Category: Ethics

 

As noted in the previous essay, it can be argued that the likeness of a dead celebrity is a commodity that and used as the new owner sees fit. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity would be analogous to their works (such as films or music) and its financial exploitation would be no more problematic than selling movies featuring actors who are now dead but were alive during the filming. This view can be countered by arguing that there is a morally relevant difference between putting a re-animation of a celebrity in a new movie and selling movies they starred in while alive.

As with any analogy, one way to counter this argument is to find a relevant difference that weakens the comparison. One relevant difference is that the celebrity (presumably) consented to participate in their past works, but they did not consent for the use of their re-animation. If the celebrity did not consent to the past works or did consent to being re-animated, then things would be different. Assuming the celebrity did not agree to being re-animated, then their re-animation is being “forced” to create new performances without the agreement of the person, which raises moral concerns.

Another, more interesting, relevant difference is that the re-animation can be seen as a very basic virtual person. While current re-animations lack the qualities required to be a person, this can  be used as the foundation for a moral argument against the creation and exploitation of re-animations. Before presenting that argument, I will consider arguments that focus on the actual person that was (or perhaps is) the celebrity.

One approach is to argue that a celebrity has rights after death and their re-animation cannot be used in this manner without their permission. Since they are dead, their permission cannot be given and hence the re-animation is morally wrong because they would exploit the celebrity without their consent.

But, if the celebrity does not exist after death, then they would seem to lack moral status (since nothing cannot have a moral status) and hence cannot be wronged. Since they no longer exist to have rights, the owner of the likeness is free to exploit it—even with a re-animation,

The obvious problem is that there is no definite proof for or against an afterlife, although people do often have faith in its existence (or non-existence). So, basing the rights of the dead on their continued existence would require metaphysical speculation. But denying the dead rights based on the metaphysical assumption they do not exist would also be problematic for it would also require confidence in an area where knowledge is lacking. As such, it would be preferable to avoid basing the ethics of the matter on metaphysical speculation.

One approach that does not require that the dead have any moral status of their own is to argue that people should show respect to the person that was by not exploiting them via re-animation. Re-animating a dead person and sending it out to perform without their consent is, as noted in the first essay, a bit like using Animate Dead to create a zombie from the remains of a dead person. This is not a good thing to do and, by analogy, animating a technological zombie would seem morally dubious at best. For those who like their analogies free of D&D, one could draw an analogy to desecrating a corpse or gravesite: even though a dead person can no longer be harmed, it is still something that should not be done.

A final approach is to build on the idea that while the re-animation is clearly not a person, it can be seen as a simplistic virtual person and perhaps this is enough to make this action wrong. I will address this argument in the final essay of the series.

 

In the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons the spell Animate Dead allows the caster to re-animate a corpse as an undead slave. This sort of necromancy is generally considered evil and is avoided by good creatures. While the entertainment industry lacks true necromancers, some years ago they developed a technological Animate Dead in the form of the celebrity hologram. While this form of necromancy does not animate the corpse of a dead celebrity, it re-creates their body and makes it dance, sing, and speak at the will of its masters. Tupac Shakur is probably the best known victim of this dark art of light and there were plans to re-animate Amy Winehouse. As should be expected, AI is now being used to re-animate dead actors. Ian Holm, who played the android Ash in Alien, was re-animated for a role in Alien: Romulus. While AI technology is different from the older holographic technology, they are similar enough in their function to allow for a combined moral assessment.

One relevant factor in assessing the ethics of this matter is how the re-animations are used and what they are made to do. Consider, for example, the holographic Amy Winehouse. If the hologram is used to re-create a concert she recorded, then this is morally on par with showing a video of the concert. The use of a hologram would seem to be just a modification of the medium, such as creating a VR version of the concert. Using a hologram in this manner seems morally fine. But the ethics can become more complicated if the re-animation is not simply a change of the medium of presentation.

One concern is the ethics of making the re-animation perform in new ways. That is, the re-animation is not merely re-enacting what the original did in a way analogous to a recording but being used to create new performances. This is of special concern if the re-animation is made to perform with other performers (living or dead), to perform at specific venues (such as a political event), or to endorse or condemn products, ideas or people.

If, prior to death, the celebrity worked out a contract specifying how their re-animation can be used, then this would lay to rest some moral concerns. After all, this use of the re-animation would be with permission and no more problematic than if they did those actions while alive. If re-animations become common, presumably such contracts will become a standard part of the entertainment industry.

If a celebrity did not specify how their re-animation should be used, then there could be moral problems. To illustrate, a celebrity might have been against this use of holograms (as Prince was), a celebrity might have disliked the other performers that their image is now forced to sing and dance with, or a celebrity might have loathed a product, idea or people that their re-animation is being forced to endorse. One approach to this matter is to use the guideline of legal ownership of the rights to a celebrity’s works and likeness.

When a celebrity dies, the legal rights to their works and likeness goes to whoever is legally specified to receive them. This person or business then has the right to exploit the works and likeness for their gain. For example, Disney can keep making money off the Star Wars films featuring Carrie Fisher, though she died in 2016. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity is a commodity that can be owned, bought and sold. While a living celebrity can disagree with the usage of their likeness, after death their likeness is controlled by the owner who can use it as they wish (assuming the celebrity did not set restrictions). This is analogous to the use of any property whose ownership is inherited. It can thus be contended that there should be no special moral exception that forbids monetizing a dead celebrity’s likeness by the owner of that likeness. That said, the next essay in the series will explore reasons as to why the likeness of a celebrity is morally different from other commodities.

Socrates, it is claimed, was critical of writing and argued that it would weaken memory. Many centuries later, it was worried that television would “rot brains” and that calculators would destroy people’s ability to do math. More recently, computers, the internet, tablets, and smartphones were supposed to damage the minds of students. The latest worry is that AI will destroy the academy by destroying the minds of students.

There are two main worries about the negative impact of AI in this context. The first ties back to concerns about cheating: students will graduate and get jobs but be ignorant and incompetent because they used AI to cheat their way through school. For example, we could imagine an incompetent doctor who completed medical school only through their use of AI. This person would present a danger to their patients and could cause considerable harm up to and including death. As other examples, we could imagine engineers and lawyers who cheated their way to a degree with AI and are now dangerously incompetent. The engineers design flawed planes that crash, and the lawyers fail their clients, who end up in jail. And so on, for all other relevant professions.

While having incompetent people in professions is worrisome, this is not a new problem created by AI. While AI does provide a new way to cheat, cheating has always been a problem in higher education. And, as discussed in the previous essay, AI does not seem to have significantly increased cheating. As such, we can probably expect the level of incompetency resulting from cheating to remain relatively stable, despite the presence of AI. It is also worth mentioning that incompetent people often end up in positions and professions where they can do serious harm not because they engaged in academic cheating, but because of nepotism, cronyism, bribery, and influence. It is unlikely that AI will impact these factors and concerns about incompetence would be better focused on matters other than AI cheating.

The second worry takes us back to Socrates and calculators. This is the worry that students using technology “honestly” will make themselves weaker or even incompetent. In this scenario, the students would not be cheating their way to incompetence. Instead, they would be using AI in accordance with school policies and this would have deleterious consequences on their abilities.

A well-worn reply to this worry is to point to the examples at the beginning of this essay, such as writing and calculators, and infer that because the academy was able to adapt to these earlier technologies it will be able to adapt to AI. On this view, AI will not prevent students from developing adequate competence to do their jobs and it will not weaken their faculties. But this will require that universities adapt effectively, otherwise there might be problems.

A counter to this view is to argue that AI is different from these earlier technologies. For example, when Photoshop was created, some people worried that it would be detrimental to artistic skills by making creating and editing images too easy. But while Photoshop had a significant impact, it did not eliminate the need for skill and the more extreme of the feared consequences did not come to pass. But AI image generation, one might argue, brought these fears fully to life. When properly prompted, AI can generate images of good enough quality that human artists worry about their jobs. One could argue that AI will be able to do this (or is already doing this) broadly and students will no longer need to develop these skills, because AI will be able to do it for them (or in their place). But is this something we should fear, or just another example of technology rendering skills obsolete?

Most college graduates in the United States could not make a spear, hunt a deer and then preserve the meat without refrigeration and transform the hide into clean and comfortable clothing. While these were once essential skills for our ancestors, we would not consider college graduates weak or incompetent because they lack these skills.  Turning to more recent examples, modern college graduates would not know how to use computer punch cards or troubleshoot an AppleTalk network. But they do not need such skills, and they would not be considered incompetent for lacking them. If AI persists and fulfills some of its promise, it would be surprising if it did not render some skills obsolete. But, as always, there is the question of whether we should allow skills and knowledge to become obsolete and what we might lose if we do so.

Microsoft’s Copilot AI awaits, demon-like, for my summons so that it might replace my words with its own. The temptation is great, but I resist and persist in relying on my own skills. But some warn that others will lack my resolve, and the academy will be destroyed by a deluge of cheating.

Those profiting from AI, including those selling software promising to detect AI cheating, speak dire warnings of the dangers of AI and how it will surpass humans in skills such as writing and taking tests. Because of this, the regulations written by the creators of AI must become law and academic institutions must subscribe to AI detection tools. And, of course, embrace AI themselves. While AI does present a promise and a threat, there is the question of whether it will destroy the academy as we know it. The first issue I will address is whether AI cheating will “destroy” the academy.

Students, I suspect, have been cheating since the first test and plagiarism has presumably existed since the invention of language. Before the internet, plagiarism and detecting plagiarism involved finding physical copies of works. As computers and the internet were developed, digital plagiarism and detection evolved. For example, many faculty use Turnitin which can detect plagiarism. It seemed that students might have been losing the plagiarism arms race, but it was worried that easy access to AI would turn the battle in favor of the cheating students.  After all, AI makes cheating easy, affordable and harder to detect.  For example, large language models allow “plagiarism on demand” by generating new text with each prompt. As I write this, Microsoft has made Copilot part of its office subscription and as many colleges provide the office programs to their students, they are handing students tools for cheating. But has AI caused the predicted flood of cheating?

Determining how many students are cheating is like determining how many people are committing crime: you only know how many people have been caught or admitted to it. You do not know how many people are  doing it. Because of this, inferences about how many students are cheating need to be made with caution so as to  avoid the fallacy of overconfident inference from unknown statistics.

One source of data is Turnitin’s AI detection software. Over the course of a year, the service checked 200 million assignments and flagged AI use in 1 in 10 assignments while 3 in 100 were flagged as mostly AI. These results have remained stable, suggesting that AI cheating is neither a tsunami nor increasing. But this assumes that the AI detection software is accurate. Turnitin claims it has a false positive rate of 1%. But we need to worry about AI detection software generating false positives and false negatives.

For false positives, one concern is that  “GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers.” For false negatives, the worry is that AI detectors can be fooled. As the algorithms used in proprietary detection software are kept secret, we do not know what biases and defects they might have. For educators, the “nightmare” scenario is AI generated work that cannot be detected by software and evades traditional means of proving that cheating has occurred.

While I do worry about the use of AI in cheating, I do not think that AI will significantly increase cheating and that if the academy has survived older methods of cheating, it will survive this new tool. This is because I think that cheating has and will remain consistent. In terms of my anecdotal evidence, I have been a philosophy professor since 1993 and have a consistent plagiarism rate of about 10%. When AI cheating became available, I did not see a spike in cheating. Instead, I saw AI being used by some students in place of traditional methods of cheating. But I must note that this is my experience and that it is possible that AI generated papers are slipping past Turnitin. Fortunately, I do not need to rely on my experience and can avail myself of the work of experts on cheating.

Stanford scholars Victor Lee and Denise Pope have been studying cheating, and past surveys over 15 years showed that 60-70% of students admitted to cheating. In 2023 the percentage stayed about the same or decreased slightly, even when students were asked about using AI. While cheaters might lie about cheating, Pope and Lee use methods to address this challenge. While cheating remains a problem, AI has not increased it and hence reports of the death of the academy are premature. It will, more likely, die by another hand.

This lack of increase makes intuitive sense as cheating has always been easy and the decision to cheat is more a matter of moral and practical judgment rather than being driven by technology. While technology provides new means of cheating, a student must be willing to cheat, and that percentage seems stable. But it is worth considering that there might have been a wave of AI cheating but for efforts to counter it, to not consider this would be to fall for the prediction fallacy.

It is also worth considering that AI has not lived up to the hype because it is not a great tool for cheating. As Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have argued, AI is most useful at doing useless things. To be fair, assignments in higher education can be useless. But if AI is being used to complete useless assignments, this is a problem with the assignments (and the professors) and not AI.

 But large language models are a new technology and their long-term impact in cheating needs to be determined. Things could change in ways that do result in the predicted flood and the doom of the academy as we know it. In closing, while AI cheating will probably not destroy the academy, we should not become complacent. Universities should develop AI policies based on reliable evidence. A good starting point would be collecting data from faculty about the likely extent of AI cheating.

One common approach to restricting abortion is to push the time limit ever closer to conception.  One moral argument for this is based on the claim that at a specific time the fetus has qualities that grant it a moral status such that killing it is immoral. While some claim this moment is conception, most find this implausible since a single cell lacks qualities that could confer a suitable moral status.

From a moral and pragmatic standpoint, it makes more sense to select a time when the fetus has qualities that are intuitively relevant to its moral status. These include such qualities as being able to feel pain, the ability to respond to stimuli and presenting other evidence of mental activity. While political opponents of abortion rarely advance philosophically rigorous arguments, the case is easy enough to make. One obvious approach is utilitarian: the fetus’ capacity to suffer means it counts in the moral calculation of abortion. The o problem with this approach is that the fetus has far less capacity than the mother and thus her interests would always seem to outweigh those of the fetus. This is analogous to similar arguments about the treatment of animals: if the woman’s interests outweigh those of a fetus that can feel pain, then the same would hold true when the interest of a human conflicts with that of an animal. If the utilitarian approach is adopted to argue in defense of fetuses, then moral consistency would require that the same argument be applied to animals with qualities equal to (or greater than) those possessed by a fetus. This would include many animals that are used for food, such as chickens, cows and pigs. As such, if abortion should be restricted based on the qualities of the fetus, then the killing of animals also be restricted. If abortion should be legally restricted on these moral grounds, then vegetarianism should also be imposed by law. That said, consistency seems to be of n concern in politics. While utilitarianism does have considerable appeal, there are alternatives.

A common alternative to utilitarianism is deontology, the view that actions are inherently right or wrong regardless of the consequences. On this view, killing a being that has the right sort of moral status would always be wrong and utilitarian calculations are irrelevant. So, if the fetus has the right sort of status at a specific stage of development, then it would be wrong to kill the fetus. As with the utilitarian argument, this would seem to open the moral door for animals as well. For example, if the capacity to feel pain grants the fetus a moral status that forbids killing it and justifies legally restricting abortion, then animals that feel pain must also be granted the same status and legal protection. Put roughly, if abortion should be restricted because fetuses feel pain, then meat consumption should be restricted because animals feel pain. Any arguments advanced involving painless killing of animals to morally justify meat consumption would also justify painless abortion. Obviously enough, moral arguments that contend that it is acceptable to kill animals because they are inferior to us would also apply to developing fetuses.

It must be noted that the above discussion is focused on moral arguments involving the claim that the fetus has moral status because it has certain empirically testable qualities, such as the capacity to feel pain. While arguments based on non-empirical qualities (such arguments based on the soul) can be advanced, they would take the discussion beyond ethics and into metaphysics. That said, there does seem to be an obvious way to restrict abortion based on empirical qualities while consistently avoiding extending the same legal protection to animals.

Fetuses are, obviously enough, biologically human. Thus, it could be argued that this is the key moral difference between humans and animals that would justify restricting abortion while still allowing animals to be used as food. One problem with this approach is that if being human is what matters, then appeals to other qualities are irrelevant. So, the argument should simply be that killing humans is wrong, fetuses are human, so killing them is wrong. While this is an option, it does abandon the appeal to qualities argument. This is an approach that some anti-abortion people use; although they also use the qualities argument as a persuasive device (even when they would not apply it to animals).

It could be argued that it is a combination of being human and the other relevant qualities that give the fetus its special status—this would allow for abortion before the fetus has those qualities while also denying animals with those qualities an analogous moral status. The challenge is showing what it is about being human that makes the moral difference. While humans are humans, it can also be said that cows are cows and the question remains as to what it is about being human that makes the moral difference. If it is a quality, then that quality can be pointed to. If it is mere species membership, then that seems utterly arbitrary and unprincipled—mere speciesism. As such, it would seem that any arguments designed to restrict abortion based on the empirical qualities of fetuses would also apply to animals possessing equal or greater qualities. If the legal restriction of abortion based on the appeal to qualities is justified, the same justification would require legal restrictions on killing animals. Roughly put, legally restricting abortion in a consistent way would effectively require legally mandating vegetarianism.

 

As J.S. Mill noted in On Liberty, people usually do not approach questions of freedom in a principled and consistent way. Instead, they support or oppose restrictions based on feelings. The subject of abortion presents an example of this sort of thing.

Conservatives claim they oppose regulations and favor liberty; yet usually support imposing strict restrictions on abortion. Liberals claim to favor regulations protecting people, yet usually at least tolerate a right to abortion. These seeming inconsistencies raise the problem of developing a consistent moral position on liberty and regulation. I will begin with the stereotypical conservative and move on to their liberal counterpart while noting that there are nuanced positions.

While it is a stereotype, conservatives often claim to oppose many regulations intended to protect people from harm. For example, environmental regulations are supposed to protect people from pollution. As another example, safety regulations for workplaces are intended to protect workers. Few conservatives will claim they are against protecting people but they often argue against such regulations by claiming they harm business, “kill” jobs and limit profits. Some also claim the dangers of things like pollution are fabrications by liberals who are motivated by their hatred of capitalism.

Pushing aside the rhetoric, an objective look at the stereotypical conservative stance on protective regulation is that they are willing to tolerate harms, such as the deaths of children from pollution, as part of cost of business. This is a utilitarian/consequentialist approach: a certain amount of harm (pollution, safety issues, health problems, etc.) is an acceptable price to pay for economic advantages. This is also a cost-shifting approach: the cost is moved from the business to those hurt by weak or absent regulations. For example, weak regulations on pollution and environmental damage allow businesses to make more profits because they do not need to pay the full costs of these harms. They are instead shifted on to the people hurt by them. The idea is, in general terms, that the interests of business outweigh the interests of those harmed even when those harmed are the unborn and young children. This is a classic consequentialist approach for resolving competing interests.

Conservatives usually claim to oppose abortion based on moral and religious views that life is sacred or that the unborn must be protected. They do not present it as imposing on liberty. The problem with this position on abortion is that it directly contradicts their professed position on regulations aimed at protecting people: they oppose such regulations by arguing in favor of economic interests. Obviously, if it is acceptable to allow harm to the unborn when doing so is in the economic interest of those doing the harm, this general principle must also be applied to abortion as well. It should be acceptable when the interest of the woman outweighs that of the unborn. Put in crude terms, if a business should be allowed to kill children so it can make a slighter larger profit, then women should be allowed to have abortions.

This reasoning can be countered on utilitarian grounds: allowing businesses to harm to the unborn for economic interests outweighs the harms; allowing women to have abortions when it is in their interest does not. This could also be argued by contending that women matter less (or not at all) in the calculation, unless they are in business and harming the unborn via business activity. This approach, while honest, does seem terrible: the unborn should not be harmed, unless doing so is profitable for the right economic interests. Liberals also run into a problem here.

While it is a stereotype, liberals are supposed to favor regulation that protects people, even when doing so imposes economic costs. They are also supposed to be pro-choice and support the liberty of a woman to have an abortion.

When arguing for protective regulations, one approach is to do so on utilitarian grounds: protecting people from harm creates more good than bad, even when the economic harms are factored in. There is also the fairness argument: when businesses can shift the costs to the people being harmed by their activities, this is stealing from those people. And, of course, there is the more deontological approach (that actions are good or bad in themselves) that allowing people to be harmed is just wrong.

The utilitarian justification can be used to justify abortion: the benefits gained outweigh the harm done. But probably not for the unborn, though. This suggests that the same approach can also justify opposing protective regulations: if it is acceptable to kill the unborn when doing so is in one’s interest, then this would apply both to a woman having an abortion and businesses killing them through, for example, pollution.

The fairness argument seems to tell against abortion: the cost is being imposed on the unborn as they are killed for the interests of another. This seems analogous to cost shifting in business. The deontological approach would also seem to tell against abortion: if regulation is needed to protect the unborn from the harm of pollution and such, then it would also be needed to protect them from abortion.

It is important to note that I am not addressing which position is correct. Rather, my objective has been to map out the conflict between views of protective regulations and abortion. Pro-life folks should be for protective regulation or have a reasonable argument why aborting the unborn is wrong but killing them through environmental pollution is acceptable. Pro-choice folks should be tolerant of the liberty to harm others when doing so is in one’s interest or have a reasonable argument why aborting the unborn is acceptable but harming them with pollution is not.

 

The tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons has long been a part of America’s culture war. During the early days of the Satanic Panic, it was claimed that D&D was a tool to lead people to Satanism. The playbook for demonizing games and media was also developed in this time, when it was claimed that James Egbert III’s suicide was caused by D&D. Egbert’s death led to an early acting role for Tom Hanks in Mazes & Monsters.  Lee Pulling’s suicide was also blamed on D&D, leading his mother to start a media campaign against the game. After the Satanic Panic ended, it was briefly all quiet on the D&D front. But in recent years the war has gotten hot.

As would be expected, D&D has been dragged into the “woke” and DEI culture war. Most of the attacks have been directed against changes made by the owners of D&D, Wizards of the Coast. The company has attempted to address some concerns about racism in the game, doing such things as revising some content. For example, some people expressed outrage at the idea that orcs and drow were not inherently evil in the official game lore. Some people have also claimed to be very angry about third party content, claiming that it is too “woke.” For example, when some players created wheelchair rules for the game, a few people expressed outrage at this “wokeness.” Most recently, Elon Musk helped manufacture outrage over the false claim that Gary Gygax, the co-creator of D&D, was being attacked and erased. A quick look at the 2024 Player’s Handbook exposes this lie. My goal here is not to refight these culture war battles but to, as a gamer and a philosophy professor, offer my fellow gamers a useful shield against efforts to manipulate them.

It must be noted that not all criticisms of D&D are part of the culture war; gamers can obviously disagree about rule and lore changes and do so in good faith. A good faith criticism of the game is one that is made honestly because the person sincerely believes there is a problem with the game. But good faith criticisms can obviously be in error or even evil. A person can be sincerely wrong or even sincerely evil. But we are most likely to encounter bad faith attacks e. These bad faith attacks can be divided into three types, although this list is not exhaustive.

The first form of bad faith attack is trolling. What defines a troll is their intent: they want to make people upset and angry. As always, one should not feed the trolls. Trolls can, intentionally or not, serve as allies or stooges for the other bad faith actors.

There are also people who are engaged in fighting the culture war and for them D&D is just a tiny battlefield in their  broader political game. Their goal is not to make D&D better; their aim is to gain political advantages for their side. One goal is to divide gamers against each other in the hopes of destroying any broad sense of community. This is part of the broader and ancient tactic of ruling by dividing: if the ruled and exploited are wasting their energy fighting each other in manufactured fights, they are not expending that energy to address real oppression and exploitation. This approach is also a method of onboarding people to radicalize them. For example, someone might be drawn in because they are mad about the artwork portraying orcs in the new Player’s Handbook and find themselves on a path that ends in white nationalism.

The third type of bad faith actor is the grifter. Like the political agents, they also aim to divide the community with manufactured conflicts. This is because such divisions lead to controversy, controversy generates attention, and attention generates money. Somewhat ironically, the grifters can also benefit their “opponents” by giving them content to, for example, criticize in their own YouTube videos.

The grifters also know that their approach is a good sorting method for other grifts; they are finding the vulnerabilities of their targets and can use these to, for example, lead people into broader political grifts and onboard them to radicalize them, thus enabling even more grifting. So, what can you do if you encounter what might be a bad faith actor on, for example, social media?

The easiest approach is to just ignore them. Even if they are acting in good faith, ignoring them almost certainly will not be a loss. If they are acting in bad faith and are good at being bad, they will break out fallacies (such as making a straw person of your response) and rhetoric to exploit any response you make to feed the controversy. As a practical matter, your time is probably better spent creating D&D stuff or playing the game instead of feeding the trolls, political agents, and grifters. But if you are unsure and do want to engage, I suggest the following approach.

You can try rational engagement and ask these questions: Is the person offering good reasons rather than engaging in fallacies and rhetoric? Are they willing to adjust their views in the face of good reasons? Are they willing to listen to what you are saying? Are they being reciprocal in terms of respect? If the answer to these questions is “no”, then the rational response is to not engage further. Do not feed the troll, do not help the recruiter, do not aid the grifter.

What if you have a friend who is being drawn into the culture war by trolls, political agents, or grifters? What can you do? This can be a tough situation, and groups have lost once good players to the culture war. Attempting to directly engage or criticize people about such views usually causes them to double down. In attempting to change their minds you will push them away and reinforce their views. This will serve to isolate them even more, making them better victims for the political agents and grifters.

A more effective tactic is to approach “at an angle” with kind, rather than critical, engagement. For example, if someone at your table seems to be getting mad about the new species rules but they love character customization, then present the new rules as allowing even more customization. Getting into a fight about whether it is “woke” to have flexible stats will be counterproductive. But there can be cases where it is best to cut them loose; the point of D&D is to have fun and if someone is making the game awful by turning the table into a culture war battlefield, everyone might be happier if they find a more suitable table.

In closing, I want to point out an obvious way to respond to efforts to escalate the culture war. When I run into people who are mad about some change to orcs or enraged about wheelchairs in the game, I politely point out what I call Rule Alpha and Rule Omega. Rule Alpha is that as a DM you are free to run your game as you wish and as a player you are free to play as you wish. This is because no one, including Wizards of the Coast can force you to do otherwise. But choices have consequences, and no one is required to play in your game or allow you at the table.  So, if something in the game makes you angry or you do not like it, then do not have it in your game. Rule Omega is that everyone else has the right to run their games and play as they wish; you do not have the right to force them to play your way. You have the right to express your views, but this can also have consequences.

I don’t think we have anything positive to gain from these manufactured culture war fights. As noted earlier, they just divide the gaming community, cause needless conflict, feed into the broader culture war and enable grifting. If you do not like something about the game but other people do, the rational approach is to not have it in your game and not get mad if other people have it in their games.

 

Faced with declining caribou and moose herds, Alaska is hoping that shooting wolves and bears from helicopters will solve their problem. The program will permit the slaughter of up to 80% of these animals on 20,000 acres of state land. I use the term “slaughter” intentionally as killing animals from helicopters should not be dignified with the term “hunting.” I say this as both an ethicist and someone who grew up as an ethical hunter. Laying aside my moral concerns about the methodology of this slaughter, there is the factual question as to whether it would achieve its stated goal.

In 2023 nearly 100 bears, including 20 cubs, were killed from helicopters. It was claimed that this helped increase the caribou population. To determine the effectiveness of such killings, the state created a report and found that the largest causal factors in the decline of the caribou herd were “disease, nutrition, and winter severity.” It was estimated that starvation or dehydration caused about 65% of the deaths. As would be expected, the state has now refused to allow photographs of the killings, has forbidden independent observers, and does not allow scientific review of the program. This shows that the state officials are not concerned with whether the method is effective, but that they must be driven by other motivations.

Looked at in purely economic terms, the slaughter of predators has already had a negative effect on state revenue. One of the major tourist draws for Denali national park has been the wolf packs. As the state has succeeded in killing wolves, tourism has declined. While the state has claimed that their program raised money from people who want to slaughter wolves and bears from helicopters, “the amount of tourist dollars from people seeking to view these predators in the wild dwarfs any incremental increase in hunting fee revenue the state hopes to realize.” Given that the justifications for the slaughter are untrue, it must be wondered why the state is persisting in this bad idea.

In terms of people having false beliefs, one possibility is that they are operating in sincere ignorance: they hold to false beliefs, but this is because they have had no cause to challenge them. The idea of the “big bad wolf” is ingrained in our culture, as is the idea that predators are a problem. As such, someone unfamiliar with the facts might, in good faith, think that wolves and bears are the problem and that killing them is the solution. They might also have no idea that tourists are paying to come see wolves and that the fees from hunting would be miniscule in comparison. But if someone is aware that there is evidence out there, such as the report mentioned above, they might decide to engage in willful ignorance.

Willful ignorance occurs when a person is aware that evidence or arguments exist that could challenge their belief but chooses to ignore or dismiss such evidence or arguments. They can also escalate by “refuting” the evidence and arguments with rhetoric, fallacies, and simply clinging to their belief. This is especially likely when the belief is part of the person’s ideology or identity. In the United States, “solving” ecological problems by killing animals is usually seen as more of a right-wing approach, and environmentally focused approaches are usually branded as “leftist.” In the case of caribou and moose herds, the main driving factor in their decline is most likely climate change. As noted above, even the state of Alaska’s own report noted that 65% of the deaths were caused by starvation and dehydration. But the right has committed to denying climate change and hence another explanation is needed. Blaming wolves and bears fits this narrative and hence enables willful ignorance. There are also those who know the truth and decide to lie.

The American right has embraced the strategy of lying about climate change, simply denying that it occurs while refusing to offer evidence for their view. In the case of killing predators, it thus makes sense why the state is refusing observers and studies: the officials know that the results would refute their claims. In terms of why they are doing this, one factor could be that they need to appease people who are sincerely or willfully ignorant but expect the state to do something to address the problem. The “solution” they have selected is killing the predators, which will end up costing the state revenue.

Shooting wolves and bears from helicopters is also an excellent metaphor for life in America. Members of the ruling class, such as CEOs of health insurance companies, are like the shooters in the helicopters and we are the wolves. They can hurt and even kill us with near impunity. Some might be tempted to think that their metaphorical helicopter lifts them above the law, but this is not true. The legal system is part of their helicopter (and their gun): they are within the law, but it serves to protect them from us while also serving as a weapon against us. It is only when they walk among us unprotected that they face any meaningful risk of facing consequences, as Luigi Mangione showed. Which is why the CEO response to the shooting was to enhance their security.

The situation in Alaska also provides another excellent metaphor for life in America: we are like the caribou and moose being harmed by starvation, dehydration and disease while our suffering and deaths are being blamed on something else. We are, like the caribou and moose, literally suffering from climate change while the ruling class lies about it. We face housing shortages, poor health care, medical bankruptcy, and economic exploitation while the ruling class blames migrants and transpeople. They are not interested in solving the problems, whether it is the declining numbers of moose and caribou or needless deaths due to Americans being uninsured or underinsured.

 

As J.S. Mill and others have argued, freedom of expression is a fundamental liberty and the people working at crisis pregnancy centers have that right. But crisis pregnancy centers purport to offer an alternative to abortion—though they seem to routinely engage in deception rather than honest persuasion. This raises moral questions about freedom of expression.

To get the obvious out of the way, those who work for crisis pregnancy centers have the moral right to express their views on abortion. They also have the moral right to try to persuade others to accept their views. A key part of the freedom of expression is the freedom to engage with others who are willing to listen. So, the freedom of expression of these centers is not in dispute.

One concern, which was addressed in my previous essay, is the ethics of deceit. While people do have the right to express their views, freedom of expression is not a license to lie. But it must be noted that there is an important distinction between making an untrue claim and lying.  While there are many forms of lying, the common form requires that a person believes they are making an untrue claim and that they have the intention to deceive. So, if the those at the centers believe the untruths they tell women, then they are not lying. However, this does not get them off the moral hook completely as there is also an ethics of epistemology (the theory of knowledge). Just as there is a moral obligation, as per Thomas Aquinas, to consider one’s actions before acting, there is also an obligation to confirm one’s beliefs before trying to get others to accept them. The seriousness of this obligation, as with actions, is in proportion to the seriousness of the likely consequences of the belief. Being epistemically irresponsible about knowing birth control’s efficacy or the medical effect of abortion is morally unacceptable. As with any liberty, there are also associated responsibilities. Due diligence and honesty in the claims one makes are part of these responsibilities. That is, freedom of expression is not freedom from truth and proper research (which is more than just Googling while under the influence of confirmation bias).

A second concern is values. While people do not have a right to their own facts, they do have the right to their own values (and the responsibility of the consequences of those values). While some embrace the self-defeating notion that relativity of values requires tolerance (it self-defeats because claiming tolerance as an objective value contradicts relativism), it would beg the question to assume that values are objective (or subjective). Even if values are objective, there is still the problem of sorting out which values are right. Because of this, it is more difficult to show that someone has the wrong values. There do seem to be some clear exceptions: those who advocate for rape and genocide have indisputably gotten things wrong. However, moral philosophy has vast tracts of disputed territory and rational moral disagreement helps warrant the freedom of expression. Since we do not always know what is right, it would often be both foolish and wrong to silence people with differing views.

While the various sides on the abortion issue tend to believe they have the objective truth; the issue is morally complicated and an area of reasonable moral dispute. Those who think they have the right answer still have an excellent reason to accept this, if only on pragmatic grounds. Even if they are winning now, they might be losing tomorrow and need the freedom to make their case. If they are losing now, they would want the freedom to make their case. So, the center folks have the right to present their values as do those who disagree with them.

The final concern I will address is the matter of compelled listening. While there have been some legal cases involving compelled speech, there is also the moral question of compelled attention. The easy and obvious view is that people have no general right to expect others to listen to them, although there are contexts where there can be such an expectation. People also do not, with some notable exceptions, have the right to harass people under the guise of free expression. To use an analogy, you have a right to swing a knife around as much as you wish as long as you are not slashing at other people. Likewise, you can express yourself however you wish, provided that the expression is not aimed at harassing, coercing or harming others. I admit there is a problem with sorting out what counts as harassment, coercion and harm. This must be addressed by considering specific types of cases and by developing general guidelines. For example, college students don’t have grounds to claim that a speaker they dislike is automatically harming them because they dislike what they hear. As another example, a student who is shouting a speaker they dislike is both violating the speaker’s right to free expression and endeavoring to compel others to listen to them over the speaker, and are in the process of trying to violate two rights.

Returning to the centers, they do have every right to try to persuade, but the tactics that are coercive, deceptive or harassing are not protected by moral freedom of expression. While they do have the right to express their views, they do not have the right to trick, harass or coerce others into listening to or accepting their views. Naturally, the general principles at work here apply generally, especially to the freedoms of people I disagree with.

 

 

While I think abortion is morally tolerable and should be legal, I recognize that there are competing moral views that can be held in good faith. Proponents and opponents of abortion have the right to argue for their views and influence others. So, I have no moral objection against the idea of a pregnancy crisis center that provides accurate information about alternatives to abortion and assistance to women who elect to not have an abortion. Unfortunately, pregnancy crisis centers often seem to engage in willful deceit.

Some years ago, John Oliver did a show on the deceptive practices of these centers. While Oliver is a comedian, his claims were backed up with evidence: these centers often trick women. One common technique is masquerading as an abortion clinic or health care provider by locating close to such places and using similar names. They also tend to use the trapping of professional medicine to create the illusion they are a clinic despite not being licensed to provide medical care. Another tactic is to make untrue claims about abortion, such as the claim that abortion increases the risk of cancer and infertility.

While centers are usually allowed to give ultrasounds, they seem to routinely mislead women about the results. While there is a shortage of funding for women’s health, many states provide public money to these centers. This should worry people who profess to favor small government and to oppose public money being used for ideological causes. After all, one of the arguments advanced against public funding of Planned Parenthood is that public money might be used for something some people find morally or religiously unacceptable. The same logic should apply to these centers.

On the face of it, deceit seems morally wrong and centers that engage in it are acting immorally. This is especially ironic given these centers tend to be affiliated with religious organizations and the bible is clear about lying. That said, one can argue in favor of the approach of these centers.

It can be argued that such deceit is justified on moral grounds because the end justifies the means. The obvious moral theory to use here is utilitarianism: the action that creates the most good and the least harmful is the right action. In the case of the centers, they could accept that deceit is generally not a good thing, but that the harm of deceiving the women and girls is exceeded by the good of misleading them so that they do not have an abortion. To use an analogy, lying to a murderer to keep them from murdering would be morally right on utilitarian grounds.

Even if one accepts the utilitarian approach, there is still the question of whether the centers are doing their moral calculation right: is the good they claim to do outweighing the harms to the women and girls they deceive? Obviously, pro-choice people would disagree. There is also my usual line: why lie if the truth will suffice? In the case at hand, if abortion is truly as evil as the center folk believe, then telling women the truth should suffice to convince them. If they must lie to people, then one would suspect that they must not have faith in their own reasons and arguments. They could, of course, reply by doubling down on the utilitarian approach and contend that people are not swayed by good reasons nor are they drawn to the right thing without being led there by deceit.

Accepting utilitarianism does create its own problem: if the ends justify the means in terms of deceiving to prevent abortion, then the same principle also applies to abortion. As such, abortion would be subject to the same utilitarian calculation and could turn out to be acceptable on these grounds. In any case, its wrongness would be conditional upon the harms and benefits.

The centers could reply that they are not utilitarians; they just hold that the end justifies the means when it comes to lying about abortion. They could hold that abortion is inherently worse than lying and it is acceptable to do lesser evils to prevent greater evils. While this is a consistent position it is morally problematic as there are non-deceitful ways to reduce abortions, such as providing cheap and effective birth control, funding quality sex-education, improving support services for women and girls who have babies, and so on. After all, it is hard to justify doing evil to stop evil when there are viable non-evil alternatives. If someone gladly embraces deceit to advance their cause when morally better alternatives exist, one must question their ethics.