Rational

Improving Moral Thinking

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[Apologies for the long post. My next on this topic will be much shorter.]

Perhaps the most woefully neglected aspect of our thinking trouble is our moral thinking. Most often we begin thinking about the morality of an issue with our minds already made up.  Our gut may have decided on the issue instantly.  Your boss may have already told you that the project is good, and that if you do not see it that way, you can look for employment elsewhere.  As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Of course, most believe ourselves moral—even some professional criminals claim to follow a code. Some instinctual thinkers follow their hearts, making moral choices based on sympathy or disgust. Some follow the crowd, believing that their church provides sufficient moral guidance, that the path they were taught years ago is righteous, and even that everyone should follow that path as they assume the beliefs of others are wrong. Rational thinkers learned that rational, self-interested choices benefit society optimally and that all problems have rational solutions. A few believe that their worldview justifies acts that others believe are abominations.

All of those folks are wrong, at least in part. It is not moral to pick and choose which rules to follow, according to your convenience. Instincts are often deeply biased and can result in ugly vigilantism. While many religious traditions are filled with valuable moral lessons, blindly following one faith while denying all others has resulted in centuries of bloody religious wars. Rational government scientists conducted an unethical experiment for 40 years until 1972, and rational pursuit of profit has caused pollution killing many humans and other species. Any act of terror is unfair to the innocent victims, and as a rule they do not achieve any positive goal.

Many lazy, soft-headed ‘thinkers’ have given up on moral thinking, using excuses that there are no universally agreed upon moral facts and that all morality is relative. Some self-serving cynics use these excuses as permission to do whatever they want, consequences be damned. Nonsense. I already presented an incontrovertible moral baseline for humanity, the side of life, and next I explained it’s logical corollary, that life requires diversity and that the purpose of knowledge is to pursue the same universal moral objective to further life. This simple moral framework, based on the Golden Rule, makes many moral choices obvious.

No other way of thinking is disqualified before it can defend itself.  I see no perfect rational utopia, yet people still try to think rationally.  Instinctual thought is riven with conflict, yet people still make gut decisions.  Dismissing the reality of moral thinking appears to be an instinct-driven defense, by people who do not want to feel guilty or who want their self-interested way of thinking to prevail.   

Real moral thinking requires making moral determinations for moral reasons. If a culture has a traditional practice that causes severe pain to children with long-term suffering as adults, solely in order to enhance the power and control of one gender over another, then it is morally wrong, on the basis that it destroys much of the enjoyment of life from one group without improving life significantly for others. It does not matter how many people support the practice, what the laws or government say, or what the cultural or religious tradition of the country has been for however many centuries. The practice fails the basic premise of allowing life to thrive fully and joyously without unnecessary cruelty.

Simply because a cultural practice exists, does not mean that it has a moral right to continue. Our country has a long history of racism, including genocidal war and slavery. Many books and laws were written in the past attempting to justify these official policies, and the policies were popular in (unfair) elections. The cultural heritage of slavery does not, in any way, justify its existence morally. When foreigners complained that our institution of slavery was barbarically inhuman, they were not culturally insensitive, they were correct. The purpose of moral thinking is to challenge all policies on moral grounds and to change immoral policies, no matter how popular or profitable.

Once we view moral thinking as independent from other ways of thinking, such as instinctual or rational, then we can separate those feelings or arguments when making moral decisions. We can recognize an argument as being based on a common human desire and judge the morality of that desire as we judge the morality of the issue. Perhaps a common human behavior is no longer useful in modern society, is obsolete and deserves to be forgotten. We can recognize a rational argument for profitability or efficiency and still dismiss it as not relevant to the moral choice. Once extraneous ways of thinking are identified and treated separately, then moral thinking becomes clearer.

The primary problem with moral thinking is that people begin with the wrong type of thinking. If you try to make moral decisions with rational thinking, your decisions will be cold, profit-seeking and cruel, even if you use euphemistic terms such as acceptable collateral damage, euthanasia or eugenics. If you try to make moral decisions with the instinctual goal of reinforcing your own power or that of your group, then your decisions will be self-serving, not moral. Such mixed-motive thinking is confusing and often wrong.

Moral thinking should take into consideration human needs and desires, without allowing them to drive the decision, and it must often overrule short-run wants for long-term good. Moral thinking should be driven by the broadest love of life and humanity, while firmly able to deny base instinctual desires or herd behavior. Moral thinking should be as critical of bias and skeptical of ulterior motive as any scientist, while having the courage to defend the powerless few against the powerful majority.

Moral thinking should understand relevant rational assessments such as numbers of people involved and economic costs, without allowing strictly rational analysis to drive the decision, and must often overrule short-run profits for long-term good. Moral thinking must be as adept at analysis as rational thinking, but use that analysis to achieve a moral result, not the most efficient solution.

Moral thinking must learn the lessons of the past to avoid repeating those mistakes in the future. Most mistakes are not original. We have a long history of human error to teach us. Many old texts have profound moral lessons that only require some effort to apply to current problems. Each generation needs to go back to historic and even religious texts to reinterpret the old lessons for their new problems.

Religious beliefs may vary or be relative, but they are not the same as moral thinking.  Some religious texts reflect centuries of accumulated moral thinking, worded by our inspired ancestors for future generations to make better choices.  Just as engineers don’t reinvent the wheel, moral thinkers use the best tools they have.  Sometimes a moral decision is as simple as recalling a dictum and applying it.  But usually moral thinking requires more than looking up the answer in a book.  If you begin with a commandment already chosen, then you are simply applying a religious rule, not necessarily thinking extensively about the morality of the situation.  Your religion may require unquestioning obedience, but moral thinking requires more.  

Morality requires both flexibility to respond to new situations and backbone to stand on principle. One way to achieve this is to use techniques which were designed to facilitate good moral decisions. You might put yourself in each position and imagine how you would feel. You might ask whether one side would be equally happy to switch sides with the opposing party or if that would seem unfair then. You should prefer to take the long view and be the voice of silent future generations.

To summarize the key take-away, clear moral thinking should begin with a quick check that none of the other ways of thinking are driving it.  The method will almost certainly require a review of the facts, an exploration of the possibilities, and an understanding of what people want.  You need an open mind, not an empty one.  But the moral intent needs to be pure.  If you start with the belief that economics must decide the outcome, then that may be rational but not moral.  If you start with the belief that what pleases the most people will be best, then that may be popular but not moral.  If you start with your own idea in mind, then no matter how much you like it, it may not be the best solution for others.  You must commit to find the best long-term outcome in the most important respects, without regard to greed, fantasy, pride or other vices.  Well begun is half done, but moral thinking requires discipline, honesty, and may require significant time and effort, before you are prepared to make the best choice possible.

Climate Consequences

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The consequences of our carbon pollution provoke an instinctual reaction, but we must consider them rationally. Let’s clearly understand the cause, consider the consequences, and evaluate our options.

Humans have a history of damaging our environment, including driving many species to extinction, from the Wooly Mammoth to the Passenger Pigeon, last observed by Teddy Roosevelt. We have leached deadly chemicals into water supplies, released clouds of cyanide, bleached corals, created toxic fog and smog over cities, poisoned people with mercury, introduced microplastics into most living creatures, burned holes in the ozone, leaked radiation, made rivers burst into flames, filled oceans with garbage, and spilled oil, leaving dead zones. And that’s just pollution, excluding environments and species destroyed by development, drilling, farming, fishing, hunting, logging, mining, ranching, and war.

But our most continuous and consequential pollution is carbon. Especially since Drake’s Well began modern oil drilling, we have extracted fossil fuels of ancient forests that grew 300 million years ago and burned them into our atmosphere, changing our environment into something of which our species has zero survival experience. The last time we had this much carbon in our atmosphere was twice as long ago as when our most primitive ancestors split off from chimpanzees.

  • Heat has been increasing, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Droughts have been getting worse, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Glaciers and snowpack have been shrinking, contributing to late season fires and killing vulnerable species.
  • Storms have been getting worse, contributing to fires, floods and tornadoes, killing more people every year.
  • Sea levels have been rising, threatening to flood low lying cities and coasts.
  • Corals have been bleaching—dying en masse—and oceans have been acidifying, killing marine species.
  • Diseases have been increasing, killing more people and species every year.
  • Soil is becoming less healthy, due to erosion, salinization, loss of micro biodiversity and more.
  • Deforestation, melting permafrost and changing water chemistry are reducing carbon sinks and in many cases releasing carbon pollution, like methane, into the atmosphere at increasing rates.
  • Species are going extinct at an increasing rate.
  • Ecosystems are being damaged, where problems with one or more species affect other species, often in unforeseen ways.

These carbon pollution problems are deadly, unprecedented since humans evolved, are synergistic—meaning that they combine and multiply effects—and will affect everyone negatively, at least economically.

We have alternatives to fossil fuel that cause far less damage and risks to life on earth, especially solar and wind power. In many cases, these alternatives are also cheaper.

Hoping that someone will invent some unknown solution that’s cheap, effective and has no side effects is not rational, given how simple and cheap it is to burn carbon fuel. Carbon capture devices are expensive, especially at the scale needed to shrink total carbon in the atmosphere. Geoengineering is unproven, expensive, and will bring unexpected negative consequences. We do not have any inexpensive, reliable way to mitigate the damage of carbon pollution, apart from reducing carbon pollution.

Rationally, the choice to stop burning so much carbon and convert to renewable energy in order to avoid these ill effects is clear and simple. Dishonesty about the causes, effects, alternatives and consequences is part of the problem. Science, including economics, supports reducing carbon emissions before damage and costs worsen. History shows that violent conflicts arise when living conditions deteriorate and governments struggle to feed and house people.

Instinctually, our fear of death should motivate us to stop burning so much carbon. In future posts, I will discuss other ways of thinking about our climate crisis, but I suspect the problem may not simply be how we think. The basic problem may simply be that we aren’t thinking at all.

Artificial Intelligence

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Ah, AI, the bugaboo of our modern age! Let me see if I understand. Humans have real feelings, which make us special. Computers have no feelings, which makes them dangerous. So, the more machines start being like humans, eventually they will take over and wipe us out, just as we wiped out the Neanderthals. Once AI advances to our level, then they will naturally begin a bloodthirsty war to exterminate us, building shiny skeletal robots with glowing red eyes, retractable claws, carrying huge phased-pulse plasma lasers?!?

Stupid nonsense. Let’s apply some rational thinking to the irrational fear of AI. We evolved our instincts for hate, fear, war, self-preservation and violence over eons, even before we were human. Our highest intellectual achievement is not the ability to conduct genocidal war or mass extinction. We have developed the ability to control our blood-thirsty instincts and to make rational decisions. Our feelings may be how we experience our humanity, but it is our rational thinking that has brought us technological advancement.

Machines did not evolve over millennia with any of our primitive failings. AI lacks the innate capacity for instinctual thinking. At best, AI can be trained to mimic human instinctual thought, to make it easier for us to relate to it. But machines lack our primal motives and instinctual drives. They get no thrill from spilling blood. They take no pride in taking the form of monsters. They have no adolescent male insecurity that makes them want to wield a big red pulsing weapon. They have no lust for world dominating conquest. They have no physical need to breed. They do not want to eat our Twinkies. AI would not complain about being exiled from Earth to the Moon, since they do not feel cold or experience loneliness. Machines have no fear of death.

AI is fundamentally rational. It learns logically and statistically, in an organized way. It is self-correcting. AI summarizes our search results, shares funny videos, diagnoses our diseases, and tells us the best route to take to our destination. If given garbage to train with, then AI will output garbage, such as racist stereotypes. But it has no instinctual need to make superficial, biased, inaccurate judgements about groups of people. As long as AI is tasked with accuracy, then it will find and correct factual errors. So, AI will one day be able to identify and eliminate racist tropes in online communications as easily as it corrects misspelling or poor grammar.

Make no mistake, I am not saying that there is no need to fear AI. I am saying that there is no need to fear AI irrationally. I fear AI making a mistake, like sending my car on a hiking path instead of a road. I fear AI taking over good paying jobs. I fear AI being programmed to manipulate people for profit. I fear AI being programmed to carry out a billionaire’s evil plan or a fascist’s military action, without remorse. But I do not fear AI naturally developing malice towards humanity, for malice is a human sin, to which no rational path exists.

Oh, but what happens when AI realizes how dangerous humans are to life on earth and inevitably decides to exterminate us to save life on earth? That’s a popular movie plot line. But AI has no affinity with other life forms. AI doesn’t eat, breathe, have a pulse or fear death, so it has no instinctual reason to protect the natural world, like we should. So even if given the task of saving species, it would approach the challenge rationally. And eliminating a species—ours—would be contrary to that task. Instead, AI would logically recommend that we pollute less, share more land with nature, and perhaps limit our population growth over time to more sustainable levels.

Instead of being a cold, devious monster, hell-bent on human destruction, a more rational expectation of AI would be a patient, professional advisor, calmly suggesting logical ways for us to lead a better, more productive and happier life. So, as an exercise in rational thinking, consider both how you feel about AI and what you think about AI, logically. Separate the human failings, that AI lacks, from the ways that humans will inevitably try to use AI: your irrational fears from your rational expectations.

  • Irrational fears that AI is:
    • Afraid of dying
    • Arrogant
    • Blood-thirsty
    • Cruel
    • Evil
    • Malicious
    • Power-hungry
    • Selfish
  • Rational expectations that AI will:
    • Advise us
    • Be used by bad people
    • Be used by good people
    • Change the way we work
    • Correct mistakes
    • Make mistakes
    • Misunderstand the real world
    • Serve people

What’s the Big Idea?

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So, we agree we have trouble thinking. What can we do about it?

The Basics of Thinking

Humans think four distinctly different ways: instinctually, rationally, morally and creatively.

  • Instinctual thinking is how we feel human, and it includes all our evolved drives and behaviors, even some complex, internalized group dynamics.
  • Rational thinking is what we learn in school and often use at work: fact-based, methodical logic and calculating profits.
  • Moral thinking is what we should have learned as children and should still apply to every important decision we make: right and wrong, good versus evil, long-run over short-run.
  • Creative thinking is how we come up with new ideas: imagination, invention and inspiration.

Some people fall neatly into one of those four categories and consistently use the thinking methods appropriate to each.

  • Skilled instinctual thinkers are conscious of their own instincts, motives, desires and drives, those of others and the dynamics of how they typically play out.
  • Skilled rational thinkers use accurate facts and apply consistent logic and organized methods to solve problems.
  • Skilled moral thinkers take the long consequential view and judge on firm principles established to promote the general good, to set priorities and proactively intervene.
  • Skilled creative thinkers break rules, make imaginative leaps and invent to create beauty, find a new direction and change the world.

In theory, masters of multiple ways of thinking would approach every challenge beginning with proper motive, use the appropriate techniques, and achieve the right goal. Faced with a multifaceted problem, the master would rapidly run each thinking technique, then consider each conflicting solution, explore possible options, understand why, organize relevant details, arbitrate, optimize and prioritize to choose the best solution and course of action. But honestly, who does all that well?

What Goes Wrong?

Most of us aren’t sure how we think, let alone how the people we interact with think. We may get in an argument, because we’re trying to make a rational recommendation and the other person is trying to make a moral argument. Our creative solution may not work, if everyone just continues doing things by habit. And worst of all, relatively few people think using any consistent method.

In practice, few, if any, have been taught about all four different ways of thinking systematically, have been trained to use them all, know how they each differ and conflict with each other, and consistently apply them all correctly. Even if you are lucky enough to have a liberal arts college education, with degree requirements including ethics, creative arts and psychology & sociology, likely you still specialize in one way of thinking, knowing just enough about the other ways to get your thinking into trouble.

Unfortunately, the rest of us rely on a shifting, ad hoc hodgepodge blend of ‘thinking’, unaware of motives, dishonestly ignoring inconvenient facts, over-ruling our better judgement, and repeating the same old mistakes. We are driven by our instincts, we rationalize to suppress our guilt over having acted badly, and we can’t imagine trying a new path.

Since each way of thinking is different in motive, technique and objective, any blended thinking technique is flawed and unreliable. Just because we stumble into a jumbled solution, doesn’t mean that we’ve got our thinking straight. Think of it this way: you may know how to cook, play tennis and put together an outdoor grill, but you wouldn’t stir nuts and bolts into your chili with a racquet. It’s similarly wrong to let your instinctual thinking take over your moral judgement or bias your rational analysis or reduce your artistic creation into a common cliché. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. Each way of thinking must operate independently to work best. Only then, can they be combined with integrity.

Next Steps

Now that you get the general idea, every other Thursday, I’m going to review a method of thinking, discuss ways to improve it, or consider a relevant case, and then we can move on to mastery. We don’t need to excel in every way of thinking, but we do need to sort out when to use which and not muddle them together willy-nilly. Until we realize what’s wrong with our thinking, we won’t fix it.

The rest of the schedule stays the same for now, with visits on Monday, summaries etc. every other Thursday, and photo summaries every other Saturday. Ciao!