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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Premise 2: Chicago does not have less gun violence.

Conclusion: Gun control laws do not work.

 

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

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

 

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

Premise 2: You died in the fire.

Conclusion: Fire prevention practices and rules do not work.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Billionaires are often lauded in America, but some condemn them as evil simply for being billionaires. This raises the moral issue of whether a person can be morally good and a billionaire. The issue is whether, in general, you could be a billionaire and still plausibly be a good person. Proper resolution of this issue requires determining which moral theory (if any) is correct. But we can rely to some degree on our moral intuitions and some basic logic.

A key concern is the way the billionaire acquires their wealth. Virtue theorists, such as Confucius, generally agree that acquiring wealth is not inherently evil. Their concern is with how the wealth is obtained and the impact on the person’s virtues. As Confucius says, “Wealth and rank are what every man desires; but if they can only be retained to the detriment of the Way he professes, he must relinquish them. Poverty and obscurity are what every man detests; but if they can only be avoided to the detriment of the Way he professes, he must accept them.”

While we could debate endlessly about ethical and unethical ways of becoming wealthy, we can probably agree that there are some ways of acquiring wealth that are inconsistent with being a good person. As an appeal to intuition, I ask you to imagine something you regard as being the evilest thing a person could do. Now imagine someone who finds a way to monetize that and manages to become a billionaire. You would probably agree that they would not be a good person. We can also probably agree that there are ethical ways to become a billionaire that no sensible person would see as evil. For example, imagine a writer of such incredible appeal that they sell billions of reasonably priced books. No one gets exploited or hurt; people just love to buy those reasonably priced books.  While unlikely, it is not impossible.  As such, merely becoming a billionaire need not make a person evil.

The second key concern is what the billionaire does with their wealth. Obviously, a billionaire could use their wealth to do evil, but this is not unique to billionaires. Someone with little wealth could use it for evil ends. For example, someone could pay another person $10 to commit murder. The special concern about billionaires is, obviously, the extent of the evil they could do with all that wealth. Once again, simply imagine a billionaire using their wealth to bring about things that you regard as evil, this should suffice to show that they could be evil. This can, of course, get complicated when one starts to consider various factors such as character, motives, and consequences.

A billionaire could also use their wealth to do good things. Simply think of what you regard as good and then imagine a billionaire using their wealth to bring that about. One can certainly raise concerns about the billionaire’s motives and other factors when wondering whether they are good even when they do things you believe to be good. But you can simply imagine a billionaire doing things you think are good for reasons you think are good and so on. This should be easy enough to do. Unless, of course, you think that billionaires are inherently bad (with one general exception). Which I do. I will need to argue for this and will do so by analogy and appealing to your intuitions.

If a person is a billionaire, then this entails that they have at least $1 billion in wealth. This is distinct from merely being in control of such wealth. The President of the United States has effective control over billions in military equipment yet need not be a billionaire. This wealth can take various forms: cash, stocks, yachts, helicopters, mansions, spaceships, and so on. This means that the typically billionaire has vast resources.

We know that many people, including many in the United States, suffer greatly from a lack of resources. People go hungry, struggle with contaminated water supplies (like in Flint, Michigan), go without adequate medical care, go without shelter and so on. There are so many who have so little that they suffer so much because of it. You can certainly guess where I am going with this.

A billionaire has such vast wealth that all their needs and are met many times over. Some even have a support yacht for their main yacht. They can own many mansions. This means that they could share their resources without putting a noticeable dent in the quality of their existence.  Jeff Bezos could, for example, easily fund the replacement of failing pipes in many towns. Elon Musk could, for example, properly fund many public schools. Bill Gates could, for example, fund animal shelters across America.

At this point, one might point out that billionaires do engage in philanthropy; they do give some money to causes and charity. Bill Gates, for example, is famous for his foundation. But there is the stock criticism that billionaires “give” away millions to make billions. For example, while Bill Gates did fund the development of a vaccine, he did not do so for the good of humanity but to profit Bill Gates. The conspiracy theorists who hate Gates are right to be critical of him, but they hate him for the wrong reason: he is not microchipping vaccines, he is monetizing vaccines.

I do admit the obvious: yes, it is morally better for a billionaire to do some good rather than doing all evil. But this doesn’t  show that billionaires are good because they sometimes give away a little bit of their wealth. The moral problem is that they are still billionaires in the face of so much suffering and need. And now comes the analogy.

Imagine people on a derelict ship drifting in the ocean. One person has supplies that would last them a thousand years. Other people have enough supplies to survive comfortably until they are rescued. Many people, however, do not have enough supplies to meet their basic needs. They are suffering, and some will die long before any possibility of rescue. Even if the person with the vast supplies somehow earned their supply cache, could they be a good person if they simply let the others suffer and die when they could easily help them? Intuitively, they would not: they could help people in need and still be completely fine themselves.

They need not give up all their supplies and could even retain much more than they would ever need. If they sit atop a pile of supplies they will never need while other people die, then they cannot be a good person. To see this, imagine you and your family on that ship without adequate supplies while someone looks down upon your suffering from their throne of supplies.

The obvious stock reply to my analogy would be that the people who lack supplies have no right to those held by the super hoarder. They need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get their own supplies, perhaps by laboring for the hoarder. Maybe if they made him supplies for 10 or 100 days, he would graciously allow them 1 day of supplies. If this would not suffice for their well-being, one might say that they need to pull those bootstraps even harder and find a way to be a supply creator before they die from lack of supplies. This sort of hoarder would, of course, be the obvious villain in a movie, but they are often the hero in real life.

I mentioned above that there is one general exception. If a billionaire is, in fact, using their resources to create more good than they would create by sharing these resources, then they would be a good person. To use a simple and silly example, a person who owned a five billion-dollar factory (hence they would still be a billionaire) but used it to provide good jobs while supplying critical infrastructure components at cost could be a good person.  To close, I must emphasize that I do not advocate stripping people of all their wealth; I have no moral objection against people living well or in some luxury. There is, of course, a complicated moral issue here about how much a person can keep to themselves in the face of the suffering and need of others. I also do not advocate just giving people things in cases where people could easily do well by their own efforts; what I am against is cruel hoarding when so many are in need and could easily be helped.

By https://www.marvel.com/articles/movies/sdcc-2019-all-of-the-marvel-studios-news-coming-out-of-hall-h-at-san-diego-comic-con, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62990603

If you have yet to see the first episode of season one of Disney’s Loki series, this essay contains spoilers. This episode presents some of the metaphysics of the MCU: there are many timelines (alternate realities) and variants of people, such as Loki and Deadpool, exist in some of them.

Loki is, obviously, the main character of Loki. In fact, he is two main characters: the anti-hero Loki and the hero-anti Loki (the villain). Since the metaphysics of the MCU includes time travel, this entails that the same person can be at different places at the same time. They can even fight, as happened with Captain America. While this is a metaphysical mess, this means time travel can be used as a multiplier: a person can time it so different versions of themselves arrive at the same place at the same time. So, for example, Loki could show up to fight an enemy at a set time and arrange for himself to go back or forwards in time ten times and end up with eleven of himself to overwhelm the foe. This, of course, leads to the usual paradoxes and problems of time travel. A future Loki could tell a distant past Loki about things that a middle past Loki did not know, but then the middle past Loki would know it. While this is even more of a mess, the time travelling Lokis could remain there in that time and start their own lives or perhaps travel back to a more distant past over and over to create a vast army of Lokis that meet up at a future time to do whatever it is that his character arc directs him to do.

Such time travel has various other problems. A point often made in time travel tales is the importance of not changing the past. Some sci-fi stories do allow a change in the past to change the future; other stories simply make it so that whatever the time travelers do is what happened anyway. That is, they make no change in the past because what they do is what they did and will always done did (Star Trek IV implies this). The classic grandfather paradox falls into this family of problems: if a person goes back to the past and changes things that impact their ability to go to the past (such as killing their grandfather), then they could not go back to change the past and hence the past would be unchanged and so they could go back to the past. But they could not, because if they made that change then they could not go back. And so on. In fiction, the writers simply write whatever they wish, but this does not address the matter of how this would all “really” work.

There is also the problem of personal identity: in the metaphysics of the MCU variants arise and a new timeline branch could presumably also spawn variants that create additional branches. As there are multiple Lokis in the show, they both spawned off the main timeline. Perhaps one Loki “divided”, or one Loki “split” from the other Loki. Or perhaps there are three (or more) Lokis: there is the Loki who remained on the timeline and was killed by Thanos. There is the Loki who escaped from the Avengers because of their time heist (the anti-hero of the show) and the third Loki who is the villain. Because of time travel, the third Loki might have split from the second Loki in the future. As always, time travel is a mess.

Having multiple Lokis does create the usual problems for personal identity. After all, what provides personal identity is supposed to make a person the person they are, distinct from all other things. As such, it would seem to be something that should not be able to be duplicated. Otherwise, it would not be what makes an entity distinct from all other things. If there are two Lokis in a room, there must be something that makes them two rather than one. There must also be something that makes each of them the Loki they are. But is this true?

One approach is taking inspiration from David Hume’s theory of personal identity.  After he argues a person is a bundle of perceptions, he ends up saying that, “The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties.” While this might be true, it does not satisfy. But it does provide a way of resolving a room full of Lokis: it’s a matter of grammar.

Another approach is trying to sort out the metaphysics of personal identity in the context of time travel. After all, time travel requires that entities can be multiply located while personal identity would seem to forbid duplication of what individuates. The reason time travel requires multiple location is that something from one time travels to another time and the matter or energy that makes up what travels will also be present when it arrives. So, the same thing will be in two places at the same time; something that is not normally possible. But one could accept the existence of metaphysical entities that allow this.

Yet another approach, and one that seems to match how the timelines were presented in the show, is that a branching creates an entire new reality that is similar but not identical to the first. This would also duplicate the people, perhaps creating them ex nihilo. So, the various Lokis would be similar people, but not the same person.

By Timdwilliamson. Creative Commons.

On a morning run I came across a sign in the park informing me that the city was “helping nature by controlling invasive plants.” This help involves herbicides and machetes as my adopted city of Tallahassee is quite active in addressing invasive species. Laying aside concerns about herbicides; this raises philosophical issues.

On the one hand, the phrase “helping nature” can be dismissed as a rhetorical device. It presents the destruction of invasive species as a benign act and might be intended to offset negative feelings about use of herbicides. As you smell chemicals and feel your skin and mouth itch a bit, you will know that this for the good of nature. On the other hand, it does imply a value position on what helps nature. I’ll look at this notion.

Taken at face value, sign implies invasive species harm nature and thus it is good for us to kill them. But these is the obvious concern that invasive species are also part of nature. For example, feral hogs, Burmese pythons, and Nandina are natural beings and they are, one would assume, not helped by being killed by us.

One way to address the ethical concerns is by using a utilitarian argument: allowing invasive species to thrive will do more harm to the ecosystem and its inhabitants than killing the invaders. As such, killing invasive species is the right thing to do in such cases. This approach would allow for invasive species to be left alone if their presence created more good than harm for the ecosystem. Whatever that might mean.

While this seems reasonable it suffers from an obvious practical challenge of making a rational and informed calculation of what is likely to be best for nature. Humans have generally proven bad at this, so such assessments need to be critically evaluated.

Another counter to the idea that we should “help nature” is that it is natural for species to migrate to new areas. Animals are usually mobile and have spread around the world. Plants have spread far and wide, such as when seeds are transported by birds. If life originated in one or a few locations, this has been going on since the beginning. And it continues to this day; the natural world is not static, and species are constantly on the move.

I am not arguing that this feature of nature is “good” because it has always been (that would be a fallacy). Rather, the point is that species moving is natural and interfering with it does not seem to really “help nature.”

Yet another counter to “helping nature” is to note that the idea of helping nature suggests nature has a purpose, goal, or end that we can assist with. The idea of nature having an end is well known in philosophy, although it is generally rejected these days.

Aristotle famously claimed that all natural beings have ends, thus arguing for a teleological reality. To use a simple example, an acorn has the purpose, goal, or end of becoming an oak tree. If one looks at nature in teleological terms, then we could help nature by assisting it in achieving its purpose. This matter can get complicated if natural being have competing ends (which they usually do), but it could make sense to help or harm nature if one holds to a teleological view. There is also the religious option.

One could embrace a religious view that grounds a teleological view of the natural world. One could accept a goddess of nature and help nature by helping her achieve her ends. Or one could accept the existence of God and help God by assisting the natural world achieve God’s ends. One would just need to sort out what the deity wanted in terms of help. As some might find supernatural things problematic, they could rely on human values.

If we accepted a teleological view of nature, then we can argue that we should deal with the invasive species we introduced by accident or design. These would include creatures such as cane toads, rats, mussels, and various plants. We are accountable for our actions, perhaps even when they are unintentional. One could even argue that what we do is artificial rather than natural, hence we need to undo the unnatural things we have done. Interestingly, this seems to entail we are the most invasive species and we should restore ourselves to our original habitat and return the world to some earlier time of species distribution. Interestingly, this does make this sort of conservation analogous to the conservative world view in politics: a desire to restore the world to some preferred (usually imagined) past. The obvious problem, given all the change, is deciding which time defines the “correct” past state of things. This leads us to human values.

Species tend to be condemned as invasive based on their impact on human beings. For example, we North Americans do not usually label our dogs as an invasive species. This is not because our dogs are original inhabitants of North America, but because we like dogs.  Recently arriving species generally get labeled as invasive when we do not like what they are doing. For example, Floridians generally do not like the non-native species that are overrunning bodies of water in the state. This is because of the impact they have on us. This is analogous to how people look at the migration of other people: people are fine with other people they like coming here. But they get very angry when the people they think should not be here come here. And, of course, they slap negative labels on them and argue for their removal. But let us get back to non-human species.

Since humans matter morally, I think we have the right to consider the impact of species on our well-being. But we should be honest when we do this: we should not claim that we are helping nature, we should acknowledge that we are doing what we think will benefit us.  This is something to be addressed in ethics, sorting out what is right based on the correct moral theory (if there is one).

Being a self-interested human, I agree with some efforts to address species we call invasive. For example, the park near my house is infested with tung trees. These trees were introduced to the United States intentionally to produce tung oil. This industry failed, but the trees spread throughout Florida. I dislike the trees because every part of the tree is poisonous. The leaves can cause a reaction like poison ivy and a single seed can be a fatal dose of poison. I recognize they are as much a part of nature as I am and hence do not argue that they should be removed because they are not native. Rather, I am fine with their removal for the same reason I would be fine with removing broken glass from the park: they are a hazard.

To close, merely being invasive does not warrant the removal or destruction of a species. Otherwise, we would need to be removed or destroyed. Rather, this is a matter for moral (and practical) assessment. Talking about “nature” and labeling species as “invasive” is mostly a matter of rhetoric and we would be better off being honest about what we are doing and why.

As a philosopher, I annoy people in many ways. One is that I almost always qualify the claims I make. This is not to weasel (weakening a claim to protect it from criticism) but because I am aware of my epistemic limitations: as Socrates said, I know that I know nothing. People often prefer claims made with certainty and see expressions of doubt as signs of weakness. Another way I annoy people is by presenting alternatives to my views and providing reasons as to why they might be right. This has a downside of complicating things and can be confusing. Because of these, people often ask me “what do you really believe!?!” I then annoy the person more by noting what I think is probably true but also insisting I can always be wrong. This is for the obvious reason that I can always be wrong. I also annoy people by adjusting my views based on credible changes in available evidence. This really annoys people: one is supposed to stick to one view and adjust the evidence to suit the belief. The origin story of COVID-19 provides an excellent example for discussing this sort of thing.

When COVID first appeared in China, speculation about its origin began and people often combined distinct claims without considering they need not be combined. One set of claims is the origin of COVID. Some claims are that it is either naturally occurring or was engineered in the lab. At this point, the best explanation is that the virus is naturally occurring. But since humans do engineer viruses, it is possible the virus was engineered. The obvious challenge is to provide proof and merely asserting it is not enough. So, at this point my annoying position is that the best evidence is that the virus is naturally occurring, but new evidence could change my position.

Other claims are about the origin of the infection. Some claim it entered the human population through a wet market. Some claim it arrived via some other human-bat interactions. There is also the claim that it originated from a lab. All of these are plausible. We know diseases can originate in markets and spread. We know that labs are run by people and people make mistakes and can be sloppy at work. We know humans interact with animals and disease can spread this way.

Back at the start of the last pandemic, I favored the wet market hypothesis because it seemed  best supported by the available evidence. Diseases do jump from livestock to humans, so this claim was plausible. However, the possibility that the virus leaked from the lab has gained credibility. While there is not yet decisive evidence, this hypothesis is credible enough to warrant serious investigation. I do not have a vested interest in backing any particular hypothesis.

There are also claims about whether it was intentional. Some it was an accident. Some claim the virus was intentionally introduced, and nefarious reasons vary between the hypotheses. Accidents are regular occurrences and things are always going wrong. But people intentionally do evil and have various reasons for doing so, ranging from making money, to getting more power, to seeking revenge, to all the other reasons people do bad things. As it now stands, there is little or no evidence that a malign actor intentionally introduced the virus into the population. But evidence could certainly arise. People have done worse things. The malign actor hypothesis is also an umbrella: one must select specific evildoers as the culprit, though there could be many. As always, evidence is needed to support any claims.

It is important to distinguish between the different claims and to keep in mind that evidence that supports one claim might not support another claim often associated with it.

A common mistake is confusing how conjunctions work with how disjunctions work. In logic, a disjunction is an “or” claim which is true when one or both disjuncts is/are true. For example, if I say that I will bring beer or tequila to the party, then my claim is true unless I show up with neither. Showing up with one or the other or both makes that disjunction true.

In the case of a conjunction, both conjuncts must be true for the statement to be true. So, If I say I will bring hot dogs and buns to the party, then I must show up with both for my claim to be true. While it might seem like an odd and obvious mistake, people can treat a conjunction like a disjunction when they want to claim the conjunction is true. In some cases, people will do this intentionally in bad faith. This has been done in the case of COVID.

As noted above, the lab leak hypothesis for COVID has gained credibility. Because of this, some might conclude the virus was also manufactured. The person could think that because there is reason to believe the virus leaked from a lab, then it is also true that it was manufactured. If it is true that the virus was leaked, then one part of the claim “the virus was manufactured and leaked” would be true, namely that it was manufactured. So, someone might be tempted to take the entire claim as true (or make the claim in bad faith). After all, if it were true that the virus was leaked, then it would be true that it was leaked or it was manufactured. But this would be a matter of logic; it would thus also be true that the virus was leaked, or unicorns exist. As always, it is important to determine which part of a conjunction is supported by the evidence. If both claims are not supported, then you do not have good reason to accept the conjunction as true. The last annoying thing I will look at is the fact that being right does not mean a person was justified.

Suppose tomorrow brings irrefutable proof the virus was leaked from a lab. Those devoted to this claim would probably take this as proof they were right all along. On the one hand, they would be correct: they were right all along, and other people were wrong. But since at least Plato philosophers have distinguished between having a true belief and having justification for this belief. After all, one can be right for bad reasons, such as guessing or from prejudice. For example, a person who likes horror-sci fi might believe the lab leak because they like that narrative. As another example, a racist might accept the lab leak hypothesis because of their prejudices. A nationalist might go with the lab leak because they think China is an inferior country. And so on. But believing on these grounds would not justify the belief; they would have just gotten lucky. As such, their being right would be just a matter of luck—they guessed right based on bad reasons.

One thing people often find confusing about critical thinking and science is that a person can initially be justified in a belief that ultimately turns out false. This is because initial evidence can sometimes warrant belief in claims that are later disproved. In such cases, a person would be wrong but would have all the right reasons to believe. Some of this is because of the problem of induction (with inductive reasoning, the conclusion can always turn out to be false) and some of it is because humans have limited and flawed epistemic abilities.

People who do not understand this will tend to think these good methods are defective because they do not always get the truth immediately and they do not grasp that a person can be reasoning well but still end up being wrong. Such people often embrace methods of belief formation that are incredibly unreliable, such as following authoritarian leaders or unqualified celebrities.  If the evidence does turn out to eventually support these initially unjustified beliefs, they do not seem to get that this is how the process works: false claims, one hopes, eventually get shown to be false and better supported claims replace them. As such, those who rejected the lab hypothesis earlier because of the lack of evidence but are now considering it based on the new evidence are doing things right. They are adjusting based on the evidence. I suspect that some approach belief in claims like they might see belief in religion: you pick one and stick with it and if you luck out, then you win. But that is not how rational belief formation works.

What, then, about someone who believed in the lab hypothesis early on and was rational about it? Well, to the degree they had good evidence for their claim, then they deserve credit. However, if they believed without adequate justification, then their being correct was a matter of chance and not the result of some special clarity of reason. To close, people should keep advancing plausible alternatives as this is an important function in seeking the truth. So those who kept the lab hypothesis going because they rationally considered it a possible explanation do deserve their due credit.

Dice (unloaded) seem a paradigm of chance: when rolling a die, one cannot know the outcome in advance because it is random. For example, if you roll a twenty-sided die, then there is supposed to be an equal chance to get any number. If you roll it 20 times, it would not be surprising if you didn’t roll every number. If you rolled the die 100 times, chance says you would probably roll each number 5 times. But it would not be shocking if this did not occur. But if you rolled a thousand or a million times, then you would expect the results to match the predicted probability  closely because you would expect the law of large numbers to be in effect. 

While dice provide a simple example, the world seems full of chance.  For example, diseases are presented in terms of chance: a person has X% chance of catching the disease and, if it can be fatal, they have a Y% chance of dying. While the method of calculating chance in the context of disease is complicated, the rough process involves determining the number of people in a category who become infected and the number in that group who die. To use a made-up example, if 1 person out of every 100 dies, then the chance of dying from infection would be 1%.

This estimate can be off for many reasons, but one obvious concern is that probability is being estimated based on the outcome. Why this is a problem is illustrated by considering a scenario in which you are given the results of repeated rolling of a die, and you are trying to figure out the type of die being rolled and whether it is weighted. You can, obviously, make some reasonable inferences. For example, if the highest number you are given is a 30, you know the die has at least 30 sides. Matters become more complicated if you are not sure that a die is really being rolled. Perhaps you have been given numbers generated by some other means. They might, for example, be selected to give the impression of chance. One could, for example, create the impression that they are rolling a 20-sided die by picking the appropriate numbers. A similar sort of thing could occur in the world, and this can be illustrated with the disease example.

Let us imagine two universes. Universe A is a random universe that has random chance and probability (whatever that means). In that world, there would be a metaphysical and metaphorical roll of the dice to determine outcomes arising from chance. For example, a disease that had a 1% fatality rate would work metaphorically like this: each infected person would get a roll with a 100 sided die (a d100 for tabletop gamers) and if they roll a 01, then they die. Thanks to the law of large numbers, if enough people got infected then this would work out to 1 in 100 people dying in this random universe.  Naturally, smaller numbers will not match the 1 in 100 perfectly, but with a large enough number of infections the 1 in 100 will be achieved (oversimplifying things a bit). Now to universe B.

Universe B is not random. It could be a deterministic or pre-determined universe or whatever non-random reality you want. In this universe the disease kills 1 in 100 people, but this is not the result of chance. Out of every 100 infected people, there will be one who will die (this oversimplifies things a bit for the sake of the example). This is not due to chance since this is not (by hypothesis) a random universe. In terms of why it occurs, this will depend on the sort of non-random universe one has picked. For example, perhaps the universe is run by a god who created the 1 in 100 death disease and has sorted out humans into groups of 100 using whatever standard the god has chosen and then selects one to kill with the disease.

From the standpoint of humans, this universe will (probably) appear identical to random universe A. After all, the samples people use will be imperfect and will create the impression that it is not a perfect 1 in 100 every time.  As such, it will seem random. Unless, of course, humans can figure out how the 100 person groups work. One could imagine a short story based on this idea in which scientists find that a disease is always fatal to 1 person out of a group of 100 people and the 100 person groups are divided up by the X factor they find. But if humans do not sort out the grouping, then the non-random universe would seem random because of human ignorance.

We do not, of course, know what sort of universe we live in. Roughly put, this might be a random universe and a 1 in 100 chance is “rolled” with metaphysical metaphorical dice. Or it might be a non-random universe in which a 1 in 100 “chance” means that it is “set” to happen once out of every group of 100. Unless we can identify the groupings and get adequate data, then we will never know what sort of universe we inhabit.