Author: Michael LaBossiere

When AI image generators, like Midjourney, were finally able to generate semi-adequate images, I started using them in my D&D content. Previously I had relied on creative commons images, purchased clip art and made my own images. When the moral uproar took place over AI in general and image generators in particular, I wondered if my use of AI images was morally wrong. The answer is, of course, yes. As our good dead friend Thomas Aquinas argued, every deliberate human action is either morally good or bad. Using AI images generated by AI is obviously bad. Like all humans, I do many bad things. But as a professional philosopher I can present an analysis of just how bad I am.

As a sometimes-self-aware person who can admit that I do many bad things, I try to explain why I do these bad things—often to re-train myself to stop doing them. What follows is an explanation of why I use such images. I am not offering a justification or an excuse—this is all about why I do what I do with no attempt to excuse or justify it. Also, since we humans are usually garbage at sorting out why we do what we do, what follows is likely to be inaccurate and full of rationalizations. Jokingly, my view of human behavior is that we do what we do and we don’t know why. But we love to lie about it.

One explanation is that I love technology, especially computers. My dad taught math and computer science and when he went to school on the weekends for some work-related stuff, he would sometimes bring me. To keep me from running around like a wild animal, he let me use the DECWriter II at the school to play games. This is how I became a computer gamer. I remember making my own book about robots and computers; I think I called it “the computer pages” and I added all sorts of (not so) special effects, like pullout tapes of paper and things involving tin foil. I continued to use computers, such as the Trash-80 and then got my own Commodore 64, which was (and still is) an amazing machine. I was involved in AI debates in college during the 1980s and ran a Traveller campaign focused on an AI bent on destroying humanity. I went to grad school when the Mac Classic came out and was blown away by MacPaint and MacDraw and my love of computers just got worse. I’m writing this using a AM4 gaming rig I built (and have to keep hanging onto because of AI), and I’m surrounded by a technophobe’s nightmare of modded tech.

When AI began to emerge, I predicted it would kill us all (which it did) but was thrilled to have “new” tech to play with (I know the history of AI). That is part of the reason I use image generators. This might explain why I think AI image generators are cool and like them but one might point out this does not fully explain why I use them in my D&D adventures. This takes us back to MacPaint and  MacDraw.

When I first started writing for gaming companies in 1989, I had an electric typewriter and graph paper. I hand drew the maps on graph paper and typed up the adventurers I sent off. Then I bought a Mac Classic. I got MacWrite, MacDraw and MacPaint and immediately started using them for my classes and game writing.

The word processing and graphics software let me do two very important things. The first was that they provided a way to easily keep copies of my work. When I did a map by hand or typed up a Dark Conspiracy adventure on my typewriter, I had one copy that I would need to take to the library and photocopy. But with a computer, I could back it up on disk and print as many copies as I wished. Although disk failure was (and is) a thing.

The second thing is that software allowed me to do edits without erasing, starting entirely over, or using whiteout. I remember that many times when I typed something out and realized I could do better, I usually convinced myself it was good enough—because changing it meant re-typing it. I did drafts; but usually a handwritten outline. I do know that great writers claim they retyped things hundreds of times but as a kid in grad school making a little extra Ramen noodle money, I did not have the time to do that. But with software I could edit and revise text and images easily, so a work would go through many changes for the better. While my focus here is on images, back when word processors came out it was (of course) claimed that they would ruin writing. They did not. But LLMs might.

While I did the rough drafts of my maps and images on paper, I used MacDraw and MacPaint to do the final versions. These tools made map and image creation faster for obvious reasons. Then I saved up enough to buy Aldus Freehand and Adobe Photoshop, which blew MacDraw and MacPaint away.

After getting my PhD.  I started teaching at Florida A&M University in 1993. I was assigned to teach Aesthetics, which I dreaded. That had been the domain of the beret wearing crowd who smoked weed and agonized over Proust and Derrida. But I found that I was operating from prejudice (see, I told you I do lots of bad things) and eventually enjoyed teaching the class. During the 1990s one of the “big fights” in aesthetics was over Photoshop and similar programs. Photoshop and digital image creation also launched a moral panic.

One concern was that Photoshop would make it impossible to discern between real and fake images.  Of course, anyone familiar with the history of photography knew people were manipulating images since the invention of the camera. While Photoshop did create challenges, these were overcome. The same panic has arisen over AI image generation, and it is worth considering that this time the panic might be justified. I do condemn using AI images for deception, but I use them for my D&D content—my goal is not to trick people into thinking that unicorns are real or that Republicans are working with demons.

There was also the debate over whether digital images could be art and criticisms that they could not be art because Photoshop made it “too easy” to create images. Ignorant critics just assumed Photoshop created images. Informed critics lamented that filters, actions, and such did too much of the work. Defenders pointed out that Photoshop and similar programs still required skill (and new skills). People who used it thinking it would make them automatic artists were disappointed.

Using an analogy, drawing by hand is like getting around by walking or running—it is all on you. Using Photoshop and Freehand was like using a bike—it enhanced what you already had, but you still needed to do the work. As you would guess, I was an early defender of digital art and played a minor role in the Art Wars of the 1990s. While I am sure there are still people who are still mad at Photoshop, digital art tools are the norm today. So, when AI image generation arose, to me it was just another tool, and it faced the same panic as Photoshop. But one might say, surely AI is different?

I won’t say that they say that about every new tech because AI image generation is different in ways that can justify the criticisms and even the panic. Going back to my analogy, if drawing by hand is running and using Photoshop is biking, AI image generation is using a self-driving taxi (which fits especially well since there are also humans behind “self-driving” taxis). Using an AI image generator for D&D content does take some skill but they are not the skills one uses to create art. Which is one of the many reasons that AI images are not art and people who use AI to create images are not artists. This is why I call the “art” in my D&D content “images.” They ain’t art.

In terms of the skills I use when employing an AI image generator, I need the skill of creating the monsters, magic items and such that will be in the images. This might be art but probably not.  As I always argue, if I can do it, it ain’t art. Then I need to create appropriate prompts and review the images.  This is writing but not art. The final step is loading them into Photoshop and fixing all the AI problems (like extra arms). This is just touching up images, so is a technical skill and not artistic skill. Again, If I can do it…

 I can do all this quickly—the longest part is obviously coming up with monster designs, magic items and such. This is one reason I use the image generators—they are fast. As writing D&D is a hobby and not how I get the income I need to buy food and live under a roof I need to use my time wisely. I’m running a 4-hour D&D game every week, so I need to put out material fast—and I like having images for the tokens and to show to the players. This is one reason I do not hand draw my images—the maps and text are essential to running adventures while the images are a luxury. So, I spend my time on the maps and text. But why don’t I hire artists instead of using AI?

The short answer is that I have tried. Since the 1990s I have recruited artists to work on various projects of mine, usually offering them about half of the income from the work while they also kept the rights to their art. The artists initially start off excited and promise they will have the art done on time. And they never finish. They always have good reasons: they are getting divorced, they are graduating, they started a full-time job, they have a commercial project to work on, they are going through things, and so on. I do think that maybe I am the problem, but when I ask people, they assure me that I am not. Which just might mean that I am a big problem. In contrast, AI image generators deliver the images I need reliably, which is why I use them. If I could find a reliable artist who can keep up with my writing schedule, I would be happy to give them 50% or more of the royalties, which takes me to the last reason I use AI image generators.

People who played Call of Cthulhu in the 1990s often remember me as the guy who gave away about 50 CoC adventures via the web.  These days I write Mike’s Free Encounters, create Mike’s Free Maps and all my other new content is Pay What You Want. I remember saving my meager minimum wage income as a kid so I could buy games, so I am committed to making game content available for free when I can. I also did a failed Kickstarter promising 99 books for 99 cents each; so I have some relic 99 cent books out there as well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 While we are unfortunate to live in a brutally extractive society ruled by oligarchs, I am fortunate to have a full-time job and can use this to help other people in various ways, including free gaming material. I would never expect an artist to donate art to my projects so I can keep giving them away and hence using an image generator makes sense to me. I would, of course, love to team up with an artist who would want to work on free projects, but it would be insane to expect that from anyone. And that is the explanation of why I use AI images in my D&D content. Am I wrong to do this? Obviously. As I said, like my fellow humans, I do a lot of bad things. I will write about why AI image generators are bad and probably also reveal other ways I am a bad person, like how I own a truck and use electricity.

 

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As a kid who started playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1979, I remember watching Tom Hanks play a character who goes insane from playing a TTRPG in Mazes and Monsters. This movie was broadcast in 1982, the same year that Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop warned America about the danger of video games. Which I also played. Thanks to the show and the surgeon general, I remember having to convince people I would not go insane from playing D&D or suffer some other mental breakdown from playing Temple of Apshai on a computer. Mazes and Monsters and the surgeon general’s view provide two excellent examples of the panic and culture war over gaming in the 1980s. It was claimed that these games would cause psychological harm.

The TV movie Mazes and Monsters was based on a book of the same name by R. Jaffe. The book was based on factually incorrect newspaper stories about James Dallas Egbert III which speculated about the role of D&D in his disappearance. William Dear, a private investigator who worked on the case, published the Dungeon Master in 1984. This book presented the facts, debunking the claims that D&D was to blame.

Unfortunately, as I found out in the 1980s, many people thought Mazes and Monsters was an accurate account of TTRPGs—even though it was fiction based on inaccurate news stories about a single person. As such, there was a lot going wrong there. While appeals to intuition arguments are often used in philosophy, an argument from fiction is always weak—for the obvious fact that it is fiction. Also, an inference from one example is anecdotal evidence.

As now has become something of a common practice in moral panics and culture war fights, fictional content was presented as proof of danger. As Hicks (1991) noted, psychiatrist and anti-television violence activist Thomas Radecki of the National Coalition on Television Violence used a fictional letter from Mazes and Monsters as “evidence” D&D had killed gamers.

To be fair, when people were concerned about the dangers of D&D (and similar games), sincere worry about potential harm should not be condemned. After all, if it can be shown that something (such as social media usage or pollution) is harmful, then it would be reasonable and good to try to protect people from this harm. The problem was, obviously enough, that this was a moral panic based on unfounded fears about alleged harm. This same tactic is still employed today and relies on fear rather than evidence.

Since the 1980s the effects of TTRPGs has been extensively studied and as Yuliawati, L., Wardhani, P. A. P., & Ng, J. H. (2024) have noted, “From existing literature, TTRPG provides benefits to promote cognitive and psychosocial skills, to prevent negative effects and stress, as well as to intervene in psychological problems such as social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and autism spectrum disorders.” Thus, far from causing psychological harm, TTRPGs are good for people. Anecdotally, this matches my experiences with TTRPGs and the hundreds of gamers I have interreacted with over the years. And that is how gamers eventually won that culture war battle. For now. But what about video games?

As noted above, United States Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop claimed young people were becoming addicted to video games ”body and soul.” In an excellent example of the “everyone knows” rhetorical tactic, Koop tried to persuade people of the danger of video games by asserting that ”more and more people are beginning to understand” the mental and physical harms of video games. To be fair and balanced, as a former pediatrician, Koop did have credibility as an expert on the health of children. Oddly enough, while he admitted he had no scientific evidence for his claims, he predicted evidence would soon be available. This can be seen as a version of the proof surrogate rhetorical device in that it promises proof will be forthcoming but does not provide it.

To his credit, Dr. Koop later admitted that his view was just his opinion and not based on evidence. The promised evidence never arrived and as noted in my previous essay, it turned out that the video games of the 1980s did us no harm. Although we gamers won that moral panic and culture war, the pattern is repeated: someone will claim, without evidence, that some technology is harmful and then some people will panic. The rational approach is, of course, to consider the evidence. In some cases, the danger will be real, as has been shown with social media in general and the infinite feed in particular. Unfortunately, social media companies have the money and influence to keep harming people as long as doing so is profitable. This does show a basic problem in our society: politicians exploiting moral panics and culture wars over what is harmless or beneficial while they protect those doing real harm. As always, culture war never changes and never ends.

 

 

References

Dear, W. (1984). The dungeon master: The disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III. Houghton Mifflin.

Hicks, Robert D. In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991; p. 288

 

Jaffe, R. (1981). Mazes and monsters. Delacorte Press.

Kroplewski, Z. (2025). Impact of participation in role-playing game (RPG) sessions on the perceived level of social anxiety and received social support. Brain Sciences, 15(11), 1158.

Rosenblad, S. R. (2025). Mastering your dragons: Using tabletop role-playing games in therapy. Behavioral Sciences, 15(4), 441.

Surgeon general sees danger in video games. (1982, November 10). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/10/us/around-the-nation-surgeon-general-sees-danger-in-video-games.html.

 

Yuliawati, L., Wardhani, P. A. P., & Ng, J. H. (2024). A scoping review of tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) as psychological intervention: Potential benefits and future directions. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 17, 2885–2903

In times of tight budgets, state governments usually cut spending.  Whether the tight budget was self-inflicted or not. One common “cost savings” approach is to fire state workers and eliminate positions; another is privatization of such things as prisons and school busing.

The reasons given for privatizing are usually intended to seem reasonable. Privatizing is supposed to save money, proved higher quality service and reduced red tape. If privatizing did these things, then it would be a good idea. After all, getting better service for less cost and less red tape would be great. In fact, even if privatizing only improved one area (cost, quality, or bureaucracy) then it would be a good thing (assuming it did not make things worse otherwise). However, there is the question of whether privatizing can deliver these alleged goods.

While it is often claimed that privatizing saves money, this does not seem true. While more studies are always needed, the evidence indicates that privatization has tended to increase costs. While supporters of privatization sometimes argue that this claim has not been well studied, this does not prove that privatization saves money.

Intuitively, it is unlikely that privatizing would save money. After all, there is no private sector magic that enables it to do things that just cannot be done by the state. As such, the state could save money by doing whatever would be done by contractors to save money. This would, of course, save the state even more money than privatizing. After all, private contractors need to make a profit on top of what it costs them to provide the service, something the state does not need to do. For privatization to save the state money, the costs incurred by the contractor plus the profit must be less than what it would cost the state to do it. It is not clear how this would be possible without the assumption that the state, as a matter of necessity, must always pay higher costs than the private contractor.

It could, of course, be countered that the state simply must do things inefficiently and in a costly manner. That is, the private sector is just better than the public sector because it is private sector and hence privatizing can save money.

This reply just begs the question by assuming the private sector will be more cost effective than the state and be able to save the state money while making a profit. What is needed is evidence that this can be done. Ideology is, of course, not evidence. As noted above, the existing (albeit limited) evidence is that privatizing is not a money saver.

This is a factual matter. I have no objection to privatization in principle—my objection is based on the evidence that it does not save money. If it can be shown that the only way to save is to go private while also maintaining quality, then I would be for that privatization. If, however, the state can save more money by adopting effective cost savings measures, then that would be the better option. After all, if the goal is to save money, then the greater savings win. That said, it is also important to consider the quality of the services.

As far as quality goes, a stock argument is that privatization is a good idea because it will improve quality.  It is often argued that the state is bad at doing things and hence provides low quality services. In contrast, the private sector is supposed to provide higher quality services (at a lower cost).  While higher quality (at a lower cost) is appealing, there is the obvious question of whether this is true or merely ideological faith. As with the matter of saving money, this is a factual matter.

While people do point to problems with the quality of state services, it is also easy to point to quality problems with privatized services. These can be horrible, as shown by the way the privatized half way houses in New Jersey were run. Paul Krugman provides an interesting analysis of this problem that is still worth reading. And I am sure most readers are thinking “enshitifictaion” and have countless examples of how the private sector industries are making everything worse. As such, the idea that the private sector will simply be better because it is private is not true.

As I argued with savings, unless it is assumed the state is incapable of providing quality service, there is nothing that a private contractor could do in terms of quality that the state could not do. After all, there does not seem to be a private sector magic that enhances quality. In fact, the opposite now seems true.

There is also the obvious point that the private contractor must make a profit, and this usually leads to cutting corners. After all, lowering costs can be an effective way of increasing profits. However, cost cutting usually involves cutting quality and this practice is common fodder for all those news stories about the horrors of quality cutting to save money.  Again, we are in the age of enshitification.

It might be replied that the private sector must have better quality because the contractor must keep the customer happy. However, the people they must keep happy are the same people who would be “customers” of the state. So, if a need to keep people happy leads to good quality, then the state should be subject to this as well. After all, just as unhappy people would change companies (if they could), they would also presumably vote to change the people running the state. Somewhat ironically, it might be easier to change the government than change the companies one must deal with. While the state has a monopoly on power, we (for now) get to vote people in and out of office. In the case of the megacorporations like Amazon, Google, Meta and Apple, we have no role in deciding who runs them or what they do.

I am in favor of what would provide the highest quality services for a reasonable cost. If privatization did this better than the state, then that would be the sensible thing to do. However, this must be based on evidence rather than an ideological view that simply favors the private (or public) sector. 

In terms of  reducing red tape, privatization clearly does not do that. In fact, it adds more bureaucracy.  Instead of two levels (state and state employees) there are now three levels (state, contractor, and employees). 

It might be countered that there will be less bureaucracy at the state level because most of it will be privatized. While this would be true, it does not actually reduce the bureaucracy, it just moves it.

It might then be countered that the private sector is just less bureaucratic than the state and hence it will be able to do the same with less bureaucracy.

One obvious reply is that the private sector has its own bureaucracy. For example, try cancelling your internet service if you have Xfinity or dealing with some other customer support issue. Another is that if the contractor can do the job as well with less bureaucracy, then the state could simply take the same approach—unless, of course, there is a contractor magic that must of necessity be denied to the state.

As with cost and quality, the bureaucracy reduction is a factual matter. If privatization did reduce the overall bureaucracy (rather than shift it) while still being able to provide the same (or better) management, then this would be a gain. However, this is something that must be shown rather than being assumed based on ideology.

Overall, if privatization could save money, reduce bureaucracy and increase quality, then it would be a good idea. However, this is not something that should be accepted (or rejected) because of ideological faith. As it stands, the evidence is that privatization is no magic bullet and makes things worse. In terms of why it is done, it does excel at one thing: funneling public money into private hands.  

 

 

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In the United States, the number of homeless shelters increased in the 1980s due to a variety of factors (mostly Reagan). One factor was a recession which resulted in more people being unable to afford housing. A second factor was a shift away from single room housing. Though limited in size, this was cheaper than the alternatives. Back in the early 1990s, some of my fellow graduate students lived in singles, but these seemed to be (like most graduate student housing) relics from another time. A third factor was the infamous closing of mental institutions and reduction in care for the mentally ill. While proponents of the approach lauded the cost savings, some critics saw it as simply dumping people onto the streets.

In the face of this surge in homelessness religious groups, charitable organizations and local governments increased the number of homeless shelters. The intent was to provide people with a place to stay until they could sort things out and secure a permanent home. This approach does make some sense and did work in some cases. After all, it seems reasonable to infer that people become homeless because of problems (financial, mental and so on) and that once these problems are fixed, then a person will be ready to have a home. Unfortunately, this approach did not prove successful and there are now about 771,480 people without homes.

Fortunately, an alternative approach had a more positive impact. This approach reverses the old approach: rather than “fixing” people so that they are ready for permanent homes, this approach involves getting the homeless into more home-like shelters or permanent housing. Those who need treatment are given treatment and the results seem to have been positive.

While this approach seems to have merit, there is the stock concern that the state funded programs are wasting the taxpayers’ money by supporting free riders. Somewhat ironically, the troubled economic times that increase homelessness also decrease the funding available for such programs and gives some support to claims that scarce financial resources should be better used, perhaps by allowing more tax breaks for the job creators or bailing out corporations whose bad decision making wrecked them. As such, there seem to be two main arguments against funding such programs with state money.

The first is a utilitarian argument. As there is less state money available than what was normal before it is even more important that the money be spent effectively. Putting money into shelters, programs and permanent housing for the homeless would yield fewer positive results than using the money elsewhere (such as deficit reduction, tax breaks for the rich or maintaining infrastructure). As such, the money should be spent in these other areas rather than in addressing the problem of homelessness.

This argument can, of course, be countered by showing that the money spent on addressing homelessness would be less than the cost of not addressing the problem. If this is the case, then the cost argument favors spending the money rather than incurring the costs that can be avoided or mitigated by spending.

While homelessness is clearly bad for the people who are homeless, it is also costly to society. One area of cost is the medical costs of homelessness. On average, homeless people average hospital stays longer than comparable non-homeless people. Also, since homeless people tend to not have insurance, the cost is born either by the state (that is, us) or by those with insurance (in the form of increased premiums).

Not surprisingly, people do become homeless because of medical problems and medical problems are caused or worsened by being homeless. Those who are homeless are more likely to become ill than those who have homes and are more likely to suffer from problems of greater severity. As such, homelessness adds a burden to the health care system, especially the emergency rooms. Addressing the problem of homelessness would help reduce these costs. That said, no doubt some people profit off this problem and they would argue that this is a good thing.

Another area is crime and prisons. People who are homeless tend to spend more time in prison than the non-homeless, especially since the United States tends to address many social problems by criminalizing them. In some cases, they are arrested for “general” criminal activity, but they are often arrested for breaking laws that are aimed specifically at the homeless, such as laws against loitering and begging. That is, they are arrested because they are homeless. While this laws are often pitched as a means to coerce the homeless to go elsewhere and be someone else’s’ problem, they also help feed “customers” into the for-profit prison system.

While prisons can be quite profitable for the private companies that run them, it is expensive to imprison people. The prices vary greatly. For example, a prison stay in California costs $127,788 a year. While those who profit from prisons will not see it this way, reducing homelessness would be a good thing because it would mean fewer people in prison and lower the cost to the taxpayers. Those who profit from prisons will, of course, wish to ensure that people keep suffering from homelessness as long as this increases the chances they are imprisoned. After all, every prisoner means more profit.

A third factor is the cost of emergency shelters, which are the traditional homeless shelter.s These shelters are more expensive than the cost of a permanent residence. As such, permanent housing would provide savings over temporary shelters.

Naturally, it is reasonable to wonder what impact the permanent home programs might have on the cost to society of homelessness. Studies have shown that these do save money, although they do obviously cost money to implement.

Of course, these savings assumes that the temporary shelters would be funded. For those willing to allow homeless people to live on the streets or who want to drive them away to become someone else’s problem, this sort of program would not yield the highest savings. After all, the cost of housing the homeless on the street is nothing. Of course, this would not reduce the other costs associated with homelessness and would almost certainly increase them. After all, people living on the street are more likely to get ill or injured and more likely to be arrested. But, as noted above, these could be profitable features for some or a chance to inflict harm (cruelty is, after all, often the point).

Of course, changing the law so that people can be refused even emergency medical care if they cannot pay and ending all state-funded treatment programs for addiction and mental illness could reduce the medical costs. That is, we could entirely abandon the homeless, other than imprisoning them when they are arrested. Of course, there would remain the question as to whether this would result in a cost saving. After all, the abandonment approach might result in a large enough increase in number of homeless people being imprisoned to offset the savings from abandonment. Naturally, this does not consider the moral cost of abandonment, just the financial cost.

Overall, the evidence does seem to be that providing permanent housing for the homeless would be a cost saver, though perhaps not as big a cost saver as the complete abandonment of a sort worthy of fiends. The second argument is a moral argument or, rather, various moral arguments. One stock argument is based on the idea that we have no moral obligations to others and hence not obligation to help the homeless. On this view, we could provide such support, but we are not obligated to do so.

A second stock argument is that providing such support is immoral because it creates a culture of dependency. That is, by providing the homeless with permanent homes and treatment for any health problems they might possess they are learning to depend on others and will be unable to carry their own weight. While not supporting them might seem harsh, the argument is that this sort of “tough love” will enable then to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Those who make this argument are often the wealthy who are bailed out by the government when their bad decisions cause their businesses to fail or who are lavishly gifted state subsidies.

While this line of reasoning has some appeal, one obvious reply is that this approach is like responding to a broken leg by refusing to treat it because putting a cast on a broken leg will just make the person dependent on the cast.  As with a broken leg, a person whose life is broken needs support until they can stand on her own again.

One reply to this is that while this might hold for those who will be able to stand on their own, it does not address the problem of those who will remain dependent forever. These people, it can be argued, are just parasites and should not be supported.

I do, of course, agree that someone who is just free riding the system should not be supported. However, the number of people who will intentionally become homeless and unemployed just so they can free ride seems to be rather low (but probably more than zero). After all, most people want to be self-supporting rather than dependent on others. To deny people who need the support to rebuild just because some small percentage of poor people would free ride seems as unreasonable as getting rid of handicapped parking because some people will get a decal for those spaces that they are not really entitled to.  It can also be countered that supporting a free rider in such a program would be cheaper and less damaging than having them free riding on the alternative system.

Another moral argument against providing support for other people is that those being supported are stealing from the taxpayers by having their housing and treatments paid by others. As such, the homeless are morally wrong and we should not enable their theft by allowing such programs. Alternatively, the homeless people could be cast as being pawns used by the politicians who are stealing money from taxpayers and giving it to the homeless. Or, for extra immorality, the homeless and those who enable such support can be seen as being in wicked (or at least misguided) cahoots.

One obvious reply is that by this sort of reasoning we all spend years as thieves. After all, as children we live off our parents (or whoever is keeping is alive), we steal education from the state (or whoever is paying for it), and until we pay enough in taxes to pay for all the public goods and services we use we are stealing every time we walk down a public sidewalk, drive on a public street or go to free a public park. We also steal from all those who have come before us and who enabled us to live in a modern society with technology, medicine and such. That is, we are all beneficiaries of the labor, money and ideas of others. As such, it would be hypocritical to regard the homeless as thieves because others assist them. It would be especially hypocritical of the wealthy who benefit from tax cuts, subsidies, bailouts and government contracts.

The obvious reply is that the non-homeless who do pay taxes (and presumably pay off their financial debt to their families) eventually pay back what they stole (or borrowed) from society when they were young thieves. Of course, the same could be said of the homeless, if they are able to return to society and work, they can repay what they owe to others.

This does not, however, address the problem presented by those who will either never be able to return to contributing to society or who will not be able to repay what they cost society, perhaps because of mental illness. The obvious reply is that it would seem unreasonable to see such people as thieves. It could, of course, be argued that we should be rid of those who cannot support themselves—but this would be a different moral argument than the one based on thievery. And would take us into a monstrous place.

What, then, about people who could return to society but elect to be free riders? That is, their situation is entirely a matter of choice and tomorrow they could pay their own way. In this case, it would be reasonable to regard these people as thieves. After all, they are taking what they could earn by honest labor and there would be (by the scenario presented) no justification for them receiving support. These do seem to be limited cases, unless we consider the wealthy people supported by the public. As argued above, the fact that very few people might exploit something intended to help people in need does not give an adequate reason to treat everyone in such a program as being an exploiter.

Considering the above arguments, providing permanent housing for the homeless seems to be both a cost saver and morally acceptable.

 

 

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The United States has great economic inequality, but the American narrative is that upward mobility is not only possible but the normal order of things. This narrative has many components. One is the idea that each generation will (or should) do better than the previous. Another is that individuals can use their talents, gumption and a bit of luck to rise from humble beginnings. This general narrative is typically accompanied by specific anecdotes, such as the popular tales of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

While narratives and anecdotes can be interesting, they are not a substitute for evidence. After all, anecdotes can and often are about cases that are unusual rather than what is supported by statistical evidence. This is why there is a fallacy called anecdotal evidence. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. It is also committed when someone rejects  statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single or small number of examples that go against the claim.

Unfortunately, the United States is a high inequality and low mobility country. Years ago,  Esmé Deprez appeared on CNN to discuss a Bloomberg report on this fact and other researchers have been discussing the matter for some time. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

42% of the men raised in the bottom 20% income remained there as adults, which matches poorly against Britain (30%) and Denmark (25%). 8% of the men in the bottom 20% were able to reach the top 20% while this rate was 12% in Britain and 14% in Denmark. 65% of those born in the bottom 20% stay within the bottom two-fifths. Of those born in the bottom 10%, 22% remain there. In Canada, the number is 16%.

The news is, as always, better at the top: about 62% of those raised in the top 20% remain in the top two-fifths. For those in the top 10%, 26% of American men born there stay there. Canada fares worse here: only 18% of Canadian men born into the top 10% remain there.

This mobility from income class to income class is relative mobility.  It is relative in that the movement is defined relative to the person’s class of origin. So, for example, someone born in the bottom 10% who moves on up to the top 10% would be upward relative mobility.

Another type of mobility is absolute mobility. This measure involves a comparison of incomes rather than economic class. Looked at in terms of absolute mobility Americans seem to be doing well: back in 2012 81% of Americans had a higher income than their parents because the United States was richer in 2012 than it was earlier. This is, of course, changing and we are seeing the youth on track to make less than their parents.  No conversation about economics in the United States would be complete without mentioning the middle class, which is said to be vanishing.  

As far as why the United States has limited mobility (especially upwards), this is a matter of dispute tainted with competing political ideologies.

Years ago, Rick Santorum claimed that the poor in the United States are more likely to be raised by single mothers relative to other countries. This is taken by some to be a factor in the lower mobility and as something to be utilized as a premise in arguing in favor of the traditional family.

Another factor is that the United States leads the world in the percentage of its citizens who are in prison. Being imprisoned is a major economic impediment that impacts the rest of the person’s life. As such, the high incarceration rates reduce economic mobility by trapping people in poverty. This seems intentional, so is a feature of America rather than a bug.

A third factor is the great economic inequality in the United States such that the distance between economic classes is large. To use an analogy, the lowest economic class starts out at the base of Mt. Everest while the top class begins at the summit. Working up from the bottom or even in the middle requires a significant change in income and wealth.

A fourth factor is that the economic playing field is obviously not level. Some people have great advantages (such as starting wealth, family connections, political influence, and race). To use a sports analogy, moving up is like running a marathon in which some people start at various miles along the course, with the poorest starting at the very beginning and the rich starting miles closer to the end. Catching up to folks who have such a huge lead might not be impossible, but would at best be very difficult.

One advantages people have is education, which is one of the many reasons the Republican party has been focused on this area. While people in the lower classes can attend college, this is more difficult in terms of paying, being prepared (wealthy areas tend to have the best K-12 schools while poor areas have the worst), and having the connections needed to get into the better schools. The trend is to cut public education spending that benefits the lower classes which hurts poorer families more than wealthy families and this will lower mobility.

A fifth and controversial factor is unionization. While the fantasy narrative of the right is that unions are job killers and economy destroyers, lower rates of unionization lead to lower wages and reduced benefits, thus reducing the ability of workers to work their way up. Interestingly, the lowering of wages is sometimes seen as a good thing since it increases profits and it is claimed that this leads to more jobs. However, some see the creation of more lower paying jobs ass less than ideal.

A sixth factor and one that might seem odd is the obesity epidemic in the United States. While the exact impact of modern obesity will not be known for some time, it is known that being obese increases health care costs and generally has a negative impact on success. Some of this impact is due to the health impact of obesity that can cause a person to miss work and be less productive. Weirdly enough, the United States might be less mobile because of obesity.

 

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As a fan of science fiction and fantasy, I know the female breast is a frequent guest in many works of the genre. Honesty compels me to admit that, as a straight male, I am not fundamentally opposed to such nudity. However, there are some reasonable grounds for objecting to nudity in works of fantasy and science fiction, at least in certain contexts. The first is ethical and the second is aesthetical.

A stock moral objection to nudity is that it is inherently wrong, perhaps because it is seen as dirty or filthy. This view is often based on a religious view that sees nudity as shameful. Some base this view on the story of Adam and Eve in which they learn to be ashamed of their nudity and this seemed to set the stage for a persistent puritanical view. There is also a feminist tendency to cast female nudity as being especially bad—there is an abundance of feminist literature addressing this point and hence I will not expand on this here.

Some people take a different view, claiming that it is men that are the problem and the moral weakness of men entails that women must always be covered. However, the result is ironically similar in that female nudity is seen as a moral threat.

While this sort of view is popular, it is not one I subscribe to. As far as the religious foundation is concerned, there are two obvious replies. The first is that the burden of proof rests on those who make this argument—they need to prove that God exists and He thinks the human form is “dirty” and his creations should be covered in shame. The second is that the human form does not seem to be dirty and although some people might stand some more time working out, there does seem to be a beauty to the human body—as the ancient Greeks and others believed. Thus, while the shame argument is not without merit, I do not find it convincing, and it is not the foundation of my dismay at gratuitous nudity.

A second stock moral objection to nudity is based on Plato’s criticism of art, namely that the portrayal of lustful behavior can corrupt the viewer. On this view, it is not that nudity itself is bad; rather it would be the lustful behavior that is typically associated with nudity. As such, the concern about nudity would be secondary, although the display of nudity would presumably augment the alleged corrupting power of art.

This argument does have some appeal. After all, what people experience (even fictional experiences) does help shape how people think and behave. Hence, exposure to nudity and lustful behavior in art could shape people in negative ways. This is like a common argument against pornography based on it alleged ability to corrupt. Of course, the nudity in science fiction and fantasy is supposed to be secondary whereas pornography is supposed to be focused primarily on nudity and sex.

While this argument does seem reasonable, the corrupting power of the occasional breast or other nudity in science fiction or fantasy seems limited. To use an analogy to radiation, the amount of exposure does generally not seem enough to provide a dangerous dose of nudity (and this assumes there is a dangerous dose). As such, the corruption argument does not really motivate my criticism of gratuitous nudity.

A third moral argument is a specific variation on the corruption argument and is one that is sometimes presented by feminist thinkers. The idea is that female nudity of this type demeans women by presenting them as mere sexual objects. This is harmful to both females (who are demeaned and objectified) and males (who learn to demean and objectify) and hence wrong.

This argument has some appeal. After all, looking at the  stereotypical demographic targets for science fiction and fantasy that includes nudity it seems likely that nudity is there to attract and titillate male viewers. Women are being exploited as objects for the amusement of men. This does work—I recall, as a young guy, people talking about seeing certain movies specifically for the nude scenes.

Even then, this struck me as a bit odd—I recall asking a friend why he didn’t just get a Penthouse or Playboy if he wanted to see nudity (this was long before the internet). The internet now serves up nudity and porn 24/7 and this seems to make gratuitous nudity make even less sense. My suspicion is that this is like how people used to say that they got Playboy for the articles and perhaps people do the same thing with science-fiction and fantasy works that feature nudity—they can say they are watching it for the story and that the nudity just happens to be there. Maybe this works in a way like the psychology that allows a person to feel that they are dieting when they have a diet soda with their super-sized meal.

Getting back to the main subject, this line of argumentation does have merit—most cases of nudity in such works seems to be there to appeal to the target demographic and clearly seems to be objectifying and demeaning women. This does not, of course, even consider women being cast as sexual victims (prostitutes, rape victims and so on) in such works.

That said, there is a reasonable concern that this sort of argument can bring one into the moral territory of the other two moral arguments. After all, if it is claimed that nudity demeans a woman and presents her as a mere object, then this might seem to entail that there is something wrong about the female body, which seems problematic from many feminist perspectives. The easy reply is, of course, that it is not the woman’s body that is wrong, but rather the way the woman is being treated and the specific context. This seems a reasonable reply.

In my own case, I do admit that this is part of the reason that I often feel dismay at such nudity. It is not so much the nudity itself, but the way it is used and the context, which is often demeaning. However, the moral aspects of the matter do not exhaust the issue and there remains the aesthetic aspect.

When it comes to aesthetics, I am something of a traditionalist. To be specific, I draw much of my aesthetic theory from thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. While I have already mentioned Plato’s argument, I will now borrow a bit from Aristotle.

When I teach my students how to write the paper for my classes, I discuss the matter of deciding what should and should not be in the paper. I base this discussion on Aristotle’s view that a work should be a complete whole as defined by the purpose of the work. I tell my students that there is a simple test to decide whether something should be left in or left out, which is to leave it out and see whether this improves, worsens or leaves the work the same. Obviously, if leaving it out makes the work worse relative to its purpose, then it should be retained. Otherwise, it should be removed. This same sort of principle can be applied to nudity in works of science fiction and fantasy.

While a discussion of the purposes of science fiction and fantasy would go beyond the limited scope of this essay, it does seem reasonable to accept that their primary purpose is not to serve as a platform for displaying nudity to men. That is, of course, one purpose of pornography. As works of fiction, their main purpose is to present a story (at least as Aristotle would argue) and that should be the focus. Sticking with Aristotle, the display of nudity would typically seem to be part of the spectacle rather than part of the story. The nudity does not (in almost all cases) advance the plot in a way that is probably or necessary in order to achieve the purpose of the work.

Science-fiction and fantasy have a long tradition of gratuitous nudity that has no connection at all to the plot. For example, in the movie Moontrap there is a completely gratuitous stripper scene that has nothing to do with what little plot the movie has. I use this example because the image of Chekov (Walter Koenig) in a strip joint has stuck in my mind since 1989. Obviously, gratuitous nudity by its nature lacks aesthetic justification.

Interestingly, some movies and shows have attempted to merge plot and sex, creating what Myles McNutt called “sexposition”, which is when characters present exposition while having sex.

Not surprisingly, merging sex and exposition seems to be an aesthetic failure. First, it seems odd to have people engaged in lengthy exposition during sex. While I am not an expert on what most people do during sex, it seems that is not something that people would do. As such, this makes the scenes less in accord with what is probable. Second, the nudity still seems to add nothing to the plot—the exposition is doing all that and hence the nudity is gratuitous and would seem to have no aesthetic justification. But one could argue that it is keeping the audience’s attention during the exposition dump. But that assumes the audience is, obviously, listening to the exposition. Also, if a sex scene is needed to keep the audience’s attention, then that is a flaw in the work—some other way should be used to inform the audience, perhaps by showing rather than telling.

In addition to not adding anything to the story, the use of gratuitous nudity has two other flaws. The first is that it can be seen as an insult to the audience—that they will only retain interest in the work if they see nudity. Of course, this might be true in some cases. Second, it would seem to show a flaw in the work.  After all, if the story cannot sustain interest through aesthetic means and they need to throw in nudity to keep people interested or to fill the visual space while characters are engaged in lengthy exposition, then they would seem to be lacking in their craft. Of course, it is fair to keep in mind that a show or film is subject to many influences and creators and that the nudity stuck in a work might not be the idea of the writer or director. For example, some of the famous nudity and sexposition in the Game of Thrones might not be what Martin envisioned.

These arguments do not exclude all nudity from  works. After all, there can be cases in which it is warranted on aesthetic grounds. For example, the nudity in a scene might be required for realism and the scene might be an important part of the plot. That is, removing the scene or the nudity would result in an inferior aesthetic result. I am sure that there are such cases, but none comes to mind.

As another example, nudity might be an important part of the experience the work is supposed to create. For example, the horror movie From Dusk Till Dawn could be seen as intentionally embracing the stereotypes of a genre that must, of necessity, include gratuitous nudity. As such, nudity could serve a legitimate aesthetic purpose in that work and other similar works. One could draw an obvious analogy to violence as being a necessary ingredient in certain subgenres and styles.

 

 

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One of the main arguments against heat safety regulations is based on a general profit argument: regulation will cost industry money. On the face of it, this seems intuitive: surely safety regulations would impose costs, such as the cost of providing shade, water and breaks. At the very least, if workers are taking breaks, they are not working in those breaks. So, the regulations will cost money, and the owners will lose profit.

If we suppose that this is true, given what we know about the harm of heat exposure (such as death), then opposing such regulations would be evil because it values profit over human well-being. Obviously, those who are willing to hurt (even kill) other people for profit will disagree with me. However, the fact is that effective safety practices increase profits.

The most popular example of this is how Paul O’Neil became the CEO of Alcoa in 1987 with the goal of zero worker injuries. O’Neil knew that improving worker safety in the right ways would also benefit the bottom line and was proved right.

In general terms, good safety practices can improve profits by reducing downtime and lost productivity. They can also reduce the costs imposed by damaged equipment, hiring, retaining and insurance. In general, good safety practices provide a positive return on investment per dollar. But what about heat safety? Would that help the bottom line?

Heat and dehydration reduce productivity for obvious reasons. For those who doubt this, it is easy to test by heat suicide: get out in the heat and do hard work without breaks or hydration to see what happens. Do not do this since it could kill you. Heat and dehydration also cause confusion and impair thinking; this leads to more accidents and bad choices that can impact the bottom line. There are also medical costs with heat exposure (which businesses try to pass on to workers, of course) and the fact that needlessly harsh working conditions lead to labor shortages as people do not want to work in such conditions. This is one of the many reasons American businesses often like illegal migrant labor: they can coerce them into working in dangerous conditions and pay them less. But getting back to why heat safety is good.

Hydration and shade breaks allow workers to recover and work at an overall higher efficiency than if workers were forced to push through heat. Again, you can (but should not) test this yourself. Given that safety practices improve profits, why would business leaders fight even good regulations that would make them more money?

While motivations can be difficult to prove, a reasonable inference would be that causing suffering and harm is the point. After all, if they would make more money by following good safety practices, then they are not being motivated by money. A good hypothesis would be that they are cruel, and evil given that they would be doing cruel and evil things. But when confronted with such claims, business geniuses have some replies.

One stock reply is that they are not evil, they are just operating withing the present value bias (discounting the future). A business leader might know that good heat safety practices would make more money in the long term, but they might claim that it is more profitable right now to not follow those practices. While this is still evil, it also seems untrue in the case of heat safety: heat safety now yields profits now. As such, even the short-term profit argument fails. So, a business leader would need to be either ignorant or extra evil (or both).

Another reply is the “someone else will do it, so I should too.” One could try to justify not following good heat safety practices by claiming that complying will put a business at a disadvantage against those who do not comply. One could, of course, apply that to many things that are regulated. This is like someone arguing they should sell cocaine or murder their business rivals because someone else will do the same. Also, heat safety practices give a business an advantage over those that do not do this; so opposing effective heat safety just reveals one is ignorant or evil (or both).

 

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Living in my adopted state of Florida, I have become accustomed to heat warnings and the local radio station providing advice on how to keep kids from being killed by the heat. Based on my own experience as a runner and doing work outside in the summer, I know that the Florida heat and humidity quickly take a toll. This is also backed up by science and anyone who doubts the effects of heat can do a proof by heat suicide test, which I recommend against for obvious moral and practical reasons.

Florida and other states are experiencing what was once considered unusual heat and a few years ago Miami-Dade County considered a rule that would require 10-minute shade and water breaks for outdoor workers on very hot days. Recognizing the danger, the state legislature leapt into action, passing House Bill (HB) 433 which forbids cities and counties from enacting local laws requiring employers to provide heat exposure protection to outdoor workers. As would be expected, the state legislature did not pass any statewide laws protecting workers and deferred to the federal OSHA regulations. Unfortunately for workers, OSHA currently lacks specific heat regulations and instead relies on the General Duty Clause. While one might argue that the generality of the clause suffices in providing heat protection for workers, in practice the vagueness makes enforcement difficult. For example, since the law does not define “excessive heat” or specify the exact number of minutes for rest a business can argue that the law is being applied unfairly if they are cited for violations. As would be suspected, industries with outdoor workers affected by heat generally oppose specific standards.

The main argument given in favor of HB 433 was that it would prevent a patchwork of local regulations that would hurt industry. This argument does have some appeal and a business that operates in multi jurisdictions would face difficulties in being aware of and complying with the various laws. That said, the Republican backers of this law profess to favor local control. As one would suspect, they favor local control when the locals are passing laws they like but oppose local control when they dislike the laws. One can say the same of Democrats. This is like the use of states’ rights arguments—people favor states’ rights when the states are doing what they like and the Federal government is not but oppose them when the opposite is true. The abortion and migration issues provide a good example of this as Republicans favor state rights for limiting abortion but oppose it when states oppose Trump’s migration policies and actions, such as when states complain about ICE agents killing people.

To be fair and balanced, the issue of local control is one that can be debated in good faith. As a general principle, I do favor local control based partially on my agreement with a principle of autonomy that provides a presumption of choice at the individual level and requires justifying each step up in imposition. But these step ups can be justified often because of what seems to be a paradox of liberty and rights: liberty and rights require placing limits on liberties and rights. While this might initially seem Orwellian, it makes sense when you consider examples. For example, your freedom of expression requires limiting the freedom of others to silence you. As another example, your right to life requires limiting the rights of others to keep you safe. To use a silly example, I support a general law against murdering people and not allowing individuals, cities or counties to pass laws allowing murder. For social policies and laws, I also usually operate using the principle of utility—judging these by the harm and benefit.

Getting back to the heat safety issue, one could argue that heat safety should not be left up to cities and counties because allowing such regulation would cause too much harm. This would certainly make sense if Florida had statewide heat laws or if the national law was effective. But this is not the case. As such, the effect of the law is to prevent local governments from protecting workers from the serious dangers of heat. It is thus not surprising that Florida is exceeded only by Texas in the number of workers killed by heat exposure. Does this mean that the state legislature is morally accountable for the injuries and deaths caused by the lack of regulations? The obvious answer would be that they bear some responsibility by failing to provide protection and preventing local governments from doing so. One might wonder why industry leaders oppose such regulations. Well, not much—I am sure everyone immediately thought “money.”

When I was younger and more naïve, I tended to think business leaders did evil things because they value profit more than the well-being of other people. This would at least make some sense; they were hurting people to get something they wanted. But the more I learned about business, the more it seemed that business leaders sometimes acted in ways that hurt people but also resulted in lost profits. This would seem to mean that these business geniuses were either ignorant and evil (doing harm, thinking it would profit them) or extra evil (doing harm despite knowing it would cost them profits). As a philosopher and not a politician, I cannot just make accusations without evidence, so let us work through the arguments.

While the arguments against safety regulations about heat do focus on heat, they also follow a standard template used to argue against regulations on general. One stock argument is to claim that regulation would impose a “one size fits all” standard that fails to consider important differences. While this does have some merit, this problem arises for almost any law, and the challenge is to write laws that address this concern. If this argument had merit, then it would also apply to almost any law—which is something that could be accepted (some anarchists, for example, might buy this).

A second argument is that regulation results in micromanagement that will waste time and money. As someone who just had to use my own money to complete four hours of continuing education training and engage in extensive record keeping complying with the new Florida laws regulating homeowners’ associations, I get this objection. I am an uncompensated volunteer HOA director for my neighborhood because the law also requires three officers and everyone else was sensible enough to avoid the headache, cost and annoyance of complying with hundreds of pages of laws.

As a professor who heads up the GENED committees at my university, I am compelled by the state to spend hours completing tasks to ensure that we are complying with all the new laws micromanaging education. So, I feel this objection and feel that it has merit every time I have do some paperwork that seems like imposed nonsense because of  the Republican culture war against “wokeness” and “DEI.”

That said, the problem is not requiring people to comply with a law and provide some documentation. The problems are defective laws and excessive paperwork. In the case of heat regulations, the solutions to heat exposure are simple and well understood (shade breaks and hydration) and documentation could and should be minimal. So, saying that there are laws that impose too much work is a criticism of those laws, not law in general. Unless, once again, one is an anarchist.

A third argument is the “we’ll be good” argument. The strategy is to argue that regulation is not needed because businesses will act well on their own, perhaps because they allege to care about their workers. This can have some appeal in that if people will, in fact, behave well without laws, then laws are not needed. For example, when states pass bathroom bills alleging that transpeople will attack women in bathrooms, they are passing a law that is not needed because transpeople generally do not attack people in bathrooms and laws already exist to protect people from being attacked. But we know from history that enough businesses will do bad things that they need to be regulated, just like we know that sexual assault and theft are enough of a problem that we need laws against them.

A fourth argument is the classic appeal to small business. Big industries with big businesses often argue that a law will hurt a small business and then use this to argue that the law should not be passed. This can be a fair point. For example, I am a director for a tiny HOA with under 20 houses that barely has any money for expenses and yet I must comply with rules designed for larger operations. To be fair and balanced, the HOA law does divide HOAs into two main groups (three in some cases) that allows smaller HOAs to be less burdened by the law. While this example shows that someone can be annoyed by a law applying to a small business, it also shows that laws can be crafted to account for the difference (and usually are). So, if a heat regulation destroyed small businesses, one could argue for exemptions. But there is the obvious question of whether such laws would be harmful. I’ll address this in the next essay.

 

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In the previous essay in this series I discussed the culture war tactic of criticizing something by alleging it is a waste of time. This is perhaps the mildest culture war tactic with the stronger ones focusing on allegations of serious harm. During the 1980s culture war against gaming, there were such allegations.

While some people might see historical value in looking back at the 1980s gaming culture war, there is the question about why this matters today. The reason is that culture war never changes and culture war never ends. These same tactics are used today and will be used in the future, so discussing them is still relevant. It is also useful to see that culture wars and moral panics follow the same patterns, although it would be a mistake to assume without evidence that a criticism must be mere culture war nonsense or a moral panic. These alleged harms can be divided into three categories.

The first was that gaming would, crudely put, make people stupid. This was usually not applied to tabletop games but was used against video games. The second was that gaming would cause psychological harm. The third was that gaming would cause moral harm by corrupting people. In this essay I will focus on the claim that gaming would make people stupid.

While the 1980s might seem like a long time ago, the idea of attacking technology because it will make people stupid is truly ancient. As philosophers love to point out in debates about AI making people stupid, the Phaedrus includes Socrates expressing concerns about the negative effects of writing. Jumping ahead, people famously worried that television and calculators would make people stupid. Being a bit more specific, the accusation that technology will make people stupid usually takes one of two forms.

The first is general harm, that the technology will somehow cause a cognitive decline. This could be due to the technology distracting people from activities that would improve their cognition (like the waste of time argument) or inflicting cognitive damage. As an example of a distracting technology, when handheld video games appeared in the 1980s, my teachers were worried they would distract us from our lessons. One of my clever classmates learned to wire a switch that would turn off the sound of these devices, so kids could play them during class. These gave us a tiny taste of what smartphones would later bring to the classroom. There were also concerns about arcade games and computer games, with the worry that they would also distract people from their studies and thus make them stupid.

Alan Bloom (yeah, that guy) claimed the Walkman (really) would damage people, writing, “As long as they have the Walkman on, they cannot hear what the great tradition has to say. And, after its prolonged use, when they take it off, they find they are deaf” (Bloom, 1987, p. 81). While he was obviously wrong, this does serve as an excellent example of the repeating unfounded moral panics over the danger of technology. There were also concerns that video games would cause, in addition to physical harms (“Space Invader’s Wrist”) various cognitive harms. I’ll discuss the alleged psychological and moral harms of gaming in later essays.

The second alleged harm is that using the technology will result in the loss of a skill or ability through atrophy as the technology does the work for humans. Socrates expressed this concern about writing and (since my dad was a math teacher) I remember people worrying that calculators would weaken people’s math skills. While they did put an end to slide rule skills, the fears proved unfounded. The slide rule example does show that while a new technology can render a skill obsolete, there is the question of whether this should be seen as harmful. That few people can use a slide rule today does not seem to be cause for alarm or concern. Jumping ahead to today, there is the fear that AI will cause skill atrophy and, as a professor, I am trying to sort out what skills we should preserve in the face of AI and which skills fall into the slide rule category. This is, as you would imagine, a matter much debated among academics.

While video games, like any activity, can distract people to a degree that is harmful, the culture war and moral panic over video games in the 1980s was proven to be unfounded. As Michael Z. Newman (2017) noted, the videos games of the 1980s did not ruin our lives. Which I already knew, having fought though that culture war and moral panic. In fact, video games are now claimed to various positive benefits for cognition, although any claims from people trying to sell you a game should be looked at critically.

As a takeaway, I’d like people to see that culture war never changes and never ends. When the next moral panic occurs, perhaps over VR, it would be wise to reflect on these past moral panics. But I would be remiss if I did not say that it would be a mistake to dismiss criticisms of technology as mere moral panic or just a culture war fight.

To use the obvious example, AI does present real dangers and although we should not fall into a panic, we do need to assess how it is impacting people—especially the youth. As an example, many students are using AI to generate their papers and thus not working on their writing skills. If a student does that in all their classes, they will not develop critical skills and will thus be harmed. But one could reply that writing skills are slide rule skills—skills that we will no longer need. I think that is wrong, but I am obviously aware I could be caught in my own unnoticed moral panic…think of the children! Seriously, we need to think about AI and its impact on kids. And the environment. And the adults. And future generations.

 

References

 

Newman, M. Z. (2017, May 25). Children of the ’80s never fear: Video games did not ruin your life. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/children-80s-never-fear-video-games-did-not-ruin-your-life-180963452/

 

Plato. (1995). Phaedrus (A. Nehamas & P. Woodruff, Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work published ca. 370 B.C.E.)

 

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While I am a fan of fantasy, I’ve only seen a few episodes of the original Game of Thrones  and its spinoffs. One reason for this was and is practical: streaming services are expensive. I also resisted watching the series because some of my friends gushed about the grittiness and were enthused over the evil of most of the characters. Other friends condemned the shows for the same reason. While my experience with the show (and spinoffs) is limited, my friends were right and I understand why some liked it and some loathed it. I ended up in the “meh” camp, not liking it enough to make an effort to watch more but interested enough to watch episodes when they were available for free and I had nothing better to do at the time. Or episodes were inflicted on me.

Having taught aesthetics,  I know that practical aesthetic taste is like one’s taste in food: what one finds too bland, another finds too spicy and so on. I am also mature enough to recognize that what I dislike might be liked (even loved) by others and that there might be merit in such things. But I do not subscribe to aesthetic subjectivism so I do not accept that aesthetic discussions end after one has expressed one’s like or dislike. As such, I will endeavor to present a rough discussion of fantasy and evil.

To set the stage a bit in terms of my own biases, my love of fantasy was shaped primarily by writers like Tolkien and by games like AD&D, which is usually called heroic fantasy. While such fantasy worlds do contain evil (such as Sauron and Orcus), evil is of a different sort than that of Game of Thrones.  In Game of Thrones, the evil of classic fantasy is wedded to perversion, depravity and other such horrors that are seen as making evil “gritty and real.” This is, of course, not limited to this series. The idea of presenting evil characters in this manner is rather common and a case could be made in its favor.

When I first watched some episodes of Game of Thrones , I thought it broke the rules of the fantasy genre by presenting and seemingly glorying in this sort of evil. This was one reason I was not drawn into the series. To be fair, one criticism made of my view was that I liked fantasy as an escape from the nasty evil that exists in the real world and this is a defect in my character. This took me back to my youth when I was criticized for reading fantasy and sci-fi as a form of escapism; presumably it was assumed that people should stay engaged with boring and awful reality until it killed their soul or them. But I digress.

There are two easy and obvious replies to this alleged problem. First, heroic fantasy is but one of the many legitimate sub-genres within the fantasy genre. While the genre does require fantasy elements to be present to a degree greater than zero, it can be argued that there is no moral requirement that needs to be met to classify as a  proper work of fantasy. Obviously, this series is not heroic fantasy, but it seems sensible to say that it is still legitimately fantasy. After all, it does include the seemingly supernatural white walkers and dragons (unless they are non-magical aliens or something) and the technology is at the sword and bow level (although guns are now a common weapon in fantasy and one should not forget the sci-fi fantasy of Shadowrun).

Second, the evil portrayed in the series is taken from the real world. So, the series  meets Aristotle’s view that characters and actions should conform to what is probable. As Aristotle argued, what has occurred is obviously possible. It could even be argued that this series and others that embrace gritty realism are better than the more classic works because they are more realistic. This could form the basis of a counterattack, namely that it is heroic fantasy that is defective because presents the powerful characters (humans, at least) in a way that is improbable (that is, being mostly heroic and good rather than mostly depraved and evil).

One response to this argument is that fantasy works by their very nature need to break with reality. After all, if they are strictly realistic, they are not fantasy. As such, by presenting humans in what is taken to be “gritty and real”, a work is failing to be a work of fantasy and instead is realism, only with a monster or two thrown in to create the appearance of fantasy.

This raises the obvious concern about what sort of realism a fantasy work should include and what it should reject. While traditional fantasy typically rejects much of the reality of evil, it can be argued that this merely defines that sort of sub-genre rather than defining the entire genre. As such, a work can be very realistic in some ways, if it contains at least the necessary conditions for being a work of fantasy. In the case of Game of Thrones, it can wallow in evil while also being legitimate fantasy.

While I obviously prefer my fantasy with less evil (or at least with less of the sorts of evil in the series), I must concede that the inclusion of such evil is compatible with the fantasy genre, though obviously not with the traditional heroic fantasy. Interestingly, I have been told that my own preference for classic heroic fantasy shows that I am lacking in maturity and adult sensibilities. That is, it is a defect on my part to not prefer the gritty realism and evil of Game of Thrones to works like The Lord of the Rings. My self-righteous reply is that I prefer good over evil, which brings me to a second point, namely the matter of corruption.

In Book X of the Republic Plato argues that art is dangerous because it appeals to emotions and encourages people to yield , in harmful ways, to these emotions.  For example, someone who watches works filled with lust and violence might become more inclined to yield to lust and violence in real life because of the corrupting power of art. This is the foundation for most censorship arguments, such as Hilary Clinton’s attack on video games. No, Hilary, I will never forget that. But lest anyone think I favor censorship, I do not.

While I have known about Plato’s arguments for years, I found them unconvincing until I played Grand Theft Auto III.  Unlike the usual violent games I had played, GTA III casts the player as a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons. I am not sure how many police cars I had burning in the street or how many hookers I had killed before I felt the corrupting influence of the game. I dropped the controller, popped out the disk and never played that sort of game again. I did, however, continue to play violent video games.

When thinking about Game of Thrones and similar works in the context of my old GTA III experience, I knew that it was not the violence that bothered me. After all, I enjoy violent video games, I play D&D and I like fantasy novels that are replete with battle. In the case of Game of Thrones (GT), my analysis is roughly the same as that I made of GTA III.

In heroic fantasy, the heroes are trying to save the world by fighting evil. There is a clear moral purpose, even though violence is the usual means to the moral end. In the case of Game of Thrones, the focus seems to be on characters doing bad things for their own selfish ends, or (in some cases) simply because they are psychotically evil. So, in heroic fantasy, the heroes are acting in the right way towards the right persons for the right reasons. In the “gritty and realistic” works, the characters typically act in the wrong way towards the wrong people for the wrong reasons. As one might gather, I find an overabundance of evil unappealing, and I am concerned that exposure to such material can (as Plato argued) have a corrupting influence on people. After all, what people watch and experience shapes their cogitative processes and being exposed to an unrelenting tide of virtual evil would seem to have an impact on people. On the other hand, one could say that it is just a show and it would be silly to think that media can affect how a person thinks and acts.  

Since I am a proponent of freedom of expression, I always feel odd arguing against artists doing as they wish in terms of the ethics they present in their works. However, I have never held that artists are exempt from morality (which, I am sure, would be vigorously argued against by someone like Oscar Wilde). I do, as might be suspected, agree with Aristotle that “things are censured either as impossible, irrational, morally hurtful, contradictory, or contrary to artistic correctness.” I did like the two episodes of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms I saw while flying to and from my home state of Maine. But this was mostly because Dunk seems to be a good person and thus offsets the evil of the other characters.

 

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