Post: #1

This is something that always grated on me, and recently there was a situation at work where it became doubly so, so curious other people's take.

Basically, if you make a decision that has a high degree of unpredictability associated with it, why do we feel the need to punish more so the person who made the same decision and had a bad outcome vs the one who made the same decision, and purely through luck did not?

I'll use drunk driving as an example. Two people make the same bad decision to drive drunk. Neither wants to kill anyone, but both accept that there is a much greater chance they will. I feel that people should only be held accountable to the decisions they make, and things directly within their control. Not supporting drunk driving, but as far as I'm concerned, both are equally guilty. The fact one hit someone and the other did not is immaterial, because both showed equal apathy towards others in making that choice, but fate favored one over the other. Is it just for revenge?

The specific situation at work was basically everyone ignored certain parts of the Standard work procedure. It was "just how it was done" (famous words I know). Anyways sure enough eventually there was a big fuckup, and the guy and his lead hand got fired. The fact that it happened to him, and not any of the other 25 people and lead hands doing it the exact same way for years and years boiled down to luck. Yet when this was discovered, he was still fired, and everyone else just got a talking to "don't do this any more".

And the other way too, for instance in resource exploration. Highly unpredictable. If you have a bunch of guys, each with a 20% shot of finding a 2000% payoff, why do we say the guy who actually finds something is a better engineer or whatever? All made the exact same decisions, all were going in with the same probability of success, yet one is called a better engineer for what amounts to luck.

The airline I fly here has signs on the seats, if you're caught using a cell phone its like a $200 fine. If it results in injury/damage, it's $20k. All you can do is decide to use the phone or not. Whether it impacts anything is completely beyond your control.

I suppose the extreme version of this, would be looking to lottery winners for advice on how to win again.

Post: #2

Are you saying the drunk driver who made it home safely should get charged with vehicular homicide...or that the drunk driver who killed somone should get away with it? I think I disagree with your entire post, I just don't know exactly what it is you are getting at.

Christopher Colombus could have been lost at sea and perrished like millions of others...but he made it to the Americas. He should not get any more credit than the man who no one ever heard from again?

This all sounds very marxist to me.

Post: #3

I think you'll find this video very interesting. Sam Harris argues, very convincingly IMO, that free will is an illusion and people cannot be held responsible for anything they do, nor given credit for anything they do.

I urge anyone who has time to watch this, as it's very revealing and insightful.

I won't embed because I want to skip to when Sam begins speaking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t4GD3VxGpI&t=6m1s

Edit: Sylo, a terrible example within a terrible post.

Post: #4

(05-28-2013 09:10 AM)sylo Wrote:  Are you saying the drunk driver who made it home safely should get charged with vehicular homicide...or that the drunk driver who killed somone should get away with it? I think I disagree with your entire post, I just don't know exactly what it is you are getting at.

Christopher Colombus could have been lost at sea and perrished like millions of others...but he made it to the Americas. He should not get any more credit than the man who no one ever heard from again?

This all sounds very marxist to me.

I'm arguing that people should be held accountable or rewarded for only the things within their scope of control, and decisions they make. Anything outside their control, well they can't control it, by definition wasn't directly their doing, it was essentially luck, so why should they be rewarded or punished for it?

Take slot machines for instance. 100% luck. Should we idolize and learn from someone who hits a jackpot? I would argue no. They didn't do anything special. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

The other side, take lets say high level math, a guy struggles long and hard and develops an elegant proof that was never done before. I'd argue that's almost 100% skill/talent. I would argue we should learn from that. Anyone else in that place at that time, would not have solved that problem.

Now, there are a lot of things that are in the middle. X% decisions, Y% luck. If 10 drunk drivers set out, and they all have a 10% chance of hitting someone, they've all made the same decision, and all accepted that selfish risk. What happens after that is outside of their control. So here lets say its 90% bad decision, 10% luck. One of those guys hits someone crossing the road, because they couldn't react in time. Had any of the others been in that same situation, they too would have hit the guy, because their reaction time was similarly impaired. The fact that they got lucky and no one decided to cross the street in front of them is just that. Luck. My point is that statistically, all 10 equally share the responsibility for the outcome (sort of a Schrodinger's cat idea I guess, each person when they set out has 10% of a death on their shoulders). But, because the one guy got unlucky, he shoulders 100% of the blame.

Speaking directly to your example, was Columbus a better sailor than the rest? Was Columbus better outfitted? Did he have a unique viewpoint to weather patterns or a special hypothesis that was responsible for his voyage succeeding where others failed? If so fine I give him all the credit in the world.

Or was he just in the right place at the right time, and had the fortune of blue skies and favorable winds? If that's the case he's no more special than anyone else who could have been put there.

Should the head of a company get huge salaries and bonus because they post a profit when the economy is screaming and every other business is doing great too? Again, its largely based on factors outside their control. In a screaming economy, you could put any retard there and still post a profit. Does that mean said retard is a financial genius?

If four ppl have two street fights, one goes down clean, but in the other, one guy punches the other, he steps on a big rock, loses his balance, falls, hits his head on the ground and dies. Guy #2 will be charged with considerably more than guy #1, but really did the exact same thing. By dumb luck the outcome was different.

Post: #5

Read 'Moral Luck' by Bernard Williams and the subsequent summary article by Thomas Nagel. Those speak precisely about moral luck and how inconsistent we can be in our judgments concerning moral blameworthiness. In fact I seem to remember the drunk driving example specifically being used.

Post: #6

I ak still not getting your point fully. If you are bashing luck, which I think you are...so what? If you are in the right spot at the right time, can't that also mean you put yourself in the right spot, at the right time? I am reminded of a quote by Thomas Jefferson "I believe in luck. The more I work, the more luck I have." (Might not be verbaitum)

What is your end goal? What is your point? We are all equal and should share the wealth? That is what I am getting but I am not sure. You ask a lot of questions but I do not see any defining statements or solutions.

Sapien, what specifically do you have a problem with?

Post: #7

(05-28-2013 09:25 AM)Homo_Sapien Wrote:  I think you'll find this video very interesting. Sam Harris argues, very convincingly IMO, that free will is an illusion and people cannot be held responsible for anything they do, nor given credit for anything they do.

I urge anyone who has time to watch this, as it's very revealing and insightful.

I won't embed because I want to skip to when Sam begins speaking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t4GD3VxGpI&t=6m1s

Edit: Sylo, a terrible example within a terrible post.

So how do you reconcile this with being a on a forum that is devoted to men improving themselves and rests on the premise that people can change themselves by choosing to work at it? Not only that but the forum also mocks people who choose not to change (ie. fat chicks saying that can't do anything about it when it's really just them not wanting to do anything about it). Lots of intellectually inclined people have been taking free will to task in the last couple of years - as a matter of fact I've seen it a couple of times in this forum - but I haven't seen one person actually live out the idea to it's fullest extent.

Post: #8

(05-28-2013 01:08 PM)Wutang Wrote:  

(05-28-2013 09:25 AM)Homo_Sapien Wrote:  I think you'll find this video very interesting. Sam Harris argues, very convincingly IMO, that free will is an illusion and people cannot be held responsible for anything they do, nor given credit for anything they do.

I urge anyone who has time to watch this, as it's very revealing and insightful.

I won't embed because I want to skip to when Sam begins speaking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t4GD3VxGpI&t=6m1s

Edit: Sylo, a terrible example within a terrible post.

So how do you reconcile this with being a on a forum that is devoted to men improving themselves and rests on the premise that people can change themselves by choosing to work at it? Not only that but the forum also mocks people who choose not to change (ie. fat chicks saying that can't do anything about it when it's really just them not wanting to do anything about it). Lots of intellectually inclined people have been taking free will to task in the last couple of years - as a matter of fact I've seen it a couple of times in this forum - but I haven't seen one person actually live out the idea to it's fullest extent.

Even if free will doesn't exist we still experience our lives as if it does. There's also a lot of evidence that the way we experience consciousness doesn't actually exist in any real way. Our brains are constantly making decisions before we've realized we've made them and we only ascribe our own will to them after the fact. So in a way there's no getting away from this paradox of human experience. We can logically know that we don't run the way we feel we do 'under the hood' but still be unable to feel otherwise.

Who knows why people change. Could be they were just in the right place at the right time to hear the proper message, their current brain wiring was open to it and they modified their behavior accordingly.

But we live every day accepting that some fates are forever closed off to us. Most of us weren't born with the genetics to be NBA stars, and most of us never will become rock stars either. We're okay with accepting determinism on this level.

Post: #9

I do believe most of us are willing to accept determinism on the level that we are limited in certain ways - whether it be just by virtue of being a mortal human being or just not having the right genetics to be capable of certain acts. I do think we have the ability to choose among the choices that are presented to us. A fat chick, due to a lifetime of bad habits is going to have a harder time to resist the urge to chomp that on that slice pizza after a night partying in a Toronto bar rejecting all the desperate guys but there is still that possibility. It'll be harder for her then for someone who isn't half-way to becoming Jabba the Hut but I reject the notion that she doesn't have a say at all.

Post: #10

Often in life punishment comes based on the result of the act - not the act itself. It's true that every night thousands of drunk people are getting behind the wheel and making it to their destination without either getting pulled over, or injuring/killing someone. But I have no problem with punishing those that DO get caught or bring harm to others. Yeah, it's dumb luck (I'm not sure "luck" is the word we really want to use here, but I get your point) that one driver avoided getting caught or getting in an accident, while another didn't avoid that fate, but so what? There's a law against stepping behind the wheel when you're impaired to prevent such accidents. If you roll the dice and do so, and the worst happens, you have to accept the consequences. Whether or not you step behind the wheel is fully within your control.

Post: #11

I had the exact same response to drunk driving, after someone I knew was killed by a drunk driver. Like you said, for every drunk driver guilty of negligent manslaughter, there are ten or a hundred who were just as guilty, they just didn't have the bad luck to kill someone.

Part of the problem is that with drunk driving, BAC isn't everything - one man at a BAC of .10% may be a lot more dangerous than an alcoholic with a BAC of .11%. So you don't have a good method for discerning just how negligent someone is until someone gets killed. On the other hand, it suggests we may need to focus on other ways to fight drunk driving. States have begun to mandate breathalyzers/ignition interlocks after the first DUI - a no-shit sherlock policy if ever there was one.

The factory example is cleaner, and I'd agree, if everyone was doing it wrong and the machine exploded only for one guy, they should all be punished equally. Problem is people don't think in terms of probability, they only judge by what they see. Frederic Bastiat's Parable of the Broken Window is an excellent example, focusing on this human failure in the economic realm.

When I recounted the example of drunk driving to people, the typical response was misunderstanding: "What do you mean? One killed someone, one didn't. One's guilty, one isn't."

Post: #12

Sylo, I don't know why you keep on bringing up Marxism or where you get that I want to redistribute all the wealth. The quote is more along along the lines of "The harder I work, the luckier I get". I have no problem with rewarding hard work. Or even calculated risks done many times which eventually work out for someone. Its like saying that because a lottery winner is richer than a self made millionaire, I'll have the lottery winner run my company. Then justify the argument with 'Well he's richer, so he must be doing something right!'

If you put the most successful CEO at the head of a company in a dying industry, in the middle of a huge recession, His results on the stock price will probably be worse than any of the track records of those tech companies during the 2000s bubble. Does that make him a worse leader/CEO? Or did he make excellent decisions, but despite that, all the negative external factors still couldn't be overcome?

If you read Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers', it touches on a lot of this. Basically that luck is responsible for a much bigger part of success and outcomes than most people would like to admit. One example they use is Bill Gates, while undeniably brilliant and a hard worker, they say that a series of fortunate events (namely access to friends and free computing time when there were only a handful of computers in the country, which coupled with his work ethic allowed him to move to the forefront of programming ability. Had that 'lucky break' not happened, some other hard working computer nerd who happened to get all that free computing time might be in his place)

Let's drop Drunk Driving because it's too controversial, I'll give another work example. For 10 years, through 3 head bosses, 3 shop managers, and dozens of employees doing something the same incorrect way there was no problem. People knew it wasn't technically "right" but they did it anyway because there was never an issue, and it was faster. The bosses turned a blind eye, because the work got done faster, and if anything happened, they had plausible deniability. Then there was a small surface detonation of explosives. (only burns, but still a huge deal). Worker, shop manager, and head boss all got fired, because they were doing things the wrong way. What about all the other employees? What about the previous shop managers? What about the other head bosses? They are all equally culpable.

Timoteo you say "If you roll the dice and do so, and the worst happens, you have to accept the consequences." My entire argument is that you can't control what happens after you roll the dice. All you can control is whether you choose to throw them or not. If two people make the same good or bad decision to play, I think that's all you can judge them on.

In poker/gambling, there is a concept known as expected value. The expected value for the roll of a roulette wheel is -5.26%. That is, if you bet a dollar, you will expect to lose 5.26 cents. This comes from the long term statistics, that if you play 100,000 rolls (on a 38 space wheel), you will lose 37/38 times. So in 100k hands, you *should* win 2632, lose the rest. payout is 2632*$36, after an outlay of $100k, for a change of -$5263. Obviously you can't lose 5.26 cents on one spin, its either win 36, or lose 1, so people tend to ignore the long term thought process there.

With poker you want to get into situations with +EV, which can result from other players making many -EV decisions. If you do this often enough, over the long term you will make money. However, trying to explain to someone else that the guy who lost $1000 in one night is a great player because of the decisions he made, is difficult. He is judged on the outcome, not the decisions.

Post: #13

Here's another quote from wikipedia on moral luck which I think illustrates the point quite well:

"There are two people driving cars, Driver A, and Driver B. They are alike in every way. Driver A is driving down a road, and, in a moment of inattention, runs a red light as a child is crossing the street. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short, does everything to try to avoid hitting the child – alas, he hits and kills the child. Driver B, in the meantime, also runs a red light, but since no one is crossing, he gets a traffic ticket, but nothing more.

If a bystander were asked to morally evaluate Drivers A and B, there is very good reason to expect him or her to say that Driver A is due more moral blame than Driver B. After all, his course of action resulted in a death, whereas the course of action taken by Driver B was quite uneventful. However, there are absolutely no differences in the controllable actions performed by Drivers A and B. The only disparity is that in the case of Driver A, an external uncontrollable event occurred, whereas it did not in the case of Driver B. The external uncontrollable event, of course, is the child crossing the street. In other words, there is no difference at all in what the two of them could have done – however, one seems clearly more to blame than the other. How does this occur?"

Post: #14

Free Will is a complex issue. The best analysis of it (and one which argues we do have Free Will) I have seen is 'Freedom Evolves' by Daniel Dennett (my favourite philosopher).

Dennett carefully guides you through all the common pitfalls surrounding this topic. And he shows how easy it is to become mistakenly convinced we don't have free will.

Dennett is a great writer. In fact I am currently reading his latest book as well. And I can't imagine being able to think clearly through these issues without him as a guide.

Post: #15

(05-28-2013 10:45 PM)cardguy Wrote:  Free Will is a complex issue. The best analysis of it (and one which argues we do have Free Will) I have seen is 'Freedom Evolves' by Daniel Dennett (my favourite philosopher).

Dennett carefully guides you through all the common pitfalls surrounding this topic. And he shows how easy it is to become mistakenly convinced we don't have free will.

Dennett is a great writer. In fact I am currently reading his latest book as well. And I can't imagine being able to think clearly through these issues without him as a guide.

Dennett is a thought provoking modern analytic philosopher. Perhaps the only analytic philosopher I really like. His essay on something about the "three states" regarding how we first ascribe a static, then algorithmic, and finally intentional description of something given its level of complexity was a really good essay.

Post: #16

Yeah - I think that one is in his collection 'Brainchildren'.

Post: #17

Hey Samseau,

Let me know what other philosophers you like.

Personally - I am not so interested in alot of the issues that Dennett tackles. But Dennett makes them so interesting. The clarity and ingenuity of his thinking is like seeing a magician show you how a trick is done. Even if you aren't interested in the trick - learning the secret might still be of interest.

I started in philosophy by being interested in the 'big' issues like God, Time and a vague sense of 'existential dread'.

But now my outlook is pretty relaxed and I just enjoy philosophy to see the ingenuity of smart people battling it out. Like watching a chess game in which you are not bothered which side wins.

I also think alot of philosophy is hampered when tackling the 'big' questions by not making proper use of some of the interesting ideas coming out physics (and evolution). Here is one example - /thread-20880-...#pid401244

I also find the field of thermodynamics to be very interesting when thinking about alot of the 'big' questions in philosophy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ph...al_physics

As a result - I spend half my time studying smart people like Dennett battling it out in well covered academic fields.

And the other half I spend diving into weird and unfashionable metaphysics such as the 'B-theory of time' and Modal Realism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-theory_of_time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism

And trying to find parallels with that and some of the unusual ideas in physics (such as time dilation and Godel's Rotating Universe approach to time travel). Or even just some of the wild thought experiments that have sprung out of physics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

It is fun to try and jumble these areas together along with alot of the paradoxes from mathematics, physics and philosophy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

Sometimes it helps with you analysis of an issue. And at other times it shows how confused the brain can get when trying to think about these areas.

Sometimes I go to my local Uni library to look up old philosophy papers. It is really fun being in a Uni library again. Here is a recent one I am going to look up. What is nice is that the paper makes use of one paradox to help answer another. I love clever shit like that...

http://philpapers.org/rec/IRVHBP

On top of that I enjoy going over the history of philosophy. It is fun trying to try and understand the exact world view of each of the great philosophers.

But it is hard to stick at this since you need to be in a particular mood to want to think about philosophy. And usually I find myself studying other areas instead. I think this I because I have full-time job. Wheareas when I was not going to lecture at Uni - I could spend weeks at a time just thinking over one tiny area of interest.

So - that above covers the three different ways I interact with philosophy. It is fun being able to tackle the same subject in different and enjoyable ways.

In the future - I plan on studying Theology (even though I'm an atheist) because I find it interesting studying how religious people debate with each other over questions relating to the nature of 'God'.

Lastly - what is the difference between a philosophy and a religion? Divine Revelation. Which is why Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion.

Just wanted to throw that out since it is an elegant description of the key difference between religion and philosophy.

Post: #18

Intention.

Are you aware of what you want?

Post: #19

Cardguy - I think you would be interested in Karl Popper. Easy as hell to read, and one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He's a heavyweight in the philosophy of science, and since you enjoy science you'll enjoy Popper.

Read two books of his:

"The Logic of Scientific Discovery" and "Conjectures and Refutations."

Post: #20

I wonder what Dennet and Dawkins think of game.

It really is worth them checking out. It's a form of evolution. Or re-discovering evolution.. re-volution.

I'd like to see what they have to say about blogs like Heartiste and Evo Pscyh in general.

But the problem is that we are the only scientists in this field.

As much as I love their thoughts, those guys would probably dismiss us as a cult.

Post: #21

This is absurd.

By the logic of the author of this topic - either everyone should be charged with murder and punished, or no one should be charged with murder and punished.

Because if there is no free will then determined outcome doesn't starts from the moment you get drunk. It starts with your birth and even predates that.

Even if you are sober you are no better then the man who killed a person because of drunk driving - you just happened to not be drunk that evening or you just happen to like drinking less or you just happen to have no need to drive while drunk or you just happen to have higher motivation to abstain from alcohol, because you just happen to be a bodybuilder who just happens to have an event tomorrow. But none of that is your choice.

Time and time again it has been proven that equality brings greater misery to everyone then inequality. There is just no way how to not make everyone more miserable following this logic. Either you remove punishments form everyone that will cause massive drunk driving, form people who have feared legal consequences or you punish everyone charging every person with murder trying to put the whole humanity into prison, which is absurd, although this is precisely what feminists try to do by suggesting that every man is an undercover rapist.

Post: #22

(05-29-2013 05:16 AM)Mage Wrote:  This is absurd.

By the logic of the author of this topic - either everyone should be charged with murder and punished, or no one should be charged with murder and punished.

Because if there is no free will then determined outcome doesn't starts from the moment you get drunk. It starts with your birth and even predates that.

You're confusing two distinct threads in this conversation.

The original poster is talking about moral luck, and the way that two people equally culpable for the same negligence, such as driving drunk, will be seen as rightfully facing vastly different consequences depending upon circumstances beyond their control. Both drunk drivers are putting other people at equal risk but one is guilty of vehicular homicide because maybe he left the house five minutes before.

This is a completely different issue to the second discussion here which is over the existence or non-existence of free will.

Post: #23

Cool thread. I appreciate the search for depth and meaning in this world of perfectly orchestrated chaos. One thing I like about this forum is that no matter what you post you will be challenged. There are some smart ass mo fo's all up in here. Nice.

Yes, some people are just "better" at certain things. Why is irrelevant. For example, I drive better drunk than some people do sober (up to a point). I have a friend who is ten years younger than me, he does not drink, but he cannot drive to save his life. He has totalled four cars in the last five years. I have been driving around "drunk" for twenty some odd years and have never had so much as a fender bender. I'm not into this anymore because its lame to do, but nonetheless I drive better drunk than my bro does sober. At least that's the conclusion I draw from our parallel driving records.

You know, in Costa Rica they lose a lot of people on the roads because they don't police the hell out of their people. I've actually lifted my screwdriver to "cheers" the cops as my buddy did a key bump off his watch and passed them on a double yellow line on a curve. They just honked and waved (they were familiar with his vehicle). But this small government/lack of regulation applies not just to the management of roads but the entire society in Costa giving the country an air of freedom, "pura vida," and low(er) levels of stress. For every one American man that lives to 100 the Nicoya Peninsula has four. They also don't have the public displays of rage we have. People just don't bust into schools and start mowing people down with semiautomatic weapons. So, say what you will, but I'd rather lose more people on the roads due to an individuals free choice to be stupid and careless than live in a culture of video surveillance and police DUI checkpoints (which I believe are unconstitutional) where I have to take a drug test every time I want to start my car or apply for a minimum wage job at the local 7-Eleven. Let freedom reign and let the chips fall where they may.

Post: #24

I get what you are saying; so what I am saying is 'who cares'? I am not saying this as in who cares about your post, the discussion is interesting. I am saying who cares why? No one can explain it...why things happen the way they do.

I am a huge Dodger fan, but lets use the case of Bill Buckner. He was a professional athlete at the top of his game and was 1 out away from winning the World Series. A routine ground ball came to him and for some reason, the ball goes between his legs and the Cubs loose a game that they should have won. You can not explain why it happened, just that it did happen.

I think you stated it in your first post, no one cares about the causes, they care about the results. I think it is a slippery-slope when you start to concern yourself with causes and not concrete results...ie the kid getting hit in the intersection vs a ticket for a red light. You can not punish a what if, but you can certainly punish a did happen.

Life just isnt fair, and it is useless to wonder why. It just is.

Post: #25

(05-29-2013 07:39 AM)Therapsid Wrote:  

(05-29-2013 05:16 AM)Mage Wrote:  This is absurd.

By the logic of the author of this topic - either everyone should be charged with murder and punished, or no one should be charged with murder and punished.

Because if there is no free will then determined outcome doesn't starts from the moment you get drunk. It starts with your birth and even predates that.

You're confusing two distinct threads in this conversation.

The original poster is talking about moral luck, and the way that two people equally culpable for the same negligence, such as driving drunk, will be seen as rightfully facing vastly different consequences depending upon circumstances beyond their control. Both drunk drivers are putting other people at equal risk but one is guilty of vehicular homicide because maybe he left the house five minutes before.

This is a completely different issue to the second discussion here which is over the existence or non-existence of free will.

No

The second discussion arose from the first and they are actually the same discussion, just with two branches. Moral luck or free will, no difference. The point stands regardless.