Mental Plutonium

The genetic perspective of ethics is mental plutonium. It has every potential to very badly blow up in your face and kill a lot of people. You get your ideas a little bit wrong and you get Nazis or Genghis Khan or ethnic cleansing or any of a number of ways genetic ethics collided horribly with real living people. There is a reason for this. It's not that I believe "caring about genes at all in ethics makes everything blow up in your face" because that's far from the truth. Plenty of societies have had strong notions of familial ethical ties. For example, the system of honoring ancestors associated with multiple oriental cultures. Rather, I think that those who stray from the truth in only a few essentials (which reverberate throughout the logical/instructive element of society that drives ideological change over hundreds of years) are far more dangerous than those who deviate from the truth in ways great and small. Someone who cannot orient himself to the existence of an objective external world (i.e. someone who acts out poor metaphysics) is fundamentally hopeless. He will be totally unable to function. Someone who demonstrates poor epistemology will be unable to develop intellectually (even across multiple generations, because the parents will teach their children how to gather knowledge or fail to do so). Each level of philosophical understanding in which the agent orients himself towards understanding and manipulating the external world, taking as given that which is beyond his control, and taking into his control (or mentally, his potential control) is another level on which the agent becomes more powerful. He is able to act forcefully in the world. He is an example and his ideas are the ones that ultimately take hold and guide the actions of others. A more powerful actor is not necessarily better informed in ethics, or politics, or law. His capacity to judge the world does not lead unerringly to higher wisdom regarding when to make war, or who to kill. I believe and hope that it does lean in that direction, but it is no guarantee. Man's conceptual faculties are not automatic. This is the point of this blog. To play in a "safe" environment with very dangerous material which if it ever broke containment could run wild. There's only one problem: No effective system of containment has ever been devised for ideas. China is attempting a quarantine with their "Great Firewall of China", but it's not airtight and it clearly cannot last. The technology to subvert the firewall already exists and is being developed and spread at ever-increasing rates. There is no containment.

No, Hitler was not 'Rational'

    I was struck by Bret Weinstein's claims that Hitler was a "rational monster" who intelligently and rationally pursued genetic self-interest. See his comments here, particularly at the beginning (which Jordan Peterson interjects to agree with vigorously):



    This is simply wrong. German Jews and German non-Jews were closely related - famously, many German Jews under the Nazi regime did not even know they were considered Jewish, since only 1 grandparent of 4 needed to be Jewish to classify an individual as a Jew - so the idea that the Holocaust served to promote German genes is not well-supported on even a conceptual level. Even to the extent that Jews were ethnically distinct from other Germans, they still shared many genes, as did the various Eastern European populations the Nazis fought during their rule of Germany.

    Moreover in the sufficiently distant future (900 years, give or take) gene frequency will be fundamentally determined by fitness rather than anything we do now. Famously, virtually all modern people who are even part-European are descendants of Charlemagne (as well as everyone else alive in Europe at that time period). The whole effect of artificially changing gene frequency is moot unless there is A) a danger of German genes going extinct within a few hundred years or B) Hitler thought he might be able to exterminate all non-Aryans worldwide or C) the Nazis or some later society were able to enforce a multi-century program of segregation and anti-miscegnation.

    I think none of those possibilities can be judged as rationally both possible and beneficial from the perspective of genetic interest. This is sufficient to refute Prof. Weinstein's claims.

    Moreover, Hitler was irrational to fixate on race in the first place. A pro-genetic ethics entails prioritizing kin over tribe, tribe over race, race over humanity, and humanity over other life, and finally life over non-life. Race is not uniquely more important than any of those other levels of analysis, and even if it were, the level of favoritism ought to be very limited. Members of one race are not that much more closely related to each other than members of other races, so while there might be some room for racial preference in a proper ethics, it would be extremely limited - closer to a tie-breaker than to the main determinant of action. Moreover, kinship can and often does cross racial lines, as when an individual of a given race has a cousin or sibling or what-have-you of a mixed race. An individual with a proper ethical orientation should value that mixed-race kinsman more highly than a same-race stranger, because the kinship is massive evidence of many shared genes and race is much weaker evidence of some shared genes.

    My view is that supremacist racists view race as having something like 90-100% of the weight in a decision, modern mainstream ideology views race as having 0% of the weight, and "anti-racists" view race as having -100% of the weight in a decision (i.e. they consider race totally determinative but opposite of the supremacists) and I think the correct weight is something like 1%-3%. I think race can be very easily outweighed by all sorts of other factors. This is another important sense in which Hitler was irrational and did not serve to promote his genes.

    Finally, Hitler's policies were not a viable program to "get more resources" for the German people (as Prof. Weinstein puts it). War is a massive expenditure of resources, as were the institutions of the Holocaust. Jordan Peterson's point (that the intensification of the Holocaust at the expense of the war effort was irrational) is well-put. One of the most basic results of trade economics (going back to Ricardo) is that under very general conditions, all parties to ongoing trade benefit. Just as modern-day trade between the nation-states of Israel and Germany serves to benefit both parties, so too would trade between the (imaginary) race-states of German and Jew benefit both parties. Prof. Weinstein assumes a Malthusian limitation of resources that does not accurately describe the situation of 1930s Germany or of Germany in the 21st century.

    Prof. Weinstein is wrong on the basic conceptual aims of the Holocaust, the rationality of fixation on race from a genetic perspective, and the economics of resource generation. Hitler was not rational, and rather than gathering more resources and spreading his genes, he destroyed vast amounts of resources and vast numbers of individuals who shared his genes. From a genetic perspective, we can quite safely judge him one of history's greatest and most irrational monsters.

Is Murder Wrong?

Is Murder Wrong?

I think the answer for human beings must be "yes". Murder could in certain relatively strained scenarios promote one's genetic lineage, it seems clear that in general murder is counterproductive regarding the end of genetic reproduction. Moreover, it is clearly opposed to the means and virtues which are associated with that end. Reason, emotion, association, kinship, kindness, etc range from disapproval of the act of murder to outright condemnation. None of these seem to approve generally of murder. I think the possible tension that may appear - that the end of reproduction appears to be served by a means opposite to the means and virtues logically associated with that end - should be interpreted as evidence that the act is not so likely as it may appear to serve the ultimate end.

One recourse against my line of argument would be to point to the likely history of human ancestors benefiting in genetic terms from murder. I do not think recorded history is replete with examples (which is something of a reply in itself). Even supposing cavemen occasionally benefited genetically from murder, it seems clear (on the basis in part of the universal human recoil against casual murder) that murder was fundamentally anti-genetic.

However, I don't think the question of the immorality of murder can be answered affirmatively for all hypothetical species of beings. Social insects, for example, should not regard a murder of a worker by the queen as unconscionable. I think even if social insects were fully sentient in the same sense as human beings, they would not experience a human-like sense of moral outrage upon witnessing a murder of this type.

Unlike ants regarding other ants, human beings are fundamentally genetically precious to each other. Each human being has a genetic payload which overlaps with his or her peers, such that the survival and reproduction is a good in itself to perfect strangers (from the genetic point of view). The procreation of a perfect stranger is as much a boon to a given individual as is the procreation of that individual's own (sufficiently) distant descendant.

No Natural Rights

Let's be upfront. My theory, being a purely consequentialist theory, does not believe in individual or natural rights as a foundational assumption. They may well be a consequence we happily find along the way, but at the outset we must bid farewell to them.

This is in fact the chief reason that this blog is anonymous. I cannot yet state with confidence that I will not arrive at some horrible set of conclusions (and be sent scrambling to find an error in my reasoning).

One avenue I want to explore is whether natural rights can be resurrected as a consequence of my genetic view. Humans all share a basic humanity and capacity to interbreed - perhaps this is enough that the individual who is properly (as opposed to mistakenly) pursuing their own genetic interest act as if there are universal rights, and the formulation of rights serves a summary (i.e. conceptual) function. The right to be free rather than enslaved would thus be a statement of a universal prohibition (i.e. enslaving others is always anti-genetic, despite appearances) rather than a statement of a universal good.

Edit: Upon further reconsideration, I think "purely consequentialist" is the wrong way to explain the way in which I disclaim natural rights. I think a better way to put it would be more simply: I do not start with them as an assumption.

The Syllogistic Form

It will soon be time to focus on the implications of my central premise. Before moving on, I would like to lay the core argument out as cleanly and briefly as possible. I believe that it can be framed as a logical deduction, leaving no viable alternative to my premise.

The argument:

• All evolved organisms, as well as their organ systems and subsystems, are tailored to propagate genes
• When an organism, organ system, or subsystem functions to propagate genes, it is functioning properly
• When an organism, organ system, or subsystem does not function to propagate genes, it is functioning improperly (it is disordered or diseased)
• Human beings are the product of evolution in the same sense as the first point
• Human moral faculties are subject to evolutionary pressures in the same sense as the first point
• Therefore, human moral faculties which promote genetic propagation are functioning correctly, and human moral faculties which suppress genetic propagation are functioning incorrectly

The Toolbox

Commentators and philosophers often use arguments that are rooted in evolutionary biology. When convenient, they will choose this method of analysis from among alternatives, as if it is one tool in their tool-box. A conservative who wants to make some point about gender roles may argue that men are evolved to hunt and women are evolved to raise children. A nutritionist may argue that humans are evolved to eat a diet of primarily wild berries. A statistician might argue that humans are evolved to weight threatening events differently from beneficial events. In countless fields, thinkers will use Darwinian thinking to justify their ideas if and when it is convenient to do so.

In reality, evolutionary thinking is much more important. It should be regarded as a constraint on all knowledge. Any piece of information that cannot be explained or understood in an evolutionary context should be viewed with deep suspicion. This is because unlike other tools and modes of analysis, evolutionary thinking is not simply one tool in the toolbox. There is not a set of analytical techniques, each equally valid and simply suited to different contexts, and our minds can simply carry them around with no preference to one or the other. Our minds are designed to think in a certain way, and to survive in a harsh world. The toolbox of ideas is not an empty vessel. It has been formed in a biological crucible to carry a specific kind of tool, and the others it may carry are baggage or bonuses. Evolutionary thinking is not a tool. It is the toolbox.

Unity of Ethics

I believe in a concept I've come to call the unity of ethics. The core thesis is this: people frequently believe that there is a dichotomy between candidate ethical beliefs such that one has to be a consequentialist who evaluates ethics purely in terms of the ends to be achieved, or a deontologist, who evaluates ethics purely in terms of of the means used to achieve ends of any kind. To this dichotomy, one might reasonably rebut that a third option is to be a virtue ethicist who evaluates ethics purely in terms of inculcating virtue and inoculating against vice. I think a stronger rebuttal can be offered. I think any candidate ethical system begins with a purported fundamental truth, and that ends, means, virtues, and any other ethical quality will simply describe and apply that truth in a different way.

An example:
System: Buddhism
Purported Fundamental Truth: Unsatisfied desire leads to suffering. Suffering is inherently bad.
What end should humans strive for?: The elimination of desire
What means should humans use to act?: Meditation, ascetism, isolation, pacifism
What virtues should humans seek to embody?: Peacefulness, mindfulness, restraint

In each mode of analysis, the same fundamental truth is examined to yield different (but non-contradictory) conclusions. Similarly, if we examine a phenomena such as ocean waves in different scientific terms, we will view the same phenomena in different ways (say, the refraction of light versus the turbulence of the water versus the energy of the wave) which are non-contradictory. To fully understand a phenomenon, whether ethical or physical, we should seek to understand it from different (real, non-contradictory) perspectives. An ethical system which ignores modes of analysis is incomplete. One which denies the possibility of other modes of analysis is likely wrong. Consider another candidate belief system:

System: Utilitarianism
Purported Fundamental Truth: Happiness is good, and suffering is bad.
Ends: Maximization of utility (roughly speaking, happiness) as a sum across all entities
Means: Whatever achieves the ends
Virtues: Whatever achieves the ends

We can see that Utilitarianism does not seek to apply its fundamental truth beyond the scope of setting a goal to achieve. The system in my view only has one advantage, which is that the purported fundamental truth appears to be intuitively correct. I think it is actually wrong (more on that in the future). Note that there is relatively little to connect the precise ends advocated to the purported fundamental truth. The strongest argument of which I am aware proceeds from the goodness of happiness to argue that happiness experienced by an entity other than a given agent is also good, and that to be morally good one must therefore pursue that happiness. I think this commits a tremendous sleight of hand, in which the individual pursuit of happiness is transmuted into a social pursuit of happiness merely due to the fact that the word "happiness" is used in both cases. While an individual knows that he likes his own happiness, it is not clear why he should regard it as good that another is happy. To argue that "good" is inherently divorced from any particular agent would be to totally assume the conclusion from the start - one would still need a convincing account of why hedonism is wrong (prior to adoption of the utilitarian ethic).

Another example:

System: Objectivism
Purported Fundamental Truth: Every organism must act to survive
Ends: Individual survival (also self-actualization or achievement)
Means: Reason, logic
Virtues: Integrity, honesty, ability

I think it should be quite clear that each aspect of ethics reveals distinct and complementary insights into a candidate ethical system. I close with a rough sketch of my own system.

System: Genetic Ethics
Purported Fundamental Truth: Organisms are shaped by evolution to pursue reproduction (in a broad sense) above all else
Ends: Propagation of one's genes
Means: Reason, emotion, social affiliation
Virtues: Kin-supportiveness, kindness, courage, foresight