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

The Centrality of Family

One particularly noteworthy test of intuition is the importance of family. Intuition that family has a positive ethical role seems to be widespread, but secular theories of morality tend to ignore or even weigh against the family.

The case for the family as a worthy institution is multiple. In part, it derives from historical social structures of evolving humans and pre-humans. A social structure which led to the development of modern humans ought to be given some extra consideration by those humans on the basis that it is likely to be necessary in some way for human success. In part, it is an economic argument that posits that keeping together those people who have a closely shared genetic interest will allow for greater cooperation and greater success. In part, it can be made on evidentiary grounds; there is now ample scientific evidence that the role of a nuclear family or an extended family is a positive one in the development of a child. As measured by later outcomes in life, a robust family environment with multiple adults closely related to the child and invested in the success of that child tends to lead to materially better outcomes. We should expect that family occupies not merely an ethical role of convenience (that it happens to sometimes be for the best) but that it has a central ethical role (it is usually for the best, to be overturned only by extreme or unusual circumstances).

The centrality of family will have a corollary impact on mate selection, a topic to which we will return.

How do other ethical theories fare on the topic of the family? In general, dismally. Religious moral theories tend to assign great weight to the family but without justification or integration into a larger framework of thought. Instead, the religious framework is typically a patchwork or constellation of ideas which are not fully integrated and each is not fully understood in light of the others. The fact that some of those ideas are brilliant and wonderful does little to navigate the student through the patchwork or constellation of disjoint ideas.

Secular theories fare even worse. Most are silent on the value of family, and regard it at best as a means to some utopian end. More frequently, strong attacks on the family can be launched under the guise of equality, justice, utility, or some other non-real value. By grounding family in its role as a mechanism for genetic propagation (a real, physical phenomenon) we shield it from many baseless and conjectural attacks.

An example: The Rawlsian theory of justice (widely accepted among the intellectual Left and the sire of modern pseudo-socialist political movements such as Social Justice) requires that all social goods (as if there were such a thing as a social good) be distributed (with no thought to their creation) equally among all members of society, except insofar as inequality helps those worst off. The last special exception, meant to inoculate the theory against extreme egalitarianism and therefore justified criticism of that failed branch if thought, is immediately discarded like a brown banana peel by those who seek to implement Rawls' theory. How might this theory apply to the family? What is parenting, if not a "social good"? What is a loving family environment, if not a "social good"? Accordingly, these things ought (under Rawls) be distributed equally, except insofar as their unequal distribution grants greater parenting to children who have none. Consequently, the Rawlsian imperative is to distribute children equally among parents (and vice versa). Rawls might demand a family who has 4 children give three up to three infertile couples, or that a family which has 6 children but an abundance of parental love should be forced to adopt another several orphans. Obviously both versions are monstrous. The Rawlsian theory fails to explain the importance of the family or to address is in a satisfactory way. The same can be said of the overwhelming majority of secular ethical theories.

The Argument from Intuition

Intuition is a tricky subject. It should be viewed not as a final authority on a philosophical concept, but as a useful barometer. It highlights areas where a concept divorces cultural norms or requires careful, reasoned consideration.

Nonetheless, intuition is powerful in philosophy. When a proposed moral theory achieves absurd results, that theory naturally (and in my opinion correctly) faces heightened scrutiny in that area.

We should expect that an ethical directive to pursue genetic self-interest will cohere with intuition better than almost any other candidate belief.

To the extent that intuition is biologically evolved, it will point in broad strokes to the same conclusion as a a self-interested pro-gene ethics. To the extent that intuition is culturally imparted, demographic dynamics should bias it towards genetic persistence. This is because the modal belief set is likely to be one consistent with memetic or genetic persistence, and in fact is likely consistent with both. A belief set which is inconsistent with persistence of these types is likely to die out, either in figurative memetic terms or in literal genetic ones.

On the other hand, theories which center around happiness, self-fulfillment or other supposed virtues will likely encounter difficulties in tests of intuitive appeal. They may capture important insights, but will continually conflict with human nature and human history.

The Randian Argument

I will lay out here the Randian argument(s) in favor of my candidate ethical system: that morality consists of maximizing the number and duration of one's genes.

I call it the Randian argument because it closely parallels the arguments Ayn Rand gives for her individualist survivalist ethic. I consider it a logical and natural extension of Rand in light of a newer and better understanding of human nature. In this sense, it does not violate the Randian demand for always and only reason as a guide to thought.

The first formulation is this: Rand claims that all organisms face a fundamental choice of nature - to live or to die. Only by taking action can the organism live, and action taken to pursue some other goal is fruitless unless action is also taken to survive. Thus nature appoints as primary a particular value, survival. I believe the same can be said just as well of reproduction over a longer time frame and in the larger sense of reproduction. By this I mean the sense I am generally using - procreation but also helping others to survive and procreate; helping not only to create the next generation but to raise them and prepare them for the adult world. This fundamental choice version of the argument would give the resulting ethics a dualist tinge, blending the Randian survivalist ethos and my own. I consider this unsatisfactory, and am motivated by all of the other arguments I present for the procreation ethos to conclude: in the dualistic formulation, procreation trumps survival should the two conflict.

The second formulation is this: If all organisms act to survive, including simple bacteria, the same ought to apply to our own genes, which seem to have arisen historically as independent organisms and created animal bodies out of self-interest. Humans are the machines that human DNA builds to survive, and genes do so via our reproduction. The survivalist ethic applied to genes (i.e. applied to our current and improved understanding of human nature) is the procreation ethic.

The third formulation is this: There is a fundamental alternative not just between choosing to live versus choosing to die, but between choosing to have come into existence and not have come into existence. It is not an alternative that is available to us in fact, but it is an alternative which we can choose for the next generation. If morality is non-subjective we should expect that the moral choices of the next generation and the moral choices of the current generation differ only with respect to circumstances, not with respect to the individual actors. If we morally approve of our having come into existence (a premise very close to the heart of the Randian system, if not quite espoused by Ayn herself) we should in most circumstances conclude that the next generation would approve of itself coming into existence. Crucially, since we are aiming for a non-subjectivist ethics we must conclude that in most circumstances we morally approve of ourselves creating the next generation. The alternative is that ethics varies from person to person, not merely by circumstance but also in content - a conclusion we ought to reject on epistemological and metaphysical grounds. In Randian terms, if one's life is the standard of value, the processes that create life across time must also have positive moral value. In lay terms, the reader ought to say to themself: wouldn't it be bizarre if it were morally good for a thousand prior generations to procreate, ultimately resulting in my own existence, but I - who share a number of fundamental traits with them - have no moral inclination to create further generations?

The Teleological Argument

I present here the argument based on features of humans and of all living organisms. This is the most important and deepest argument in favor of my candidate ethical system: morality is the propagation of one's genes. As a result, I will likely need to revisit it and expand further in the future.

The teleological argument can be thought of as an argument about proper function. Simply put, if a human must do X, Y and Z to be considered to function properly then a human ought to do X Y and Z. The central problem of ethics is the is/ought dichotomy. This theory states that we may be able to describe the world as it is, but it does not follow that we can describe the world as it ought to be. The teleological argument, which concerns proper function, argues that there is something about the way humans are which requires a particular behavior to function properly and therefore that humans ought to exhibit that behavior. In this sense it is a direct attempt to defeat the is/ought dichotomy.

A designed object like a watch has a teleological nature. By virtue of the fact that a watch is a tool designed to tell time, it ought to do so within a certain range of accuracy. Similarly, biological organisms of all types and all complexities are designed, in the sense of emerging from dynamic, non-random systems. A bacterium is designed by its genes to form a protective cell wall, to seek nourishment, and to reproduce. If it fails to do any of these tasks, it will die and that individual bacterium will not pass on its genes. If the bacterium is functioning properly and in accordance with the genetic plan, it must act to accomplish these tasks. Larger organisms are not exempt from these facts. A salmon or mackerel that feels no reproductive urge is defective. It is not functioning properly, just as if it lacked a sense of sight or hunger. The same facts apply to dogs, cats, and of course Homo sapiens.

Human function is obviously much more complex than that of bacteria or even simple animals, but it cannot escape the facts of genetic evolution. A human being who is unconcerned with the spread of their genes is defective. That spread could take the form or bearing and raising children, but it can also take other forms such as helping relatives raise their children or even helping perfect strangers with areas that seem at first glance to have nothing to do with reproduction. More on this critical topic will follow. The term for a defect that we do not choose is disease, disability, or even simply defect as in birth defect. We rightly pity and sympathize with those who suffer from these defects through no fault of their own. The term for a defect chosen freely by the individual is evil.

The Premise

The Premise of my argument and inquiry is this:

I do not intend to investigate deeply metaphysics or epistemology. I will assume a stable reality, independent of any particular observer, knowable through the senses, and discoverable through science.

In ethics, I will take on a candidate belief system based on genetic success and evolution as the determinants of morality. I will argue for this system and explore its potential implications. I will endeavor to extend the system to politics, the economy, and other fields of human action.

What is the nature of the ethical premise? It is not intended to be deontological, virtue-ethical, or impose fictitious "side constraints". It is a work of pure consequentialist theory, accepting the manipulations that such a theory is subject to and arguing that they are the best alternative.

My ethical premise is also not a "rule" consequentialist system, at least not on an a priori or assumptive basis. I will assume at the onset that the individual action which most closely produces an ethical result is morally correct, rather than the action which comports to some rule generally producing a desired result.

To state the ethical imperative succinctly: Among possible actions, that which most increases the duration and number of one's genes is the moral action.

Statement of Purpose

This work is a collection of essays. It intends to capture a single line of thinking: what if evolution is ethics? In other words, what if human beings' moral nature relates primarily to evolution rather than to reason, happiness, self-fulfillment, or any other supposed virtue? What value system, what politics, what theory of mind and of happiness will ultimately flow from that simple inquiry?

I must confess that at time of writing I do not yet know. I hope that in reading, thinking, and discussion you will join me in discovery.

-Jupiter