Grasp the Nettle

An important and possibly overlooked part of fallibility is that you are very frequently wrong about the way in which you are wrong, even if you’ve identified that there’s an error. These are mistakes about mistakes!

Example: You think: “I sort of understood this concept, but then forgot it, and that’s why I messed up.”
The truth: “I never really understood it in the first place.”

It’s easy to fall into this. One would rather think one partially knew something than that one never knew it. It’s easy to want to “trade up” in terms of mistakes.

But it’s important to remember that this is one way bad memes can survive. If you don’t identify the error in your thinking properly, it will keep happening; it’s not enough to be right about being wrong. You have to know the way in which you are wrong.

It’s possible to understand something in a vague sense, but not really think through the implications of it because you don’t want to deal with those implications. Ayn Rand referred to this sort of thing as a “blank-out” in her work. Here’s her talking about it:

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: “Who am I to know?” he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”– Ayn Rand, Galt Speech

For certain kinds of knowledge, related to, say, the value of certain relationships, or the value of going to school, etc., there is a psychological impediment to thinking very clearly that arises specifically because of the reach of those ideas and the reach of changing them. One can recognize that there are problems with the interactions one has with individuals in one’s life, or that one doesn’t really enjoy going to school, etc. But thinking clearly might cause one’s life to change in complex and scary-seeming ways (causing schisms with lovers or relatives, dropping out of school), and lead to what seems like lots more problems; this seems overwhelming and dizzying. Hence, blank-out.

It doesn’t matter whether or not one’s ideas are inexplicit or explicit — blank-out can still happen.  “Knowing” a formal system of arguments for a proposition means very little if one cannot apply this knowledge outside a very narrow domain. The slightest deviation from that formal system and your understanding turns out to be shaky. This happens in math and can happen in morality.

One has to remember though, that identifying problems is never a bad thing — that is knowledge and thus progress. When dealing with stuff that’s potentially life-changing, the alternative to identifying big problems and dealing with them isn’t an ignorance-is-bliss  problem-free existence. It’s having a shittier life.

Lots of people
1) do things in computer role-playing games they wouldn’t actually do, for moral reasons (example: murdering a village full of innocents with magical fire)
2) do things in sexual fantasies they wouldn’t actually do, for moral reasons (example: asserting control over another human being through physical violence)
3) imagine things in their daily lives they wouldn’t actually do (example: punching a cashier in the face for being obnoxious)

Some of these might actually be morally problematic, depending on the reason why they seem interesting.

Murdering a village full of innocents in an RPG might make getting money for better armor easier. If done for this utilitarian purpose, it seems fine, as the villagers aren’t actually people.
However, if it is done for the “thrill” of hurting things which seem similar to people, it is bad. It is not bad because it makes you more likely to commit murderous acts, necessarily (a silly inference often made by mainstream TV reporting on video games), but because it encourages a theory that says being a terrifying badass with the capacity to hurt people is a good/fun thing, which has implications for other areas.

Analogous might be dealing with insects. If you kill an insect for the utilitarian reason of its annoyance, there’s not an issue — insects are annoying and have no moral status. However, if you kill it and enjoy it because you enjoy imagining it as a sort of anthropomorphized creature upon whom you are inflicting great suffering … well, that’s pretty fucked up. (Additionally, there’s the possibility of testing out theories that are not strictly utilitarian nor bad that would be ok — like dissection)

Similarly, with sex stuff, there are similar issues raised. People should want to engage in sex with people who are confident, self-assured, assertive, thoughtful, calm, and happy, because that is the natural disposition of a healthy, productive human being. If you want to be a plaything, or have a plaything, there is some theory in your mind which deserves further investigation. These theories are not consequence-free, and can often cause you to act in non-autonomy-respecting or non-assertive ways (depending on which side you fall on) in other areas of your life, or at least make it seem like a good idea to do that. You’re encouraging a theory / developing a habit of mind which associates being dominant or submissive with extreme happiness and pleasure. It’s unsurprising that this might prove problematic.

While people shouldn’t repress their sexual desires (conservative/traditional morality is bad in this sense), neither should they treat all desires as equivalent morally (modern/progressive/liberal morality is bad in this sense). If one has certain desires, like being in a dominant role relative to other human beings, then one should question why this is the case, for the reasons discussed above. Sometimes, engaging in the sex act itself (or in the playing of an RPG in order to test out theories about hurting NPC villagers, as in the above example) can be useful in figuring out what is appealing about something — the reasons why things are appealing are difficult to figure out, and direct emotional experience can be one helpful avenue. But one has to actually subject one’s theories to criticism, and not fall into the pitfall of avoiding criticism due to the irrational fear that one is fundamentally “bad” because one’s values, sexual or otherwise, may have some problems.

The last example is likely the most common. Most have experienced imaginary rage-violence at some perceived slight of social niceness. And again, the overwhelming majority will never actually engage in violence as a result of such fantasy. But what they will do is encourage the theory, which is itself giving rise to the fantasy in the first place and can be further entrenched by emotional reinforcement and repetition, that imaginary rage-induced-violence is a useful coping device for stress. This is fundamentally flawed — one should care less about social slights, and develop better theories for dealing with emotions.

Came across this article a while ago, which claims that women have more orgasms if partners are wealthier according to an analysis they did of a survey.

The link between enjoyment of sex and partner’s wealth was statistically significant even when they took into account other factors such as age, education, happiness, the length of relationship and health. The scientists say the findings could be explained by bias in the study – that women who have frequent orgasms tend to overestimate their partner’s income, or that women with ‘high powered’ partners exaggerate how much they enjoy sex. ‘While we cannot rule out reporting bias, we note that the interviews took place away from the respondents’ home, without their partner present and with the respondents able to input their responses directly into the computer if they so wished,’ Dr Pollet said. It is also possible that women who are highly susceptible to orgasms select partners who are wealthy, he said. He added: ‘The third interpretation is that more desirable mates cause women to experience more orgasms,’ he said. If this is true, a woman’s ‘capacity for orgasm’ could have evolved to help her discriminate between males on the basis of their quality, he added. The link between enjoyment of sex and wealth has also been found in studies in Germany and America. Evolutionary biologists argue that every aspect of sex – from courtship to the quality of orgasms – is influenced by millions of years of evolution. Although many people find the idea that women enjoy sex more with rich partners offensive, some biologists argue that the instinct makes evolutionary sense. Women have to invest so much time and personal risk into each baby, it is crucial that they get the most successful and healthy partner so they can to improve the chances of their own DNA being passed on. A man, in contrast, can father hundreds, or even thousands, of babies in a lifetime and so invests less in each child. That means they do not have to be so choosy about whether their partner is socially successful. The result of this battle of the sexes is that women are more influenced by the social status, intelligence, quick wits and success of a partner than men are, scientists argue. Wealth is usually an obvious indicator of success.

Question: suppose I demonstrate that a woman exists who thinks anyone who “hoards excess wealth” is immoral, and finds sex with them repulsive. Does this refute a theory of biologically-driven sexual attraction which (somehow?) discriminates for wealth, while still being compatible with a theory that explains sexual attraction through memes? If not, why?

Another question: how would the hypothesized “instinct” even work? When one is rich, does one emit a pheromone of some kind?

Several banks are repaying their government bailout money, partially so they don’t have to abide by executive pay limits which they say reduces their competitiveness. The President is telling banks that having benefited from the help of U.S. taxpayers, they have to lend more.

Article in pertinent part:

President Obama told some of the nation’s top bankers Monday that they need to explore “every responsible way” to make more loans.

BARACK OBAMA: “America’s banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry. And now that they’re back on their feet, we expect extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild the economy.”

Earlier, he criticized what he called “fat-cat bankers on Wall Street.”

Major banks have been doing well since the worst of the financial crisis shook Wall Street more than a year ago. Banks including Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo have recently announced plans to repay government rescue money.

First, does the President think he knows more about the optimal rate of lending then the banks? His statement that they need to explore “every responsible way” to make more loans suggests this interpretation. As profit-making enterprises, wouldn’t we assume that they were already doing this, and that the current diminution in lending is merely the most “responsible” reaction to a time of great economic uncertainty? If Obama believes he has a better handle on the responsible rate of lending than the banks, that would be pretty extraordinary arrogance, considering the example of the massive, systematic failure to ascertain the appropriate rate of lending in the housing market by pretty much every market actor in the past few years. Banks, consumers, and investors failed to adequately gauge the risk of home lending for the better part of a decade — obviously, this indicates that accurate risk assessments of lending are an easy problem which the President should be able to do better than everybody! Obama would hardly be the first political leader who thinks he is smarter than and can do better than every market actor combined, of course. It is still disturbing.

On the other hand, perhaps he is not that arrogant, and just sees the banks as an extension of social welfare policy, which should engage in certain lending practices without worrying about whether they are optimally profitable. Discussing banks as having an extraordinary commitment to help rebuild the economy would cut towards this interpretation. Banks have no such commitments — they have a commitment to profit. Perhaps the President thinks accepting the bailout money has imposed a moral obligation on the banks where one did not necessarily exist before, or enhanced the moral weight of a pre-existing obligation. Note to private enterprises: this is precisely the hazard of accepting government assistance. Of course, if the government expected a certain level of lending activity as part of the TARP loan “bargain,” it should have put that in the initial terms, rather than trying to effect a post-hoc bargain via altruistic moral pressure.

Finally, by tying the restrictions on CEO pay to the companies’ outstanding TARP loan obligations, the government made this result pretty inevitable. Once the government establishes that it will back up banks using taxpayer money, it makes those banks a much less risky asset, both by the actual present-moment transfer of wealth and by establishing a bad precedent for the future (in the form of a market expectation that if anything goes really bad, the government will come in and rescue).

As a result of this decrease in risk, the banks will have a much easier time raising capital in the private market. Any restrictions imposed by the terms of the initial government assistance itself, which are conditioned on having outstanding loan obligations to the government, can be gotten around by simply selling what is equity in a now very secure enterprise. This is what they are now doing. To do otherwise would be foolish. To expect otherwise would be to expect banks to act against their interests. To avoid this outcome, the solution is to either draft better regulations (for instance, making the executive compensation limits a permanent or long-lasting condition of accepting the loan initially, which endures even after repayment) or, and this would be my solution, simply stop meddling in the market to begin with. But whether you subscribe to the idea of government regulation or not, it’s clearly not the banks fault that the government can’t see 90 seconds into the future in drafting their market-meddling regulations.