Author: Michael LaBossiere

 

During the last pandemic, some organizations mandated vaccination against COVID-19. As another pandemic is inevitable, it is worth revisiting the moral issue of mandatory vaccination in response to a pandemic.

Schools have a well-established precedent for requiring students to be vaccinated, although there have been ways to opt out.  The moral justification is usually a utilitarian one: while there is a cost and possible harm arising from mandatory school vaccinations, this is outweighed by the harm these vaccinations prevent. Students are in close contact in closed spaces for long periods of time, putting them at risk. As such, allowing students (or, rather, their parents) to opt out of vaccines would put themselves and others at greater risk. Exemptions can, and should, be granted in cases where a person would be medically harmed by vaccination; but these are extremely rare cases. During a pandemic, the moral argument is even stronger as the risk and harm would be greater than in normal circumstances.

In terms of a moral objection to mandatory vaccinations at schools during a pandemic is that the long-term effects of a new vaccine on children and teens would not be known. As such, one could claim that possible harmful effects of the vaccine might outweigh the harms of being unvaccinated. While this is a legitimate concern, it is not unique: all past vaccines have raised the same concern. So far, the benefits have consistently outweighed the harms of vaccination. So unless there is evidence that a new vaccine presents a special problem, then it is as morally acceptable to require it during a pandemic as it was, for example, to require the polio vaccine when it was developed. This is not to deny that things can go wrong, but that we always must make such decisions without having certainty.

Employers requiring vaccination is more controversial. While some professions, such as healthcare workers and military personnel, are usually required to get vaccinated these are exceptions rather than the rule. Most professions, even those that involve working closely with other people, do not require vaccinations, even during a pandemic. There are also moral questions about what employers can compel their employees to do.

In general, the American right supports granting considerable power to employers over their employees. One example is at will employment which allows employers to fire employees at will. For example, if an employee refused to stop smoking (outside of the workplace) they could be fired. As another example, if an employee expresses political views on their own time that their boss dislikes, they can be fired. Given that the right generally supports employers having great power over their employers, one might think they  would accept that employers could mandate vaccination on the pain of being fired. While workers would be free to refuse, few can afford to quit their jobs and companies have great coercive power.

But the right has made vaccines part of their political war. While they would normally favor employers imposing what they wish on their employees, the anti-vaxxers on the right have opposed this mandate. They have shown that when corporations do not side with them in their manufactured culture war battles, they will turn against these businesses. This is presumably because they believe the political points they gain will outweigh a conflict with the corporations who help fund their re-elections.

While the right professes to be anti-vax because of their love of freedom, this is a bad faith claim. The right has been busy passing restrictive laws to “solve” problems that do not exist. For example, the right has been busy limiting access to voting based on their “big lie” about the 2020 election. If they cared about freedom, they would not be doing this. They have also been busy passing laws aimed at trans people, claiming that strict restrictions must be in place to protect people from (imaginary) dangers. Again, if they believed that freedom is so important, they would not be passing such laws. And if they really believed in protecting people from real harm, they would not be anti-vax.

The left generally favors workers’ rights and often seeks to at least slightly reduce the power disparity. As such, it would make sense for the left to generally hold that workers could refuse to be vaccinated without being fired. That said, the left also has concerns beyond the workplace, so some leftists might favor mandatory vaccination imposed by the state. This would typically be morally justified on utilitarian grounds: the state is supposed to use its coercive powers to protect citizens, and this could include requiring vaccination during the next pandemic.

My own view is, to state the obvious, that this issue is complicated. On the one hand, people have the moral right to control their bodies. This provides a moral foundation for arguing against vaccine mandates. On the other hand, all rights should be morally limited by the harm that might be done to others in exercising them. To use a silly example, I have the right to run as fast as I wish. But I do not have the right to charge into other people. This is because my actions could hurt them. As another example, while I do have the right to remove the brakes from my truck, I do not have the right to drive it on public roads after doing this. This is because I would hurt other people. In the case of the next pandemic, the harms would likely warrant mandatory vaccination just as people are required to have working brakes on their vehicles and forbidden from charging other people like deranged bulls.

While the rich have long enjoyed luxury cars, mansions and yachts, their newest luxury vehicle is the spaceship. Musk has the most useful rockets as his SpaceX vessels can put satellites into orbit and reach the International Space Station. While they do make some innovations, they are more of an evolution of existing rockets rather than a revolution in space travel.

Virgin Galactic has a spaceplane, which can be likened to a passenger version of the old X-15. While spaceplanes have potential, Virgin Galactic seems mostly focused on space tourism. Bezos has a conventional rocket that shot him and later, Katy Perry, into space. Because of its limited reach, it seems suitable mostly for space tourism.  As would be expected, critics see these billionaire space vessels as wasteful excesses: resources are being expended for ego trips to space that would be better used to address serious problems here on earth.

Bezos has acknowledged the validity of this criticism, saying “Well, I say they’re largely right. We have to do both. You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We’ve always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both.” He claimed that his mission is aimed at “building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there, and those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth.” Is Bezos right?

He is right that the critics are largely right: while Musk can claim his SpaceX ships put cargo into space, Branson and Bezos have been joyriding (just barely) into space. Vast resources were expended to for these joyrides, and, in the case of Bezos, it can be argued that his flight was enabled by his brutal exploitation of his workforce. As is well known, Amazon workers have been pushed so hard that they need to pee in bottles to meet the requirements of their job. Amazon’s leadership has also been busy crushing unions, thus enabling Bezos to expand his wealth to the point that he has his own rocket ship. This creates a powerful symbol for use in arguing about taxing the rich and increasing the minimum wage. In the glare of rocket engines, it seems absurd to argue the rich would be hurt by having to pay more taxes or that business like Amazon would be meaningfully harmed if they had to provide workers with better pay and benefits. After all, if a company is so well off that its owner has his own rocket ship, it is absurd to argue against treating employees better on the grounds that the company cannot afford to do so. Bezos could have forgone some of that rocket ship money and eased up on his employees so that they would not have needed to pee in bottles. Given his bountiful wealth, he could easily have done both. But he decided not to. He also could have used all those resources to address problems here on earth while still maintaining a lavish lifestyle including multiple yachts.  His counter is, as mentioned above, that he is building a road to space.

For sci-fi fans, it is obvious that Bezos is probably thinking of Heinlein’s novella The Man Who Sold the Moon. This novella recounts the machinations of Harriman, “the last of the robber barons”, to get to the moon. In the story, Harriman manipulates and schemes to get backing for his plan and uses the money to acquire talented people to solve the technical problems. The story includes a successful flight the moon and ends with the plans to establish a colony on the moon. But Harriman is never allowed to go to the moon: he is seen as too important to risk. Heinlein does present a plausible tale, and it is still well worth reading today. But, of course, the actual world turned out differently.

Like most other huge endeavors, the moon was reached as part of a collective effort by a state when the United States put the first person on the moon. This public development of technology laid the foundation of billionaire space flight, just as their businesses were built on public foundations.  For a while, it seemed like a version of Heinlein’s vision might come to pass. But a moon colony was never established and humanity’s expansion into space has been slow and limited for many reasons.

We do have the technology to create a moon base and plans have long existed to do just that. As such, Bezos and his fellows are not really in the business of overcoming technological hurdles for a moon base or space expansion. As noted above, Musk and Bezos have rockets and Branson has a spaceplane. They have offered some evolution of technology that, in Musk’s case, has been heavily subsidized by the taxpayers.

Also, while they are extremely wealthy, they do not have the resources to establish a significant moon base, let alone a Mars colony. But one could argue that they can shape public policy towards space. To use an obvious analogy, the United States government has heavily subsidized railroads, fossil fuels and interstate highways. This has usually been done at the behest of the wealthy. This public investment has provided infrastructure and, of course, vast fortunes for some. As such, the space billionaires might be planning something similar with space: a vast public investment gets them into a position where they can make private profit. Musk is already doing the best here; he has been getting contracts from the state to provide space vessels and services.  Bezos and Branson are behind here, but they seem to be aiming at space tourism. They, it seems, are adopting the model of selling their services to the wealthy.

In terms of billionaires building the road to space, the highway system and railroads provide good analogies: they were built by public funds and now the billionaires are cashing in. It is debatable whether paying billions to billionaires for space is superior to using those billions to fund public space operations. While there is the myth that the private sector is magically better than the public sector, there is the obvious question of how billionaires will make a profit while somehow also being cheaper and better than what could be done by NASA. The answer, as is usually the case, will probably be to simply lie.  

In terms of the road to space leading to amazing things that will solve problems here on earth, a case can be made for this. One example is asteroid mining. Asteroids contain resources and space mining would seem to avoid the usual environmental harms of mining on earth. However, there is the obvious concern about how those resources will be used and who they will benefit. If this just leads to space trillionaires while most people remain poor, then this will only solve the problem of not being a space trillionaire. One would need to go through and assess all the plausible benefits to make (or break) this claim, which is beyond the scope of this short essay.

In closing, an obvious critical consideration is what would be the best investment for problem solving. Sci-fi fans find the idea of space as the solution appealing. But we need to be realistic about this. For example, while a Mars colony sounds cool, those resources could be used to address problems on earth. For example, the failing infrastructure of the United States could be repaired and upgraded, and this would solve many problems. It would not be as cool as a Mars colony but would certainly solve more problems.

Because of my love of sci-fi, I want humanity to go into space. But moral considerations point to focusing more on solving problems here on earth. As Bezos said, we can do both. But this would require the billionaires to decide to use some of their billions to solve these problems. Many of which they themselves have created and thus could often easily fix by simply ceasing to cause harm.

While most states have hate crime statutes, only  about five include law enforcement officers as a protected category. Utah is one of these states. After a 2021 traffic stop for speeding, Lauren Gibson is alleged to have stomped on a “Back the Blue” sign while “smirking in an intimidating manner” at a deputy. She was charged with a hate crime for her actions. These leads to two issues. The first is a specific matter: did her actions constitute a hate crime? The second is a general matter: should law enforcement be a protected category in the context of hate crime?

While the legal debate is best left to legal experts, I can consider the text of the law and assess whether it seems reasonable to interpret her actions as a hate crime. According to the Utah law, a hate crime occurs when a person commits an offense “with the intent to intimidate or terrorize another person or with reason to believe that his action would intimidate or terrorize that person.” And, of course, the person must be in a protected category. So, for example, if I went to Utah and was recognized as a philosophy professor and a crowd attempted to terrorize or intimidate me because of this, it would not be a hate crime, since philosophy professors are not a protected category. If the same crowd did the same sort of thing to a police officer who was with me, then that would be a hate crime. That is how protected categories work.

Given that Gibson was a 19-year-old unarmed woman at the time of the incident, it seems unlikely she believed she could intimidate an armed deputy. While she probably did not know it at the time, the deputy is a veteran of the department and had seen combat duty while serving in the military. One could, of course, argue that she did think she could intimidate and terrorize him by stomping on a sign and smirking; but those would be rather odd ways to try to intimidate and terrorize an armed deputy.

Determining intent can be tricky since as this requires speculating on internal psychological states. Naturally, a person can make their alleged intent clear by words or deeds. But stomping on a sign and smirking in this context seem to be based on an intention to express anger and displeasure rather than expressing an intention to intimidate and terrorize. One can, of course, say that she exercised poor judgment in antagonizing the deputy, but she probably did not expect to be charged with committing a hate crime. Smirking, after all, is generally not a crime. In the case of the sign, it had apparently been found abandoned by the side of the road. Stomping on an abandoned sign is also usually not a crime. While ignorance of the law is not an excuse, unless she was aware of the statute, she would have no reason to think that her actions would constitute a hate crime. After all, her actions are not what a person would intuitively think of as falling under a hate crime. While the legal judgment was up to the judge, it would be absurd to convict her of a hate crime—even under the statute. This leads to the question of whether law enforcement should be considered a protected category in the context of hate crimes.

While people can and do hate the police, hate crimes are not defined based on the emotion. After all, if a mob in Utah tried to kill me because they hate my ontological commitments, then they would be acting from hate but not committing a hate crime. As noted above, a hate crime involves intimidation and terrorizing aimed at a protected category. From a moral standpoint, a reasonable justification for focusing on intimidation and terrorizing is to distinguish crimes that might be committed against a person who just so happens to be in a certain category and crimes aimed at a person because they are in that category. So, if Ted embezzles money from Sally because he hates her for being a cruel boss, and Sally is in a protected category, then that would generally not be a hate crime. After all, Ted is not trying to intimidate or terrorize her. He is trying to steal money and just happens to hate her. But if Ted attacks Sally because she is in a protected category and intends to intimidate or terrorize her because of that category, then that could be a hate crime. As far as why a hate crime would be worse than a normal crime, one moral factor is that a hate crime also harms other members of the category. This is because the hate crime is not aimed just at intimidating or terrorizing a person but also aimed at intimidation and terrorizing them because they are within that category. So, if Ted commits a crime against Sally aimed at intimidating and terrorizing her because she is a woman, then he is also acting against other women and thus the consequences are usually greater than for a “normal” crime. Or so one might argue.

In the case of law enforcement, it is true that a person can be targeted for a crime because of their profession. While it is fortunately a rare occurrence, there are cases where police are targeted for assassination. But this is also true of many other professions. For example, journalists are subject to attacks because they are journalists (sometimes by the police). Thanks to Trump and his fellows, these attacks increased and are still an ongoing concern. Speaking of Trump and his fellows, their lies also contributed to increased attacks on public health officials. As such, if law enforcement should be protected by hate crime laws, then the same protection should be extended to other professions as well, especially journalists and public health officials. In this case, one might see an interesting case in which a journalist commits a hate crime against a police officer by “intimidating” them by filming them committing a hate crime by intimidating and terrorizing the journalist by shooting them with “less than lethal” munition and whacking them in the face with a club. One could, of course, argue that professions should not be the basis for being in a protected category.

Also from a moral standpoint, hate crime definitions often tend to focus on intimidation and terrorizing because of ethical concerns about power disparities between categories of people and not just between individuals. While individuals do vary in power, certain categories enjoy relative power advantages over others. To use an obvious example, men as a category have more power than women as a category. I, as a man can run through the park in the dark with no fear; the same is not true for most women. While there are individual women who can physically intimidate and overpower individual men, men as a category have the advantage when it comes to terrorizing and intimidating.   As another example, white Americans as a category have more power than other Americans. This is not to deny that an individual white American can be intimidated or terrorized by, for example, an African American. But white Americans generally have the advantage here when it comes to inflicting terror and intimidation. For example, Amy Cooper seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she attempted to use the police to intimidate Christian Cooper. In this specific case, her efforts backfired, and she got in trouble, but this is because the encounter was recorded. In other cases, the intimidation works as intended.

While an individual law enforcement officer could be intimidated or terrorized by someone outside of the profession, as a category law enforcement has an absurd level of advantage over civilians. Police are armed, often with military grade equipment, they usually wear some form of armor, and they have at least basic training in combat. They also have the advantage of being able to call on the power of the state, both in the form of reinforcements and in inflicting punishment through the legal system. They also often get away with using excessive, even lethal violence. There have been, of course, some famous exceptions that show if the violence is recorded and witnessed by many people and the incident gains national and international attention during the right phase of public opinion, then an officer might be held accountable. As such, law enforcement as a category is unlikely to be intimidated or terrorized by civilians. The weight of terror and intimidation is entirely on their side. As such, there seems to be no moral need to single out law enforcement for special protection under hate crime laws. To pre-empt likely straw man attacks, I am obviously not claiming that police should not be protected by the law; a crime against a person who is in law enforcement is still a crime but would not be a hate crime. So, why are their such statutes?

The easy and obvious answer is that the intention is to, ironically, intimidate and terrorize people who might come into conflict with the police. This could be during an arrest or during a protest. On the face of it, one could argue that a person who resists arrest is committing a hate crime under this statute. If stomping on a sign and smirking count as threats or intimidation, then protesting the police would also fall under this category. Protesting anything while police are merely present could fall under this sort of statute. An officer might, for example, see a protestor smirking at them and decide that was an attempt to intimidate them.

I must, of course, grudgingly admit that the right is devilishly clever to repurpose hate crime laws intended to protect marginalized communities and vulnerable groups. They are weaponizing these laws against these communities and groups; just as they have weaponized free speech. In closing, while law enforcement does deserve the full protection of the law, making them a protected category is obviously intended to weaponize hate crime statutes and do so largely against the people they were originally intended to protect.

 

It might seem like woke madness to claim that medical devices can be biased. Are there white supremacist stethoscopes? Misogynistic MRI machines? Extremely racist X-Ray machines? Obviously not, medical devices do not have beliefs or ideologies (yet). But they can still be biased in their accuracy and effectiveness.

One example of a biased device is the pulse oximeter. This device measures blood oxygen by using light. You have probably had one clipped on your finger during a visit to your doctor. Or you might even own one. The bias in this device is that it is three times more likely to not reveal low oxygen levels in dark skinned patients than light skinned patients.  As would be expected, there are other devices that have problems with accuracy when used on people who have darker skins. These are essential sensor biases (or defects). In most cases, these can be addressed by improving the sensors or developing alternative devices. The problem is, to exaggerate a bit, is that most medical technology is made by white men for white men. This is not to claim such biased devices are all cases of intentional racism and misogyny. There is not, one assumes, a conspiracy against women and people of color in this area but there is a bias problem.  In addition to biased hardware, there is also biased software.

Many medical devices use software, and it is often used in medical diagnosis. People are often inclined to think software is unbiased, perhaps because of science fiction tropes about objective and unfeeling machines. While it is true that our current software does not feel or think, bias can make its way into the code. For example, software used to analyze chest x-rays would work less well on women than men if the software was “trained” only on X-rays of men. The movie Prometheus has an excellent fictional example of a gender-biased auto-doc that lacks the software to treat female patients.

These software issues can be addressed by using diverse training groups for software and taking steps to test software for bias by using a diverse testing group. Also, having a more diverse set of people working on such technology would probably also help.

Another factor is analogous to user error, which is user bias. People, unlike devices, do have biases and these can and do impact how they use medical devices and their data. Bias in healthcare is well documented. While overt and conscious racism and sexism are rare, sexism and subtle racism are still problems. Addressing this widespread problem is more challenging than addressing biases in hardware and software. But if we want fair and unbiased healthcare, it is a problem that must be addressed.

As to why these biases should be addressed, this is a matter of ethics. To allow bias to harm patients goes against the fundamental purpose of medicine, which is to heal people. From a utilitarian standpoint, addressing this bias would be the right thing to do: it would create more positive value than negative value. This is because there would be more accurate medical data and better treatment of patients.

In terms of a counterargument, one could contend that addressing bias would increase costs and thus should not be done. There are several easy and obvious replies. One is that the cost increase would be, at worst, minor. For example, testing devices on a more diverse population would not seem meaningfully more expensive than not doing that. Another is that patients and society pay a far greater price in terms of illness and its effects than it would cost to address medical bias. For those focused on the bottom line, workers who are not properly treated can cost corporations some of their profit and ongoing health issues can cost taxpayer money.

One can, of course, advance racist and sexist arguments by professing outrage at “wokeness” attempting to “ruin” medicine by “ramming diversity down throats” or however Fox news would put it. Such “arguments” would be aimed at preserving the harm done to women and people of color, which is an evil thing to do. One might hope that these folks would be hard pressed to turn, for example, pulse oximeters into a battlefront of the culture war. But these are the same folks who professed to lose their minds over Mr. Potato Head and went on a bizarre rampage against a grad school level theory that has been around since the 1970s. They are also the same folks who have gone anti-vax in during a pandemic, encouraging people to buy tickets in the death lottery. But the right thing to do is to choose life.

A few years ago, PragerU tried to push back on Twitter (now X) against arguments by young Americans about racism. In general, getting involved in social media battles is a bad idea. To use an AD&D analogy, these fights are like punching green slime: the more you attack, the more you hurt yourself. And you end up covered in slime. It is usually best to avoid rather than engage. 

In the case of PragerU, they fired off what they presumed would be a sick burn of the youth: “Young people are enamored with ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric because they think they are fighting racist systems in America.  The TRUTH is they are fighting America itself and the very values the country was founded on.” Ironically, PragerU could have used some schooling in clear writing.

Their intended meaning, given the ideology evident in their videos, is that the youth think they are fighting racism, but they are wrong about this. Instead, they are fighting America and its founding values. Which are supposedly not racist. However, the tweet as written states that the youth think they are fighting racist systems in America, but they do not realize that the racist systems are America itself and its founding values. That is, PragerU seems have tweeted openly what they were supposed to keep quiet: they believe that America was founded on racism and that the racist systems are America. Sometimes they are willing to acknowledge that there were a few racist things in America’s past, but quickly rush to explain that they were not so bad and, of course, have no meaningful consequences for the present day.

 These are the same people who defend “Civil War” statues on the grounds that history must be preserved. This is a bad faith argument for obvious reasons. While a statue can be an historical artifact, a statue is not history. As comedians have noted, we do not have statues of Bin Laden in New York City, even though he is historically significant to the city. We do not do this because such statues are political statements. There is also the obvious problem that the history presented by PragerU and its ilk generally try to whitewash the past and ignore the truth. Attacking Critical Race Theory has become a key part of this strategic attack on history and facts. This is a fight that the right is currently winning, a backlash from a time when Black Lives Mattered.

 Ironically, PragerU (and those who share their ideology) agree with key factual claims accepted by most Critical Race Theorists about racism. These include the fact that the United States political, economic, and social systems have been dominated by white Americans to their advantage.  The difference is that Critical Race Theorists generally see the racism (systematic and otherwise) as morally wrong and something that needs to be addressed. PragerU and their fellows see these systems as generally good, although they were reluctant to openly assert this claim. Instead, they have engaged in revisionist history and take great effort to block criticism of the existing system.

PragerU is (as is usually the case) is mistaken in its key claims. While the United States founding values include racist values (they are explicitly laid out in the Constitution, political philosophy, and laws) there are other professed values that are not racist and some are even anti-racist. As Dr. King noted, the Declaration of Independence makes promises to all Americans, whether those promises were sincere or not. While America is racist, it is also anti-racist as America is not monolithic, and we have a complicated moral history. There are those, like PragerU, who fight for racist elements of the system and those, like the young Americans they tried to attack, who are fighting racism. In the face of the backlash, anti-racism is fighting a defensive battle with open racism in the ascendence. But as the racism becomes more open and extreme, America will probably push back towards the center. Probably.

PragerU, like many other right-wing propaganda engines, is engaged in a project worthy of a comic book villain, but all too real. While they do admit America had some racism in the past, they contend that it was not that bad. They take special pains to present slavery in a positive light and present many Confederates as heroic figures. They refuse to accept that past racism has had any significant systematic effect on the present. While sometimes willing to admit that there might a racist bad apple or two, they refuse to accept that racism exists in a significant and systematic form. They do all this while defending and enhancing racism, even “cleverly” accusing those critical of racism of being “the real racists.” As always, I am unsure if ordinary citizens who profess to believe these things are unwitting victims or accomplices who know the lies are lies but pretend to believe. One must thus either think them ignorant or dishonest; neither of which is a pleasant. I prefer to think that many believe out of ignorance, if only because ignorance is easier to overcome than dishonesty.

In addition to the pandemic, 2020 was marked by “the deadliest gun violence in decades.” Since then, the US continues to lead the world in gun violence. Those on the left, broadly construed, profess to want to address gun violence. Those on the right, broadly construed, offer thoughts and prayers after each mass shooting and then obstruct efforts to address gun violence.

While the right tries to appeal to an inviolable constitutional right they love, this is clearly a bad faith position. After all, the party has been busy restricting voting rights and curtailing liberties and rights they dislike. As such, a true claim would be that the right favors a narrow set of rights for a narrow set of people and gun rights for white people is a major intersection of these sets.

To pre-empt the usual ad hominem and straw man attacks, my backstory as a guy from Maine who grew up hunting and shooting gives me a positive feeling about guns. Subjectively, my gun experiences have been positive, such as hunting with my dad. I am well aware that other people have radically different experiences that shape how they feel about guns.

From a philosophical standpoint, I have also argued in favor of weapon rights as part of the right to self-defense. This justification does, of course, run up against another of my views in political philosophy. Stealing from Locke and Hobbes, I think that we give up some of our rights when we enter civil society and one can make a good case that this can include the right to possess certain weapons. Somewhat ironically, the people who are mistreated by the political and economic systems would have the best claim to possess and use weapons against those who would harm them. This view is generally the exact opposite of what is pushed by the right. A white couple “protecting” themselves from peaceful protestors legally walking by their property are presented by some as heroes. Minorities who seek to arm themselves are seen in a rather different light. As such, when the right tries to block attempts to address gun violence by appeals to rights, they are generally acting in bad faith: they are not principled defenders of rights, they are working to defend very specific rights for  very specific people. But on to the focus of this essay.

When laws are proposed to address gun violence, one stock tactic of the right is to bring up Chicago. This city is infamous for its gun violence. The Chicago Tribune has a web page, updated weekly, that provides daily totals of shooting victims in the city. It even has an interactive map that allows people to search for shootings. One cannot deny that the city has a problem with gun violence. My adopted city of Tallahassee also has a crime map, it shows the location of shootings as well.

As one would expect, there have been efforts to address this violence by passing gun control laws. While Illinois does not have the strictest gun laws in the United States (California seems stricter), the laws are stricter than most other states. And yet, as noted above, gun violence is still a serious problem. From this, folks on the right often infer that gun laws do not work. On the face of it, their logic would seem good:

 

Premise 1: If gun control laws worked, then Chicago would have less gun violence.

Premise 2: Chicago does not have less gun violence.

Conclusion: Gun control laws do not work.

 

Thus, it is no surprise that the “Chicago Card” is regularly played to “refute” efforts to address gun violence by new laws. Unfortunately, this gambit is a cheat: while the logic seems good, a little consideration shows that it has serious flaws. That this is the case can be shown by the following analogy.

Suppose that you live in an apartment complex and would prefer to not die in a fire. So, you install a smoke detector, you buy a fire extinguisher, you don’t allow open flames in your apartment, you do not store oily rags next to your stove and so on for all the sensible things to do to avoid death by fire. But then your apartment burns and you die in the fire. Using the logic of the right, this is how people should reason:

 

Premise 1: If fire prevention practices and rules worked, then you would not have died in the fire.

Premise 2: You died in the fire.

Conclusion: Fire prevention practices and rules do not work.

 

But this seems problematic. Intuitively, these practices and rules would seem to work and should reduce the chances of dying in a fire. So, what went wrong? One possibility is, of course, possibility: things can always go wrong. No sensible person claims that taking precautions against fire will always work. Likewise, the same can happen with gun laws. But, of course, Chicago is place where the metaphorical fires keep occurring—so the idea that it is just bad luck does not hold up. So, we need to look more at the cause of the fires.

Going back to your apartment building, suppose your immediate neighbors also took the same precautions as you, but their apartments were also consumed by fire. If the investigation stopped there, one might conclude that precautions do not matter and having rules about fire safety are pointless. But suppose that the investigators decided to trace the fire to its starting point, and they find the fire began in apartments whose inhabitants took few precautions against fires and some, in fact, engaged in dangerous behavior like leaving burning candles unattended. In this case, the inference would not be that fire prevention and practice do not work. Rather, it would be that to have the best chance of working, then everyone needs to follow these measures. Otherwise, the laxity of some can kill others even if they take precautions.

Chicago is like the apartment where fire safety is practiced. Other states around Illinois are like the apartments without good safety practices. So, just as a fire is more likely to start in those other apartments and spread, guns are likely to come into Chicago from states that have less restrictive rules. As such, Chicago’s gun violence does not prove that restrictions do not work. Rather, it shows that a lack of restrictions in other states can negate restrictions in one state. As such, the Chicago argument is either a bad faith argument, or an a made in ignorance of how things work.

In closing, it might be true that laws would not meaningfully reduce gun violence but pointing to Chicago no more proves that then pointing to a burned-out apartment of a person who was careful about fire proves that fire safety would not meaningfully reduce fire deaths. Now, if everyone practiced fire safety and fire deaths not diminished, then we could conclude that fire safety was useless. Likewise, if all states had restrictive gun laws that were enforced and gun deaths never diminished, then we could conclude they were useless. But this is not the case.

This contains many spoilers. When I first saw the trailer for The Tomorrow War my thought was “I wonder who that discount Chris Pratt is?” When I realized it was the actual Chris Pratt, my thought was “he must really need money.” Yes, it is exactly that kind of movie. I will start with some non-philosophical complaints and then move on to what is most interesting (and disappointing) about the flick: time travel.

Like many war movies of its ilk, this flick handles armored fighting vehicles by leaving them out. Instead, the human forces confront the aliens with infantry, Humvees, transport helicopters, and fighter-bombers. Oddly, the infantry is armed with standard guns that are largely ineffective against the aliens.  This is even though they know this and there are plenty of existing infantry weapons that would kill the aliens. No armored fighting vehicles (like tanks) are used, and Humvees are the mainstay of the forces. They get easily destroyed by the aliens charging into them like deranged moose (except when the main characters are in one). Maybe leaving out armored vehicles is a budget issue, but it mainly seems because the aliens, which are basically animals, would be slaughtered by modern armor. They could do no damage, and antivehicle weapons would slaughter them. My theory is that rather than come up with an alien that could beat armor, the writers just leave out armored vehicles. The transport helicopters, as one would expect in such a film, generally fly within the leaping range of the aliens and attack helicopters do not exist (they do have armed drones, though). The fighter-bombers exist, as always, as a stupid plot device: in one part of the movie the hero is tasked with rescuing research that is the last hope for victory, yet an air strike is called on the otherwise empty city and it cannot be called off. But enough of that, on to the time travel.

Time travel is always a mess in philosophy, science, and fiction. But it can be fun if used properly. The movie does have an interesting, though unoriginal, premise: humans in the future have built a time machine and are using it to recruit soldiers and supplies from the past to fight the aliens that have killed all but 500,000 people. As movies must, the movie puts limits on time travel. The biggest limitation is that the time “tunnel” has a fixed temporal range of 30 years. When people go forward, they go forward thirty years. When they go back, they go back thirty years. One of the minor characters explains it in terms of two connected rafts in a river: they always stay the same distance apart but move along with the river. One of the supporting characters asks the obvious question as to why they do not make more rafts. The answer is that the time machine they have is held together with bubble gum and chicken wire, so they cannot build another one. While not the worst answer a writer could come up with, it is stupid within the rules of the movie: people and equipment can move freely between the present and future. More time machines could be made in the past and brought to the future. They could even build a time machine in the present and open a time tunnel to 30 years earlier, giving humanity another 30 years of preparation time. And then do that repeatedly until the paradoxes destroy reality. A better answer would have been some techno-metaphysical babble about how the time stream can only permit one time tunnel to operate. But let us get back to the fact that people and things can move between the times.

At one critical point in the movie, the heroes have completed a toxin that will kill the female aliens. But just as they complete it, their last base is overrun, and Chris Pratt is recalled to the past, with the toxin. The time machine is done, so the war has been lost. Apparently having struck his head in the fall, Pratt thinks he has no way of getting the toxin to the future, so everything is lost. The nations of the world also just sort of decide to give up as well, which would make sense if everyone believed in metaphysical determinism. Pratt’s character apparently lost the ability to understand how time works: the toxin he has in the present will eventually reach the future. It will just travel one day at a time towards that future.

Going back to the raft analogy, the time machine is like a pneumatic tube that has a fixed length, it can quickly move things back and forth over that distance. But, and here is how normal time works, one can also walk an object to towards the other end of the tube in the future. As such, when the aliens show up, the humans will have as much toxin as they wish to make to use against them. This feature of time would also allow the humans to plan their missions very effectively. To illustrate, I will use a smaller version of the time tunnel thing.

Suppose that on 12/5/2026 I build a time tunnel that reaches back 1 year (roughly). On that day, the tunnel pops open on 12/5/2025 and Mike 2026 can hand Mike 2025 a usb drive full of useful information (such as winning lottery numbers, weather reports, news reports on disasters, and so on). How would this be possible? Here is how. When Mike 2026 arrives, he tells Mike 2025 to fill up the drive. Mike 2025 spends the year doing just that, so in 2026 the drive is full of information and Mike 2026 hands it to Mike 2025 when he arrives.  Mike 2025 can now use all that information.

In the case of the movie, when the time tunnel opens for the first time, they could do the same thing: as people come from the future, they just update information. Thirty years after the time tunnel opens, the travelers have all that information and can use it to change missions that failed, and so on, thus changing the future. This, of course, creates the usual time travel mess of changing the future based on information from the future. An analogous problem also arises from bringing objects back from the future that depend on the future to exist. I will use the toxin from the movie to illustrate this old problem.

As mentioned above, Pratt’s character helps create a toxin in the future and brings it back to the past. He is weirdly baffled about how he will get it to the future but decides to not give up the fight. With the help of some others, he manages to determine that the aliens landed long ago and were frozen in the ice (like in the Thing). So, he does the sensible thing: he goes to a government official and tells him he knows where the aliens are and has the toxin to kill them. So, the official does the usual movie thing: he just refuses. So, Pratt and his associates do the usual movie thing and go it on their own. They use the toxin to kill a couple aliens, then blow up the alien ship (so they did not need the toxin). Then Pratt and his dad beat up the female that escapes the ship. The movie ends with everyone being happy. Except, obviously, the aliens and anyone who might have wanted the technology in that ship. Because of this, the tomorrow war never occurs. Which leads to some problems, but I will focus on the toxin.

The toxin only exists because it was created in the future in response to the aliens. To steal from Aquinas who stole from Aristotle, “To take away the cause is to take away the effect.” As such, the defeat of the aliens would mean that the toxin would never exist, it could not be there in the past. Also, going back to the information problem, Pratt only knows about the aliens because of the tomorrow war, which he prevented from happening. They could, of course, have done a “Yesterday’s Enterprise” thing: the whole timeline changes or something. This is just one of the many paradoxes of time travel.

Another approach, which one could mentally write into the movie if one wishes, is that time travel is dimensional travel or creates time-line branches (which is effectively dimensional travel). So, the future Pratt goes to is real and does not change for it is what it is. When he comes back from that future (alternative reality) with the toxin and kills the aliens in his present, this creates a new future timeline for him. This means, of course, that his alternative adult daughter dies in that alternative future, but his new alternative daughter does not, since the war does not happen in the new timeline.

The movie, I think, would have a been a bit more interesting if they used the alternative timeline approach and they could have had a brief moral debate about obligations to help in an alternate future of one’s own reality. Or it could be a plot twist that the people doing the “time travel” knew they were going to another reality but decided to lie about it to get help.

In terms of the quality of the movie as a movie; well, it is what one would expect from either a store-brand Chris Pratt or a name-brand Chris Pratt who really just needs the money.

In the face of real problems, the Republican legislature of my adopted state of Florida has been busy addressing fictional problems and undermining democracy. For example, HB 233, the “Viewpoint Diversity” bill, was signed by Governor DeSantis. When Republicans were asked for examples of problems the bill was intended to address, they could only refer to some parents being worried about things that might happen because the Republicans had been scaring them about things that have not happened. This is obviously the best possible justification for expanding the coercive power of the state.

I am a member of the United Faculty of Florida, a union for faculty. As would be expected, Florida Republicans do not like this union any more than they like most other unions, the police unions being a notable and expected exception. The Republican ideal seems to be that employees should face off against institutions and businesses as isolated individuals, operating from a position of weakness. Engaging with an employer as an individual is like trying to play alone against a full football team: the worker is going to get crushed. I do admit the obvious: unions can have problems. But pointing to things unions have done wrong no more proves that unions are inherently bad than pointing to things employers have done wrong proves that employers are inherently bad.

As would be expected, the UFF sent an email informing us of the law and making recommendations on how to teach in the climate it created. One provision of the law is that students can record lectures without notice and without consent; although there are some limits on how the recordings can be used. As is often the case with Republican laws, this seems to already be allowed by existing laws.

In Florida, it is a crime to record a person without their consent. The exception is for in-person communication when all the parties do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. An example of this would be holding a conversation in a public space where they could be overheard. A reasonable case can be made that a classroom in a public university is a public space and there is no expectation of privacy when a professor is lecturing. Naturally, there can be cases in the classroom where privacy is expected. For example, if I am speaking to a student after class about their grade and someone is hiding in the hallway recording us, then they would seem to be breaking the law. While I am not a lawyer, I had always operated under the assumption that my lectures could be recorded by students without breaking this wiretapping law: I do not believe that I have an expectation of privacy when I am teaching a class at my public university. That said, a case can be made for such an expectation of privacy.

One could argue that the classroom at a public university is not a public space where there is no expectation of privacy. After all, at class time the classroom is intended for the students enrolled in the class and there is a mechanism for auditing the class. As such, a professor could contend that they have an expectation that the lecture will only be heard by the students enrolled in the class. The class is private for the students and the fact that there are many students does not eliminate the expectation of privacy. I am sympathetic to this view, especially if one considers the students in the class.

Students often, perhaps wrongly, think of the classroom as a private space in terms of being able to express themselves and even to bring up personal matters. For example, a student might want to discuss an incident in which they were the victim of a crime during a course on criminal justice or ethics. As another example, student with atheist parents might want to discuss aspects of their faith in a religion class. If a student is secretly recording the classes, these students will end up in the recordings. As such, one impact of this law might be that students will be even more reluctant to talk in class. In any case, they do have the moral right to know that one of their number might be recording everything in the classroom. I obviously have a moral obligation to inform my students that this is something that can happen.

In my case, the law changed little. I have been recording my classes for years. Students have never asked to not be recorded, but they have always had the moral right to make this request in my classes. But defenders of the law can argue that students should not be worried because the law limits how these secret, non-consensual recordings can be used.

Lectures are presumably protected by copyright laws, and the law seems to respect this somewhat. Such recordings can be used only “for a student’s own personal educational use”, “in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made” and “as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.”

The first use might strike some as very generous; imagine, for example, if a law allowed people to take a camera to a commercial play or movie and record the show for their own personal use later. That said, people are allowed to make recordings in certain contexts for later viewing, so one could take that as the better analogy. 

The second use seems a bit vague and perhaps would allow some abuse, but one could argue that students have a right to record evidence they will use as the basis of a complaint. That said, there is already an existing complaint process and, as noted above, the Republicans have not provided evidence that there is a significant problem that would warrant a new law. But this is to be expected, since the intent of the law seems to be not to protect students but to intimidate professors.

The third use would probably strike most as eminently reasonable: if a professor is doing crimes in the classroom, then they would be hard pressed to make a moral or legal case for a right to do crimes in private. But, as has often been noted, the Republicans have not provided evidence that this is a significant problem or that the matter was not adequately addressed by existing laws.

If a recording is used for other purposes, a faculty member can seek damages of up to $200,000. But, of course, people can already sue anyone for anything, so putting this in the law just limits the damages. Students do, of course, have an easy workaround: they can record a lecture, make a complaint and then the video could end up a matter of public record.

Since I have been recording and distributing my lectures for years, I was and am not worried about the impact of the law on me. However, I was concerned about the intent of the law. One clear motivation was to rile up the base and create the illusion that the Republicans are solving a problem (they made up).  It also allows the Republicans to say they are “owning the libs.” This seems to be much more important to them then engaging in real governance.  The most worrisome motivation is that this law is intended as a Soviet style threat to faculty: “anyone in your class could be a spy, so you had better watch what you say, comrade.”

The right has long been interested in “spying”  on professors and in 2006 a right wing group even offered to pay students to do just that. This tactic of spying goes beyond the classroom and includes attempts to infiltrate political organization. As a counter, one might contend that the media also engages in “spying” operations to gather information about groups. However, there are important differences between an investigation conducted by a professional media organization and partisan “spying.” A key difference is that a professional investigation is aimed at determining the truth of the matter, while partisan “spying” is aimed at a political agenda and hence includes a willingness to distort and mislead. I am, of course, aware of the right-wing view that the liberal media is biased. To the degree that this claim has merit, I would certainly share their concerns.

In closing, my classes include a concise and neutral statement to my students making it clear they have every right to record my class in accord with this law. I also make it clear that they should always keep in mind that someone could be recording them in the class without their knowledge or consent.

As a runner, I have often imagined what it would be like to have super speed like the Flash or Quicksilver. Unfortunately for my super speed dreams, Kyle Hill has presented the fatal flaws of super speed. But while Hill did consider the problem of perception, he seems to have missed one practical problem with being a super speedster and that is how mentally exhausting (and boring) running a super speed could be. Kant can help explain this problem.

Our good dead friend Kant argued that time is not a thing that exists in the world, rather it is a form in which objects appear to us. It is for him, the “form of inner sense” because our mental events must occur in temporal sequence. Or, rather, must occur to us in that way. He does bring up a very interesting point, namely that other beings could experience time differently than humans. For example, God might experience all time simultaneously.  If God does this, it can account for both omniscience and free will: God knows what you will do because from his perspective you done did it, are doing it, and will do it. Other beings might have a similar inner sense, but with a different perceived speed. This takes us to speedsters.

While humans can operate fast moving vehicles like jets and rockets using our merely human perceptions, a super speedster would need to perceive the world and make decisions at super speed. Consider a simple comparison. With adequate training, I could pilot a plane going 500 mph. But imagine that I could run 500 mph, but my brain operated normally. If I tried to run a winding trail in the woods, for example, I would slam into trees because my running speed would vastly exceed my ability to perceive the trail and decide when to turn. But if my mental processes were also fast, then I would be able to run “normally” on the trail: from my perspective, I would have plenty of time to make decisions and avoid collisions. My “form of inner sense” would match up with my movement speed, so I would be fine. Mostly. But there would be a problem if I wanted to use my super speed to save on travel expenses.

Suppose I wanted to visit my family in Maine. My sister’s house is about 1500 miles from my house in Florida. If I could run 500 mph, I could be there in three hours. Being an experienced marathoner, I know that running for three hours is no big deal for me and it would be well worth it to save the cost and annoyance of flying. But travelling in this way would be more complicated than just running for three hours. For people watching me and by my watch, it would be three hours of running. But remember, my mind would be significantly sped up to enable it to handle my physical speed.

To keep the math simple, suppose my normal human running speed is 10 mph. So, my super speed would be fifty times that (500 mph). Suppose that my perception and decision-making speed was equally increased. While this might seem amazing, it would entail that from my perspective the three-hour run would take 150 hours (6.25 days). Even ignoring concerns about sleep and endurance, that would be an extremely unpleasant run. After all, I would experience it as if I were running there at normal human speed (although other people and things would seem to be moving very slowly). For me, it would not be worth it to spend 150 (mental) hours running even if it saved me the price of a plane ticket. After all, I could do that now—and I do not.

One could, of course, tweak the numbers a bit. Perhaps I could safely run at 500 mph while my mind operated at slower than 50 times normal speed. But it would still need to operate much faster than normal, otherwise I would keep running into things and doing a lot of damage. So, super speed would generally not be great for long distance travel.

One could, of course, do some comic book stuff and come up with workarounds to avoid the boredom problem. Perhaps a speedster would have multiple levels of awareness—a fast navigating subconscious awareness that guides them safely and a slower conscious mind to avoid the boredom. Going back to Kant, this would involve having two different forms of inner sense operating in the same mind, which is obviously not even very weird in philosophical terms. In that case, super speed would be a great way to travel.

In the previous essay, I looked at the question of whether a good person could be a billionaire. I concluded that, in general, the two are not compatible. The gist of the argument is that if a person is good and they have vast resources, then they would use those resources to do good. I, of course, also used an analogy: could a good person on a derelict ship sit on a giant pile of supplies while other people suffered and died from lack? The answer is obvious: a good person would not do that.   In thinking a bit more about this matter, I realized I had omitted some important ethical considerations.

In moral philosophy, philosophers make an important moral distinction between doing harm and not doing good. As philosophers such as J.S. Mill have argued, we generally consider harming others to be wrong (although there are exceptions). So, a billionaire who becomes rich by doing harm to others or uses their wealth to cause harm would usually be a bad person, or at least not good. But one can make a case that people have no moral obligation to help others and can withhold their assistance while still being good.

Immanual Kant considers this possibility. He asks us to imagine a person who is well off and could easily help others. This person considers their options and elects to avoid harming people but also decides to withhold all assistance. Kant considers this person more honest than those who speak of good will and charity but do nothing. But Kant being Kant, he believes they would be acting immorally.

Kant seems to appeal to the Golden Rule here: he asks us to imagine what the person would want if they found themselves in dire straits and in need of assistance. Kant claims they would want help and thus must accept there is an obligation to help others. This sort of reasoning can, and has, been countered.

A hard-core approach a person can take is to insist they would not want help.  If they were in need, then they think they should be left to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This is easy enough for a well-off person to claim. But even if it were true this is hardly a decisive refutation: what some would or would not want doesn’t seem sufficient to show what is good or bad. This also applies to Kant’s case: even if everyone would want help, this seems to be just a fact of psychology rather than proof of what is right. That said, the Golden Rule is a good starting place as it can be useful in considering the morality of actions. After all, thinking about why you would not want something done unto you can help in sorting out why you, perhaps, should not do it to others.

Another classic distinction in ethics is between killing (or doing harm) and letting die (or allowing harm to come to others). In the case of the billionaire, if they acquired their wealth by or used it to cause harm, then they would be doing active harm and thus would not be a good person (in general). But if they merely allowed harm to come to others, then one could contend they are not doing wrong as they are merely allowing wrong to occur. Going back to the ship analogy, someone who is killing other people and taking their supplies is doing wrong actively. But if they sit on their vast stockpile, they are merely letting people die. One could argue that a good person could do this, since they are not doing evil.

One can, of course, argue that letting people die is a form of active evil. In the analogy of the ship, the person who stockpiles the supplies is actively denying other people what they need to survive. They are killing rather than letting die. Likewise, a billionaire who stockpiles wealth is denying others what they need, thus they are actively doing harm. To use a more extreme analogy, think of a derelict spaceship and imagine someone who is stockpiling air cannisters and have such a vast supply it would take them centuries to use it all. They are thus actively killing the other people on the ship by taking away air they need. They cannot be a good person. Likewise, a billionaire is actively harming people by taking away resources.

One could, of course, argue that there is plenty for people if they would just work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But that is simply not true; a person cannot be a billionaire in a meaningful sense unless other people are poor. So there are no good billionaires.