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Explorations Outside
Here's a possible variation on the Fat Man version: A trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you might be able to stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only chance to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge, hopefully onto the track, killing him for sure to possibly save five. Should you proceed?
Moral indignation has served us well throughout the evolution of our species, keeping free-riders and rule-breakers in check, maintaining group cohesion, helping us reproduce and thrive. It is deeply embedded in our nature. Yet moral indignation is a response tendency that gets us into all sorts of trouble. Like love of sweets, it is a natural inclination to be managed and restrained.
...dissent potentiates a process that may lead us closer to the truth of things. Even when dissent is stupid and wrong-headed, it can make you think.
Here we have the conflict between a moral imperative of treating people as ends in themselves and a pragmatic imperative of treating people as means to an end. But what if the pragmatic end is also a moral good?
For some people, the mere possibility of achieving a goal matters more than favorable opportunities. A chance, not necessarily a good chance.
Given the personal pain exacted by goal failure, we develop "optimization heuristics" to increase the likelihood of success and provide a psychological cushion for when we fail. One heuristic is to maintain sufficient goal diversity to insure a sense of control, optimism, and competency in at least a few life domains. So if we suck at x, at least we know we're good at y.
To control is to make things happen or not happen. Primary control is when we align the world to our wishes. Secondary control is when we align ourselves to the world, often because the world isn't cooperating with our wishes.
Those few hundred milliseconds between relief and renewed vigilance. Researching and thinking hard before the game - and then the payoff, the sense-making, in-between the momentary triumphs.
Living in the jungle is hard: building nests every evening, extracting the nutritious stuff from thousands of plants. That takes deliberation, reasoning, inference, problem-solving, weighing the pros and the cons.
Sometimes simply doing something is the payoff, especially when coming after a period of indecision. Of course, the same behavior may have multiple potential payoffs: enjoyable in its own right, doubly so if applauded by others, triply so if it advances one's career.
All sorts of things inform our choice of payoff, for instance: ease of achieving, certainty of achieving, vividness, immediacy.... A lot of things to consider but usually these choices are made in a flash, below the threshold of consciousness, thanks to our extraordinary brains.
...'trigger' is also "a device that releases a spring-loaded mechanism" and that’s how I mean it. A trigger in this sense is what psychologists call an “affordance”: something that presents the possibility of an action on an object or environment. An affordance is an opportunity to achieve an outcome. In this way a trigger suggests a pay-off. Just like a doorknob, a trigger is not a cause of behavior but an enticement to act.
Brains and agents are prediction machines. Behind every behavior is an anticipated consequence. A pay-off. Before every behavior is its trigger. The trigger hints at a pay-off and sets the whole ABC sequence in motion.
Thanks to memes, we can hold ourselves apart and consider the spectacle, thereby falling into delusion and wonder.
...plenty of environmentalists include humans in their circle of caring. It's just that their circle includes more than humans. Such caring doesn't need a rationale. It doesn't even need to be rational.
Might the consistent application of these Moral Principles reduce overall well-being in society at large? If so, why might this happen and should anything be done about it?
If needs are for scarce resources that cannot be distributed equally, is the answer just to prevent everyone from accessing those resources? Why? Why not?
The ideological mind is a fortress, ever vigilant against infiltration and treason. The ideological mind keeps its eye on the prize, keen to weed out those who impede progress. And so we have Establishment Democrats, Wall Street Democrats, and now Corporate Democrats: the Left's New Despicables.
Why do we signal virtue? Is it to give each other courage: you are not alone. I stand up for the good and the true - you can, too. Is it to do good by building collective confidence to fight the forces of evil - in other words, a tactic to combat evil? Is it a form of bragging? Is it to let your family, friends, and neighbors know that you're not one of Them?
Thoughts are inchoate until expressed in the head or the world. Expression generates thoughts from patterns of spreading activation.