Author: Michael LaBossiere

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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Misrepresenting facts and lying have long been a part of politics. However, it was claimed facts died  on April 18, 2012. On this day Representative Allen West of my adopted state of Florida claimed that about 80 congressional democrats were members of the Communist Party. This was not true, but West decided to stand by his remarks. If facts died that die, one must wonder what has happened since then. Can facts become more dead?

As a gamer, this situation reminds me of the death rules in D&D. While in some versions characters die when they are beaten down to zero hit points, in other versions a character could keep taking damage beyond zero and end up with negative hit points (usually dying at -10). Facts seem to be like that—although they seem to have died in 2012, they kept taking damage and are now very dead. One might even say that Trump and his ilk have turned facts into the undead: horribly distorted versions of once living things. But some people retain hope for facts.

While this might come as something of a shock, people are often not very rational—especially when it comes to politics. When people get information that corrects a false claim they believe, they are even more likely to believe the false claim.  For example, if Republicans and Democrats read an article that claims that a Democrat did something bad and then learn that the article was mistaken, the Republics would now be more inclined to believe the original article even though it had been shown to be in error. The Democrats would be more inclined to reject the original article. In short, it seems that corrective information is generally only accepted when it corrects in a way that matches a person’s ideology.  This has unfortunate effect that correcting an error in an ideological context will only correct the error in the minds of those who already want to believe it is an error and will probably not change the mind of those who want to believe.

In addition to the obvious problem, this tendency also means that people who are wrong (intentionally or unintentionally) usually will not suffer any damage to their credibility among their own faction, provided that their errors match the faction’s ideology. As such, the consequences of saying things that are not true seem to be generally positive, at least from a pragmatic standpoint. After all, if the claim is properly ideological and is not called out, then it will be accepted. If it is called out and shown to be in error, the criticism will generally serve to incline those who agree with the claim to still believe it. As such, presenting an ideologically “correct” falsehood (which need not be a lie) seems to be a win-win situation.

Since I teach critical thinking, this worries me. After all, a large part of my job as a philosophy professor is trying to teach people that they should base at least some of their beliefs on evidence and rational argumentation.  One stock response to my concern is that people are this way “by nature” and there is little point in trying to teach people to be critical thinkers. Trying to overcome this tendency and solve the problem of ideological irrationality would be as futile as trying to solve the problem of teen pregnancy by trying to teach abstinence (after all, people have sex by nature).

On my bad days, I almost agree. After all, I often see people who are rational in non-ideological areas lose this capacity when it comes to their ideology. However, this is not true of everyone. After all, there are clearly and obviously people who can do a reasonably good job of objective analysis. While some of this might be disposition, much of it is due to training. While everyone might not be trainable, most people can learn. To use an analogy, just as natural tendencies can be overcome by other forms of training (such as military training), this allegedly natural tendency to just go with one’s ideology could be overcome. I know this because I have seen it happen. Albeit rarely.

Of course, there is also an artificial barrier. Some bad people benefit from being able to (consciously or not) manipulate people. As such, they have a vested interest in learning how to do this while also ensuring their targets are left as defenseless as possible. While critical thinking skills are in demand, our education system is largely designed to not create such skills. One example is that very basic critical thinking classes are not taught until college. While some educators wonder why students do so badly at critical thinking, this is an obvious part of the answer. Imagine the math skills of students if they took their first actual math class as a college freshman. While it might be countered that critical thinking is too hard for kids, this is not true—the basics could be taught as soon as kids were being taught the basics of math and probably even earlier. In short, I would say that much of what is attributed to human nature is the result of education—or the lack thereof.

 

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While high fructose corn syrup (usually a blend of fructose and glucose) was a ubiquitous food ingredient, it now has a bad reputation. For example, the bottle of syrup I used on my pancakes proudly proclaims, “no high fructose corn syrup!” As consumers turned against high fructose corn syrup, the Corn Refiners Association tried to get the United States FDA to allow them to rename the syrup “corn sugar.” While there are serious health concerns about sugar, it is generally looked upon more favorably than high fructose corn syrup. The FDA denied this request because the syrup did not meet the definition of “sugar” and thus, using an argument by definition, it follows that high fructose corn syrup is not sugar. According to the FDA, sugar must be “a solid, dried and crystallized food.” High fructose corn syrup, being syrup, obviously does not meet this definition.

The Corn Refiners Association did try to convince the public that high fructose corn syrup is a form of sugar and is comparable to table sugar. Not surprisingly, the Sugar Association responded with a lawsuit.  Battles over names in the food industry is nothing new or particularly unusual. For example, there was a battle between the producers of dairy milk and the makers of soymilk over whether soy milk should be legally allowed to be called “soy milk.” As you can see in your local supermarket, soy milk is still legally milk.

It might, of course, be wondered why food names matter. In the case of high fructose corn syrup, the most likely reason was noted above: while high fructose corn syrup has a bad reputation, sugar still has a better reputation (deserved or not). As such, replacing “high fructose corn syrup” with “corn sugar” on ingredient labels could cause uninformed consumers to believe that they were not consuming high fructose corn syrup, thus allowing more syrup to be sold.

Because of government subsidies for corn, high fructose corn syrup is cheaper than “table” sugar and is widely used because it provides more sweetness for the dollar. As such, high fructose corn syrup is a competitor to sugar that enjoys a price advantage. As might be suspected, it seems reasonable that the Sugar Association did not want a major competitor to change the name of their signature product that was falling out of favor.

For those who recall basic chemistry, this dispute will probably seem odd. After all, fructose is chemically classified as sugar (as is, obviously, glucose). As such, it is tempting to agree with the Corn Refiners Association: high fructose corn syrup is sugar. However, the FDA does not define “sugar” chemically, but also in terms of its state (it must be a solid-at least in its “normal” state). As such, syrup is not a sugar–even if it is chemically sugar (or two sugars mixed). This, of course, might suggest that the dispute was the result of an arcane legal process in which the definition of what seem to be a chemical term is set by bureaucrats and lobbyists rather than by chemists. Given that chemists are the legitimate experts on what counts as a sugar, it would seem more rational to rely on the scientific rather than a political definition of “sugar.”

One obvious reply is that the FDA might have  a legitimate reason for classifying sugar in a way that involves it being a specific sort of solid rather than based on its chemical composition. After all, looking at the matter from the standpoint of food classifications, there does seem to be a reasonable distinction between syrup and sugar. To use an appeal to intuition, imagine that you ask for some sugar for your coffee and you are handed a bottle of syrup.  If the response to your puzzled look was “this is fructose syrup, which is a sugar”, then you would probably say  you meant the white crystal stuff. As such, from the standpoint of how consumers understand “sugar” and “syrup”, high fructose corn syrup would be syrup and not sugar. This leads to the second point.

A second obvious reply is that renaming high fructose corn syrup would seem to mislead consumers. As noted above, until consumers realized that “corn sugar” is just high fructose corn syrup, they would probably buy products thinking they are avoiding an ingredient they do not want. While I will not make any claims about the true intentions of the Corn Refiners Association, misleading the public in this way is morally dubious at best. But probably good business.

My second reply could be countered by arguing that the name change is not intended to mislead consumers but to offset an unfair bad reputation. After all, consumers often seem to see high fructose corn syrup as bad or at least as worse than sugar. If this is not the case, then the syrup is being judged unfairly. If this is the case, then it could be contended that the name change would merely allow the maligned ingredient to shed its unearned bad reputation. This could be seen as a person who has been falsely accused of misdeeds electing to change their name for a fresh start because they have been unable to erase the stain on their original name. This does have a certain moral appeal to it, but I am inclined to think that it is offset by the fact that most consumers would be ignorant of the name change and hence would be misled by such labels.

While one should always check the latest science, the best evidence now is that sugar is not good for us—at least if we eat too much.  So, sugar by any other name would be just as sweet but also just as harmful.

 

 

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While many culture wars raged in the 1980s, I fought in the Game Wars. In this war, computer/video games and Dungeons & Dragons were under attack, with the mildest criticism being that these activities were a waste of time. While modern culture wars usually involve claims of (typically made up) dire harm, it is still worth considering this criticism as culture war never ends and never changes.

Back in the 1980s, I was often accused of wasting my time playing games, be they computer games or tabletop games like AD&D or BattleTech. In some cases, these criticisms were benevolent—friends and relatives were concerned for my wellbeing (one of the greatest sins a New Englander could commit is wasting time). Some other folks were merely deriding my choices.

The criticism that an activity is a waste of time is a value claim. While people who make this criticism are usually not consciously applying a normative theory, they claim the activity does not have (or produce) enough value to be worth doing, usually relative to activities they see as valuable. For those who like normative theories, this could be presented in consequentialist terms: if a person is doing an activity that lacks value, they are not generating value. They should be generating value, so they should be doing something else. This criticism is based on what the critic thinks other people should (and should not) be doing. As people like to think of time as a currency, wasting time can also be presented as spending the currency of time unwisely, as one might waste money. During the 1980s (and beyond) I often faced such criticism.

When I was in college and started studying philosophy, I wondered why I was expected to defend the value of gaming to people who spent hours chugging beer and watching other people play sports. Laying aside my residue resentment, there is a philosophical question about where the burden of proof falls when someone claims an activity is a waste of time. There is the pragmatic answer, which is determined by imbalances of power. For minors, those with power can include their parents. For example, a child might need to convince a parent that playing D&D is not a waste of time, so they are allowed to play. For almost all of us, those with power include the politicians who can pass laws banning or restricting activities. As an example of this, I offer the philosophy major.

Every philosophy major has been asked what they will do with their degree and, as a professor at a public university in my adopted state of Florida I have been repeatedly compelled to defend the major. In this pragmatic case, the goal has been to persuade those compelling me to show that the major is not a waste of time by convincing them that it results in something they value (this always involved employment and income). As they have the power to end the major, they can simply put the burden of proof on me.

There is also the pragmatic context of social cost and annoyance—people who can impose that cost or annoy those doing the activity with their criticism can thus impose the burden of proof simply by demanding it as a condition to cease their criticism.

As this essay appears in a philosophical context, I infer that many readers are familiar with the claim that philosophy itself is useless (a waste of time). Bertrand Russell (1912) has perhaps the most famous reply to this criticism, although Frankfurt (2005) has the best titled response in his work Bullshit.  My experience defending gaming prepared me to defend philosophy and my experience in philosophy now enables me to discuss the waste of time criticism philosophically.

In the case of gaming in the 1980s, the challenge we gamers faced was to show that it has value. One could also frame this challenge in terms of establishing that gaming has meaning and can be part of a meaningful life. In terms of addressing the challenge, a key issue is whether the goal is to persuade the critics that gaming has value or if the goal is to prove that gaming has value. This would, of course, apply to any activity one is defending.

If the goal is to persuade the critics, victory is getting them to stop saying the activity is a waste of time or to even acknowledge that it has value. If the goal is to prove that an activity has value, then this is a matter of logic—what is needed are plausible premises and good logic. In the case of any culture war, the goal is always persuasion, and logic is not very effective in this role.

As the waste of time criticism is based on the view that the activity does not produce adequate value, responding to it requires showing that it does. One way to do this is to operate within the concept of value used by the critic and show that the activity does produce what they value. As an anecdotal example, I was able to silence some people who said gaming was a waste of time by showing them I got paid to write gaming material. As another anecdotal example, I have defended the philosophy major by providing the latest employment and salary data for philosophy majors.

Another option, which is usually more difficult, is to convince the critic to accept a concept of value under which the activity does generate value. For example, people who defend philosophy often try to argue that the non-monetary value it produces is valuable. During the Game Wars both approaches were used. And we eventually won that war. But war never changes and never ends. So, how was that war won and how might similar wars be won in the future?

In pragmatic monetary terms, the culture war over video games was clearly won when gaming moved from a niche nerd activity to a billion-dollar marketplace ruled by corporations like Microsoft, Sony, EA, Ubisoft and Valve. Of course, this path of “victory” might have come with a higher cost than if the war had been lost. But under capitalism an obvious way to persuade many people that an activity is worth doing is to show how it generates money.

In more artistic terms, the cultural elites signaled their acceptance of the value of gaming with the 2012 The Art of Video Games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the MoMA exhibit the same year. Getting the cultural elites to accept something as valuable obviously helps in persuading some people that the activity is not a waste of time. In terms of mass acceptance, it makes sense to give the smart phone some credit here. As mobile games appeared, almost everyone with a smartphone became a casual gamer, thus making it harder for people to see gaming as a waste of time.

While tabletop role playing games are not as profitable as video games and are perhaps not seen as artistic as video games, Critical Role (and its animated series on Amazon Prime like The Legend of Vox Machina) and Netflix’s Stranger Things show that D&D is now a valued part of the culture. The victory parade for D&D was when Brennan Lee Mulligan ran a D&D game at the Hollywood Bowl on June 1, 2025. I remember, vividly, declaring to my D&D group that we had won the war. Anecdotally, it has been a long time since anyone accused me of wasting my time gaming. But I must admit it still feels a bit weird when people are impressed that I’ve published so much gaming stuff.

Some might think that there is more to the war over waste and worth than appeasing or persuading those with power and that there is also a philosophical issue here. As a veteran of the culture wars, I know that these pragmatic fights are won (or lost) with persuasion rather than logic. But, as a philosopher, I agree that there is obviously an important philosophical issue worth considering when we discuss whether something is a waste of time.

These discussions raise the question of value in terms of what is worth our time and what is not. As would be suspected, this discussion always runs hard into the subjective vs objective debate in value theory. Is the question of whether an activity a waste a matter of what it is worth to the person doing it or those with the power to stop them or is there an objective basis to such discussions? Or something else? This is obviously not going to be settled, so the rational approach is to consider arguments for and against an activity having worth within the context of arguments for a particular theory of value. So, the challenge is developing a theory of value and then assessing an activity within that theory. Obviously, one could embrace the pragmatic approach discussed above, which is how it plays out in practice and how I fight the culture wars. But I fight them in good faith—I only try to persuade people to believe what I can also support with (largely ineffective) logic.

 

 

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As a philosopher who teaches aesthetics and a gamer, I find questions about games and art interesting. As I have argued elsewhere, I take the intuitively plausible view that video games can be art. However, even if this is considered settled, there is still a rich vein of philosophical issues to mine.

One topic that I and many other gamers find interesting is the importance of story in games. John Carmack, who knows a bit about games, once said that “story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” Folks who delight in story driven games disagree. For the sake of this discussion, I will be assuming that games (specifically video games) can be art. I have argued for this over the years but will not repeat my arguments here.

Obviously enough, there are games that have no story at all and are still good games. To use some obvious examples, Tetris and Asteroids are story free, yet great games. Naturally, these are not the sort of games that people debate about when it comes to whether story is important. However, it is worth noting these sorts of games because they provide relatively pure context in which to present two relevant points.

The first is that game mechanisms (the purely game aspects of the game) are reasonably seen as being distinct from the art aspects of the game (the game as art).  After all, while all games are games and some games are art, not all games are art.  This can, of course, be disputed. However, it does have enough intuitive plausibility that it is well worth considering.

The second point is that even the art aspects of a game that is (or contains) art can be distinguished from each other. For example, while Tetris and Asteroid do not have plots, they do have game artwork and sounds (which might be dismissed as mere sound effects rather than having any status as art). As another example, the music and visual art of Halo can be distinguished from each other in that one is music and the other visual art.

The importance of story is most interesting when it comes to games that do, in fact, feature a story. Obviously enough, the story (or plot) of games has varying degrees of integration into the game. For games that have a story, on one end of the spectrum lives the games whose story has a minimal role in the game. One excellent example of this is Serious Sam: The First Encounter. The game does have a story: an evil alien threatens earth and you, as Sam, must travel in time and kill wave after wave of monsters. That is pretty much it. Despite the limited story, the game works amazingly well as a game and it is fun to play. On the other end of the spectrum are games that are heavily story driven, such as the classic Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate 3. These games are, not surprisingly, role-playing games. In these games the player takes on the role of a character and spends considerable time talking to non-player characters, making decisions and experiencing the plot unfold. As might be imagined, the story in such games is much more important than in the typical first person shooter. In the middle are games like the Halo series which have well-developed stories and unfolding plots, but do not have any role-playing elements. For example, in Halo games your choices mainly revolve on what gun to use to kill which alien in what way.

As might be imagined, the significance of the story would seem to be proportional to its role in the game. After all, a first-person shooter whose plot is lacking or poor would suffer less than a story-driven role-playing game whose plot is lacking or badly done. That said, it could still be argued that plot is important.

It is tempting to compare a game with a story to a movie and, obviously enough, plot seems to be somewhat important to a movie (although Michael Bay, some might claim, has long endeavored to prove otherwise). The idea of plot being the most important aspect of poetical works (broadly and classically construed to include theater) dates back at least to Aristotle. To steal his argument regarding tragedy, the following argument can be given for the importance of plot in games that have a story element.

Games are not an imitation of humans (or elves, aliens, or dragons), “but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.” It is, of course, the actions taken by people that “make them happy or miserable.” As such the “the incidents and the plot are the end of” the game and “the end is the chief thing of all.” Thus, the story is important, at least on the key assumptions made by Aristotle.

For Aristotle, a key part of having a good plot is ensuring “that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity permits a change from bad fortune to good or from good to bad.” In more general terms, the plot must be such that the events make sense and fit together to form a coherent whole. In my own experience as a gamer, I have consistently disliked games in which the story fails to meet that basic requirement that events play out in a way that makes sense (except for games that are supposed to not make sense). After all, if you are running around in a game doing things that make no sense for no apparent reason that leads to nothing, then that will tend to be a disappointing gaming experience (although it would be a fair approximation of life).

The obvious reply to this is that there are games that are weak in stories that seem to be great successes as games, thus helping to support Carmack’s claim. This seems a consistent aspect of the top tier first person shooters as they tend to be marked by weak, implausible or otherwise lame plots but are top ranked for game play, especially competitive multi-player. As I once jokingly put it while playing one of the Borderlands games, “I don’t really care why I am killing, I just care about whether I’m enjoying it or not.” That, I think, nicely captures the view of most gamers. 

This view often extends into games in which story would seem important, such as role-playing games. While some people do enjoy going through all the dialog and getting into the story, my  experience is that the main focus is on the game-play rather than on the story.  This even extends to my experience in traditional role-playing games, like AD&D and Pathfinder: many players are far more into roll-playing (that is, simply killing monsters in combat) than role-playing (that is, talking to the monsters before killing them).

Getting back to the claim that the game aspects of a game are not art, this does seem to suggest that the story is not as important to the game as the game aspects of the game. Alternatively, it could be argued that the game aspects of the game are still art, but they are a different sort of art than a story. After all, the name of the game is, well, “game” and not “story.” In the case of a first-person shooter, the game is (obviously enough) about shooting things from a first person perspective. Story is thus secondary. Even in role-playing games, such as Pathfinder, all the actual game mechanism are about rolling dice, usually while trying to kill monsters who are blatantly and shamelessly holding the loot that rightfully belongs to the party. While the game can be augmented by art (acting, beautiful maps, and well-crafted stories) the core of the game is, it can be argued, the game mechanics. As my friend Ron has said, “if you are not rolling dice, you are not playing the game. You are just sitting around the table talking.” Those who enjoy role-playing would, of course, disagree.

The idea that a game should be focused on the game is also consistent with Aristotle’s view: “each art ought to produce, not any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to it.” But story is fine, too.

 

 

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When discussing liberty in my ethics class, I use the example of the time the mayor of New York considered a ban on selling sweetened drinks larger than 16 ounces. When considering an imposition on liberty to protect people from harm, there are factual and moral issues that should be addressed. General factual issues include whether the harm is real and whether the imposition on liberty would address the harm effectively. As would be suspected, politicians often make up harms (often as part of the culture wars) or propose ineffective solutions to real harm.

In the case of the danger of “big sodas”, there are two key factual issues. The first is whether such large drinks are harmful (the harm is usually claimed to be obesity). The second is whether imposing a ban on big sodas would be effective. The same sort of reasoning would apply to other proposals to limit liberty to protect people from harm.

When the ban was proposed, the folks in businesses that profit from “big soda” claimed the drinks are not the cause of the problem. On the one hand, one could say they are wrong. After all, it makes sense that consuming large quantities of high calorie beverages (a 12 ounce soda has 124-189 calories) would contribute to people being overweight. On the other hand, it can be argued that these drinks are not the problem. After all, big drinks are not the only (or even main) source of calories for most people and hence they are just one contributory cause among many. One could also claim that people are not compelled to consume large beverages and people are often obese because of their choices. One could claim that these drinks make it easier to be obese, but they don’t seem to be the primary villains in the obesity epidemic, so to speak.

As a general principle, I hold that any imposition of liberty must be effective at addressing real harm if it is to have any reasonable chance of being justified. In the case of banning big drinks, the obvious flaw is that people can just get refills or buy multiple drinks. People buy multiple burgers or tacos and could adjust easily to getting multiple drinks. To be fair and balanced, an imposition need not be perfect but there is reasonable concern about whether the effectiveness of a proposed imposition adequately addresses the alleged harm. This is but one example and the same consideration would apply to other similar proposals, such as banning a food additive or other food product.

While the factual matters are of concern, what is of philosophical interest is whether the state has a right to impose such bans. As might be imagined, it is easy to argue for and against this right using the very same principles.

One reasonable principle is that the state has a legitimate role in preventing harm to the citizens and has a right to use its compulsive power in this capacity. The most obvious examples of this include the state’s role as a military protector and its role as the police (to the extent the police protect). Another reasonable principle, taken from John Stuart Mill, is that the state does not have a right to impose on the liberty of individuals except in cases in which the individual’s actions could cause unwarranted harm to others. For example, the state has a right to prevent citizens from murdering each other. Arguing that the state has the right to keep people from offending each other is a much heavier lift.

In the case of a drink ban, it could be argued that the state is acting to prevent harm to the citizens and is thus operating within its legitimate rights. After all, the easy accessibility of high calorie foods in high volume servings makes it easier for people to over-consume calories and this leads to increased obesity. Obesity presents a clear health threat to individuals as well as imposing significant costs on society (such as lost productivity and increased medical costs). As such, the state would be acting rightly in banning such sweet drinks. Or so one might argue. Again, this same reasoning could be applied to other alleged dangers, such as guns, same-sex marriage or video games.

One easy reply is to contend that such a ban would not be effective (as argued above) and hence would be an imposition on liberty that fails to achieve its stated goal. It seems reasonable enough to accept that the state should not restrict liberty when doing so would not achieve the stated goal of the imposition. This is because the justification for the imposition is that it will reduce or prevent harm.

Another reply, and the one I favor, is that even if such a ban was effective, it would be an illegitimate violation of liberty. The state does, of course, have a right to protect people from toxic ingredients, especially when the consumer does not know such ingredients are in their food. To use a specific example to illustrate this, the state would be acting legitimately by banning companies from surreptitiously using lead acetate in place of sugar as sweetener. This is because this substance is known to be toxic and most customers would not willingly consume “sweet lead.” In this case, the state would be protecting the customers from being harmed by the manufacturers. After all, companies should not have the liberty to poison ignorant customers. Unfortunately, in the US companies can easily sneak new chemicals into our food. One striking example was the use of Tara flour by Daily Harvest in one product. Tara flour was found to be a hepatoxin and the FDA now bans it.

In the case of sweet drinks, the customer knows what they are getting: a high calorie (typically low nutrient) drink. While it is unwise and unhealthy to consume large amounts of such drinks, if the consumer is freely making the choice to drink the beverage and is aware of its contents and effects, then the state has no right to impose on the individual’s liberty. As usual, John Stuart Mill’s arguments in favor of liberty apply here. Naturally enough, the state would be well within its rights to require companies to provide information about the beverages so that they can make informed choices. However, treating adults as if they were children in this regard is not acceptable nor within the legitimate rights of the state. After all, what is solely the business of the individual is not the business of the state and how much sweet drink a person consumes would seem to be solely his or her business. The choice is thus the right of the individual, be it a good choice (to avoid sweet drinks) or a bad choice (to consume mass quantities of sugar water).

The obvious reply to this is that the harm done by obesity is not limited to the individual. Obesity increases health care costs for everyone, impacts productivity, and has other consequences that extend beyond the individual. Given that the obesity of an individual harms others, then it would seem that the state would have the right to step in and impose restrictions to counter obesity. After all, while people have the liberty to be as obese as they can and want to be, they do not have the right to expect the rest of society to bear the consequences and costs of their poor choices. After all, that is the job of the companies that are “too big to fail.”

 To modify a stock line from the right in the US, why should the rest of us subsidize the cost of obesity–that would be a socialism of fat.  If this reasoning is plausible, then there seem to be two reasonable alternatives (and, of course, there might be others).

The first is that the state should act within its legitimate rights to endeavor to counter causal factors that significantly contribute to obesity (such as high-volume high calorie beverages). The second is that individuals who wish to enjoy the liberty to be as fat as they choose to be would need to take full responsibility for the consequences of their choices. They would, for example, need to opt out of state medical support in regard to any conditions caused by or aggravated by their obesity, perhaps by purchasing special insurance. Provided that an individual was willing to eliminate the harm their choices would impose on others, then they would have the right to do as they please. This is analogous to how certain states allow people to ride motorcycles without helmets if they have adequate insurance. Perhaps people could receive special ID cards proving they have obesity insurance and this would allow them to purchase large beverages (and other such things). Then again, this might just be silly.

A second reply to the liberty argument is that it could be argued that the sweeteners used to create sweet drinks is actually a toxic substance. Interestingly enough, lead acetate was once used as a sweetener until it was established that it is, in fact, toxic. As such, it is not wildly implausible that sweeteners in use are toxins that should be properly regulated. While it is easy enough to dismiss the idea that, for example, sugar could be toxic because it just sounds silly, it should be assessed based on scientific evidence. If sweeteners were not harmful, then an objective scientific investigation would show this. As such, those who think that it is silly to consider sugar and other sweeteners as toxic should insist on objective and extensive evaluation. After all, doing so would silence the rational critics of sweeteners and provide hard evidence to counter attempts to ban or restrict sweeteners and products that use them, such as sweet drinks.

My own view on the matter is that people have a right to the liberty of self-abuse (even self-destruction). However, this liberty does not allow them to impose on others. As such, the freedom to be fat comes with the responsibility of ensuring that other people are not forced to bear the price that the individual alone should pay. As the hackneyed saying goes, freedom is not free-and this goes for fat freedom as well. But while we are following hackneyed sayings, we should also consider stopping the practice of repeatedly using tax dollars to save the ruling elites from their endlessly bad decisions. After all, freedom isn’t free.

 

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Years ago, Neal Stephenson argued that contemporary science fiction was too focused on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios. As an example, the Walking Dead was compared unfavorably to the hopeful view of the future claimed to be a common theme in the mid twentieth century. As the Walking Dead franchise is still walking and science fiction is still being written, I decided to revisit this subject.

One question is why the focus on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios should be seen as a problem. Stephenson worried that science fiction of this sort lacked the optimism about the future needed to inspire scientists, engineers and others. If science fiction stories predict an apocalyptic world, then the readers will not be inspired to do things such as inventing space ships or solving the fossil fuel problem.

In support of his view, Stephenson pointed to an incident in which the president of Arizona State University and co-founder of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes  Michael Crow told him that science fiction writers have been “slacking off” and are thus (at least partially) responsible for the (allegedly) slow pace of innovation.  To address this problem, Stephenson created the Hieroglyph project which aims at getting science fiction writers to create inspirational works infused with optimism. As Stephenson put it, “we have one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace and no holocaust.” This rule seems to have three goals. First, avoid “hacking”, which is using old solutions rather than creating something new. Second, provide optimistic inspiration (hence no holocaust). Third, avoid any “impossible” or “magical” solutions to problems, presumably so that the inspiration will focus on what is possible. As might be imagined, Stephenson raised some interesting matters for philosophical consideration.

One obvious concern is that dystopian science fiction seems to be as old as science fiction itself. One example is Mary Shelley’s 1826 The Last Man.  In this book, humanity is beset by a terrible plague, and the work ends in 2100 with the last man.  A later work is H.G. Well’s 1895 vision of the far future in the Time Machine. In this classic work, humanity is divided into the cannibalistic Morlocks and their beautiful (but ignorant) food, the Eloi. Jack London even wrote within the dystopian genre, producing a political dystopia in his 1908  The Iron Heel . Rather interestingly, London’s 1912 The Scarlet Plague is about a worldwide pandemic which echoes the The Last Man. H.P. Lovecraft also presents a dystopian world during the early twentieth century—one in which humanity is apparently destroyed by Nyarlathotep. There are, of course, a wealth of classic dystopian works such as 1984, Brave New World, and a Clockwork Orange.

Given that dystopian science fiction is a well-established genre in science fiction, it seems odd to blame an alleged slowdown of innovation on the dystopian and nihilist science fiction of today. After all, if this sort of science fiction slows technological innovation due to its pessimism, then it would seem to follow that past dystopian science fiction should have been slowing down innovation all along. At the very least, it would seem to follow that it does not present a special problem now, given that it has been around so long.

One counter is to claim that while dystopian science fiction has been around for a long time, it is only recently that it has come to dominate fiction. By analogy, while there has been junk food for a long time, it is only relatively recently that it dominated the foodscape. Thus, just as obesity is now a serious problem in the United States, the retardation of inspiration is now a serious problem in science fiction.

As a science fiction fan (and a very, very minor writer), I am somewhat inclined to agree with this. In my own case, I find myself loading my Kindle with science fiction from the early to mid-twentieth century and ignoring many new novels. In part, this is a matter of being thrifty. I can, for example, get H. Beam Piper’s works for free. However, part of it is because much of the new stuff seems to lack something possessed by the good old stuff. While I have thought about this for some time, I considered that my experience matched Stephenson’s claim: the new stuff often lacks a certain thread of optimism that ran through the good old stuff, even the old dystopian stuff.

For example, consider Fritz Leiber’s 1960 story, “The Night of the Long Knives.” On the face of it, this story is dystopic and nihilist: the world has been devastated by a nuclear war, the survivors have divided into warring states, and the main characters are murderers. However, the story is oddly optimistic: some surviving scientists have created technological marvels and at the end the main characters struggle to free themselves of their need to murder. As another example, consider Asimov’s Foundation stories. While humanity builds a vast galactic empire, it falls into the long night and civilization all but dies.  The capital of the empire, Trantor, goes from being a metal encased super world to a wrecked planet whose inhabitants subsist by selling the remains of the great civilization for scrap. However, there is still the Foundation (or, rather, two—spoilers) that restores civilization and the original trilogy is ultimately optimistic. This is not to say that all the dystopian stories have optimistic aspects. In fact, some of them are (or at least seem) unrelenting in their pessimism. There is, I think, nothing wrong with this. After all, not all good tales must have happy endings.

If, as a matter of empirical fact, the dystopian and the nihilistic dominate modern science fiction, then Stephenson could have a case. But, of course, making such a case requires drawing a connection between science fiction and technological innovation. Fortunately, this seems easy enough to do.

Some recent technological innovations can be traced back to science fiction, and these have been explicitly credited with inspiring engineers and scientists. To use the obvious example, the older Star Trek was an inspiration for technology and inspired scientists, engineers and astronauts. Another example of this is Well’s 1903 story “The Land Ironclads” in which he introduces the tank. Naturally, there are also the contributions of Jules Verne. One could, in fact, fill a book (or more) with all the innovations that first appeared in science fiction (for good or for ill). Considering this, it would seem reasonable to accept a connection between science fiction and innovation. However, there is the question of whether the dystopian and nihilistic works would lack inspirational power or, more importantly, impede innovation.

On one hand, such works could provide ideas that would inspire later innovation. For example, a dystopian work could still include descriptions of interesting technologies or innovations that later engineers or scientists might duplicate. There is also the possibility that such works could provide an inspiration in a negative way. That is, by portraying a horrific future a write could inspire people to try to avoid that. To use the obvious example, the classic stories about nuclear war might motivate the audience to avoid nuclear war. Likewise, stories about pandemics could motivate people to develop the means to prevent them in ways that tales of a disease-free future might not. After all, we can be inspired by the threat of something awful. Or maybe not.

On the other hand, works that lack optimism could fail to inspire, despite including interesting technology or providing a plausible threat. To use an obvious analogy, if a leader tries to inspire people by sharing an anecdote of failure (“and then everyone died a pointless death”), then this probably would not be motivational. Perhaps the bad can be inspiration, if there is a strong element of the possibility of the good. Works that lack this would, not surprisingly, fail to inspire. One final point I will consider is whether science fiction writers have any obligation to write inspirational stories.

As might be imagined, it is easy to argue that writers are not so obligated. Writers should have the freedom to create works as they see fit and it is up to the writer whether they wish to present optimistic or nihilistic tales. Oscar Wilde, for example, would no doubt argue that writers should not be constrained by such an imposition.  This view is, of course, consistent with writers electing to produce optimistic tales and even working within the limits discussed by Stephenson if they are contributing to an anthology or want to write within a narrower genre. After all, if it is acceptable for writers to limit themselves to time travel stories for a time travel anthology, it would be equally acceptable for writers to limit themselves to optimistic stories for an optimistic anthology of science fiction.

It is also easy to argue that writers should contribute to beneficial innovation. After all, being a writer does not seem to grant a person an exemption from morality. If a utilitarian approach to ethics is taken, then a solid case could be made that authors (morally) should write inspirational works. After all, if writing such works increases the likelihood of good consequences (such as developing clean energy or a means of replacing diseased or damaged organs), then authors (morally) should write such books. After all, a failure to do so would result in a worse world.  Kant, given his view of the moral badness of letting useful talents rust, would no doubt favor writing positive science fiction. This is not to say that writers should be compelled to write such works and the usual arguments for artistic liberty would have their normal weight here. Plato, of course, would be against the liberty of creating harmful works, but he might favor science fiction that yielded good results (after all, he did endorse the noble lie).

To close, writers should (obviously) be free to craft nihilistic dystopian hellscapes. But optimism is also nice.

 

 

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Way back in 2012 the Washington Post published a story about how teenage Mitt Romney took offense at the long hair of fellow student John Lauber. Lauber was often teased for being a nonconformist and suspected of being a homosexual. One day young Romney and some friends overpowered Lauber and cut his hair. Apparently, no disciplinary action was taken against Romney. As time begins to run out of me, I have taken to reflecting on my own past, with a focus of sins that I might need to atone for. A key question is, of course, whether the man of today is accountable for the sins of the boy of yesterday. I’ll use Mitt as the focus of the discussion, in part because I am nostalgic for a time when even youthful misdeeds by Republicans seemed they might matter.

Intuitively, under normal circumstances a person is morally accountable for his actions. There are, of course, clear and obvious exceptions to this. In the case of teenage Romney, he seems morally accountable. He does not seem to have been coerced or compelled.

However, it is fair and reasonable to counter this view with the obvious: this took place when Romney was a teenager. Research on the teenage brain has confirmed what has long been believed: teenagers often have poor impulse control and assess actions differently than adults. Stereotypically, young males are supposed to be even more prone to bad behavior. Thinking back on my own teens, the research matches my own experiences.  I can recall numerous instances in which either I or other people did rather stupid things. In some cases, I was the perpetrator. For example, when I started playing D&D we thought it would be a great idea to engage in live combat with homemade medieval weapons. During one fight, I whacked my friend Mike in the back of head with a wooden flail and drew blood. Lots of blood. Sometimes I was the victim, like the time I had my shorts ripped off on a track team run and was forced to run back to school wearing just a jock and my shoes. For male readers who are beyond their teens, I suspect that the same is true.

While it is tempting to excuse our sins because our brains were immature, this does not seem to be enough of a basis to completely excuse bad behavior. After all, having a teenage brain does not preclude a person from making sound moral judgments. It does, however, mean that teenagers are not as good at it as adults and hence should be held less accountable than adults.

John Stewart Mill noted the difference between children and adults in his writing on liberty in terms of decision-making ability. On his view, this reduced the degree of liberty they should be allowed. From a moral (and legal) standpoint it is important to consider the extent to which an immature brain affects judgment and impulse control. After all, it is to this degree that children should be morally (and legally) excused in their actions. This difference is, of course, already recognized in some laws: in general, children are not tried as adults and in the United States and there are juvenile courts just for kids. But, as one would expect, the United States incarcerates youth at a rate much higher than the rest of the world.

We do not know how much impact the immaturity of the brain has on judgments and behavior. However, it is sufficient for my purposes to say that teenage Romney’s immature brain probably had some impact on his decision to attack Lauber, just as it did in my decision to whack my friend with a flail. Whacking  a  friend with a flail is not something I would do today, outside of a video game.

However, it seems reasonable to claim that teenage Romney should not be held as accountable as an adult would be in similar circumstances. Likewise for the teenage flail wielding LaBossiere. I will admit that I am unsure of the degree to which accountability should be reduced, but it does seem quite sensible to hold children less accountable than adults, and this should clearly extend to all of us.

In addition to the question of how accountable a person is for the action at the time of the action; there is also the question of what the sins of the past reveal about the person of the present. In the case of Mitt Romney, the clear concern was what this incident from his teenage years told the people of the United States about his fitness to be president. While Romney’s case was somewhat extreme, similar questions can be asked of all of us. For example, what does the flail incident reveal about my fitness to be a professor of philosophy? If I ran for office, should that incident be brought up by the press? What about the time I…wait, my imaginary lawyer has advised me to not speak of great egg madness of 1984.

When assessing past incidents as indicators of current character, an important point of concern is the seriousness of the action. For example, the fact that I got into a couple minor scuffles in school does not show that I am a person of bad character now. As another example, if someone committed an unprovoked brutal murder as a teenager, then this would indicate that they could be an evil person today.

In Romney’s case, the incident was somewhat serious. After all, he was involved in what seems to have been assault and battery. Likewise for the time I whacked my friend with the flail (or the time my shorts were stolen). As such, Romney’s incident and my own seem worth considering when assessing current character. While it is a tautology, it does make sense to say that we are what we did. That is, the person I am now is the result of what I did in the past. Because of this, my past actions (and anyone else’s) would be relevant to assessing who I am now.

But, of course, a person is more than just a sum of past actions. These actions impact the person and what a person does can change them so that they would no longer do what they once did. People can change for better (or worse). As such, it would not do to simply look at a specific incident and take it to define the person of today. Rather, it must be taken in context of the person’s life. How a person responds to the past action is also relevant to determining the person’s current character.

In my own case, and in the case of my friends, we generally managed to become decent adults. While I whacked my friend with a flail, I grew up to be a calm professor of philosophy. My friends turned out well, too.  Naturally, I remember the flail incident (and others) very well and I feel bad about what I did. This is one reason why I became the calm philosophy professor I am today who would not hit someone with a flail. As such, the flail incident does not show that I am currently a person of bad character.

In the case of Romney, there has been no evidence that he is prone to attacking people and cutting their hair. What was somewhat worrisome is that he initially denied remembering the incident.

On the one hand, a case could be made that Romney honestly did not remember. After all, people forget things. No doubt there are some rotten things that I did as a kid that I have forgotten that other people (such as my parents or sister) remember. Perhaps Romney honestly did not remember. Naturally, some folks might see this as a sign of bad character in that the attack did not make enough of an impression to remain in his mind. After all, I vividly remember hitting my friend with the flail. But I suspect that other people remember some bad things I did as a kid that I have forgotten.

On the other hand, politicians often claim they do not remember an incident in which they (allegedly) did wrong. This always strikes me as an odd tactic, especially when there is evidence and it is something they should remember (barring mental deterioration). A claim to not remember a misdeed certainly says something about a person’s current character. Admitting the misdeed, showing remorse and an improvement in character is, I would contend, says something far better about a person. Unless, of course, it is just a clever move to look good. But I am, in fact, sorry about whacking Mike with the flail.

 

 

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