Day: September 29, 2025

The United States has settled into a post-shooting ritual. When a horrific shooting makes the news, many people offer some version of this prayer: “Oh God, let the shooter be one of them and not one of us.” Then people speculate about the identity of the shooter. In most cases the next step is that the Republicans offer thoughts and prayers while the Democratics talk about wanting to pass new gun control laws, if only they could win more elections. The final step is forgetting about that shooting when the next one occurs. My focus in this essay is on the speculation phase.

One of the most recent shootings is the attack on a Mormon church in Michigan which resulted in four people dying in the church and the attacker being killed by the police. As soon as the attack made the news, speculation began on the identity and motives of the shooter. Laura Loomer seemed to claim that the shooter was a Muslim acting as part of a broader plan while Donald J. Trump asserted that it appeared to be a targeted attack on Christians. And, of course, social media was awash with speculation. As this is being written, the suspect has been identified as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford. He is believed to be a military veteran and there is some evidence he held anti Mormon views. There is currently no evidence that he was Muslim. The investigation is ongoing, but the speculation continues.

In terms of why people speculate so quickly and without much (if any) evidence, there are various psychological reasons. I will leave those to the psychologists. There are also some practical reasons that connect to critical thinking, so I will briefly discuss those.

One practical reason to speculate immediately and even claim to know the identity and motives of the shooter is to generate clicks and hence income. One recent example of this is when 77 year old Michael Mallinson, a retired banker living in Toronto, was falsely claimed to be Charlie Kirk’s killer by an account pretending to be a Fox News outlet. Whoever was behind it also claimed he was a registered Democrat, which suggests they had some understanding of their targets. This example, and others like it, shows the importance of confirming a source as credible before accepting a claim. While one outlet might scoop a story, if it is credible, then other news outlets will run it as well and thus it is also wise to see if a claim is confirmed by other credible sources. There is, of course, the obvious problem that there has been a longstanding war against credible media outlets and that we are awash in misinformation and disinformation.  

While people can speculate in good faith (believing what they claim), there can be bad faith speculation intended to get an ideological narrative out there as soon as possible. This is because what is claimed first can often establish itself as plausible and then resist efforts to debunk it if it turns out to be false.

 Such false claims also provide others with “evidence” that they can use later when making their own false claims. For example, I regularly see people posting the false claim that many mass shooters are trans people, despite this being obviously untrue. As “evidence” people often post images of other posts making a false claim about a shooter’s identity. In some cases, people are acting in a form of good faith: they are being duped and wrongly think they are making true claims. For people who want to believe true things, a wise approach is to confirm whether a claim is true by seeking out multiple credible sources. But there is the obvious problem that people are often locked into ideological bubbles and what they see as credible sources are heavily biased or even dedicated spreaders of disinformation. There are also those who act in bad faith, posting claims about the identity and motives of shooters they know are false and using other untruths as “evidence” in order to advance their agenda, even if that is just to troll and trigger.

It is, of course, tempting to speculate about the identity and motives of shooters. While it might seem reasonable to draw inferences from such things as the target of the shooting, such speculation is still just speculation. For example, Trump speculated that the shooting might have been a targeted attack on Christians because the shooter attacked a church. As noted above, there is now some evidence that Trump was somewhat right: the attack might have been motivated by the shooters alleged dislike of Mormons. As this is being written, the religious beliefs of the shooter are unknown, but the United States does have a history of Christian Anti-Mormonism. When Mitt Romney was running for President, I (an Episcopalian) had to argue that Mormons are Christians. As such, any inferences about the shooter’s religious beliefs would be drawn from very thin evidence. The shooter could be a Christian who detested Mormons; but this is just speculation.

From a critical thinking and moral standpoint, the rational and ethical thing to do is to not speculate about a shooter’s identity and motives in public (such as posting on social media). Leave the investigation to the professionals and wait for adequate evidence to become available. This applies whether one is a pundit, a president or just a random person like me. People do, of course, have the right to speculate but rights should always be exercised with prudence and moral restraint.

The Martian is a science fiction film about the effort to rescue an astronaut from Mars. Matt Damon, who is often rescued in movies, plays “astrobotanist” Mark Watney. The discussion that follows contains some spoilers, so those who have yet to see the film might wish to stop reading now. Those who have seen the film might also wish to stop reading, albeit for different reasons.

At the start of the movie Watney is abandoned on Mars after the rest of his team believes he died during the emergency evacuation. The rest of the movie details his efforts at survival and the efforts of NASA and the Chinese space agency to save him.

After learning that Watney is not dead, NASA attempts to send a probe loaded with food to Mars. This effort fails, strewing rocket chunks and incinerated food. The next attempt involved resupplying the returning main space ship, the Hermes, using a Chinese rocket and sending it on a return trip to pick up Watney. This greatly extends the crew’s mission time. Using a ship that NASA already landed on Mars for a future mission, Watney blasts up into space and is dramatically rescued.

While this situation is science fiction, it does address a real moral concern about weighing the costs and risks of saving a life. While launch costs are probably cheaper in the fictional future of the movie, the lost resupply rocket and the successful Chinese resupply rocket presumably cost millions of dollars. The cached rocket Watney used was also presumably expensive. There is also the risk undertaken by the crew of Hermes.

Looked at from a utilitarian standpoint, a case can be made that the rescue was morally wrong. The argument for this is straightforward: for the “generic” utilitarian, the right action is the one that generates the greatest utility for the being that are morally relevant. While Watney is morally relevant, the fictional future of the film is presumably a world very similar to the real world. As such, there are presumably millions of people who are at risk of dying who could be saved by the expenditure of millions (or even billions) of dollars in resources.

Expending so many resources to save one person, Watney, would seem morally wrong: those resources could have been used to save many more people on earth and would thus have greater utility. As such, the right thing to do would have been to let Watney die, at least on utilitarian grounds.

There are many ways this argument can be countered on utilitarian grounds. One approach begins with how important Watney’s rescue became to the people of earth. The movie shows vast crowds concerned about Watney. Letting Watney die would make these people sad and angry, thus generating negative consequences. This rests on the psychological difference between abstract statistics about people dying (such many dying due to lacking proper medical care) and the possible death of someone who is now a celebrity. As such, the emotional investment of the crowds could be taken as imbuing Watney with greater moral significance than the many who could have been saved from death with the same monetary expenditure.

One obvious problem with this sort of view is that it makes moral worth dependent on fame and the feelings of others rather than on qualities intrinsic to the person. But, it could be replied, fame and the feelings of others do matter, at least when making a utilitarian calculation about consequences.

A second approach is to focus on the broader consequences: leaving Watney to die on Mars could have been damaging to the future of manned space exploration and humanity’s expansion into space. As such, while Watney himself is only a single person with only the moral value of one life, the consequences of not saving him would outweigh the consequences of not saving many others on earth. That is, Watney was not especially morally important as a person, but in terms of his greater role he has great significance. This would morally justify sacrificing the many (by not saving them) to save the one as an investment in future returns. This does raise various concerns about weighing actual people against future consequences but these are not unique to this situation.

There is also the meta-concern about the fact that Watney is played by Matt Damon and some contended that this would justify leaving Watney to die on Mars. But, I will leave this to the film critics to settle.