Peter Singer and intuition

Reason with yourself | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

See the link above for an interesting article by Peter Singer in the Guardian. Given my general dislike of his work, it is gratifying to see that the great majority of reader comments are critical of his argument.

The article is about moral intuitions, and research that indicates how cross-cultural they are. Singer argues:

...the fact that our moral intuitions are universal and part of our human nature does not mean that they are right. On the contrary, these findings should make us more sceptical about relying on our intuitions. There is, after all, no ethical significance in the fact that one method of harming others has existed for most of our evolutionary history, and the other is relatively new. Blowing up people with bombs is no better than clubbing them to death. And the death of one person is a lesser tragedy than the death of five, no matter how that death is brought about. So we should think for ourselves, not just listen to our intuitions.

While it would be wrong to say that reason has no place in moral decision making, it seems to me that Singer's point is exactly the opposite lesson that one should learn from modern history.

The great warning from the 20th century is surely that rational and logical arguments can be extremely successful in convincing large numbers of people to act in a way that is appallingly immoral and contrary to moral intuition. If anything, the remedy for the genocides, political pogroms and ideologically induced famines would have been an emphasis on moral intuition, not scepticism of it.

Singer's article deals with a philosopher's hypothetical dilemma involving a runaway rail trolley and how to think about the most moral action to take, given that all outcomes will involve at least some loss of life. For those who know Singer's controversial views on the disabled, this comment by "Shrover" following the Guardian article is pretty funny:

Prof Singer omitted his preferred scenario, where you can push a disabled person in front of the trolley and save five lives without costing one.

The best simple explanation of the main objection to Singer's utilitarian approach is given by "Calgacus" further down in the comments:

Singer is obviously a utilitarian. Utilitarianism is very limited on its own and leads to many obviously wrong actions - only a combination of utilitarianism with deontological principles can give a good guide to moral choices.

In other words a result which e.g saves one more life than it costs is not necessarily right if it involves murdering someone. We should do what avoids suffering/produces happiness for the greatest number of people provided that we don't do anything clearly wrong in the process (e.g stealing food from someone who has more than they need may be moral if you're starving but murdering someone never is).

My distrust of Singer is further reinforced.

UPDATE: by coincidence (I think), there are a couple of stories relating to the "runaway train" moral dilemma at news@nature and Scientific American. The news @nature story puts it this way:

A runaway train is speeding down the tracks towards five workmen. You and a stranger are standing on a bridge over the track. The only way to save the five is to push the stranger in front of the train to his death, and his body will stop it from reaching them.

Do you push him?

Most people answer that they could not personally push a stranger to his death, even though more lives would be saved than lost. But a new study published online in Nature finds that people with damage to a particular part of the frontal lobe reach the opposite — alarmingly utilitarian — conclusion.

I like the phrase "alarmingly utilitarian"! My sentiments exactly.

Over at the Scientific American report, though, comes this quote, indicating a much more "scientific" attitude to the meaning of the study (emphasis mine):

"The decisions of VMPC patients are not amoral," says senior study author Antonio Damasio, formerly a University of Iowa neurologist and now director of the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute. "They are just different from the decisions of other subjects." He adds that these subjects seem to lack the human conflict between emotion and reason. "Because of their brain damage, they have abnormal social emotions in real life," says Ralph Adolphs, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology. "They lack empathy and compassion."

Funny how scientists often don't like to use the word "amoral", which goes back to my original point about Singer's article.

Nazi Skinheads of Russia

Foreign Correspondent - 20/03/2007: Russia - Hate Crimes

Foreign Correspondent last night had a fascinating and disturbing account of the rise of neo-Nazi skinheads in St Petersburg, of all places. I would not have expected thugs with stylised swastikas on their shirts to be in Russia, but there you go.

They like to bash the non Slavic types (or even those who are just unlucky enough to look ethnic) and have killed many.

The 2 thugs who let themselves be interviewed no doubt got off on the publicity (with lots of shots of them walking the streets looking intimidating and giving the odd Nazi salute to no one in particular,) but the stories of the children attacked by such groups were particularly upsetting. (As was the fact that the police, courts and politicians don't seem to be taking the problem too seriously.)

I expect the story will be available on video soon on the Foreign Correspondent site linked above. It is well worth watching.

No going back

So, Mr. Hitchens, weren't you wrong about Iraq? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Christopher Hitchens comes outs swinging against any suggestion that he should admit the Iraq invasion was a mistake. Good argument well made, in my opinion.

Scepticism on the EU and CO2

Comment is free: High hopes

Bjorn Lomborg's comment piece on the recent EU announcements about CO2 cuts is well worth reading. A few key extracts:

Man-made climate change is, of course, real, and constitutes a serious problem. Yet the current cut-emissions-now-before-it-is-too-late mindset neglects the fact that the world has no sensible short-term solutions.

This seems to be why we focus on feel-good approaches like the Kyoto Protocol, whose fundamental problem has always been that it is simultaneously impossibly ambitious, environmentally inconsequential, and inordinately expensive. It required such big reductions that only few countries could live up to it. ...

We will not be able to solve global warming over the next decades, but only the next half or full century. We need to find a viable, long-term strategy that is smart, equitable, and doesn't require inordinate sacrifice for trivial benefits. Fortunately, there is such a strategy: research and development. Investing in R&D of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would leave future generations able to make serious and yet economically feasible and advantageous cuts. A new global warming treaty should mandate spending 0.05% of GDP on R&D in the future. It would be much cheaper, yet do much more good in the long run.

Get a grip

Lateline tonight is reporting that Newspoll tomorrow will show a 2 party preferred vote of 61% to Labor and 39% to the Libs.

A few weeks ago, Kevin Rudd said that he intended "playing with" John Howard's mind.

I reckon that the electorate has decided to get in first. In my opinion, there's no way the current polling results show a real intention to abandon Howard in such a decisive way. They're just toying with him.

Andrew Bolt seemed unusually pessimistic on Insiders this week too. But I did agree with Matt Price's Saturday column that argued that Abbott's "character attack" on Rudd was nothing spectacular as far as these things go. I liked this paragraph (referring to Abbott's atack):

All right, a little nasty (mud level: medium) but Julia Gillard must have been struck with severe temporary amnesia when she ripped into Abbott for sinking to "a new low in Australian politics". Hyperbole, for sure, especially when you remember Gillard's fondness for Mark Latham included qualified admiration for his diaries (mud level: mayday, mayday, everybody's drowwwnninn ...)

I don't find Swan, Gillard and Rudd's media performances of late particularly impressive. In fact, the "tired and arrogant" government message (which was obviously promoted as their message for the week) strikes me as particularly fake. For example, one of the major issues that seems to be working against the government is the perception of its IR laws, but these are clearly a case of a reforming step too far, and not a problem arising from a lack of ideas. The Keating government, on the other hand, really did seem to have hit the a wall as far as policy innovation was concerned.

So, people of Australia, get a grip and stop toying with the PM. Wait for real policy details from Labor, at least.

Where the deer and the pygmy rabbits play

20 pygmy rabbits released in Washington - Los Angeles Times

It's cute furry animal day here today, obviously. Have a look at the photo in the story above. It's a very cute rabbit. (Can you tickle them, I wonder?) According to the article:

They are the smallest rabbits in the United States and one of only two types in North America that dig their own burrows. Adults weigh about a pound, and measure a foot long

In the US, they are releasing them into the wild to revive a very small natural population.

It strikes me as a little odd that in some countries rabbits can live without causing environmental havoc, yet in Australia they became a devastating plague. (And Queensland is still so paranoid about them that you still can't even own one as a pet.)

I guess it all something to do with natural predators, and delicate balances, etc. I don't know, I sort of regret that squirrels were never imported here.

(I didn't so biology as a separate subject in high school. Can you tell?)

It couldn't happen to a better class..

BA sorry for first class body mishap.

From the above ABC story:

British Airways has issued an apology after cabin crew put the body of a woman who died on a flight to India in a vacant first class seat....

After she died, crew members moved her from an economy seat into a vacant first class seat where they strapped her in with a seatbelt and propped up the body with pillows.

Can't say that I had ever thought before about what they would do with a dead body on a flight.

How to tickle a rat

What Happens When You Tickle a Lab Rat? See for Yourself - TierneyLab - Science - New York Times Blog

This New York Times story above links to a video showing rats being tickled. At first I thought that maybe the squeaking sound they make (only made audible by electronics) might actually indicate annoyance or something else. But when you see then chasing the tickling hand in a manner that looks playful, that seems very unlikely.

What a fun job: investigating how to give rats pleasure.

All about Moon dust

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lunar dust 'may harm astronauts'

This is an interesting, fairly lengthy article about the problems moon dust may cause for astronaut's health. Same thing may apply on Mars too, I think I have read elsewhere.

A surprising survey

Iraqis: life is getting better-News-World-Iraq-TimesOnline

I wouldn't have expected this:

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

Yet in the next paragraph, it says:

By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces.

I guess what it doesn't answer is when the locals want the multinational forces to leave. But it is a bit odd that the survey indicates support for the current security operations, but that they also want the main troops doing it to leave.

What is going on in Spain?

Large Iraq war protests across Spain | International | Reuters

Don't they have anything better to do other than making very sexually explicit art house films and protesting against a war they no longer have any part in? They are even protesting against sending troops in to support Afghanistan. Just how many socialists want to see the Taliban back in power?

Happy music time

This deliberately educational song, as covered by They Might be Giants, never fails to makes me feel happy. (The video, made be someone at home, is nothing special; I post this just so you can listen to the music.)



If you want to hear what the 1959 original version of this sounded like, there is a short clip of a young looking Sting lip-syncing it. It looks like it is from a TV show, and I think he was trying to be funny.

Boys for the boys

Making male babies for gay men. - Slate Magazine

As if the world was in need of more men (when sex selecting abortion practices in India and China mean that there will soon be hundreds of millions more men than women,) it appears that gay men in America who want to make their own kiddies usually choose boys too (at least if the choice is available).

Sex selection should be banned for everyone, everywhere.

It's not the beer, it's the soap

ScienceDaily: Obesity In Men Linked To Common Chemical Found In Plastic And Soap

From the above article:

Phthalates have been widely used for more than 50 years, but only recently implicated as a possible health risk in people. Animal studies have shown consistently that phthalates depress testosterone levels. Recent human studies have found that phthalates are associated with poor semen quality in men and subtle changes in the reproductive organs in boy babies. This connection between phthalates and testosterone helped to establish a basis for the study, Stahlhut said.

Stahlhut's group hypothesized that phthalates might have a direct link to obesity, since low testosterone appears to cause increased belly fat and pre-diabetes in men....

The analysis found that, as expected, several phthalate metabolites showed a positive correlation with abdominal obesity. Indeed, men with the highest levels of phthalates in their urine had more belly fat and insulin resistance. Researchers adjusted for other factors that could influence the results, such as the mens' age, race, food intake, physical activity levels and smoking.

Pretty surprising, hey?

I'm ready for my close up..

ScienceDaily: Videotaped Confessions Can Create Bias Against A Suspect

For those with an interest in law enforcement, this story indicates that the way suspects are videotaped affects a jury's perception of a confession:

In videotaped confessions, many law enforcement agencies focus the camera on only the suspect. Lassiter’s research shows that this practice creates what he calls a camera-perspective bias that leads trial participants to view the confessions as voluntary, regardless of how interrogators obtained them.

That sort of makes sense to me, and it's easily fixed. Good to see some very useful psychological work being done.

More on the big ideas

Could Crazy Technology Save the Planet?

This Physorg.com article starts off with a bad metaphor for the geo-engineering style proposals for reducing CO2:

"Of course it's desperation," said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. "It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can't be trusted to do the right thing."

Well I wouldn't trust this planet to ever be well behaved. It's spent a hell of a lot of its time covered in ice, and by that I mean the real thing, not the crazy homeless man with bugs under his skin type.

Anyway, the article is worth reading. I didn't realise another test of fertilising the oceans with iron was about to begin.

A dark energy solution?

0703364.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The link is to a paper on arxiv in which a couple of guys claim to have sorted out what causes dark energy. Not that I can understand it properly, but they say their solution is a relatively simple one, which cuts out the need for a lot of the more complicated stuff in other proposals. It's also testable (unlike string theory.)

Good luck guys. If their solution turns out to be correct, remember that I may one of the first bloggers in the world to have posted about it.

Bad medical practices of the world

Unneeded cure spreads a deadly killer - International Herald Tribune

Oh good. The "Blog This" feature on Blogger works now on the new version of Blogger. I find it very handy.

Anyway, back to the point. The story above is about a medical treatment issue I had never heard of before: the use of unnecessary blood transfusions in Russia, Asia and Eastern Europe, and its role in spreading HIV.

Keep Gran alive for Christmas

Phillip Adams once wrote somewhere about how intense hatred of a politician can be a powerful incentive to stay alive, in the hope of seeing said politician fail.

Further confirmation of this idea, and a lot of excitement amongst the left generally, is currently being generated by the strong Labor polling. Have a look at the comments to this post at Road to Surfdom. Some extracts:

I was talking to an old mate yesterday who is eighty six and not in good health, we talked about things generally and he said suddenly, “Lang, I’d like to live just a little while longer, I want to see Howard voted out and most of the people he controls, I fought in the second war, as you know, and the friends and family that died in that war would be most upset that this fellow has been in a position that he should never have been allowed to obtain and the disgrace he has brought on this country.”

And how about this piece of calm political commentary:

The point is that the current Canberra Mafioso absolutely HAS to disintegrate into oblivion, and soon. History will eventually write down Howard’s band of loony freaks as just that: a marauding abberation that unfortunately reigned upon the nice land of Australia simultaneously with the uprising of the worst ghostly shadows of Hitler and Stalin: e.g. Bush, Blair and the chronically addicted liar and dangerous warmonger extraordinaire: John W. Howard of Australia....

Only a snail who has lived in a darkened hole for the last ten years would think that John Howard and his Gestapo militia of stinking jackbooted thugs has brought benefit and honesty to this country....

If Howard’s Nazis aren’t thrown out soon, then we won’t have a home. Or an environment. Or a future.

I suppose this means that if there is a Labor win later this year, there will be a sudden surge in deaths caused by all those frail or terminally ill people who have been hanging on just to see Howard's defeat.

If you want to have your aged relative here for Christmas, I say vote Howard.

I want a can

Japundit has a story about a new insect spray that works by freezing the bug. Sounds cool (boom boom.)

But... wouldn't an accidental spray to the eye with that be a lot more dangerous than what happens with your average can of insecticide? Paging litigation lawyers...