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While science fiction has speculated about robot-human sex and romance, current technology offers little more than sex dolls. In terms of the physical aspects of sexual activity, the development of more “active” sexbots is an engineering problem; getting the machinery to perform properly and in ways that are safe for the user (or unsafe, if that is what one wants). Regarding cheating, while a suitably advanced sexbot could actively engage in sexual activity with a human, the sexbot would not be a person and hence the standard definition of cheating (as discussed in the previous essays) would not be met. This is because sexual activity with such a sexbot would be analogous to using any other sex toy (such as a simple “blow up doll” or vibrator). Since a person cannot cheat with an object, such activity would not be cheating. Some people might take issue with their partner sexing it up with a sexbot and forbid such activity. While a person who broke such an agreement about robot sex would be acting wrongly, they would not be cheating. Unless, of course, the sexbot was enough like a person for cheating to occur.

There are already efforts to make sexbots more like people in terms of their “mental” functions. For example, being able to create the illusion of conversation via AI. As such efforts progress and sexbots act more and more like people, the philosophical question of whether they really are people will become increasingly important to address. While the main moral concerns would be about the ethics of how sexbots are treated, there is also the matter of cheating.

If a sexbot were a person, then it would be possible to cheat with them; just as one could cheat with an organic person. The fact that a sexbot might be purely mechanical would not be relevant to the ethics of the cheating, what would matter would be that a person was engaging in sexual activity with another person when their relationship with another person forbids such behavior.

It could be objected that the mechanical nature of the sexbot would matter because sex requires organic parts of the right sort and thus a human cannot really have sex with a sexbot, no matter how the parts of the robot are shaped.

One counter to this is to use a functional argument. To draw an analogy to the philosophy of mind known as functionalism, it could be argued that the composition of the relevant parts does not matter, what matters is their functional role. A such, a human could have sex with a sexbot that had parts that functioned in the right way.

Another counter is to argue that the composition of the parts does not matter, rather it is the sexual activity with a person that matters. To use an analogy, a human could cheat on another human even if their only sexual contact with the other human involved sex toys. In this case, what matters is that the activity is sexual and involves people, not that objects rather than body parts are used. As such, sex with a sexbot person could be cheating if the human was breaking their commitment.

While knowing whether a sexbot is a person would (mostly) settle the cheating issue, there remains the epistemic problem of other minds. In this case, the problem is determining whether a sexbot has a mind that qualifies them as a person. There can, of course, be varying degrees of confidence in the determination and there could also be degrees of personness. Or, rather, degrees of how person-like a sexbot might be.

Thanks to Descartes and Turing, there is a language test for having a mind. If a sexbot can engage in conversation that is indistinguishable from conversation with a human, then it would be reasonable to regard the sexbot as a person. That said, there might be good reasons for having a more extensive testing system for personhood which might include testing for emotions and self-awareness. But, from a practical standpoint, if a sexbot can engage in a level of behavior that would qualify them for person status if they were a human capable of that behavior, then it would be just as reasonable to accept the sexbot as a person. To do otherwise would seem to be mere prejudice. As such, a human person could cheat with a sexbot that could pass this test. At least it would be cheating as far as we knew.

Since it will be a long time (if ever) before a sexbot person is constructed, what is of immediate concern are sexbots that are person-like. That is, they do not meet the standards that would qualify a human as a person, yet have behavior that is sophisticated enough that they seem to be more than objects. One might consider an analogy here to animals: they do not qualify as human-level people, but their behavior does qualify them for a moral status above that of objects (at least for most moral philosophers and all decent people). In this case, the question about cheating becomes a question of whether the sexbot is person-like enough to enable cheating to take place.

One approach is to consider the matter from the perspective of the human. If the human engaged in sexual activity with the sexbot regards them as being person-like enough, then the activity can be seen as cheating because they would believe they are cheating.  An objection to this is that it does not matter what the human thinks about the sexbot, what matters is its actual status. After all, if a human regards a human they are cheating with as an object, this does not mean they are not cheating. Likewise, if a human feels like they are cheating, it does not mean they really are.

This can be countered by arguing that how the human feels does matter. After all, if the human thinks they are cheating and they are engaging in the behavior, they are still acting wrongly. To use an analogy, if a person thinks they are stealing something and takes it anyway, they  have acted wrongly even if it turns out that they were not stealing. The obvious objection to this line of reasoning is that while a person who thinks they are stealing did act wrongly by engaging in what they thought was theft, they did not actually commit a theft. Likewise, a person who thinks they are engaging in cheating, but are not, would be acting wrongly in that they are doing something they think is wrong, but not cheating.

Another approach is to consider the matter objectively so that the degree of cheating would be proportional to the degree that the sexbot is person-like. On this view, cheating with a person-like sexbot would not be as bad as cheating with a full person. The obvious objection is that one is either cheating or not; there are no degrees of cheating. The obvious counter is to try to appeal to the intuition that there could be degrees of cheating in this manner. To use an analogy, just as there can be degrees of cheating in terms of the sexual activity engaged in, there can also be degrees of cheating in terms of how person-like the sexbot is.

While person-like sexbots are still the stuff of science fiction, I suspect the future will see some interesting divorce cases in which this matter is debated in court.

 

As discussed in the previous essays, classic cheating involves sexual activity with a person while one is in a committed relationship that is supposed to exclude such activity. Visual VR can allow interaction with another person, but while such activity might have sexual content (such as nakedness) it would not be sexual activity in the sense that requires physical contact. Such behavior, as argued in the previous essay, might constitute a form of emotional infidelity but not physical infidelity.

One of the iron laws of technology is that any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Virtual reality (VR), in its various forms, is no exception. For the most part, VR is limited to sight and sound. That is, virtual reality is mostly just virtual visual reality (VVR). However, researchers are hard at work developing tactile devices for the erogenous zones, thus allowing people to interact sexually across the internet. This is the start of what could be called “robust” VR that involves more than just sight and sound. This sort of technology might make virtual cheating suitably analogous to real cheating.

Most current research is focused on developing devices for men to use to have “virtual sex.” By the standards of traditional cheating, this sort of activity would not count as cheating. This is because the sexual interaction is not with another person, but with devices. The obvious analogy here is to with less-sophisticated sex toys. If, for example, using a vibrator or blow-up-doll does not count as cheating because the device is not a person, then the same should apply to more complicated devices, such as VR sex suits that can be used with VR sex programs. There is also the question of whether such activity counts as sex. On the one hand, it is some sort of sexual activity. On the other hand, using such a device would not end a person’s tenure as a virgin.

It is worth considering that a user could develop an emotional relationship with their virtual sex “partner” and thus engage in a form of emotional infidelity. An objection is that this virtual sex partner is not a person and thus cheating would not be possible since one cannot cheat on a person with an object.

This can be countered by considering the classic problem of other minds. Because all we have access to is external behavior, one never knows if what seem to be people really are people; that is, they think and feel in the right ways (or at all). Since I do not know if anyone else has a mind as I do, I could have emotional attachments to entities that are not really people at all and never know. So, I could never know if I was cheating in the traditional sense if I had to know that I was interacting with another person. As might be suspected, this sort of epistemic excuse (“baby, I did not know she was a person because of the problem of other minds”) is unlikely to be accepted by anyone (even epistemologists). What would seem to matter is not knowing that the other entity is a person but having the right (or rather wrong) sort of emotional involvement. So, if a person could have feelings towards the virtual sexual partner that they “interact with”, then this sort of behavior could count as virtual cheating because of the one-way emotions.

There are also devices that allow people to interact sexually across the internet; with each partner having a device that communicates with their partner’s corresponding device. Put roughly, this is remote control sex. This sort of activity does avoid many of the possible harms of traditional cheating: there is no risk of pregnancy nor risk of STDs (assuming the equipment is clean). While these considerations do impact utilitarian calculations, the question remains as to whether this would count as cheating or not.

On the one hand, the argument could be made that this is not direct sexual contact as each person is only directly “engaged” with their device. To use an analogy, imagine that someone has (unknown to you) connected your computer to a “stimulation device” so that every time you use your mouse or keyboard, someone is “stimulated.” In such cases, it would be odd to say that you were having sex with that person. As such, this sort of thing would not be cheating.

On the other hand, there is the matter of intent. In the case of the mouse example, the user has no idea what they are doing and it is that, rather than the remote-controlled nature of the activity, that matters. In the case of remote-control interaction, the users are intentionally engaging in the activity and know what they are doing. The fact that is happening via the internet does not matter. The moral status is the same if they were in the same room, using the devices “manually” on each other. As such, while there is not actual bodily contact, the activity is sexual and controlled by those involved. As such, it would morally count as cheating. There can, of course, be a debate about the degrees of cheating. One might argue that cheating using sex toys is not as bad as cheating using body parts. I will, however, leave that to others to discuss.

In the next essay I will discuss cheating in the context sex with robots and person-like VR beings.

 

While there is debate about the right moral theory to apply to cheating, what makes the behavior cheating is that a person in a committed relationship is engaging in sexual activity with a person outside of that relationship. As such, cheating involves three main factors. The first is that the cheater is in a relationship that is supposed to exclude cheating. The second is that there is sexual activity. The third is that this activity is with a person outside of the relationship.

These factors would, on the face of it, exclude sexting and “cheating” in virtual environments (such as video games) from being real cheating. After all, sexting is the exchange of texts and in current virtual environments, there is no sexual contact. For example, if two players in World of Warcraft decide they are going to have a “virtual affair”, the most they can do is chat, strip down to their virtual underwear and awkwardly bump their characters together. I will address more “robust” virtual interactions in an essay to follow. These virtual and textual realms preclude the possibility of cheating in the traditional sense: at most, one is bumping code rather than bumping body parts. That said, there is intuitive appeal to such virtual cheating being real cheating in a moral sense. The challenge is making the case for this.

Since the physical infidelity aspect of cheating cannot occur in virtual cheating, the obvious focus is on emotional rather than physical fidelity. That is, the commitment is not just to sexual exclusivity but also a certain type of emotional exclusivity. This does require being careful about specifying the boundaries of this exclusivity. To use the obvious analogy, just as sexual exclusivity does not exclude all physical interaction with others, emotional exclusivity does not exclude all emotional interaction with others. Physical cheating, obviously enough, is easier to define and there are reasonably clear boundaries between sexual and non-sexual behavior. While there are some grey areas, the boundaries are adequate for this general discussion, and I will leave the precise boundaries of cheating to the relationship therapists and divorce attorneys.

Emotional cheating is more difficult to define, although the focus is on emotions connected with sex and romance. There is a broad area of concern about emotional fidelity which is the question of what is appropriate to feel about people outside of one’s committed relationship. Fortunately, the discussion is focused not merely on feeling, but the expression of feelings through sexting and virtual behavior. While I am aware of the problem of other minds (one never knows what another is really thinking or feeling or if they are thinking or feeling at all), it is reasonable to take the emotions expressed in sexting and virtual behavior at face value unless there are grounds for doubt.

While it is always reasonable to consider that a person’s feelings and thoughts might not match their behavior, this is more of an epistemic problem than a moral problem in this discussion. So if a person is expressing emotions via sexting and virtual behavior that should be exclusive to their relationship, then they are engaged in virtual cheating. This rests on the reasonable assumption that the expression of romantic and sexual feelings should be confined within the committed, exclusive relationship. The next obvious point of concern is why virtual cheating matters.

Traditional cheating runs the risk of the usual harmful consequences: unplanned pregnancies, STDs, questions of property rights and inheritance, emotional damage, physical damage and so on. While virtual cheating cannot cause STDs or pregnancies, it can cause emotional damage and thus could be morally wrong on utilitarian grounds. If the people in a relationship have agreed to emotional fidelity, such cheating can also be a violation of a person’s rights or moral rules. There is also the practical concern that virtual cheating can lead to physical cheating. To borrow from Plato’s arguments about the corrupting influence of art, even if someone starts out just “joking around” with sexting and virtual behavior outside of their committed relationship, there is a clear psychological path in which that “kidding around” can lead to real infidelity.

In the next essay I’ll look at the ethics of cheating in more “robust” virtual realities.

 

Advances in technology lead to advances in cheating, necessitating advances in moral discussions. Traditional cheating involves people having “face to face” sexual interactions when at least one is in a (supposedly) committed relationship. Virtual cheating is not traditional cheating: the people either do not interact sexually in person or the sexual behavior involves a non-person (such as a sexbot). While most people claim traditional cheating as wrong, it is not clear if the ethics of traditional cheating applies to virtual cheating. Answering this question requires first sorting out what, if anything, makes traditional cheating wrong.

A common approach to arguing that traditional cheating is wrong is to “mix norms” by going from religion to ethics. For example, people will often say that the Ten Commandments forbid adultery and then say this makes cheating wrong. The problem is that religion is not automatically the same as ethics. What is needed is a way to transition from religion to ethics. One easy way to do this is to use divine command theory. This is the moral theory that what God commands is good because He commands it. What He forbids is wrong because He forbids it. Assuming this theory, if God forbids adultery, then it is wrong. Regarding virtual cheating, the question would be whether virtual cheating is adequately like traditional adultery.

Another approach is more norm mixing by inferring that what is illegal is also immoral. While there are excellent reasons not to equate legality and morality, the moral theory of legalism (also known as legal positivism) is that what is legal is moral and what is illegal is immoral. If adultery is a crime, this would make cheating immoral. Legalism provides the easiest way to address the ethics of virtual cheating: just consult the law and the answer is there.

A third approach is the utilitarian option. On this view, the morality of an action is determined by weighing its harmful and beneficial consequences. If more negative value is created by the action, it is morally wrong. If there is more positive value, then it is morally good (or at least acceptable). Moral arguments against traditional cheating focus on the usual negative consequences: emotional damage, physical damage, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on. Moral arguments defendimg cheating focus on the alleged benefits: pleasure, emotional fulfillment, and so on. The utilitarian approach makes it easy to avoid the question of whether virtual cheating is cheating. What matters in the moral assessment is whether the consequences create more negative or positive value.

A fourth option is to embrace a rule-based approach, such as the deontology of Immanuel Kant. On this view, the action itself is wrong or right, and its morality is not a matter of consequences. Religious arguments that do not rely solely on divine command theory are often rule based arguments. The rules would usually be those attributed to God. While deontologists can embrace very different rules about who you should embrace, Kant’s categorical imperative and his view that people are ends rather than means would seem to support the view that cheating is morally wrong. The question about virtual cheating would be whether it is cheating.

A fifth approach is that of virtue theory of the sort of theory endorsed by Aristotle and Confucius. On this view, a person should strive to be virtuous, and the incentive is that virtue will make you happy. Since cheating would seem to violate such virtues as honesty and loyalty, then it would usually be wrong under virtue theory. In the case of virtual cheating, the concern would be with the effect of such behavior on a person’s virtues.

A final approach is a rights-based approach. Ethics that are based on rights purport that people have various rights, and it is wrong to violate them. In the case of cheating, the usual argument is that people engage in a contractual ethics by agreeing to a committed relationship. This gives each party rights and responsibilities. If the explicit or implicit contract is one of exclusive sexual interaction, then traditional cheating would violate this right of exclusivity and is wrong. In the case of virtual cheating, it would also be a question of rights—typically based on an explicit or implicit contract. Naturally, contractual ethics can also be cast in the form of rule based ethics in which the contract forms the rules.

In the next essay I will move on to the matter of virtual cheating, beginning with considerations of sexting and “cheating” in virtual worlds such as video games.

 

Due to the execution of a health insurance CEO, public attention is focused on health care. The United States has expensive health care, and this is working as intended to generate profits. Many Americans are uninsured or underinsured and even those who have insurance can find that their care is not covered. As has been repeatedly pointed out in the wake of the execution, there is a health care crisis in the United States and it is one that has been intentionally created.

Americans are a creative and generous people, which explains why people have turned to GoFundMe to get money for medical expenses. Medical bills can be ruinous and lead to bankruptcy for hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. A GoFundMe campaign can help a person pay their bills, get the care they need and avoid financial ruin. Friends of mine have been forced to undertake such campaigns and I have donated to them, as have many other people. In my own case, I am lucky and have a job that offers insurance coverage at a price I can afford, and my modest salary allows me to meet the medical expenses for a very healthy person with no pre-existing conditions. However, I know that like most of us,  I am one medical disaster away from financial ruin. As such, I have followed the use of GoFundMe for medical expenses with some practical interest. I have also given it some thought from a philosophical perspective.

On the one hand, the success of certain GoFundMe campaigns to cover such expenses suggests that people are morally decent and are willing to expend their own resources to help others. While GoFundMe does profit from these donations, their take is modest. They are not engaged in gouging people in need and exploiting medical necessities for absurdly high profits. That is the job of the health insurance industry.

On the other hand, there is the moral concern that in a wealthy country replete with billionaires and millionaires, many people must beg for money to meet their medical expenses. This spotlights the excessive cost of healthcare, the relatively low earnings of many Americans, and the weakness of the nation’s safety net. While those who donate out of generosity and compassion merit moral praise, the need for such donations merits moral condemnation. People should not need to beg for money to pay for their medical care. 

To anticipate an objection, I am aware that people do use GoFundMe for frivolous things and there are scammers, but my concern is with the fact that some people do need to turn to crowdfunding to pay their bills.

While donating is morally laudable, there are concerns about this method of funding. One practical problem is that it depends on the generosity of others. It is not a systematic and dependable method of funding. As such, it is a gamble to rely on it.

A second problem is that it depends on running an effective social media campaign. Like any other crowdfunding, success depends on getting attention and persuading people to donate. Those who have the time, resources and skills to run effective social media campaigns (or who have help) are more likely to succeed. This is concerning because people facing serious medical expenses are often in no condition to undertake the challenges of running a social media campaign. This is not to criticize or condemn people who can do this or recruit others. My point is that this method is no substitute for a systematic and consistent approach to funding health care.

A third problem is that success depends on the appeal of the medical condition and the person with that condition. While a rational approach to funding would be based on merit and need, there are clearly conditions and people that are more appealing in terms of attracting donors. For example, certain diseases and conditions can be “in” and generate sympathy, while others are not as appealing. In the case of people, we are not all equal in how appealing we are to others. As with the other problems, I do not condemn or criticize people for having conditions that are “in” or being appealing. Rather, my concern is that this method rests so heavily on these factors rather than medical and financial need. Once again, this serves to illustrate how the current system has been willfully broken and does not serve the needs of most Americans. While those who have succeeded in their GoFundMe campaigns should be lauded for their effort and ingenuity, those who run the health care system in which people have to run social media campaigns to afford their health care should be condemned.   

 

While teen pregnancy has declined in the United States, Texas has had the slowest rate of decline. In a typical year, 35,000 Texan teenagers and women under 20 get pregnant. While some states have addressed the problem of unplanned teen pregnancies by education and social services support, Texas has taken a different approach. Most Texas schools offer either no sex education or abstinence only sex education. While many states offer contraception counselling to teen mothers, Texas generally does not. Texas also has restrictive policies regarding contraception for teenagers, although the evidence shows access to contraception reduces unplanned pregnancies (and also abortions). Despite the evidence linking Texas’ approach with teen pregnancy, the view of many social conservatives is that abstinence only education is the best approach. But is it?

Looked at in the context of reducing unplanned teen pregnancies, Texas’ abstinence only (or no sex education at all) approach is not the best. To use the obvious analogy, it is as if Texas was trying to reduce automobile accidents, injuries and fatalities involving teenagers by offering them either no driver education or driver education that says not to drive or get in cars. Texas is also doing the equivalent of trying to ensure teens who do get in cars do so without access to seat belts, air bags and other safety equipment. This all assumes that the best approach is defined in terms of reducing unplanned teen pregnancies just as the best approach to automobile accidents would be defined in terms of preventing them. But there are other ways to assess what is best.

One alternative is to pick the morally best. Some conservatives claim premarital sex is morally wrong. On this view, Texas is taking the right approach because unmarried teenagers should be practicing abstinence and enabling them to understand and access birth control would contribute to their immoral deeds. To use an analogy, consider murder. Since murder is wrong, schools should teach an abstinence only approach to murder and not enable people easy access to implements of murder. Except, obviously, guns.

One reply to this approach that the moral righteousness of those who deny teenagers proper sex education and access to contraceptives comes at the cost of harming the teenagers and society. Allowing this harm to occur to others so one can impose their own values is morally unacceptable on utilitarian grounds.  There is also moral concern about the rights of teenagers to make their own informed choices about consensual sexual behavior. The imposition of the values of the social conservatives denies them this right and infringes on their freedom. Naturally, those who value abstinence and oppose contraception are free to act on this view themselves. They have the right to not engage in sex or to not use contraception. They do not have the right to cause harm to others because of their views of sex as there seems to be no foundation for such a right. There is not a right to keep people in a state of harmful ignorance nor a right to deny people contraception.

But the Texas approach can be seen as the best approach by considering an alternative set of goals. As noted above, if the goal is reducing unwanted teen pregnancies, then the Texas approach is failing. However, it could be succeeding at other goals. One possible goal is to ensure the poor and uneducated remain that way. After all, unplanned pregnancies are most likely to occur among the poor and uneducated and they make it harder for people to rise out of poverty and achieve educational goals. Maintaining a poor and uneducated population confers significant benefits to the upper classes and meshes with some morally repugnant ideological views. Another possible goal is rooted in misogyny in that it is aimed at making it more likely that girls will get pregnant. This is a variant of the goal of maintaining an underclass; in this case the specific targets are girls and young women.

While a utilitarian case could, perhaps, be made for using these policies to help maintain the underclasses, the harms caused by them outweigh the alleged advantages. As such, policies aimed at maintaining the underclasses would seem morally wrong.

Given the above discussion, Texas’ approach to teenage pregnancy is either ineffective or immoral (or both). As such, the policies in Texas should be replaced by those that have proven effective elsewhere.

 

Trump picking anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy to serve as the secretary of Health and Human Services has shone a spotlight on the anti-vax movement. This movement has been growing, leading to a decrease in vaccinations. One impact of this has been an increase is measles cases in the United States.

Critics of the anti-vaccination movement point to such cases as proof the movement is misinformed and dangerous.  Critics of the anti-vaxxers often deride them and see them as stupid because there is no evidence that vaccines cause the harms anti-vaxxers claims they do. For example, it is often claimed that vaccines cause autism, but this is clearly untrue. Vaccinations have also been conclusively shown to prevent diseases and reduce the severity of illnesses and this is evident to anyone who has a basic knowledge of the history of disease.  

It is tempting for critics to dismiss anti-vaxxers as stupid people who are too dumb to understand basic science. This, however, is a mistake.  One reason is purely pragmatic: those who are pro-vaccination want the anti-vaccination people to change their minds and calling them stupid, mocking and insulting them will cause them to entrench and double down on their view. Another reason is that the anti-vaccination people are not, in general, stupid. Interestingly there are grounds for both skepticism and concern about health and science. To show this, I will present some points of concern.

One point of rational concern is that scientific research has been plagued with corruption, fraud and errors. For example, the percentage of scientific articles retracted for fraud is ten times what it was in 1975. Once lauded studies and theories, such as those driving the pushing of antioxidants and omega-3, were riddled with inaccuracies. So, it is not stupid to worry that scientific research might not be accurate. Ironically, the study that started the belief that vaccines cause autism is a paradigm of bad science. So, it is not stupid to consider that studies that show vaccines are safe might also have flaws. That said, the fact that some research is flawed does not prove that any specific research is flawed. After all, the fact that some people are guilty of crimes does not therefore prove that you are guilty of a crime.

Another matter of concern is the influence of corporate lobbyists on health issue. For example, the dietary guidelines and recommendations set forth by the United States Government should be set based on the best science. However, these recommendations are influenced by industry lobbyists, such as the dairy industry. Given the influence of corporate lobbyists, it is not stupid to worry the recommendations and guidelines given by the state might not be the best but instead are aimed to increase profits for certain industries.

A third point of concern is that dietary and health guidelines and recommendations undergo what seems to be relentless and unwarranted change. For example, the government has warned us of the dangers of cholesterol for decades, but this recommendation has changed. It would, of course, be one thing if the changes were the result of steady improvements in knowledge. However, the recommendations often seem to lack a proper foundation. John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and statistics at Stanford, has noted “Almost every single nutrient imaginable has peer reviewed publications associating it with almost any outcome. In this literature of epidemic proportions, how many results are correct?” Given such criticism from experts in the field, it hardly seems stupid of people to have doubts and concerns.

There is also the fact that people do suffer adverse drug reactions that can lead to serious medical issues and even death. While the reported numbers vary (one FDA page puts the number of deaths at 100,000 per year) this is certainly a matter of concern.  Everyone who has seen drug ads is familiar with the warnings. For example, consider Januvia, a diabetes drug. As required by law, the ads mention all the side effects of the drug and these include serious consequences including death. Given that the FDA has approved drugs with dangerous side effects, it is hardly stupid to be concerned about the potential side effects from any medicine or vaccine.

Given the above points, it is not stupid to be concerned about vaccines or any medication. At this point, the reader might suspect that I will defend an anti-vaccine position, bust despite all the points I raised I am pro-vaccination. This might seem surprising given the points made above, but my pro-vax position is consistent with my concerns.

The above points show there are rational grounds for a critical and skeptical approach to matters of health, medicine and science. However, this skepticism needs to be rational. That is, it should not be a rejection of science but the adoption of a critical approach in which one considers the best available evidence, assesses experts by the proper standards (those of a good argument from authority), and so on. Also, it is important to note that the general skepticism does not justify accepting or rejecting a specific claim. For example, the fact that there have been flawed studies does not prove that a specific study about vaccines is flawed. As another example, the fact that lobbyists influence government does not prove that all vaccines are harmful drugs pushed on Americans by greedy corporations. As a final example, the fact that some medicines have serious and dangerous side effects does not prove that the measles vaccine is dangerous or causes autism. Just as one should be rationally skeptical about pro-vaccination claims one should also be rationally skeptical about anti-vaccination claims.

To use an analogy, it is rational to have a general skepticism about the honesty and goodness of people. After all, people do lie and there are bad people. However, this general skepticism does not automatically prove that you are dishonest or evil—that is a matter that must be addressed on the individual level.

To use another analogy, it is rational to have a general concern about engineering. After all, there have been many engineering disasters. However, this general concern does not warrant believing that a specific engineering project is defective or that engineering itself is defective. The specific project would need to be examined, and engineering is, in general, the most rational approach to building stuff.

So, the people who are anti-vaccine are not, in general, stupid. However, they are not rationally assessing the specific vaccines and the evidence for their safety and efficacy. It is rational to be concerned about medicine in general, just as it is rational to be concerned about the honesty of people in general. However, just as one should not infer that a friend is a liar because there are people who lie, one should not infer that a vaccine must be bad because there is bad science and bad medicine.

Convincing anti-vaccination people to accept vaccination is challenging. One reason is that the issue is politicized and is a battle of values and identity. This is partially since the anti-vaccine people have been mocked and attacked, thus leading them to entrench and double down. Another reason is that, as argued above, they do have well-founded concerns about the trustworthiness of government, the accuracy of scientific studies, and the goodness of corporations. A third reason is that people tend to give more weight to the negative and tend to weigh potential loss more than potential gain. As such, people give more weight to negative reasons against vaccines and fear the alleged dangers of vaccines more than they value their benefits.

Given the importance of vaccinations, it is critical that the anti-vaccination movement be addressed rather than attacked. Calling people stupid, mocking them and attacking them are not effective ways of convincing people that vaccines are generally safe and effective. A more rational and more effective approach is to address their legitimate concerns and consider their fears. After all, the goal should be the health of people and not scoring points in a political battle

 

Asking “when was the last battle of the Civil War fought?” is a trick question; the last battle has yet to be fought. One example of a minor skirmish is when New Orleans began its removal of Confederate monuments. The removal of the first monument looked like a covert operation. Using equipment with hidden company names, the removal crews wore masks and body armor while operating under the cover of darkness and police sniper protection. These precautions were deemed necessary because of threats. In addition to being controversial, the removal of such monuments is philosophically interesting.

One argument commonly used to defend Confederate monuments is the historical argument: the monuments express and are part of history and their removal is claimed to be like tearing pages from the history books. This argument does have some appeal, at least for objects marking an historical event and presenting facts. However, monuments tend to be erected to bestow honors, and this goes beyond marking an historical event and presenting history.

One example is the Battle of Liberty Place Monument. It was erected in New Orleans in 1891 to honor the 1874 battle between the Crescent City White League and the racially integrated New Orleans Metropolitan police and state militia. The monument was modified by the city in 1932 with a plaque expressing support for white supremacy. The monument was modified again in 1993 when a new plaque was placed over the 1932 plaque, commemorating all those who died in the battle.

From a moral perspective, the problem with this sort of monument is that it is not an objective historical marker, but and endorsement of white supremacy and racism. As such, to keep such a memorial in place would be to say the city at least tolerates white supremacy and racism. If these values are still endorsed by the city, then the monument should remain as a warning label. That way people will know to expect white supremacy and racism.

 However, if the values are no longer endorsed by the city, then such a monument should be removed.  This would express the current views of the people of the city. It could be objected that such removal would be on par with purging historical records. Obviously, the records of the event should not be purged. Historical records should aim at recording the facts without praising (or condemning) what has occurred. In contrast, to erect and preserve an honoring monument is to take a stance on the matter; to praise or condemn it.

It could be argued that the 1993 change to the monument “redeems” it from its white supremacist and racist origins and it and similar monuments should remain in place. This does have some appeal, part of which is that the monument expresses the history of the (allegedly) changed values. To use an analogy, a building that once served an evil purpose can be refurbished and redeemed to serve a good purpose. This, it could be argued, sends a more powerful statement than simply razing the building.

However, the monument was originally created to honor white supremacy, and the recent modification could be justly seen as an effort to conceal this fact. Since the monument does have historical significance, it would be reasonable to preserve it. After all, historical artifacts can be kept without endorsing values associated with the artifact. For example, keeping artifacts that belonged to Stalin as historically significant items is not to endorse Stalinism. Keeping a monument in a place of honor, is an endorsement.

The matter can become more complicated in cases involving statues of individuals such as General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General P.G.T. Beauregard. These men did shape the history of the United States. It also cannot be denied they possessed some personal virtues. Lee is often presented as a man of considerable virtue. P.G.T. Beauregard went on to advocate for civil rights and voting rights for blacks (though some might say this was due to political expediency).

Given their historical importance and roles, it can be argued that they were worthy of statues and that these statues should remain to honor them. The easy and obvious counter is that they engaged in treason against the United States and backed slavery. Whatever personal virtues they might have possessed, they should not be honored for their role in the Confederacy. Statues that honor people who were Confederates but who did laudable things after the Civil War should, of course, be evaluated based on the merits of those individuals. But to honor the Confederacy and its support of slavery would be a moral error.

It could also be argued that even though the Confederate cause of fighting for the right of some people to own other people is wicked, people like Lee and Beauregard earned their statues and their honor. As such, it would be unjust to remove their statues because of the political sensibilities of today. After all, as it should be pointed out, there are statues that honor the slave owners Washington and Jefferson for their laudable deeds within the context of the dishonor of slavery. If the principle of removing monuments that honored those who supported a rebellion aimed at creating an independent slave-owning nation was strictly followed, then there would need to be a rather extensive purge of American monuments. If honoring supporters of slavery and slave owners is acceptable, then perhaps the removal of the statues of the heroes of the Confederacy could be justified on the grounds of their rebellion against the United States. This would allow for a principled distinction to be made: statues of slavery supporters and slave owners can be acceptable, as long as they were not rebels against the United States. Alternative, the principle could be that statues of victorious rebel slavery supporters are acceptable, but those of losing rebel slavery supporters are not. Winning, it could be said, makes all the difference.

 

In something of a flashback to 2001, Microsoft is once again the target of an antitrust lawsuit. Google and other tech companies are facing similar challenges as governments have found the political will to go up against big tech, at least for now. While there are various legal arguments as to why tech companies should be split up, there are also good policy reasons for this. For this essay, I will focus on the sensible warning to not put all your eggs in one basket and argue that this is also rational for digital “eggs.” As might be expected, the 2024 CrowdStrike disaster will serve as the main example of why the one basket approach is a bad idea.

On July 19, 2024, CrowdStrike released a flawed update to its Falcon Sensor software causing about 8.5 million Windows systems to crash and become unable to properly restart. As of this writing, this was the largest outage in history. As businesses ranging from airlines to gas stations rely on these Windows systems, the impact was devastating, and it is estimated the financial damage was at least $10 billion done over the course of only a few hours. In addition to becoming a textbook case about how not to test and rollout security software, it also provides a lesson in the danger of putting some many digital eggs in one basket, especially given the inclination companies often have to cut corners and operate badly. The repeated, self-inflicted failures at the once respected Boeing provides another excellent example of how this sort of easily avoidable failures occur.

While the poor handling of the update is the main cause of the disaster, the fact that CrowdStrike was the security software on so many Windows systems enabled it to be a worldwide disaster. While Microsoft was not to blame, the market dominance of Windows was also a factor since Macs and Linux systems were not impacted by the failure of CrowdStrike. The case of CrowdStrike was, of course, unintentional but there are also intentional efforts to cause harm.

Like many people, I recently received a letter from Change Health Care informing me of a data breach that occurred back in February. While they did offer me free monitoring, my data (and probably yours) is now out in the wild, presumably being sold and used by criminals. Such data breaches are common for a variety of reasons. In terms of why health care data is targeted, the short version is that such data is very valuable and stealing it is relatively easy. The larger a company gets, the more desirable it is as a target. This is because breaching a large company is often not much more challenging than breaching a small company, but the potential payoff is greater. Unfortunately, these companies are not like monsters in video games in that the challenge of getting the treasure is not proportionate to the value of the loot.

This points to the obvious danger presented by data and software companies gaining dominance in markets: when they drop the basket, the eggs break. To be fair to these companies, they are playing the game of capitalism and trying to win it by maximizing their profits by grabbing as much of the market as they can. As noted above, some governments are pushing back but there is the question of whether this will continue in the United States with the change of administration. While the devil is in the details, this danger does provide an excellent justification for keeping market dominance in check, since this dominance entails that the eggs will be stuffed into one basket and companies have shown they are constantly poor stewards. Thus, good policy should be aimed at restricting the size of companies, not to “punish their success” but to mitigate the damage done to other companies and the public caused by their inevitable failures.

The execution of CEO Brian Thompson has brought the dystopian but highly profitable American health care system into the spotlight. While some are rightfully expressing compassion for Thompson’s family, the overwhelming tide of commentary is about the harms Americans suffer because of the way the health care system is operated. In many ways, this incident exposes many aspects of the American nightmare such as dystopian health care, the rule of oligarchs, the surveillance state, and gun violence.

As this is being written the identity and motives of the shooter are not known. However, the evidence suggests that he had an experience with the company that was bad enough he decided to execute the CEO. The main evidence for this is the words written on his shell casings (deny”, “depose”, and “defend”) that reference the tactics used by health insurance companies to avoid paying for care. Given the behavior of insurance companies in general and United Healthcare in particular, this inference makes sense.

The United States spends $13,000 per year per person on health care, although this is just the number you get when you divide the total spending by the total number of people. Obviously, we don’t each get $13,000 each year. Despite this, we have worse health outcomes than many other countries that spend less than half of what we do, and American life expectancy is dropping. It is estimated that about 85 million people are either without health care insurance or are underinsured.

It is estimated that between 45,000 and 60,000 Americans die each year because they cannot get access to health care on time, with many of these deaths attributed to a lack of health insurance. Even those who can get access to health care face dire consequences in that about 500,000 Americans go bankrupt because of medical debt. In contrast, health insurance companies are doing very well. In 2023, publicly traded health insurance companies experienced a 10.4% increase in total GAAP revenue reaching a total of $1.07 trillion. Thomson himself had an annual compensation package of $10.2 million.

In addition to the cold statistics, almost everyone in America has a bad story about health insurance. One indication that health insurance is a nightmare is the number of GoFundMe fundraisers for medica expenses. The company even has a guide to setting up your own medical fundraiser. Like many people, I have given to such fundraisers such as when a high school friend could not pay for his treatment. He is dead now.

My own story is a minor one, but the fact that a college professor with “good” insurance has a story also illustrates the problem. When I had my quadriceps repair surgery, the doctor told me that my insurance had stopped covering the leg brace because they deemed it medically unnecessary. The doctor said that it was absolutely necessary, and he was right. So, I had to buy a $500 brace that my insurance did not cover. I could afford it, but $500 is a lot of money for most of us.

Like most Americans, I have friends who have truly nightmarish stories of unceasing battles with insurance companies to secure health care for themselves or family. Similar stories flooded social media, filling out the statistics with the suffering of people. While most people did not applaud the execution, it was clear that Americans hate the health insurance industry and do so for good reason. But is the killing of a CEO morally justified?

There is a general moral presumption that killing people is wrong and we rightfully expect a justification if someone claims that a killing was morally acceptable. In addition to the moral issue, there is also the question of the norms of society. Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago’s project on security and threats, has claimed that Americans are increasingly accepting violence as a means of settling civil disputes and that this one incident shows that “the norms of violence are spreading into the commercial sector.” While Pape does make a reasonable point, violence has long been a part of the commercial sector although this has mostly been the use of violence against workers in general and unions in particular. Gun violence is also “normal” in the United States in that it occurs regularly. As such, the killing does see to be within the norms of America, although the killing of a CEO is unusual.

While it must be emphasized that the motive of the shooter is not known, the speculation is that he was harmed in some manner by the heath insurance company. While we do not yet know his story, we do know that people suffer or die from lack of affordable insurance and when insurance companies deny them coverage for treatment.

Philosophers draw a moral distinction between killing and letting people die and insurance companies can make the philosophical argument that they are not killing people or inflicting direct harm. They are just letting people suffer or die for financial reasons when they can be helped. When it comes to their compensation packages, CEOs and upper management defend their exorbitant compensation by arguing that they are the ones making the big decisions and leading the company. If we take them at their word, then this entails that they also deserve the largest share of moral accountability. That is, if a company’s actions are causing death and suffering, then the CEO and other leadership are the ones who deserve a package of blame to match their compensation package.

It is important to distinguish moral accountability from legal accountability. Corporations exist, in large part, to concentrate wealth at the top while distributing legal accountability. Even when they commit criminal activity, “it’s rare for top executives – especially at larger companies – to face personal punishment.” One reason for this is that the United States is an oligarchy rather than a democracy and the laws are written to benefit the wealthy. This is not to say that corporate leaders are above the law; they are not. They are wrapped in the law, and it generally serves them well as armor against accountability. For the lower classes, the law is more often a sword employed to rob and otherwise harm them. As such, one moral justification for an individual using violence against a CEO or other corporate leader is that might be the only way they will face meaningful consequences for their crimes.

The social contract is supposed to ensure that everyone faces consequences and when this is not the case, then the social contract loses its validity. To borrow from Glaucon in Plato’s Republic, it would be foolish to be restrained by “justice” when others are harming you without such restraint.  But it might be objected, while health insurance companies do face legal scrutiny, denying coverage and making health care unaffordable for many Americans is legal. As such, these are not crimes and CEOs, and corporate leaders should not be harmed for inflicting such harm.

While it is true that corporations can legally get away with letting people die and even causing their deaths, this is where morality enters the picture. While there are philosophical views that morality is determined by the law, these views have many obvious problems, not the least of which is that they are counterintuitive.

If people are morally accountable for the harm they inflict and can be justly punished and the legal system ignores such harm, then it would follow that individuals have the moral right to act. In terms of philosophical justification, John Locke provides an excellent basis. If a corporation can cause unjustified harm to the life and property of people and the state allows this, then the corporations have returned themselves and their victims to the state of nature because, in effect, the state does not exist in this context. In this situation, everyone has the right to defend themselves and others from such unjust incursions and this, as Locke argued, can involve violence and even lethal force.

It might be objected that such vigilante justice would harm society, and that people should rely on the legal system for recourse. But that is exactly the problem: the people running the state have allowed the corporations to mostly do as they wish to their victims with little consequence and have removed the protection of the law. It is they who have created a situation where vigilante justice might be the only meaningful recourse of the citizen. To complain about eroding norms is a mistake, because the norm is for corporations and the elites to get away with moral crimes with little consequence. For people to fight back against this can be seen as desperate attempts at some justice.

As the Trump administration is likely to see a decrease in even the timid and limited efforts to check corporate wrongdoing, it seems likely there will be more incidents of people going after corporate leaders. Much of the discussion among the corporations is about the need to protect corporate leaders and we can expect lawmakers and the police to step up to offer even more protection to the oligarchs from the people they are hurting.

Politicians could take steps to solve the health care crisis that the for-profit focus of health care has caused and some, such have Bernie Sanders, honestly want to do that. In closing, one consequence of the killing is that Anthem decided to rescind their proposed anesthesia policy. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans representing Connecticut, New York and Missouri had said they would no longer pay for anesthesia care if a procedure goes beyond an arbitrary time limit, regardless of how long it takes. This illustrates our dystopia: this would have been allowed by the state that is supposed to protect us, but the execution of a health insurance CEO made the leaders of Anthem rethink their greed. This is not how things should be. In a better world Thompson would be alive, albeit not as rich,  and spending the holidays with his family. And so would the thousands of Americans who died needlessly because of greed and cruelty.