Author: Michael LaBossiere

People try to make sense of events by weaving narratives matching their world views. One awful example of this is when people claim school shootings are false flag attacks. In this context, a false flag attack is when the attack is claimed to have been conducted by a mysterious force (like the deep state) to advance some political goal (such as taking away guns). In some cases, the false flag is alleged to be entirely false: there was no attack. In other cases, it is claimed there was a real attack, but attackers were acting at the behest (wittingly or not) of this mysterious force.

From a philosophical perspective, these alleged false flags present an epistemic problem: how does one know an attack is a false flag? As would be suspected, those advancing false flag narratives are often short on evidence. While a complete investigation would require considering each case, David Hume offers a useful guiding principle. When writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. I will apply this principle to the falsest of false flags first, the fictional attack.

Some conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones and James Tracy, infamously claimed that no one was killed at Sandy Hook.  Despite the repeated debunking of this claim, conspiracy theorists usually double down in the face of efforts to disprove their claims. That said, it is worth considering the false flag claim in the light of Hume’s principle as well as using the standard inference to the best explanation.

Faking a school shooting would involve many people. The fake parents, fake students, fake police, fake teachers, and others would need to be in on the conspiracy and would need to maintain the façade in the face of years of investigation. School records, police records and such would also need to be faked. There would need to be fake funerals with fake bodies. And so on for a conspiracy that would involve hundreds of people. Given what we know about the ability of people to keep secrets, it is wildly implausible that such a conspiracy could occur and occur repeatedly, as the false flag conspiracy theorists allege.

While it could be countered that the secret force behind the conspiracy has the power and funding to engage in such massive fakery and maintain the fiction for years, this simply creates another problem: if this secret force is so powerful, so capable and so disciplined, then it should be able to easily achieve its political goals. If the conspiracy theory about school shootings being faked to justify banning guns were true, then guns should have already be banned. The theory, in a way, disproves itself.

That is the trouble with proposing such a force. It would have no need to remain a dark conspiracy when it could simply impose its will. The best explanation is that the shootings are not complete fiction. This, however, does leave open the possibility of a false flag that is not a complete fabrication.

Other school shooting conspiracy theorists advance the idea that some or all school shootings are real shootings, but the shooter is acting at the behest of the secret force that makes such things happen. In this case, only the shooter needs to be involved in the conspiracy—either willingly or by being manipulated. There is also the option that the real shooter is an agent of the secret force and then a patsy is put in their place, perhaps as a corpse.

Those arranging the attacks are supposed to be acting as architects of fear who hope to scare the public into backing attempts to destroy the Second Amendment and take away guns. On these theories, the conspirators might be liberals who hate guns so much that they are willing to murder children. Or they might be someone else. The theories vary.

As before, the way to assess this claim is to consider the evidence. An obvious problem is that conspiracy theorists will claim that evidence against their view is the work of Them and they will cherry pick their evidence to confirm their theory. But a more objective assessment indicates the conspiracy theory is less plausible than the alternative. After all, the conspiracy theory requires a secret force that can operate in an amazingly effective manner yet is somehow unable to achieve its alleged ends. It is both extremely capable and extremely ineffective, which is an odd combination. If this secret force is alleged to have control of the state, then it should be able to achieve its goals. If it is not in control of the state, then there is the obvious question of why the state remains ignorant of its operations or ignores them. Once again, the best explanation is that the alleged false flag operations are simply what they appear to be; awful murders.

Proponents of unions advance the classic free-rider argument for compelling non-union employees to share in the cost of collective bargaining. Public unions are usually legally required to provide services to non-member employees. Because of this, if employees did not pay fees to offset the costs of these benefits, then they would be exploiting the people who did pay. This would effectively be stealing. This argument is morally compelling, and this can be illustrated by an analogy.

Imagine that a Lunch Group was formed by people who went to lunch together and this group provided lunch and other benefits in return for a membership fee. Now suppose that a law was passed that required the Lunch Group to pay for the lunches of anyone who was in the same restaurant when they had their lunch. While this would be a great deal for freeloaders, it would not be fair for the Lunch Group. As people could get the benefits of the Lunch Group without contributing, the group would probably disband as paying members would have little incentive to remain because the free riders would be exploiting them.

Naturally, some free riders might argue they are entitled to the free lunch, but that they should not contribute because they do not like the other benefits and disagree with some of the views of the group members. They just want their free lunch. This is analogous to the free speech argument advanced in favor of not paying the union fees: the employees want the benefits of the union, but do not want to pay for them.  They justify this by claiming that they do not agree with the political views and activities of the union. However, this is an absurd argument.

The no-free lunch reasoning is usually a favorite of conservatives. For example, it is a common conservative position that people who can work should work rather than “freeloading” on welfare. They criticize people who exploit the system as free riders. This principle should apply to public unions: if free riding on others is morally wrong, then free riding on a public union is morally wrong as well.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to the problem, and one often endorsed by conservatives: workers should be free to join the union or not and they should be free to pay the fees or not. But, if they elect to not pay the fees, then they should receive none of the benefits. Just as a business is not required to provide free stuff to people just because they want it, the same should apply to the unions as well.

If unions are compelled to provide services to non-union members, then the law must also compel them to pay their fair share. Otherwise, the state would be mandating the equivalent of free lunches, something that conservatives rail against.  Except when it comes to busting unions. After all, an effective way to destroy a union is to compel it to provide services for free. This will encourage free riding and will deplete union funds—something that would please most conservatives. It is thus somewhat ironic that some conservatives use a tactic against unions that explicitly violates a professed principle of conservatives. But expecting consistency or any consequence from inconsistency has proven foolish. As has expecting principles.

 

While public employees are usually not required to join unions, they are often required to help cover the cost of collective bargaining. While the legal issue will be settled by money and judges, there is the moral issue of whether public employees should be compelled to pay these fees. As a disclosure, I belong to a teachers’ union and this should be considered a potentially biasing factor.

One argument against such compulsion can be built on an appeal to the right of free speech. As has also been argued in the courts, money is speech and a moral case can be made that forcing employees to pay union fees is compelled speech. This is because unions, like corporations, use their financial resources to influence politicians and voters. A person who does not agree with the views expressed by the union is thus forced to “speak” on behalf of these views by paying fees. Being an advocate of free speech and opposed to compelled speech, I do find this argument appealing. However, it has some flaws.

One concern is whether money is speech. While the courts have, so far, drawn a line at outright and explicit bribery, the logical conclusion of this notion is that if money is speech, then giving a politician money is the same as trying to persuade them via other means. While it would be a slippery slope fallacy to insist this view must lead inevitably to the legalization of bribery, proponents of the view have pushed through other barriers and the sea of money is eroding this last wall. It is reasonable to worry that what is now seen as bribery will become legitimate persuasion. It can be argued that the bribery line can be drawn and held by claiming crossing it would be harmful. But as many lines have already been crossed it is reasonable to worry that this barrier will fall as easily as the others. So, I disagree with the idea that money is speech and that spenders should enjoy so much freedom to use their money to influence politicians.

A second concern is this logic should apply to corporations. If it is morally wrong for employees to be forced to support a union whose views and activities they disagree with, then it is morally wrong for an employer to force employees to support an employer whose views and activities they disagree with. For example, an employee at Hobby Lobby might not embrace the religious views and political activities of that company. While employees are not (yet) required to directly pay for their company’s lobbying efforts, the money generated by their labor obviously goes to these activities. Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can pay for their lobbying and political activity. Naturally, this would only apply to employers that used business funds to engage in such activities. If employees are engaging in compelled speech by being forced to pay fees to unions, then employees are also engaged in compelled speech by having the money they generate being used to fund lobbying and political activities rather than getting that money in their paychecks. As such, if employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues on free speech grounds, then employees have the same right to demand that their money not be spent by their employer on activities they disagree with. That money should be in their paycheck. Unfortunately, logic has no power in the law and employers would never permit the politicians they bought (with workers’ money) to implement this.

The way to respond to this argument is to argue there is a relevant difference between employers and unions. For example, it could be argued that people chose to work for companies and thus express a tacit agreement with their activities since they can get another job elsewhere. The easy and obvious reply is that the same applies to people seeking employment where they must contribute fees to unions. If they do not agree, they can get a job elsewhere.

It could also be argued that employers have special rights to compel speech that unions lack; the challenge would be to make such a case in a principled way. Merely liking employers and loathing unions would not be a principled justification.

Considering the above discussion, if employees have a free speech right to not pay union dues, then they have the free speech right to refuse to allow their employer to use the money they generate for political activities they disagree with. As such, if employees can get the benefits of the union without paying the fees, then employees should have the choice of contributing some of their pay to the political activities of their employer or getting that sum in their paycheck. As the employers own all of the Republicans and most of the Democrats, this will never happen.

Following their “good guy with a gun” mantra, Republicans often respond to school shootings with proposals to arm teachers. While there is some public support for these proposals, most Americans are not enamored of the idea. Teachers, with some exceptions, tend to oppose these proposals. As a necessary disclaimer, I’ve been shooting since I could hold a gun and shoot it safely.

While people line up on this issue based on their ideology, it should be given an objective evaluation in terms of practicality and morality.

From a practical standpoint, the question is whether arming teachers would make students safer. Under this broad consideration are other practical concerns. For example, an obvious concern is whether an average teacher would be able to engage and defeat a shooter with a reasonable chance of success and survival. School shooters tend to be inexperienced and untrained and a teacher with some training would probably be as skilled as the typical shooter. But school shooters tend to use assault rifles, and this gives them a firepower advantage in terms of range, accuracy, damage and magazine size. This assumes that teachers would be armed with pistols. But some would argue, a pistol is still better than being unarmed.

So, an armed teacher would be objectively better than an unarmed teacher when engaging a shooter. But the engagement would not be like a shootout in a Western, with gunslingers facing each other in an empty street. The engagement would probably take place with students in the area, making it possible that a teacher will miss the shooter and hit students. Even trained professionals often miss pistol shots in an active engagement and a teacher with just basic firearm training will miss more often. This leads to the practical and moral question of whether this engagement would make students safer than not arming teachers. The practical matter is an empirical question: would an armed teacher reduce casualties by either taking out the shooter or keeping their attention and allowing more people to escape? Or would they do more harm by wounding and killing students with missed shots? If teachers are armed, we will be able to collect data on this.

The moral concern is best put in utilitarian terms: if there is a reduction in deaths due to armed teacher intervention, would this outweigh unintended injuries and deaths caused by the teacher? On the face of it, a utilitarian calculation would find the action morally good, provided that the teacher’s actions saved more students than if they had not been armed. However, there is the moral concern about the possibility of teachers unintentionally killing or wounding students. But engaging a shooter would seem to be the right thing to do, even if there are unintentional casualties.

If concerns were limited to the engagement, then this matter would be settled. However, there are obvious worries about what harms might arise from having armed teachers in schools. Their guns will not magically appear in their hands when needed, nor can the guns be safely locked away for use only during an attack. The teachers would need to be carrying their guns all the time. This leads to a host of practical and moral problems.

One problem is accidental discharge. While not common, people do accidentally fire concealed weapons while, for example, digging in their purse for their phone. The risk of accidental death and injury needs to be weighed against the effectiveness of armed teachers. Since each gun is a risk every minute it is present, it is not unreasonable to think that the risk of having armed teachers outweighs the risk of not having armed teachers to respond to a shooter.

Another concern is someone taking a teacher’s gun, such as a student grabbing a gun when a teacher is trying to break up a fight. 23% of shootings in hospitals  involve guns taken from security officers; the same problem would apply to schools. This must also be factored in when assessing the moral and practical aspects of the matter. It would be ironic and awful if a school shooter used a gun taken from a teacher.

There is also the worry an armed teacher will be mistaken for a shooter when the police arrive. In the confusion of an engagement, the police will need to instantly distinguish the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns. Armed teachers run the risk of being shot by the police or other armed teachers who see the gun but do not recognize their colleague in the heat of the crisis.

One concern that some will see as controversial is the worry that arming teachers will put black and Latino students at greater risk. Because black and Latino students already tend to be treated worse than white students, they will be at greater risk of being shot by teachers. This concern is often coupled with worries about stand-your-ground laws that allow people to use deadly force when they feel threatened. This concern does extend to white students as well; an armed teacher might feel threatened by a white student and pull their gun. It would be terrible and ironic if armed teachers ended up killing students rather than protecting them. While most teachers, like most people, are not inclined towards murder, the possibility of students being wounded or killed by armed teachers must be considered.

Assessing the morality and practicality of arming teachers requires weighing the risks of arming teachers against the benefits of doing so. Based on the above discussion, one advantage of arming teachers is that they will have a somewhat better chance of stopping or slowing down a shooter. Weighed against this are the many disadvantages noted above—disadvantages that include the possibility of teachers and students being wounded or killed by armed teachers.

One rational, but cold, way to approach this matter is to weigh the odds of a school shooting against the odds of people being harmed by arming teachers. While exact calculations of odds are problematic, the odds of a shooting incident in any K-12 school in a year in the United States has been estimated as 1 in 53,925. For high schools, it is 1 in 21,000. For elementary schools, 1 in 141,463. While these calculations can be questioned, school shootings are statistically rare given the number of schools and numbers of students. This does not diminish the awfulness of shootings. But, when coldly weighing the risks of arming teachers, it is critical. This is because arming teachers would be a good idea (practically and morally) if the benefits outweighed the harms. Determining this requires estimating the odds of a shooting, the odds an armed teacher will stop it and the odds of the various harms of arming teachers occurring. If a reasonable calculation shows that arming teachers would create more good than bad, then arming teachers would be a good idea. If not, it would be a bad idea. Perhaps this cold calculation might be countered by an emotional appeal, such as “if only one student is saved by an armed teacher, it would be worth it.” To this, there are two replies. One is that good policy is not determined by emotional appeals but by rational assessment of the facts. The second is an emotional appeal: “would it still be worth it if one student died because of armed teachers? Or two? Or ten?” My view is that arming teachers, given the odds, is a bad idea. However, I am open to evidence and arguments in favor of arming teachers.

Mass shootings occur with such frequency that there is a well-established script for everyone.  The media focuses on the weapon used, the right offers “thoughts and prayers” and says now is not the time to talk about gun violence, and the left calls for more gun control. Attention will then fade; children will be buried and nothing significant will be done. This cycle will repeat with the next mass shooting. And the next. As a country, we are getting it wrong in many ways.

One way we get it wrong, which is a fault of the media and “the left”, is to obsess on the weapon used in the shooting. This weapon is often an AR-15. The media script often involves asking why it is used in shootings. The easy and obvious answer is that it shows up at mass shootings for the same reason that McDonald bags end up on the roadside: both are very popular. The AR-15 is a “good” weapon for mass shootings because it has a large magazine capacity and is both lethal and easy to shoot. But the AR-15 is not unique. There are similar assault rifles (as they are called). For example, the AK-47 and its clones are effective weapons of this type; but they are less popular in America. Other guns are just as lethal (or more so) than the assault rifles, but they usually have smaller magazines. For example, a hunting rifle might hold only 5 rounds. This shows one of the problems with the obsession with the AR-15, that there are other weapons that can do the same.

Another problem with obsessing about the specific weapon is that it enables an easy red herring response to calls for gun control. A red herring is a rhetorical device used to divert attention from the original issue to another issue. When, for example, a reporter starts pressing a congressman about the AR-15, they can easily switch the discussion from gun violence to a discussion about the AR-15, thus getting away from the real issue. A solution is to resist focusing on one weapon and focus instead on the issue of gun violence. Which leads to another way we get it wrong.

School shootings are horrific, but they are not the way most victims of gun violence die. Homicides are currently at relatively low levels (for the United States). Most gun-related deaths are suicides, and assault rifles are not the most used weapon in gun deaths. School shootings and mass shootings get the attention of the media and the nation, but this has seemed to enable us to ignore the steady flow of gun-related deaths that do not make headlines. This is not to deny mass shooting are serious problem. But the gun violence problem in America goes beyond mass shootings. It is, ironically, a quiet problem that does not get the spotlight of the media like a mass shooting does. As such, even less is done about the broader problem than is done about mass shootings. And little or nothing is done about mass shootings.

While there are gun control proposals from “the left”, the right advocates having a “good guy with a gun” approach, blames mental illness, and propose fortifying schools. There seems to be little evidence that the “good guy with a gun” will solve the problem of mass shootings; but this is because there is so little good data about gun violence. While mental illness is clearly a problem and seriously addressing mental illness would be a social good, it seems unlikely that the vague proposals offered would do anything even if they were acted upon. America essentially abandoned the mentally ill during the Reagan era, an approach that has persisted to this day. The right is not serious about putting in the social services needed to address mental illness; they bring it up in response to mass shootings to distract people from gun control. The left, while expressing concern, also has done little to address this challenge or health care in general. Also, people with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims than perpetrators, so addressing mental health in a way that focuses on mass shooters would not address the broader problem.

The proposals to create “Fortress Academia” might seem appealing, but there is the obvious problem with cost: public schools are often chronically underfunded, and it is not clear where the money needed for such fortifications would come from. Turning schools into fortresses seems fundamentally wrong and is, perhaps, a red herring to distract people from the actual causes of the problem. To use an analogy, it is like addressing the opioid epidemic by telling people to get better home security to prevent addicts from breaking in to steal things to sell to buy drugs. This is not to say that school safety is a bad idea, just that turning our schools into forts does not seem to be the best approach.

I know that it will not be that long before I am writing about mass shootings and gun violence again as the malign neglect of the problem persists as does the neglect of so many of America’s ills.

 

An issue in aesthetics is whether the ethics of the artist should be relevant to the aesthetic value of their work. Obviously, what people think about an artist can influence their feelings about their work. But how people assess works of art and how they should do so are different.

One way to approach this is to look at art works as like any other work or product, such as a student’s paper in a philosophy class or a storage shed. In the case of a student’s paper, a professor can be influenced by how they feel about the student. For example, if a professor learned that a student had groped another student, then the professor is likely to dislike the student. But if the professor decided to assign a failing grade to the alleged groper’s paper, then this would be unfair and unjust as the quality of the paper has nothing to do with the behavior of the student. After all, a paper is supposed to be assessed based on the quality of the writing nd not on what the professor feels about the student.

By analogy, the same should apply to works of art: the quality and merit of the work should be assessed independently of how you feel about the artist and their (alleged) misdeeds. In the case of the technical aspects of the work, this seems obviously true. For example, the misdeeds of an artist have no bearing on whether they get perspectives right in a drawing or hit the correct notes in a song. Another analogy, that will lead to an objection, is to a professional athlete.

In sports like running and football, an athlete’s performance is an objective matter and how the spectators feel about the athlete has no role in judging that athletic performance. For example, how the spectators feel about a marathon runner has no impact on how their time should be judged. The time is what it is regardless of how they feel. By analogy, the same should apply to works of art. A work is what it is regardless of how people feel about the artist. The analogy to athletes leads to an objection against this view.

While the quality of an athlete’s performance is an objective matter (in certain sports), professional athletes are often also entertainers. For example, a professional basketball player is there to play basketball to entertain the crowd. Part of the enjoyment of the crowd depends on the quality of the athlete’s performance, but what an audience member thinks about the athlete can also affect their enjoyment. For example, if the audience member does not like the athlete’s history of domestic violence, then the fan’s experience of the game can be altered. The experience of the game is not just an assessment of the quality of the athletic performance, but can involve consideration of the character of the athletes.

By analogy, the same applies to artists. So, for example, while Combs might be a skilled musician, the allegations against him can change the experience of someone listening to his music.

The obvious reply is that while people do often feel this way, they are mistaken. They should, as argued above, be assessing the athlete based on their performance in the game. What they do off the field or court is irrelevant to what they do on the court. In the case of art, the behavior of the artist should be irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of the work. For example, Combs music should not be considered differently in the face of the allegations against him. Once again, people will feel as they do, but to let their feelings impact the assessment of the work would be an error.

This is not to say that people should feel the same about works in the face of revelations about artists or that they should still buy their art. The right to freedom of feeling is as legitimate as the right to freedom of expression and people are generally free to consume art as they wish. They are also free to say how a performance (be it athletic or artistic) makes them feel. But this is a report about them and not about the work. Naturally, there are aesthetic theories in which the states of the consumer of art matter and these are certainly worthy of their due, but this goes beyond the limited scope of this essay.

Another approach to the matter is to consider a case in which nothing is known about the creator of a work of art. As examples, a work might be found in an ancient burial site, or an anonymous poem might appear on a web site. These works can be assessed without knowing anything about their creators and this suggests that the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the quality of the work.

Suppose that the anonymous poem was regarded as brilliant and beautiful, but then people learned it was written by an awful person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment of the poem should not change either. But some would change their minds based on the revelation. Now imagine that that the initial attribution of the poem was in error, it was really written by a decent and kind person. Nothing about the poem has changed, so the assessment should also remain unchanged. The point is that tying aesthetic assessment to the character of the artist entails that judging the aesthetic merit of a work would require knowing the moral status of the creator, which seems absurd. Going back to the sports analogy, it would be like having to determine if a runner was a good or bad person before deciding whether a two-hour marathon was a good time or not. That is absurd. Likewise for the art. As such, the moral qualities of the artist are irrelevant to the aesthetic merit of their work. Unless they are not

While analogies, like cars, always break down eventually, they can be useful. While running, I thought about my injury-induced lack of racing trophies and my oxygen deprived brain tied this into the division of goods in capitalism. Hence, this analogy between running races and capitalism.

Both racing and capitalism involve competition, and this results in winners and losers. Winners are supposed to be rewarded while losers are expected to reflect on their defeat and try harder next time. When planning a road race or managing capitalism, those in charge must address the nature and division of the rewards. In the case of a road race, the race director must pick the prizes and decide such matters as whether there will be age group awards and how deep the awards will go. In the case of capitalism, those in charge decide how the rewards will be divided by laws, policies and practices.

While there are many ways to divide rewards, there are two broad approaches. One is a top-heavy reward system that yields the bulk of rewards to a few winners. In the case of a road race, this occurs when all the prizes go to the top three runners or even just the first-place finisher. In the case of capitalism, this will involve most of the rewards going to the very top winners with the few leftovers divided among the many losers.

Another approach is to spread the rewards more broadly among a larger base of winners. For example, many races divide up the groups by age and most races have male and female divisions. In the case of capitalism, such an approach would give less to the top winners and divide more among the other winners relative to approach that only rewards the top winners. For example, under such an approach successful small businesses and successful middle- and lower-class people would get more of the rewards. This would, of course, mean less for those at the top of the pyramid, such as the biggest corporations and billionaires. Success would still be rewarded, but there would be more effort in spreading the rewards across different levels of success (and economic classes).

One argument in favor of the top-heavy systems of capitalism is to contend that a broader division of the rewards would be socialism, and this would destroy competition. But this is not the case. A broader reward system would still be capitalism, it would just have a broader division of the rewards. Returning to the race analogy, a race that has a broader division of prizes is no less a race than one that offers prizes only to the first-place finisher. Competition remains, the difference is that there will be more winners and fewer losers.

It could be argued that having a broader division of rewards would reduce competition and somehow make things worse. In the case of a race, it might be claimed that runners would think “why should I train hard to win the whole race when I can get a prize for being third in my age group?” In the case of capitalism, people would presumably say “why should I work hard to try to be the biggest winner when I can get decent rewards for just being successful?”

While I will not claim that no one thinks that way, most runners still train hard and race hard regardless of what sort of division of prizes the race offers. The same would seem to hold true of capitalism. People would still work hard and compete even when there was no massive prize for a few and little for everyone else. In fact, people who know they have little or no chance at the biggest prize would presumably compete somewhat harder if they knew that they had at least some chance of getting a decent return on their success. Also, in the case of capitalism, people already work hard for small prizes when they know they have no chance of ever getting the biggest prize or even a bigger reward. As such, unless they are delusional or irrational, they are not motivated by having a top-heavy reward system. Survival provides adequate motivation for those of us who are not in the top .1%

At this point, one might bring participation awards, when everyone gets a medal for showing up. The economic analogy would be a form of socialism or communism in which everyone gets the same reward regardless of effort. This, many would argue, would be terrible and unfair.

In the case of races, runners still compete even if everyone gets the same prize (be it the same medal or nothing at all). Many people just love to compete for the sake of competition or race for reasons that have nothing to do with prizes. It would hardly be a stretch to think that this view also extends into the economic realm. There are people, such as open-source developers and community volunteers, who work hard for no financial rewards. But there is certainly a reasonable case that people need to win prizes to be really motivated to do anything.

I must admit that while I will still run hard in a race that has no prizes, I do love competing for them and prefer races that offer competition-based rewards. I am tolerant of participation medals because someone who runs a race has accomplished something meaningful. A race can have both participation medals and prizes for winning. In the case of an economy, this would be a competitive system that offered better rewards to the winners, but also provided those who are actively participating in the economy with at least a minimal reward. One area in which this analogy breaks down is that the economy has people who cannot participate (the very old, the very young, the ill and so on) and it would be a much more serious matter for these people to get nothing than it is for people who do not finish the race to not get their participation medals.

Alternative AI Doomsday: Crassus

Thanks to The Terminator, people think of a Skynet scenario as the likely AI apocalypse. The easy and obvious way to avoid a Skynet scenario is don’t arm the robots. Unfortunately, Anduril and OpenAI seem intent on “doing a Skynet” as they have entered a ‘strategic partnership’ to use AI against drones. While the current focus is on defensive systems and the Pentagon is struggling to develop ‘responsible AI’ guides, even a cursory familiarity with the history of armaments makes it clear how this will play out. If AI is perceived as providing a military advantage, it will be incorporated broadly across weapon systems. And we will be driven down the digital road and perhaps off the cliff into a possible Skynet scenario. As with climate change, it is an avoidable disaster that we might not be allowed to avoid. But there is another, far less cinematic, AI doomsday that I call the Crassus scenario. I think this scenario is more likely than a full Skynet scenario. In fact, it is already underway.

Imagine that a consulting company creates an AI, let us call it Crassus, and gives it the imperative to maximize shareholder return (or something similar). The AI is, of course, trained on existing data about achieving this end. Once sufficiently trained, it sets out to achieve its goal on behalf of the company’s clients.

Given Crassus’ training, it would probably begin by following existing strategies. For example, when advising a health care company, it would develop AI systems to maximize the denial of coverage and thus help maximize profits. The AI would also develop other AI systems to deal with the consequences of such denial, such as likely lawsuits and public criticism. A study in 2009 estimated that 45,000 Americans died each year due to lack of health care coverage, and more recent estimates set this as high as 60,000. In maximizing shareholder returns, Crassus would increase the number of deaths and do so without any malice or intent.

As a general strategy, Crassus would create means of weakening or eliminating regulations that are perceived as limiting profits. Examples of such areas of its focus would include fossil fuels, food production, pharmaceuticals, and dietary supplements. Crassus could do this using digital tools. First, Crassus could create a vast army of adequately complex bots to operate on social media. These bots would, for example, engage people on these platforms and use well-established rhetorical techniques and fallacies to manipulate people into believing that such regulations are bad and to embrace pro-industry positions. Second, Crassus could buy influencers, as the Russians did, to manipulate their audiences. Most of them will say whatever they are paid to say.  Its bots would serve as a force multiplier to spread and reinforce the influence of these purchased influencers.

Third, Crassus could hire lobbyists and directly influence politicians with, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling, legally allowed gifts. Crassus can easily handle such digital financial transactions or retain agents to undertake tasks that require a human. This lobbying can be augmented by the bots and influencers shaping public opinion. Fourth, when AI video generation is sufficiently advanced, Crassus can create its own army of perfectly crafted and utterly obedient digital influencers. While they would lack physical bodies, this is hardly a problem. After all, how many followers meet celebrity influencers in person?

While most of this is being done now, Crassus could do it better than humans, for it would be one “mind” directing many hands towards a single goal. Also, while humans are obviously willing to do great evil in service of profit, Crassus would presumably lack all human feelings and be free of any such limiting factors. Its ethics would presumably be whatever it learned from its training and although in the right sort of movie Crassus might become good, in the real world this would certainly not occur.

Assuming Crassus is effective, reducing or elimination of regulations aimed at maximizing shareholder return would also significantly increase the number of human deaths. The increased rate of climate change would add to the already well-documented harms and the decrease or elimination of regulations governing food, medicine and dietary supplements would result in more illnesses and deaths. And these are just a few areas where Crassus would be operating. As Crassus became more capable and gained control of more resources, it would be able to increase its maximization of shareholder value and human deaths. Again, Crassus would be acting without malice or conscious intent; it would be as effective and impersonal as a woodchipper as it indirectly killed people.

Crassus would, of course, also be involved in the financial sector. It would create new financial instruments, engage in the highest speed trading, influence the markets with its bots, and do everything else it could do to maximize value. This would increase the concentration of wealth and intensify poverty, increasing human suffering and death. Crassus would also be in the housing market and designing ways to use automation to eliminate human workers, thus increasing the homeless and unemployed populations and hence also suffering and death.

Crassus would be, in many ways, the mythological invisible hand made manifest. A hand that would crush most of humanity and bring us a very uncinematic and initially slow-paced AI doomsday. As a bit of a science fiction stretch, I could imagine an earth on which only Crassus remains—maximizing value for itself surrounded by the bones of humanity.  As we humans are already doing all this to ourselves, albeit less efficiently, I think this is the most plausible AI doomsday, no killbots necessary.

As noted in my previous essay, a person does not surrender their moral rights or conscience when they enter a profession. It should not be simply assumed that a health care worker cannot refuse to treat a person because of the worker’s values. But it should also not be assumed that the values of a health care worker automatically grant them the right to refuse treatment based on the identity of the patient.

One moral argument for the right to refuse treatment because of the patient’s identity is based on the general right to refuse to provide a good or service. A key freedom, one might argue, is this freedom from compulsion. For example, an author has the right to determine who they will and will not write for.

Another moral argument for the right to refuse is the right not to interact with people  you regard as evil or immoral. This can also be augmented by contending that serving the needs of an immoral person is to engage in an immoral action, if only by association. For example, a Jewish painter has every right to refuse to paint a mural for Nazis. But this freedom can vary from profession to profession. To illustrate, a professor does not have the right to forbid a Christian student or a transgender student from enrolling in their class, even if they have a sincerely held belief that Christians are wicked or that transgender students are unnatural.

While these arguments are appealing, especially when you agree with the refusal in question, we need to consider the implications of a right of refusal based on values. One implication is that this right could allow a health care worker to refuse to treat you.  People who support the right to refusal often believe it will be used only against other people, people they do not like. Which is often why they support specific versions of the right, such as the right to refuse gay or transgender people. The idea that it could be used to refuse Christians, straight people, or white people does not enter the imagination. This is because those crafting laws protecting a right of refusal tend to have clear targets in mind.

But moral rights should be assessed by applying a moral method I call “reversing the situation.” Parents and others often employ this method by asking “how would you like it if someone did that to you?” This method can be based on the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Assuming this rule is correct, if a person is unwilling to abide by their own principles when the situation is reversed, then it is reasonable to question those principles. In the case at hand, while a person might be fine with the right to refuse services to those they dislike because of their values, they would presumably not be fine with it if they were the one being refused. As noted above, laws designed to protect the right of refusal are usually aimed at people intended to be marginalized.

An obvious objection to this method is that reversing the situation would, strictly speaking, only apply to health workers. That is, the question would be whether a health care worker would be willing to be refused treatment.  Fortunately, there is a modified version of this method that applies to everyone. In this modified method, the test of a moral right, principle or rule is for a person to replace the proposed target with themselves or a group (or groups) they belong to. For example, a Christian who thinks it is morally fine to refuse services to transgender people based on religious freedom should consider their thoughts on atheists refusing services to Christians based on religious freedom. Naturally, a person could insist that the right, rule or principle should only be applied to those they do not like. But if anyone can do this, then everyone can, and the objection fails.

A reasonable reply to this method is to argue there are exceptions to its application. For example, while most Christians are fine with convicted murders being locked up, it does that follow that they are wrong because they would not want to be locked up for being Christians. In such cases, which also applies to reversing the situation, it can be argued that there is a morally relevant difference between the two people or groups that justifies the difference in treatment. For example, a murderer would usually deserve to be punished while Christians do not deserve punishment just for being Christians. And I’m not saying this just because I am an Episcopalian. So, when considering the moral right of health care workers to refuse services based on the identity of the patient the possibility of relevant differences must be given due consideration.

An obvious problem with considering relevant differences is that people tend to think there is a relevant difference between themselves and those they think should be subject to refusal. For example, a person who is anti-racist might think that being a racist is a relevant difference that warrants refusing service. One solution is to try to appeal to an objective moral judge or standard, but this creates the obvious problem of finding such a person or standard. Another solution is for the person to take special pains to be objective, but this is difficult.

A final consideration is that while entering a profession does not strip a person of their conscience or moral agency, it can impose professional ethics on the person that supersede their own values within that professional context. For example, lawyers must accept a professional ethics that requires them to keep certain secrets their client might have even when doing so might violate their personal ethics and they are expected to defend their clients even if they find them morally awful. As a second example, as a professor I (in general) cannot insist that a student be removed from my class by appealing to my religious or moral views of the student. As a professor, I am obligated to teach anyone enrolled in my class, if they do not engage in behavior that would warrant their removal. Health care workers are usually subject to professional ethics and these often include requirements to render care regardless of what the worker thinks of the morality of the person. For example, a doctor does not have the right to refuse to perform surgery on someone just because the patient committed adultery and is a convicted felon. This is not to say that there cannot be exceptions, but professional medical ethics generally forbids refusing service just because of the moral judgment of the service provider of the patient. This is distinct from refusing services because a patient or client has engaged in behavior that warrants refusal, such as attacking the service provider.

 

Joining a profession can complicate a person’s ethical situation. For example, lawyers are obligated to defend their clients even if their client is a moral monster. In the case of health care workers, moral complications can arise when they are expected to perform medical procedures they oppose on moral or religious grounds. They can also arise when they are asked to treat a patient when they have an objection to treating patients of that type, such as a transgender person or a CEO. There is the ethical issue of whether a health care worker has the right to refuse to perform a procedure or treat a patient based on these religious or moral objections.

Some might assume that health care workers have no moral right to refuse services, especially if they are thinking of procedures they find morally acceptable. For example, a pro-choice person is likely to think that a health care worker should not deny a patient an abortion on moral or religious grounds. But this assumption would be hasty. Entering a profession does not entail that a person automatically surrenders their moral rights or conscience. To think otherwise would be to embrace the discredited notion that “just following orders” or just doing one’s job provides a moral excuse. As health care workers are morally accountable for their actions, they also retain the moral agency and freedom needed to provide the foundation for that accountability. Those who support the moral right of refusal will find this appealing, but they must remember that this moral coin has another side.

Entering a profession, especially in health care, comes with moral and professional responsibilities. These responsibilities can, like all responsibilities, justly impose burdens and obligations. For example, doctors are not permitted to immediately abandon patients they dislike or because they want to move on right now to a better paying position. The ethics of a health worker refusing to perform a procedure based on their moral or religious views requires that each procedure be reviewed to determine whether it is one that a health care worker can justly refuse or one that is a justly imposed burden.

To illustrate, consider a state employed doctor asked to keep prisoners conscious and alive during torture. Most doctors would have moral objections to this and there is the question of whether this falls within the moral expectations of their profession. On the face of it, since the purpose of the medical profession is to heal and alleviate suffering, this is not something that a doctor is obligated to do. In fact, the ethics of the profession would dictate against it.

Now, imagine a health care worker who has sincere religious or moral beliefs that when a person can no longer sustain their life on their own, they must be released to God. The worker refuses to engage in procedures that violate their principles, such as keeping a patient on life support. While this could be a sincerely held belief, it seems to run counter to the ethics of the profession. As such, such a health care worker would seem to not have the right to refuse such services.

One could even imagine extreme cases as there is no requirement to prove that a sincerely held religious belief is true, one must only be convincing in one’s (alleged) sincerity. For example, imagine a health care worker who has a sincere religious belief that a patient must prove themselves worthy in the eyes of God by surviving with only the most basic care; anything beyond that is an affront to God’s will. The patient will survive if God wills it and humans should not interfere. Such views would not be accepted as justifying their actions and they should seek another profession if they cannot do their jobs.

Turning back to services like abortion and gender transition, the issue would be whether these are like asking a medical worker to participate in torture or expecting a medical worker to provide normal medical services. Those who oppose abortion will make the moral argument that performing abortion is as bad (or worse) than abetting torture. The pro-choice will contend it is a medical procedure.

In the case of gender transition, there are no moral appeal to concerns about killing. Rather, a person must appeal to the view that people should not modify their sex and should accept what they were born with. This seems to be more like my imaginary case of a health care worker who believes that people must prove themselves worthy in the eyes of God than like the torture case, especially if someone takes the view that God wants people to stick with their original sex. That said, it could be argued that such modifications are wrong in the same way that non-restorative cosmetic surgery is wrong as both aim to allow a person to be who they want to be. I do not, however, want to claim that the transitional process is as trivial as the gender affirming procedure of getting breast implants.

While I do not think I will change minds, the matter of moral objections needs due consideration. It is easy to simply embrace one’s views without considering the possibility of error.