Darrell Hougen

There was an interesting article recently by a woman who attempted to start an all female production company. That was her utopian dream. Unfortunately for her, it turned into a nightmare. In my view her failure stands as an object lesson.

One should not, of course, jump to conclusions based on a single example. Perhaps the women that worked at the author's company were unusual in some way. Perhaps they were mostly young and immature, though their ages are not given in the article. However, it seems to me that it highlights a feature of the female personality that is often ignored. Women are generally not as cooperative as men. That simple fact has far reaching consequences.

One of the features of the left that often attracts women is its calls for more cooperation. In fact, it is a staple of the left to claim (or hope) that a society can be built in which competition is eliminated and people are made to act in purely cooperative ways. So, winners and losers are eliminated from childhood games, at least those led by adults. It is often suggested that grades and grading be eliminated from schools and colleges. In fact, the whole communist/socialist package is based on the utopian notion that competition can and should be eliminated. How ironic it is then, the women seem to be so incapable of cooperating toward a common end.

Women are often compared to cats while men are compared to dogs. What are the differences between cats and dogs? Generally, cats go their own way and do their own thing. Dogs (or wolves) cooperate to hunt and are known for their loyalty. Ok, female lions also cooperate so the analogy is not perfect. Still, everyone knows the impossibility of "herding cats."

Perhaps it is the fact that women are so constantly in competition with each other that causes them to crave more cooperation. However, if the article is any indication, women need men for more than mere companionship. They need men for their very survival. The women in the article, if left to their own devices, would undoubtedly starve to death in the span of a few years. This is not to say anything about anyone's individual talents or abilities. Women tend to be more talented than men in some respects and less in others. But, survival for a single, lone individual is difficult. It is the capacity for large scale cooperation that makes society and civilization possible.

One might argue that these characteristics are not features of all women. There certainly have been remarkable women. Ayn Rand comes to mind. However, Rand's life is not necessarily a rebuke to my argument. Indeed, even she fits the mold. She achieved success largely on her own. She was a loner in many respects. Her most loyal students, followers, and defenders were men.

Of course, there have also been famous heads of state that were women: Queen Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, Margaret Thatcher. But again, such women were surrounded by loyal supporters and those supporters were mostly men. It is impossible to know whether they could have achieved greatness without a cooperative base of men. In short, if the world were devoid of men --- if women were somehow able to reproduce without men --- would the sisterhood be able to survive? If the article is any indication, the answer is a resounding, "No!"

Darrell

It will be interesting to see whether Canada resumes its attacks on freedom of speech:

As to what awaits us if the Liberals win, on an issue dear to my heart, Peter Frost writes of "The End of Indian Summer":

Until three years ago, Canada's human rights commissions had the power to prosecute and convict individuals for "hate speech." This power was taken away after two high-profile cases: one against the magazine Maclean's for printing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone; and the other against the journalist Ezra Levant for publishing Denmark's satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Both cases were eventually dismissed, largely because the accused were well known and popular. As Mark Steyn observed:

'[...] they didn't like the heat they were getting under this case. Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about, piling up a lot of cockamamie jurisprudence that inverts the principles of common law, and nobody paid any attention to it. Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean's case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit. I've grown tired of the number of Canadian members of Parliament who've said to me over the last best part of a year now, "Oh, well of course I fully support you, I'm fully behind you, but I'd just be grateful if you didn't mention my name in public."' (Brean, 2008)

My case put the army of statist hacks opposed to free speech on the defensive, and eventually the Canadian Parliament repealed Section 13, under which Maclean's was dragged into court. But those who value identity-group rights over individual liberty fell quiet, bided their time, and are looking forward to enforcing ideological compliance once again:

Today, our Indian summer is coming to an end. In Alberta, the human rights commission is pushing to see how far it can go, and Ezra Levant is again being prosecuted... Last month in Quebec, the government passed a bill that greatly expands the powers of its human rights commission to prosecute "hate."

Bill 59, introduced by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard's Liberal government, would make it illegal to promote hate speech in Quebec, without defining what hate speech is. Despite this, it would expand the definition of hate speech to include "political convictions" for any speech deemed by Quebec's human rights bureaucracy to promote "fear of the other", an absurdly vague term which could easily lead to prosecutorial abuses...

How did this piece of legislation come to be? It had been sold to the public as a means to fight Islamist terrorism and, as such, gained the support of many people, including right-wing politicians who thought its "ant-hate" language was just window dressing to make it more palatable. In its final form, however, there are no references at all to Islamism or terrorism... So it isn't surprising that only two groups to date have supported the bill: The Canadian Muslim Forum and the Muslim Council of Montreal. (Marcotte, 2015)

As Joanne Marcotte notes ironically, this bill was pushed through by a center-right government that claims to believe in individual freedom...

After a brief lull, a new offensive has begun against "hate speech" in Canada.

Darrell

Well, you know Michael, us rubes need to be reeducated. It would be a lot easier if they could reeducate us all in one place. Perhaps, they could open up a reeducation camp ... oh wait ...

So, I don't know all the details of this story, but it sounds like the Missouri University System President is guilty of not speaking up quickly enough or forcefully enough against racism. I saw a little of his resignation speech where he appeared to humiliate himself by taking full responsibility for all of the racism on campus because, of course, people who don't jump to the PC bandwagon fast enough are as guilty as the actual perpetrators, at least in the twisted minds of the Cultural Marxists.

This is starting to remind me of the Cultural Revolution in China. How many more people that are insufficiently PC will be forced to humiliate themselves before this is over?

Darrell

Happy Birthday!!! This thread keeps attracting new posts about once a year. I wonder why that is...

Darrell

Happy Birthday!!!

I have to admit I like reading Mark Steyn's columns. I read them virtually every day. It sounds like a United passenger was also a big Steyn fan. Unfortunately for him, he was surprised to find that of all the websites he was able to access while flying on United, he was not able to access Steyn's rather innocuous little site.

Since when have businesses been so politically correct that they won't allow their customers to read material with which the business owners disagree? Imagine staying in a hotel and not being able to access conservative, libertarian, or objectivist websites using the hotel WIFI. I'm not saying the business doesn't have a right to do such things, but I'll certainly be boycotting those that do.

The article linked here describes this particular patron's experience at the end of the article.

Darrell

I sincerely hope that sites such as this survive. As Stephen noted above, sites like this are searchable. Facebook really isn't. Many of the discussions on here have been pretty informal and probably aren't worth saving, but there have been some serious discussions of philosophical topics with a lot of high quality contributions that should be preserved.

Sites like this are conducive to ongoing conversations. Facebook, in particular, has a way of ignoring contributions to old threads -- at least that is what I sense that it is doing. In my experience, if I write a reply to an old thread, no one ever responds to my post. That makes me think that they never see it. It could be that the typical Facebook user thinks that the conversation is dead and doesn't want to continue the discussion, but one way or the other, it makes it difficult to have a serious discussion on such a forum. Serious replies sometimes take several days or weeks, especially for people with busy schedules involving work and family.

Sites like this are accessible at work. Although people are posting links to increasing numbers of videos that are difficult to watch at work, the basic thread of a serious conversation can be followed. Sites like Facebook are swamped with ads and other high bandwidth media that are frowned upon at a place of work. Being accessible at work is a big plus for me because my wife wants my attention when I'm at home and doesn't understand my penchant for philosophizing. At the office, I can take a little break from what I'm doing and read an interesting discussion on a site like this.

Anyway, I appreciate people like Michael Stuart Kelly who take time to run "Objectivist Living" and sites like it.

Marcus,

There is a distinction within Objectivism between basic sensory responses of pleasure and pain, and cognitive responses of joy and suffering. Our pleasure and pain responses are innate. They result from the stimulation of nerve endings in a particular way. We have no choice about our experience of sensory pleasure or pain and Objectivism doesn't claim that we do. Sex, at the most basic level leads to pleasure at a sensory level while hitting one's thumb with a hammer leads to pain.

It is the fulfillment or loss of our values that lead to the emotional responses of joy and suffering. Values are held at a conceptual level and are the result of a process of reason. A man who holds his life as his standard of value, holds those things that are conducive to his life as valuable and those things that are destructive of it as disvalues. Thus, an immediate sensation of pleasure or pain is not as important as the long term consequences of his actions in relation to the attainment of his goals. A man may be willing to stay up late studying though that will cause him to experience tiredness, fatigue, and possible muscle, joint, and other forms of pain if it helps him to achieve his goal of learning as much as possible and graduating with a high GPA. He may also forego the opportunity to experience the pleasure of sex with a woman if that woman has no value to his long term goals of running a successful business and having bright, successful children.

As for your last few points, they actually serve to undermine your original contention. You said that 80% of people are married or have been married by age 40. Yet, not everyone has been and it seems reasonable to guess that some of them have not been married because they do not value marriage highly. That is, those people have not chosen marriage as a value.

Now, if a high percentage of people do get married, it may be because marriage is objectively valuable to most people. Although people aren't always reasonable --- certainly most people are not Objectivists --- people tend to do a pretty good job over time of determining what is valuable to them --- to their lives --- and a high percentage of them have concluded that marriage would be beneficial to them. In other words, marriage is not an innate value, but rather an objectively positive value for most people. That is why it is chosen with such high frequency.

--- Darrell

Hey! Happy Birthday!!!

The Alberta Human Rights Commission is charging Ezra Levant with a crime for calling it "crazy".

Canada's free speech protections are not as robust as those of the United States but perhaps they should be. Canada has previously criminalized "hate speech" though the law was mostly defanged a few years ago due to a case involving Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. Now, the commisars have found another reason to harass Mr. Levant.

You can read the full story here. You can sign a petition calling the AHRC all kinds of names here. I signed and I noticed that Ed Cline had signed. I'm not sure who else of note might have signed.

Edit: I should add that although they're only looking for a thousand signatures, I think it would be great if tens of thousands of people signed. There is strength in numbers. If more people sign, it is harder to anti-free speech types to single out individuals for harassment.

Darrell

I didn't know the GOP and the Democratic Party were one and the same. I mean, I've heard libertarians say that, but I was totally in the dark.

Darrell

Hi Derek,

You've sort of set yourself up by offering to answer questions about black culture, but here goes:

1. Why do 95% of black people vote Democratic?

2. Why is the murder rate among the black population so high?

I haven't known a lot of black people in my life. There are a few at my place of work. Some computer programmers. One guy was in management but moved to another company. I got to talking to him a little one day and asked him if he had ever read Thomas Sowell, but he said he'd never heard of him.

Darrell

Michael,

Your daughter-in-law is very smart and very brave.

Darrell

Not true. Mao Tse-tung killed millions and lived comfortably into his eighties.

Again, you're trying to use a specific example and not looking at the expected payoff. For every Mao, there were 100 would-be Mao's that failed.

You wrote, "I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest."

I cited Mao as a disproof.

You responded with irrelevant statements about expected payoffs and failed would-be Maos.

Yet Mao's life shows, among many other things, that at least one person in history did advance his career and build wealth and power through cheating, lying, stealing, murdering. It upends your bald assertion about crime never paying. And as for payoffs, for every successful actress in Hollywood there are a thousand would-be stars. But the existence of overwhelming numbers of failed hopefuls does nothing to prove the claim that being a successful actress is never in one's interest.

Mao's life doesn't show anything. I don't know that much about Communist China, so let's talk about Stalin instead. Stalin lived well, but what happened to Lenin? What if Stalin had been Lenin? Lenin succumbed to his injuries after he was shot. What happened to Trotsky? He was murdered with an axe. What happened to Zinoviev? He was executed? What happened to Kamenev? He was executed too. What happened to Bukharin? He was executed.

Most of the original members of Politburo and more than half of the members of the Central Committee were eventually executed or murdered. Most of them probably thought that they were important, just like Stalin. They probably thought they were little kings or nobles, just like Stalin. In the fight for power, someone is going to come out on top, but Stalin had no realistic way of knowing he would win, though he undoubtedly thought he would.

History is replete with similar examples. Half the emperors of Rome died violent deaths. Half the emperors of the Eastern Roman empire met a similar fate. Many of the Merovingian rulers died violent deaths. I could go on. Between Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, Hitler met a violent end, so looked at that way, the odds of survival would only be 2/3 and I'm only counting people who already made it to the top. I'm sure Stalin's odds were much lower when he was first attempting to gain power. If Lenin (or any number of others) had realized what a power-hungry SOB Stalin was, they could have had him removed and possibly shot much sooner.

Many people believe that Arron Burr was a power-hungry SOB. If he hadn't been widely discredited by killing Hamilton in a duel, he might have become President. As it was, the odds were against him and he never achieved power.

Expected payoff absolutely is the issue. Individual examples of people that got lucky mean very little. People have survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but I wouldn't recommend it.

.

Francisco Ferrer, on 07 Mar 2015 - 11:29 AM, said:

Politicians do it all the time, and there is no evidence that they live abbreviated lives or suffer mental anguish.

Same problem. For every person that succeeds as a sleazy politician, there are 100 that don't. And, even politicians have their limits. A lot of them end up going to jail. Look at the recent history of governors of Illinois.

Me: Bill Clinton cheated, lied and stole, and now lives a comfortable life.

You: There's a problem with your example because the governor of Illinois went to jail.

Me: ???

You're giving examples of people that got lucky. I'm giving examples of people that didn't.

Francisco Ferrer, on 07 Mar 2015 - 11:29 AM, said:

If the principle is that one self-interest must be subordinated to another's property rights, then stealing is unprincipled. If the principle is that one's self-interest is always primary, then there is nothing necessarily unprincipled about stealing a necklace.

The whole argument is over whether violating other people's rights is in a person's self interest, so you can't use that as a point of argument. I disagree that stealing a necklace is in a person's self interest.

You described the prudent predator's behavior as unprincipled. I merely pointed out that the principles she adhered to happen not to be your particular principles.

Something can't be a principle unless it is practiced virtually all the time. A person that stole constantly would soon be caught. Being honest doesn't require calculating the odds. Lying does.

Francisco Ferrer, on 07 Mar 2015 - 11:29 AM, said:

This is twaddle. If she were handed the necklace as a gift, would it make any sense for her to refuse it on the grounds that, "Sorry, this bangle is only worth 12.5% of my lifetime earnings"? Of course not. Thus, there is no good reason from the standpoint of pure self-interest for her not to steal it given the near 0% likelihood of the crime being traced to her.

$100,000 or $10,000, the effort needed to take the item was no greater than to bend down and pick up a quarter from the sidewalk. Should we advise one not to pick up coins because they represent only a fraction of one's lifetime income?

"Twaddle" being defined as any argument that you disagree with.

Again, the issue is expected payoff, not the payoff in one instance. Hindsight is 20/20. (I guess, as a determinist, you know the outcome before there is one.)

You wrote, "I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest."

If a person manages to increase her wealth and advance her self-interest through stealing, the expected payoff is irrelevant. It is the actual payoff that matters in my example of a successful thief. That example directly contradicts the claim that stealing is never in one's self-interest.

Furthermore, it wasn't hindsight that told the thief that the owner of the necklace was demented, that there were no other witnesses in the house, that no one regularly checked on the contents of the jewelry box, or that other caregivers visited on other days of the week and thus obscured any particular leads for detectives.

Your post is an example of a person clinging to a failed theory by claiming that reality must be in error.

I'm afraid you're the one clinging to a failed theory.

Actually, it might be instructive to look at the stock market. There are plenty of money managers out there trying to predict whether the market will go up or down. Some of them do quite well, but on average, they under perform the market averages. So, a better strategy is to buy and hold an index fund.

The thief is like the money manager, trying to guess what will happen but under performing the average honest person. So, a better strategy is to be honest.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but personal gain is not a good reason to be dishonest. People who are dishonest or violate people's rights in other ways tend, on average, to do less well in the long run.

I know several investors who have done extremely well by picking winners and not blindly following the choices of a major fund. In any case it is the exceptions I'm talking about, and your claim did not admit exceptions: "I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest." [my emphasis]

Yes. The odds are against the liar, cheater, or thief. Would you assert that it is a good idea to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel because some people have done it successfully? What if someone offered a million dollars to anyone who was successful?

Darrell

Not true. Mao Tse-tung killed millions and lived comfortably into his eighties.

Again, you're trying to use a specific example and not looking at the expected payoff. For every Mao, there were 100 would-be Mao's that failed.

Politicians do it all the time, and there is no evidence that they live abbreviated lives or suffer mental anguish.

Same problem. For every person that succeeds as a sleazy politician, there are 100 that don't. And, even politicians have their limits. A lot of them end up going to jail. Look at the recent history of governors of Illinois.

If the principle is that one self-interest must be subordinated to another's property rights, then stealing is unprincipled. If the principle is that one's self-interest is always primary, then there is nothing necessarily unprincipled about stealing a necklace.

The whole argument is over whether violating other people's rights is in a person's self interest, so you can't use that as a point of argument. I disagree that stealing a necklace is in a person's self interest.

This is twaddle. If she were handed the necklace as a gift, would it make any sense for her to refuse it on the grounds that, "Sorry, this bangle is only worth 12.5% of my lifetime earnings"? Of course not. Thus, there is no good reason from the standpoint of pure self-interest for her not to steal it given the near 0% likelihood of the crime being traced to her.

$100,000 or $10,000, the effort needed to take the item was no greater than to bend down and pick up a quarter from the sidewalk. Should we advise one not to pick up coins because they represent only a fraction of one's lifetime income?

"Twaddle" being defined as any argument that you disagree with.

Again, the issue is expected payoff, not the payoff in one instance. Hindsight is 20/20. (I guess, as a determinist, you know the outcome before there is one.)

Actually, it might be instructive to look at the stock market. There are plenty of money managers out there trying to predict whether the market will go up or down. Some of them do quite well, but on average, they under perform the market averages. So, a better strategy is to buy and hold an index fund.

The thief is like the money manager, trying to guess what will happen but under performing the average honest person. So, a better strategy is to be honest.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but personal gain is not a good reason to be dishonest. People who are dishonest or violate people's rights in other ways tend, on average, to do less well in the long run.

Darrell

If there are "arrays and arrays" of possible outcomes, why is there in fact only one outcome?

Maybe because there is a fundamental difference between "possible outcome" and "outcome"?

The first is in the future and the second is in the past.

This is the determinism time travel fallacy I see all the time. Determinists imagine the characteristics of the future must be identical to those of the the past. Why? Just because.

Simply untrue. I challenge you to cite one determinist who says "the characteristics of the future must be identical to those of the the past." To take such a position one would have to suppose that the world is is perfect stasis: that milk in the jug never reaches the glass, that trains never leave the station, that the moon is never less that full.

Your straw men are invariably original, whimsical and entertaining.

FF,

Your insults are invariably original, whimsical and entertaining.

You clearly didn't understand what Michael was saying. Go back and read it again.

Darrell

Let's examine the logic. The Kapos spent the war beating up helpless Jews. Therefore before the war they must have been criminals. The 20 million members of the Wehrmacht spent the war trying to kill American, British, French and Russian soldiers. By the same logic we would have to say that before the war they must have worked as murderers for hire.

As for costs and benefits, yes, one has to weigh the costs of being a rights violator with the benefits. Similarly, one has to weigh the costs of starving to death in the streets versus the benefits of smashing the window of a bakery.

Let's return to the original point you raised: "I will simply assert, without proof at this point, that cheating, lying, stealing, murdering, etc., are never in a person's self interest."

I have given you the example of the kapos, who managed to avoid the gas chamber by serving as violent enforcers of SS discipline.

To suggest that all the kapos had to do to ensure the downfall of Nazism was to persuade every Jew to rebel is ludicrous. To bring up the poor cost/benefit ratio for the average criminal in society is beside the point. The kapos were locked in the camps and had the choice to be victimizers or victims. They chose the former. And they survived at a dramatically higher ratio than the rest of the inmates.

Your crime never pays assertion has been busted. Unlike Disney, real life doesn't always offer happy endings.

Perhaps, I misstated my position initially, so allow me to be more clear.

It is never in a person's self interest to live an unprincipled life.

To the extent that your example works, it works only by severely limiting the time and place where there is a supposed benefit to being bad.

Your argument is basically that a person can live an unprincipled life, being a liar, cheater, thief or brute whenever it is convenient, and being an upstanding citizen at other times. However, my argument is that it is impossible to simply turn the dark side on and off like a light switch, whenever it is convenient.

Once a person has justified evil acts to himself, it becomes easier to do it the next time. And, each time he does it, it becomes easier still until the person has completely abandoned moral principles such as honesty, fairness, respect for property rights, and respect for the lives of others. Having abandoned such principles, a person is very likely to screw up at some point, get caught, and suffer the consequences.

Back to the Germans: part of the reason for the death camps was that German soldiers didn't like and complained about having to shoot down scores of innocent people. The death camps were set up to relieve the typical soldier from the burden of having to murder people. So, it is not at all clear that members of the Wehrmacht were all amoral brutes. Most of them fought on the front lines in a war that they thought was just, having been convinced of as much by Hitler.

Again you are evading the example (which, by the way, is drawn from real life). Caregiver A was not spending her best years sitting and waiting to rip someone off. She was sitting and waiting but only because that was part of her job description. She was a low wage caregiver. Couldn't she have obtained better employment? Maybe, maybe not. That's irrelevant. By accident she happened to find herself in the midst of a perfect opportunity to get rich quick with no muss, no fuss, and no comebacks. The opportunity fell in her lap and she grabbed it. The cost/benefit was extremely low/extremely high.

This happened to a relative of mine. Since there were several caregivers over the course of months, no one could pinpoint a suspect. The family couldn't even collect insurance money. No one could prove a damn thing.

I'm not evading the issue. You're just not understanding my point. My point is that it is difficult to live well without principles and a principled person wouldn't commit the crime.

An isolated example of a person getting away with something doesn't prove anything. How do you know the thief didn't do it before and wouldn't do it again?

Let's say the woman really did get away with $100,000 when her annual salary was only $20,000. That means the necklace was worth five years of her salary. If she worked for 40 years, from the time she was 20 till the time she was 60, the value of the necklace would be 12.5% of her lifetime earnings. Looked at in that light, it's not really that much.

By the way, it is usually hard to sell or pawn stolen jewelry for anything close to its original value, so a million dollar necklace might only fetch the aforementioned $100,000. If the original value was only $100,000, its street value might only be $10,000 to $20,000, not several times the thief's annual income and probably something like 1-2% of her lifetime income.

Now, this same woman, thinking that she had gotten ahead of the game by stealing the necklace, is likely to try to steal something again in the future. She managed to justify it to herself once, so what is to prevent her from doing it again? And, what are the odds that she will get away from it again?

She got lucky (and your family was unlucky) in the case you cited because there were several caregivers over the course of several months. But, she had no way of knowing that would happen and no control over how many care givers there would be, so her odds of getting away with the crime were probably not that great.

Actually, if you don't know who stole the necklace and haven't recovered it, how do you even know it was stolen? Perhaps, it was just lost.

Also, how do you know she wasn't looking for opportunities to steal things? She might not have been at your relative's place very long, but it seems likely to me that she was a thief before she was hired and is probably still a thief. So, in all likelihood, she will trip up at some point and get caught. And, whether that particular woman is ever caught doesn't really matter because one has to look at the average across all women that engage in that kind of behavior to see what the cost/benefit equation tells you a priori.

At any rate, I simply don't find your examples convincing.

Darrell

Every thought is the product of biological and/or environmental factors.

FF,

I've argued in other threads on OL that the world is not deterministic. It is tempting to think it is because it is only possible to predict the deterministic elements of some process. However, the notion that it is deterministic just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I'd rather not repeat all of the arguments I've made before about the physics of deterministic systems, so let me just engage you in the following way: Would you not agree that the human world is more varied, richer, more complex than it was 100 years ago? What about 1000 years ago? What about 10,000? What about 4,000,000,000, years ago before the dawn of life?

If the world were deterministic, where did all of this additional complexity come from? Was the existence of the amoeba implicit in the rocks that existed before there was life? Was the existence of the TV somehow implicit in the existence of single celled organisms that populated the earth for at least a billion years before multi-celled organisms came into existence?

To me, it seems clear that there must be some source of variability outside of that which can be predicted. Without random permutations, there is simply no way to explain the continuous increase in variety and complexity that exist.

BTW, if biological or environmental factors control human choices, what controls biological or environmental factors?

Darrell

Darrell,

Heh.

I guess I was a little too harsh.

I fully agree about the importance of moral principles.

Michael

No problem. I realized that what I said the first time wasn't entirely clear.

Darrell

Heh. Randomness. There was a "classic cult" novel around in the early 70's, The Diceman, by Luke Rhinehart (pen name). It sold millions and still gets rave attention now. About a bored psychologist who hits on the idea of throwing a die to decide everything he does, like for instance, a *one* means he must (for real) rape his neighbor. It really is the most nihilistic garbage, and not even good writing as i recall. Readers bragged of emulating him and carried around dice.

A motto of his: "This truth above all: fake it". Taleb almost sounds like a disciple

'Randomness', another small-minded, sad attempt by the disillusioned to find omniscient knowledge, I think.

I wonder how he decided that a 'one' meant that he should rape his neighbor. That sounds pretty random in and of itself. Actually, it sounds pretty nihilistic and/or just plain evil. Why couldn't a 'one' mean that he should bake cookies for his neighbor? Anyway, some people's minds are filled with garbage.

Darrell

To this point, I have only examined the possible consequences for the kapos after the war, but I realized that that approach isn't really complete. We should be looking at what happened before the war as well.

The German guards tended to choose criminals to be kapos because they knew that criminals were more likely to be unprincipled brutes. But, as a person living before the war, what were the odds that living as an unprincipled brute would get a person a job as a kapo during the war? Well, you said that there were several thousand kapos, so let's use the figure 10,000. I'm not sure what the population was in 1940, but it was more than 2 billion, so let's use that figure. Let's also assume that 10% of the population were criminals. Then, the probability of any criminal ending up as a kapo during the war would have been 0.005%.

If we postulate, for a moment, that kapos came out ahead during the war by an amount X, then the expected payoff before the war would have been 0.00005 * X. However, that would have to be offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute.

Not all of the kapos were criminals before the war. I do not know that even a majority were. Furthermore, given the economic collapse and widespread street violence that characterized German life after World War I, it is hardly a certainty that joining a criminal gang would not have been in one's self-interest, particularly for one of the millions of unemployed workers.

You say, being a kapo would be "offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute." If by loss you mean regret or guilt, there is no reason to suppose that the men and women who served as prison functionaries instead of fodder for the crematoria suffered from any self-doubts. For a significant part of the population, empathy is an unfamiliar, even unknown emotion.

I'm guessing that most of the kapos were criminals before the war given their predilection for violence. If the kapos had been nice guys, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Post war Germany had a lot of crime and unemployment, but a person wouldn't have known before the war which countries would go to war and who would win, so one has to weigh the cost of being an unprincipled person anywhere in the world with the benefit, if any, of being a criminal during or after the war in Germany.

When I talk about the offsetting cost, I'm talking about the cost of being an unprincipled person. How well do criminals typically fare in a peaceful society? What is their average income?

Setting aside for a moment whether drugs should be legalized or not, I've heard that the average person involved in the illegal drug trade in the U.S. makes about $20/day. Sure, there a few drug lords that make big bucks, but most of their stooges and secondary dealers make peanuts.

It is also instructive to look at the odds that any given person will rise to the top of the heap and become a drug lord, because that is the calculation that one has to make going in. A person might be certain he will rise to the top, but wishful thinking doesn't get a person very far. For every tyrant, their are scores of want-to-be's that got cut off at the knees, somewhere along the line.

People without principles typically don't do very well.

Let's assume that one's probability of being caught were 1%. I don't know what the average jewelry heist nets, but the typical bank robbery nets less than $1,000, so let's use that figure. Now, if a person earns the median income of $50,000, a $1,000 heist won't make much difference to one's life. In order for a thief to generate an income comparable to the typical worker, he would have to commit 50 thefts per year. In two years, that would add up 100 robberies. But, if he correctly calculated that the probability of being caught was only 1% each time, then his probability of getting away with 100 robberies would only be 36.6%. Or, his probability of being caught would be 63.4% in two years. Moreover, during those two years he would live no better than the average person and would have to live in constant fear of being caught in his web of lies and deceit.

You can probably put together an excellent statistical case against jewel thieves. No doubt the insurance industry has daunting figures on the percentage of thieves that go to prison.

None of that is relevant to the case I described. Even supposing that statistically 99% of jewel thieves are caught, if caregiver A finds herself in a situation where there are no witnesses and the victim is incapable of distinguishing illusion from reality and there is no family member to regularly take inventory of valuables, caregiver A may correctly conclude that her chances are not 100 to 1 against, but 100 to 1 for success. And that tiny risk could be well justified by the possession of a necklace worth several times her annual income.

Ah, but you're ignoring the cost of looking for such an opportunity. A person could wait 20 years --- she could wait for a lifetime --- for the perfect opportunity to come along, and all that time the person would have to keep looking for opportunities, wasting time and effort.

A principled person wouldn't waste her time looking for opportunities to steal something and probably wouldn't even notice when the big opportunity came along because her eyes and her mind would be fixed on other things. In fact, she might have moved from caregiver for the elderly, to a position on the hospital oversight board while her small minded cousin was busy trying to find an opportunity to steal a necklace.

We could go around and around on this, but I hope that it is becoming clear that a principled, moral existence really is in everyone's self interest.

Darrell

I would not advise someone to be a coal miner.

Darrell,

I come from coal miners (a little town called Coeburn, Va., in Wise County). My grandfather on back, and God know who else among my antecedent family, were coal miners. Back when it was dangerous for real.

There is nothing shameful about that profession. Honest work. Good people. Good product.

There was nothing wrong with the profession back then, either. It sure beat the dickens out of starving in the backwoods. That was a real reality at the time.

If Howard Roark could work in a rock quarry, what's so anti-Objectivist about working in a coal mine?

Michael

Michael,

Being a coal miner is indeed an honorable profession. I just wouldn't advise my sons to go into it because I know the risks --- cave ins, poison gas, black lung disease.

There is nothing "anti-Objectivist" about coal mining. Sorry, if I gave the impression that that is what I meant. But, when it comes to giving advice to a person about the career he should pursue, his expected payoff, both in monetary and health terms is important.

Living a principled existence is also important, but I would argue that it is important because of how it bears on other considerations, like ones probability of staying alive. In my opinion, people feel a great deal of angst or anguish when they stray from the straight and narrow because they know, deep down, that lying, cheating, and stealing are likely to come back to bite them later. They also know that in abandoning a principled existence, they are likely to become lost --- to not know which way to turn or why.

Life without principles becomes a frenetic and bewildering series of calculations about when to lie, cheat, steal, or even kill, that almost invariably leads downhill to destruction. That is what people fear more than anything --- being morally lost.

Of course, one wrong turn doesn't mean the end is nigh. The solution is to claw ones way back to a principled life, but that isn't always easy or possible.

Darrell

I don't know what you mean by saying the kapos "briefly" extended their lives. Unlike other inmates, they were fed adequately and not subject to debilitating labor. Their survival rate was many times that of the regular prisoners. Yes, Jews could have refused in unison to serve as kapos, and by remote chance the war might have been shortened--or just as likely the SS might have accelerated the extermination of unwanted ethnic groups to get fighting men back on the front.

But we don't have to speculate about what-ifs. The historical fact is that there were sell-outs among the Jews, and those sell-outs today serve as demonstration of the unfortunate fact that some people can survive by by preying on others. Life does not always deliver happy endings, even when one follows the Golden Rule.

Actually, it is necessary, to some extent, to engage in "what-ifs". The outcome of any particular case doesn't matter as much as the odds of getting away with it.

To this point, I have only examined the possible consequences for the kapos after the war, but I realized that that approach isn't really complete. We should be looking at what happened before the war as well.

The German guards tended to choose criminals to be kapos because they knew that criminals were more likely to be unprincipled brutes. But, as a person living before the war, what were the odds that living as an unprincipled brute would get a person a job as a kapo during the war? Well, you said that there were several thousand kapos, so let's use the figure 10,000. I'm not sure what the population was in 1940, but it was more than 2 billion, so let's use that figure. Let's also assume that 10% of the population were criminals. Then, the probability of any criminal ending up as a kapo during the war would have been 0.005%.

If we postulate, for a moment, that kapos came out ahead during the war by an amount X, then the expected payoff before the war would have been 0.00005 * X. However, that would have to be offset by the loss that one would expect to suffer both before and after the war by living one's entire life as an unprincipled brute.

You say, "It is impossible to know with any kind of certainty when one can get away with something immoral and when that is not possible." If caregiver A takes jewels from senile patient B's dresser while she is sleeping, there may be 100 to 1 odds against of getting away with it, 50-50, or 100 to 1 odds on. It depends entirely on the circumstances, which the predator must evaluate with cold logic. If there is no other one with knowledge of the jewels to look out for them and there are no witnesses to the theft, A could safely take the the goods and rest assured that they would not soon if ever be reported missing.

But risk is not limited to the violators of individual risks. As I said in an earlier posts, there are numerous occupations fraught with danger. The jewel thief may be taking a risk far smaller than that of a logging worker or coal miner, occupations I've never heard Objectivists criticize as not being in one's rational self-interest.

Let's assume that one's probability of being caught were 1%. I don't know what the average jewelry heist nets, but the typical bank robbery nets less than $1,000, so let's use that figure. Now, if a person earns the median income of $50,000, a $1,000 heist won't make much difference to one's life. In order for a thief to generate an income comparable to the typical worker, he would have to commit 50 thefts per year. In two years, that would add up 100 robberies. But, if he correctly calculated that the probability of being caught was only 1% each time, then his probability of getting away with 100 robberies would only be 36.6%. Or, his probability of being caught would be 63.4% in two years. Moreover, during those two years he would live no better than the average person and would have to live in constant fear of being caught in his web of lies and deceit.

I would not advise someone to be a coal miner. I'm not sure about the dangers of logging. Objectivists don't usually harp on such things because they aren't destructive to the lives of other people, but that doesn't mean that such occupations are a good choice. Of course, they might be a good choice at a sufficiently high wage, but that's another issue.

Darrell

Assume that a wealthy man came along and told you that he would guarantee you a life without want for as long as you lived as long as you agreed to be his prisoner.

Gee, the government made that same offer,

and hundreds of millions of suckers took it.

Greg

Indeed. As Benjamin Franklin once said:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Darrell

..., you'll lose your self-respect. this is one of the main reasons why i decided not to do it, under these circumstance you can not possibly be happy. (as a side note that is connected to this: i've stolen in the past. i've been able to forgive myself because i was a dumb teenager with no moral reasoning. if i stole now however, where i'm older and can think about my actions and where i know that it's wrong, i'll destroy my forgivness for my past faults, i'd have to forever see myself as scum.)

The answer to your question is that man must live according to principles. A principle might be something like, one should not steal. If you violate the principle, it is no longer a principle. If you can justify violating it once, you can justify it again. There is no practical way to limit the number of times you violate the principle.

To use Christian terminology, if you do something wrong, you must repent. To repent means more than to seek forgiveness. It means to turn away from a wrong course and back towards a righteous course. In non-religious terms, you must recommit yourself to upholding rational principles. But, if you commit another bad act, you have again violated the principle in question. If you continue to violate it, soon it will mean nothing to you and you will become unprincipled.

FF has brought up the notion of a "prudent predator". The "prudent predator" presumably only steals or commits other crimes when he can get away with them and thereby gets ahead of the game. The problem is that life doesn't work that way. Your expected payoff in living that way is always less than your expected payoff in living a morally upright life. That's because, as a practical matter, it is impossible to estimate with any accuracy your chances of succeeding. Moreover, the odds of succeeding aren't in your favor. So, if you engage in such behavior, you'll eventually be caught.

The not so "prudent predator" is the man that attempts to live without principles, attempting to calculate the odds of succeeding in his contemplated action separately each time. It is simply impossible for a human to rationally expect success in living that way. The fact that some people might have succeeded doesn't alter that fact. They just got lucky. But, the odds are always against the man that attempts to live without principles.

There is also another argument to make. This is the positive argument. Living in harmony with other people is generally in one's self interest. That's because other people produce things of value to ones own life. Therefore, living by principles that allow each person to be productive is in ones self interest. That argument tells the rational person which principles to adopt. The argument above tells the rational person why he needs principles in the first place.

Darrell