is the moral issue of what opportunities should be a matter of competition. The second is the moral issue of what means are fair and what are foul within the realm of competition. This essay focuses on the first issue.

While some might argue that there should be no competition for opportunities, this position suffers from two obvious defects. The first, and most obvious, is that in a finite world opportunity must always be limited. As such, if there are more people than opportunities, there must be competition—if only in the form of a lottery. This limit need not be anything malign. For example, many people might desire to be trained by a skilled running coach, but because of human limits she cannot coach everyone. As another example, many people might wish to learn at a specific university, but the faculty of the university can only grade so many students—even with the assistance of graders. While there obviously can be other coaches and other schools, there will always be people who prefer one over the other—even when they are equally good. There is, of course, the legitimate moral concern that certain opportunities are being limited for unethical reasons—I do not want to be taken as suggesting that all limits on opportunity are warranted simply because there will presumably always be some unavoidable limits. To illustrate, it is morally fine for a coach to limit her efforts to certain number of runners. It would not be morally fine for a coach to refuse to coach runners because they were, for example, Christian or Moslem.

The second is that there should be competition for opportunities because this is morally right. The easy and obvious argument is that if opportunities are limited (and the limit passes ethical muster), then they should be distributed on a competitive basis. In the usual terminology, the opportunity should be earned. The obvious analogy is to sports: the awards in a 5k should be earned by those who run the fastest. To hand out the awards randomly or based on some standard other than performance would be unfair and thus wrong.

Even if the notion of competition for opportunity is accepted, there arises the moral and practical problem of deciding the basis for deciding the competition. In some cases, this will be obvious. For example, it makes sense that the varsity cross country slots should go to the best runners on a team. In other cases, deciding who wins is more complicated—such as determining who should be admitted to a desirable university. As would be expected, vast volumes can (and have) been written about the ethics of how such competitions should be resolved.

While people do debate about resolving competitions over opportunity justly, there is also the question of what opportunities should be a matter of competition. While there are always finite resources to create opportunities, there is also always a finite number of people seeking these opportunities. In many cases we, as a people, can decide how many people can avail themselves of these opportunities by deciding how we allocate resources. To use an obvious example, Americans could decide that we want all our public schools to be well-funded so that all children can attend a good school. This would obviously not eliminate competition for schools—even if all schools were well funded and properly supported, there would be schools that would still be better because of various factors, such as having truly exceptional faculty. But people would not need to compete to buy houses in wealthy neighborhoods in order to get their children into good schools—they could live anywhere and still get into a good school. This would come at a cost—the well-off parents would need to contribute to the general education of children rather than paying the property taxes that benefit only their school. But if we value equality of opportunity for all children, then this could be a price worth paying.

This essay cannot, obviously, provide details about each opportunity. A reasonable starting point for broad moral choices is, of course, the utilitarian approach: looking at the cost and benefits for all, what would generate the most good and the least evil? This series continues in the next essay.

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Opportunity Hoarding I: Mobility

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In the wake of the college admissions scandal of 2019 the media briefly focused on how the wealthy use their advantages to secure admission to the best schools. As part of the coverage, there was some discussion of opportunity hoarding, a concept developed by Richard Reeves in his Dream Hoarders. The gist of the concept is that opportunity hoarding occurs when parents try to seek advantages for their children in ways that are harmful to others. One extreme example would be parents disparaging children competing with their own for school admission. The practice of opportunity hoarding raises many important moral issues that I will address over the course of a short series of essays. I will begin by discussing the concept of economic mobility in the context of opportunity hoarding.

Americans want to believe in economic mobility—that by hard work, people will be better off than their parents. While people tend to just talk about economic mobility, it is important to distinguish between two types: relative mobility and absolute mobility. In both types, mobility is a matter of moving up or down relative to one’s parents. Relative mobility is measured by comparing the economic ranking of current adults relative to the rankings of their parents. This can be illustrated by an analogy to running road races. When comparing two road races, my relative performance is a measure of my place in the second race relative to how I placed in the first race. If I placed better in the second race than in the first one, then my relative performance was upward. If I placed worse, then my relative performance would be downward. In this analogy, the race is a generation: the first race would correspond to the economic ranking of the parents and the second would be analogous to the current adult’s ranking.

Absolute mobility is a measure of whether the current adults have a higher adjusted (for inflation and such) income at the same age as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, my absolute performance would be a measure of whether I was faster in the second race relative to the first race. As before, the first race is analogous to the parents’ income and the second is analogous to the current adults’ income. While both measure improvement (or decline) there are some important differences.

A critical difference between the two is that relative mobility is a zero-sum game: if someone moves up, someone else must move down. To illustrate, the top 1% can only be 1% of the population: if Sally moves into the 1%, then she pushes someone else down. The analogy to the race illustrates this as well: if I move into first place, then I push someone else into second place. In contrast, absolute mobility need not be zero-sum: my getting more income does not entail that other people get less. Going back to the running analogy, my getting faster between races does not make anyone else slower—in fact, everyone could get faster. Because of this, a country could have little or no relative mobility, but exceptional absolute mobility.  Using the running analogy, the same people could place in the top 10 in race after race while everyone is also getting faster. Because of this, distinguishing between the two types of mobility is critical—especially when it comes to opportunity hoarding.

If relative mobility is low, then children almost always stay in the same economic class as their parents. For example, if Sally is born to parents in the top 20%, then she will probably stay there. If it is high, then people are likely to move up (or down) relative to their parents. While it is tempting to think that low relative mobility would always be bad, this is where absolute mobility becomes rather important. If relative mobility is low but absolute mobility is high and widely distributed, then most people will be better off than their parents—though they will still be in the same relative place as their parents. Going back to the running analogy, everybody is running faster—but people keep getting the same places in the races. One could imagine a very desirable society that has very low relative mobility but exceptional absolute mobility. Imagine, if you will, a nation in which Bartholomew Billionaire’s family has always been in the top 1% and owns dozens of houses, several yachts, three private jets and 100 luxury cars. Living in the same country is Paula Poor whose family has always been in the lowest 1% of income earners. But her family now owns a modest residence, her children are attending state college, and she and her husband can easily afford good insurance, good food and the occasional vacation.

 This would seem to be far better than a society with high relative mobility but with a history of awful absolute mobility. People readily moving up (and down) from generation to generation might seem good, but if income does not improve (or worsens) from generation to generation, then moving around more freely would be worse than being “stuck” in a good situation. Going back to the running analogy, this would be like be races in which people did not get better (or got worse), but different people made it into the top 10 each race.

A society in which both types of mobility are low would also be a bad scenario: those stuck in the lower income classes would not move up relatively or absolutely. While those in the upper classes would be secure, their lot would also not improve much relative to their parents. This would be a rather stagnant society. But what about real countries, such as the United States?

Currently, the United States has low relative mobility: people tend to stick within the class of their birth. Absolute mobility used to be good, but income has stagnated and currently the United States has lower absolute mobility. As such, many Americans are worse off than their parents and are stuck in their economic class. In this situation, downward relative mobility would be rather bad: one would be moving towards or into an economic class inferior to that of one’s parents—downward mobility.

Those in the upper classes (the top 20%) are aware of what downward mobility entails and, if sensible, they endeavor to prevent this by giving their children all the advantages they can. While doing the best one can for their children is generally the right thing to do, it can become morally problematic when these efforts actively harm the opportunities of others—perhaps by locking them out of moving upward. Richard Reeves and Kimberly Howard have discussed the phenomena of the glass floor—a metaphor for the various factors that keep the children of the well off from sinking into the lower classes. This floor is obviously a ceiling for others—even if there is no malicious intent, to the degree that it keeps the children of the upper classes from descending it also keeps the children of the lower classes from ascending. This is for the obvious reason that relative mobility, like the places in a race, is zero-sum. My victory is your loss. But it should not be simply assumed that this is immoral, hence the need for additional essays on this subject.

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The Mobile Homeless

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While the overall economy is strong, there has been an increase in the number of homeless Americans. One of the growing segments consists of people who live in their cars and many of them work. They are generally homeless not by choice, but because they cannot afford housing near enough to where they work.

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Since people in such straits generally lack political power and are often regarded as presenting a threat or creating an eyesore, it is not surprising that many municipalities tried to “solve” this problem by passing laws aimed at cracking down on people living in their cars. As would be expected, these laws were not effective in solving the problem. Churches, charity groups and some communities have attempted to address the problem in a more positive way by establishing safe parking areas for the homeless. In some cases, there is access to showers and bathrooms. This situation raises various moral concerns about what, if anything, should be done to help the homeless. This is, obviously enough, yet another specific version of the broader moral question of what we owe other people.

One approach, as noted above, is to try to solve the problem by passing laws banning people from sleeping in their vehicles in public areas. This gives people the choice between running afoul of law enforcement or leaving the area. If these laws are widespread, then leaving becomes problematic—there would be few places to go. Also, the working homeless are often tied to their jobs and moving would thus problematic. If they stay, they can end up losing their car to fines and impounding—which will leave them without shelter or transportation. This solution is also morally problematic since it punishes people for being poor and unable to find affordable housing.

It could be objected that these people could easily drive somewhere, find a new job and get affordable housing. However, if it were so easy for them to do this, then surely most of them would have done so already.

Another approach, as mentioned above, is for charity, churches and communities to create safe parking lots for the homeless. While this is certainly preferable to turning the coercive power of the state against the poor and powerless, it does have some problems. One concern is the cost of the lots—they are typically located in pricey areas and hence the resources used to pay for lots there could pay for actual housing elsewhere. Another concern is that the lots used by the homeless are thus not usable by other people, thus reducing available parking. Perhaps the greatest concern is that while the homeless need not fear the police and have some safety, they are still living in their cars in a parking lot—a situation that is certainly stressful, unpleasant and difficult. The fact that they do not have a permanent residence also creates other problems, such as the matter of where the children can attend school. As such, while such safe lots are a step up from parking illegally or “in the wild”, they are hardly ideal and do not address the underlying problems.

Obviously enough, the main reason that the working homeless live in their cars is that they cannot afford housing. This can be seen as their pay being too low to pay for housing or the housing being too expensive for them to afford. As such, the underlying problem is financial in nature. This does allow for two obvious solutions.

The first is to increase wages so that the working homeless can afford at least basic, safe housing. The obvious problem is determining how this should be done. While some employers do provide sufficient wages, it would be a bit foolish to think that they will (or even can) step up to provide a living wage. Another option is to use the coercive power of the state—this time not against the homeless, but to compel employers to pay more. This raises the usual objections about the state interfering with the “free” market.

The second solution is to provide more affordable housing. As with better pay, this could be done by the private sector (landlords voluntarily making less money) or by the state (compelling more affordable housing). As always, this raises the usual objections about the state interfering with the market.

As noted above, one could argue that the working homeless should find better jobs or move someplace with lower housing costs. While this has some appeal, the working homeless driving away would create a problem for the well-off: if the people who clean their houses, make them lattes, teach their kids, put out their fires, police their streets, and so on are forced to move too far away, then the rich will be left without these services. Perhaps this is why Silicon Valley is working so hard on robots. As such, even the rich have a reason to support better pay or affordable housing—or better public transportation to bring in workers from the less-affluent neighborhoods. At least until the robots arrive. However, expecting rational self-interest or moral concerns about the well-being of others to solve the problem from within the private sector is most likely unreasonable. Also, solving social problems is not really the job of the private sector—dealing with social issues is one reason we form governments. So, if the problem is to be addressed effectively, then the power of the state would be needed.

As noted above, using the coercive power of the state against the homeless is not an effective solution and is certainly not ethical. As such, the state should use our resources to address pay or housing costs. As noted above, many would object to the state interfering in the market (except, obviously, when the state’s interference is to their advantage) by compelling change in wages or the cost of housing. However, the Lockean view of the state is that it exists for the good of the people—so using its power to slightly reduce the wealth of the wealthy so that the less well off do not have to live out of their cars would seem morally justified. At least for those who subscribe to the Lockean view. But, not everyone subscribes to this view of the purpose of the state and even Lockeans might see this as unjustified.

Another option that does not involve wages or compelling affordable housing is for the state (and perhaps some in the private sector) to invest in affordable, reliable and fast public transportation that would allow workers to live where housing is affordable and commute (as many now do) into the upper-class zones to work. This approach would have the effect of enhancing the already established and growing division between the classes in America: the rich will dwell within their enclaves, while those who teach their children, make their lattes, clean their houses, fight their fires, and police their streets will be transported in to do their work, then shipped out when they are done. But at least they won’t be living in their cars.

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The Logic of Conspiracy Theories V: Best Explanation-Assessment

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In the previous essay in this series I presented the argument by elimination and ended with a promise to address how to assess the competition between explanations. The overall method of elimination in this context can be presented in the following form:

Premise 1: There are X (some number) explanations for Y (some phenomenon).

Premise 2: E (an explanation) is the best of the X explanations.

Conclusion: E is (probably) correct.

Sorting out the second premise involves “scoring” each explanation and then comparing these scores to see which one does the best. As noted in the previous essay, to the degree that there are reasonable doubts that all plausible explanations have been considered, there are reasonable doubts that the correct explanation has been found. But the focus of this essay is on the competition.

While the scoring metaphor is a useful one, the scoring of explanations is not an exact science and admits of a degree of subjectivity. As such, reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the relative ranking of explanations. That said, there are objective standards that are used in assessing explanations.

Conspiracy theorists do often make use of this method and argue that their theory best explains the facts. However, problems often arise when all the standards for assessing explanations are given due considerations.

There are some fairly obvious defects that any explanation needs to avoid to be considered a good explanation. At a minimum, an explanation needs to avoid being too vague (lacking adequate precision), ambiguous (having two or more meanings when it is not clear what is intended), and circularity (merely restating what is to be explained). These are minimal standards because an explanation that cannot even meet them would not be worth considering. For example, if an explanation is too vague, one does not even know what it is saying. There are other standards as well.

One standard is that an explanation needs to be consistent with established fact and theory. As would be imagined, conspiracy theories will almost by definition fail to meet this standard. For example, the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the moon landing goes against established fact. As another example, the view that the earth is flat goes against established fact and theory.

When faced with this standard, conspiracy theorists will often point out that some established facts and theories were themselves once inconsistent with the facts and theories of an earlier time. On the one hand, they are right to point out that old facts and theories have been overturned and thus this standard is not decisive. On the other hand, the fact that it has occurred in other cases does not prove that the specific conspiracy theory in question is thus proven. To use an analogy, while it is true that some convictions have been overturned, this fact does not entail that a specific person is thus innocent. Overturning established fact and theory requires showing that they have defects serious enough to warrant their overthrow—merely pointing out that it has happened does not show that it will happen in any particular case. When explanations compete, the explanation that better matches established fact and theory is better—unless compelling reasons can be given to overturn them.

A second standard is that an explanation needs to keep it simple. This involves avoiding unnecessary assumptions and needless complexities. The famous Occam’s Razor falls under this standard, with the enjoinder to not multiply entities beyond necessity. For example, explaining the phenomenon of night terrors in physiological terms as opposed to invoking demons or witches is simpler and hence better. As another example, those who favor evolution over creation contend that the theory of evolution explains everything that the creation explanation explains but has the advantage of not postulating God. As a third example, faking the moon landing in the 1960s would have required far more advanced technology than was available at the time as well as a global conspiracy between competing nations. The simpler explanation is that the landings took place. As the examples illustrate, explanations compete in terms of simplicity: all other things being equal, the simpler explanation is better.

Explanations often become more complicated as they endeavor to deal with problems or objections. This need not be a fatal problem as long as the increased complication is warranted. In other cases, the increased complexity is ad hoc and serves primarily to try to save the explanation from criticism in an unprincipled way. This typically involves presenting more explanations to account for the problems that arise for the original explanation. For example, when experiments seem to show that the earth is not flat proponents of this view attempt to explain these failures by bringing in some new factor(s) such as a previously unknown type of energy that affects gyroscopes. When challenged, they can say that this is an accepted method in science: almost all explanations are modified as complications arise. The challenge, then, is sorting out what is a legitimate modification in the face of a complication and what is an ad hoc attempt to save the explanation by bringing in new entities or complexities. This leads to what might be the most important standard, that of testability.

If an explanation gets it right, then it should yield predictions that turn out to be true. These predictions need to be testable, otherwise there would seem to be no way to know whether the explanation is correct or not. As such, if an explanation produces predictions that cannot be tested, then that is a problem for establishing its correctness: it might be correct, but we cannot know. If an explanation yields predictions that are tested and turn out to be false, then that is a problem for the theory—but it need not be fatal. As noted above, an explanation can be modified in the face of failure to account for that failure. This should yield a new prediction that can be tested. If the prediction turns out to be true, that is a plus for the explanation. As would be suspected, explanations compete in terms of explanatory power: all other things being equal, the explanation that yields better predictions is better. If the new prediction turns out to be false, then the explanation can be modified again to yield another prediction for testing. For example, if a new type of energy is postulated to explain how gyroscopes work, then predictions need to be made and tested for this energy. If it is claimed that the prediction is that gyroscopes would work the way they do and thus the energy has been shown to be real, then this would seem to be reasoning in a circle. As would be suspected, this is where conspiracy theories often hit the rocks: they advance explanations that yield false predictions and then modify the explanations, which then yield false predictions. They then modify then explanations, which yield more false predictions and so on. The problem does not lie with the basic method: as noted above, modifying explanations in a principled way in the face of findings is a legitimate method. The problem is that the proponent of the explanation simply refuses to accept testability—nothing can refute their explanation because they will simply modify it to respond to every failure. 

It might be objected that such persistence is a good thing—that if the great thinkers of the past gave up at the first failure of their predictions, we would not be where we are today. While there is much to be said of persistence, there is a point at which the proponent is simply refusing to accept testability—nothing can ever refute their explanation. But this is meaningless—it becomes useless as an explanation. To use a silly analogy, consider the invisible unicorn.

When I was in grade school, a kid told us they had a unicorn. Being kids, we doubted this but really wanted to see it. The unicorn kid claimed that we could not see it because it was invisible. A smart kid pointed out that we should be able to hear it. But unicorn kid said their unicorn was silent. Then someone said that we should be able to touch it or see its prints on the ground. To which unicorn kid said it was too quick and was flying. And so on, for every test that would prove (or disprove) the unicorn. While we might not be able to draw an exact line at which an explanation starts becoming an invisible unicorn, once it reaches that zone the game is over.  As would be guessed, conspiracy theories often end up in the land of invisible unicorns.

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