Wild Moral Dilemmas

I had to decide whether I would send my sister to prison for a year or let her keep using IV drugs. I chose to send her to prison, but this was not the intuitive choice. I very much performed a utilitarian calculation. This leads me to remark on socioeconomic class: My station has certainly improved since childhood, but I would still say that I'm very much working class, and I dare say that the reliability of one's moral and memetic heuristics and inputs are very dependent on class.

In my personal experience, though I take a risk in fully generalizing, the working class is permeated with toxic memes. The most common and general is probably anti-intellectualism, but there are other more specific ones that are better communicated in phrase: "It is better to be thrilled than it is to be safe"; "It is more important to conform to working-class social norms than to obey the law"; "Physical, verbal, and emotional abuse are tolerable so long as the abuser loves me"; "Physical exercise and healthy diet merely confer bonus points"; "Regrettable actions committed on emotional impulse are entirely excusable, even with this maxim in mind"; and perhaps most ironically, "One should follow one's heart," without the caveat that one should not follow it over the edge of a suspension bridge.

This is not to say that the other classes are entirely nontoxic, but I would say that they are less toxic. You can see in the other classes, being safety-conscious, physically exercising and eating healthy food, not tolerating abuse, and at the very least making the appearance of deliberation, are acts that actually confer social status. When I spend time around people in a higher socioeconomic class it seems that they on average have healthier thoughts than me, if we're talking about gut reactions and intuitions, as we are, even if they have not deliberately sought out and acquired their memes. In one sense, we would expect them to seem healthier, and in another more objective sense, we would also expect them to seem healthier, because socioeconomic class, mental and physical health, and all of those other enumerable things correlate with one another; it is social and so it is a causal shooting gallery, but the correlation is there.

And likewise, LessWrong is skewed heavily towards white, male, very well-educated first-worlders. We might expect that an average LW user simply relying on the memes that they've acquired and not applying a moral calculus at all would not be a terribly worse alternative to applying the calculus, or perhaps an even better alternative, if they would apply the calculus selectively and in the pursuit of justification.

And so in my everyday life I find that I am surrounded by people with unhealthy memes and that I myself have some curled up in the various corners of my mind, and it is, more often than one might think, safer and very useful to consciously deliberate as opposed to following intuition. Virtue ethicists who consider virtuous danger, thrill-seeking, impulse and anti-intellectualism, do not live very long on average.

And furthermore, though I am technically twisting your words to my own end, I do not think that it is such a crazy hypothesis to say that higher classes lead more 'morally inert' lives, because many healthier memes allow you to 'skip' the moral dilemmas altogether; e.g. contraceptive use, abiding the law, taking care of your health, surrounding yourself with people who do all of these things and have all of these healthy memes, etc.

But of course, neither am I a human utility calculator.

What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?

Should I tell the truth and weaken social bonds or keep silent and maintain social bonds?

I cinsider the importance to me of a truth or a bond then I make my choice. Outcomes vary.

Food: I would like to stop contributing to animal suffering, but I also like the taste of a good meal, and I want to have a balanced diet. I do not want to spend much time studying diet, because that topic is boring as hell to me, and I believe that if I eat a random non-vegetarian diet, it will be closer to a balanced diet than a random vegan diet. Also, it is convenient to have a lunch near my workplace, with my colleagues, and there are not many vegan options there.

My solution here is to take the most vegetarian-ish choice from the conveniently available options. If I were single, I would eat joylent for breakfast and dinner, but living with other people, I again try to eat the most vegetarian-ish choice given, being open but not obnoxious about my preferences.

Work: When I was a libertarian, I was proud for working in a private sector, not working for the state. But then I realized that many private companies I worked for also did some projects for government. So I wasn't sure, if there really is a meaningful difference between working for the state directly, or using an intermediary.

Later, when I wanted to be a teacher, there was a choice between private and public school. Unfortunately, in my country, the public schools are the good ones, and the private ones are a "pay for good grades and a diploma without any learning" system. (That's because in my country employers care about you having a diploma, but don't care which university gave it to you. Of course in such environment diploma mills are very popular among students.) I tried a private school anyway, because they convinced me their school was different, but it actually wasn't, and when I saw my colleagues were blackmailed into giving good grades, I quit. And then I taught in a public school, which was better; until I ran out of money, so I returned to programming.

Maybe a half of IT business in my country means doing something for government (state or local), which often is just a pretext for stealing money from taxpayers. (When your business strategy is being friends with influential politicians and selling overpriced products for the government, it is better to sell a product such as an information system, where the average voter has no idea about what the market price should be.) So, when I have a suspicion that my employer is doing exactly this, is it my moral duty to quit? Also, what difference would it make? If they received the deal because of political connections, they will receive it anyway, and for the same price, so the only difference is what quality the taxpayers will finally receive. If I contribute to make such project better, am I doing a good thing (providing better quality to the taxpayers) or a bad thing (helping to excuse a theft)?

The work in IT itself has some dilemmas: given a choice between two possible solutions, should I as an expert recommend the one better for my employer, or the one better for me (e.g. where I can learn new things that will later increase my value on the job market, even if it means that this specific project will take a little more time and be a little more expensive)? It is very easy to rationalize here a lot; I may convince myself that using a more sophisticated technology is "better in long term" for my employer.

How hard should I work, and how much time should I spend reading the web? Especially when everyone spends a part of their working time browsing online news. Or perhaps could I use those parts of my working time more meaningfully, such as learning something new? Is it an excuse if I will later use some of such gained skills for my employer's benefit?

In most situations I choose some kind of middle way: not doing obviously immoral things, but also not going an extra mile to be perfect. -- However, this is probably how almost everyone could describe their choices, because usually there is at least one less moral and one more moral alternative compared with what you did.

I am well aware of how much my moral choices are a result of what people around me are doing. I wouldn't even call it "peer pressure", because those people do not really exert any significant pressure on me, and I am weird enough so I wouldn't care so much about being weird in one more thing. It's just... I don't want to inconvenience myself with moral tradeoffs more than people around me do.

It is obvious what this adaptation means. It prevents me from seeming immoral, but it also prevents me from taking morality so seriously that it would give me big disadvantage compared with the rest of my tribe. But that's an evolutionary description, not a psychological one. For evolution, it means "be only as much moral as necessary, not a bit more". But for me, psychologically... I want to do the right thing, but I also want to be surrounded by people who do the right thing. When people around me don't do the right thing, it feels futile when I try to do it, so I gradually give up. What is the difference? If you would give me a choice of living in two otherwise equivalent cities, only one city completely vegan, I would choose the vegan city, even if I knew the other city is available. I just don't want to have the temptation right in front of my eyes. Similarly, I would rather work in a company where everyone tries their best, than in a company where people choose the easiest way; it's just difficult to try doing my best when I keep seeing people who choose the easiest way, especially if once in a while their laziness makes my own work harder.

I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me.

Virtue ethics is not the worst heuristic.

• Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?

Definitely. Whether to cheat on a test used to be a common moral dilemma. I ended up making different decisions in different circumstances, based on both virtue ethics and consequentialism, and occasionally deontology.

Often in real life dilemmas the hard part is being honest with oneself rather than doing an accurate utility calculation.

The most important dilemma I encountered is probably my career choice which I got wrong by rationalizing my desire for luxuries and social status. The dilemma is made considerably more difficult by having responsibility to my family rather than only to myself. Essentially the same tradeoff (luxuries vs greater good) comes up in day to day choices as well. Often it is hard to tell whether you really need that extra indulgence to maintain motivation.

Another notable moral dilemma is regarding what is acceptable to eat. I gave up on eating mammals long ago and currently try to stick to a mostly vegan diet, however I'm not quite sure about the right solution. Here some of the difficulty truly arises from philosophical questions like what sort of entities have moral status and how to weight quantity vs. quality of animal lives.

Most of the moral dilemmas I face in real life I've never read about in ethics or philosophy classes. Most of my real world experiences are more along the lines of decision theory/prisoner's dilemmas.

So for example, if someone has wronged me, what does moral philosophy say I should do? I'm not sure because I don't really know where to look or even if this question has been answered; to my knowledge it's never been addressed in any philosophy or ethics undergrad courses I took.

But from a prisoner's dilemma point of view, I have to juggle whether I should cooperate (let it slide) or defect (retaliate). If I let it slide, then I might be sending the signal that I'm a cooperate bot and future agents will think they can take advantage of me. But if I retaliate, then this might descend into an infinite loop of defect bot behavior. And from either of those nodes, I have to take into account the degree to which I cooperate or defect.

What kind of moral dilemmas do you actually encounter?

• None. I'm a virtue ethicist, more or less, of an Objectivist bent. A "dilemma", to me, is a choice between two equally good things (which virtue I want to emphasize), rather than two equally bad things.

Do you have any thoughts on how much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life? Do you think this is a typical amount?

• It feels like "None."

Do you have any examples of pedestrian moral dilemmas to which you've applied abstract moral reasoning? How did that work out?

• No.

Do you have any examples of personal moral dilemmas on a Trolley Problem scale that nonetheless happened?

• No.

"Trolley Problems" are less about describing genuinely difficult situations, and more about trying to find faults with ethical systems or decision theories by describing edge scenarios. To me, they're about as applicable as "Imagine there's an evil alien god who will kill everyone if you're a utilitarian. What is the most utilitarian thing to do?"

ETA: In fairness, though, I don't see any ethical issue in the Trolley Problem to begin with, unless you tied all the people to the tracks in the first place. I regard any ethical system as fatally flawed which makes a rich man who walks through a rich neighborhood and is completely ignorant of any misery -more ethical- than a rich man who is aware of but does nothing about misery. Whether or not you qualify as a "good" person shouldn't be dependent upon your environment, and any ethical system which rewards deliberate ignorance is fatally flawed.

Do we define a moral dilemma as something where you are not punished for making the wrong choice? As if you are it is more of a calculation for your own profit.

In my personal life I encounter almost none, since there would be almost always some kind of a punishment, at least people thinking I am an asshole and be less willing to help me in the future and this makes them not a purely moral dilemma.

I have a hunch that moral dilemmas are "meant" to be more political. Like should we allow factory farming of animals.

Also they are for people with more interesting jobs such as docs.

I think the legal system of the first world is pretty much tied down so much that a normal mundane citizen rarely encounters purely moral dilemmas. Usually, if it is dubious it is not allowed.

Therefore, moral dilemmas are handled at law-making, hence at voting. They are political.

For example Climate Change / AGW is a huge moral dilemma for me. I tend to lean towards the skeptics being more right, because the alarmists are talking taking action in the last dramatic minute for 20 years now. The alarmists look a lot like the usual suspects of anti-industrialist hippies. But do I really dare to gamble with this politically? It would be safer to act as if the alarmists are right. My feelings about a bunch of kumbaya hippies are less important than not making the planet almost inhabitable and if there is only 1% chance the whole alarmist case is right, despite their many problems, we should be working more on cutting CO2...

Whether to cheat on gift aid and whether I should steal money from my parents to fund charitable donations. In my case the fear of being caught and desire to appear moral in front of other people won out over the desire to do the right thing.

When I have to go home during the holidays I have the dilemma of deciding whether it is worse to eat animal products or to argue with my parents. Normally I'd compromise and agree to eat small quantities of milk and eggs and only eat meat in cases where it would be wasted if I don't eat it. Now Mum often cooks too much meat and tries to persuade me that the leftovers will be wasted if I don't eat them. If I eat them, she'll keep using the same trick. If I don't, she'll say that I'm being irrational and betraying my principles against wasting food.

When the social norms consider it well within your rights to do so, when should you trust people to make their own decisions for the sake of their own interests vs. when should you "paternalistically" extrapolate their desires and make decisions such as what you think they would want if they were smarter/wiser/disciplined comes about instead" is one that happens to me a surprisingly large number of times.

This often but doesn't necessarily imply positions of authority. If your good buddy who isn't very financially savvy is willing to freely give you large sums of money with no obligations attached, do you accept? A strict Mormon who just arrived at college feels peer pressure and impulsively asks you for a drink, and while you do not think it's immoral you know they'll feel guilt later-do you give it to them?

More succinctly: My respect for autonomy and my consequentialism conflict in all cases where I think I know what someone wants better than they do and have any measure of power over what happens. Paternalistic attitudes are also very lonely, there are some analogues to "heroic responsibility" here.

My current position is that consequentialism wins, and what feels like moral uncertainty is actually more a "but what if the other person really does know better?" risk which must be calculated. Respect for autonomy is not usually a fundamental value (except for sometimes, we might intrinsically value the choice) but in practice it is a heuristic which usually leads to the best consequences because people are usually best at knowing what they want.

And again a poll:

How much moral judgement you have to exercise in your daily life (consider typical times)? [pollid:960]

Do you think this is a typical amount? [pollid:961]

I am working in a position where I have responsibility for people (see examples below) ? [pollid:962]

To make this more precise I define "to exercise moral judgement" as matching aginst the following cases (feel free to suggest more):

• deciding how to treat a person based on their behavior
• deciding which thing to buy based on how the purchase affects people (e.g. in other countries)
• deciding on actions which affect one or more persons directly or indirectly (e.g. as a parent, doctor, boss or social worker).

In each of these cases only if that decision is neither an impulse nor a cached thought (e.g. you have that way other times before).

How about self/other tradeoffs? In my primary relationship I often consider a decision's effect on myself and on my partner in more-or-less utilitarian fashion, while also taking into account heuristics around obligations and rights. Though admittedly it's never a pure moral dilemma in that it's usually bound up with an akrasia problem and/or a prediction problem.

For example, say I have an extra hour or two to myself to either clean or play Kerbal Space Program. Factors that could go into the decision: -How much I'd rather play KSP than clean -How much happiness I'll derive from the cleanliness if I clean -How much happiness my partner will derive from the cleanliness if I clean -How much secondhand happiness I'll derive from the above point -How much of a share of chores I've generally been doing

Of course, even if cleaning is the rationally correct decision, that's no guarantee I'll do it. Or maybe I've been doing more than my share of chores and the best choice would be to tell my partner to do the cleaning instead, but I'm afraid of having that conversation.

And if the utility considerations point to a different choice than the fairness considerations, I'm in a rather interesting spot.

I recently faced a dilemma.

A real-estate agent called me to notify me that a property I was inquiring about was sold before auction. I was an interested party and the fact that they did not try to solicit a price from me before accepting a signed contract to another party means they did not do their best to secure the best deal for the owner. I happen to actually know the owner as well, (I have no great worries about losing the deal) I wonder if I should report the events to the owner who effectively lost out on an unknown number of dollars (AUD~$10,000-$50,000), from myself or possibly a number of other interested parties who might have taken the opportunity to bid - had the property either gone to auction or been offered to other parties before the auction.

Extra info: The owner is currently unwell and does not need any kind of further stress in their life; also I don't think anything can be done to change the situation as contracts have been signed (also this was a week ago); also property prices in this local marketplace have gone wild recently, causing stupid things like this to happen - probably frequently. I wonder if regulation of the bidding marketplace would make this less likely to happen.

Separate comment post for a separate top-level moral dilemma. (x2)

I have been aware of safety failures in a workplace. (several in the same workplace) Recently in this country the laws were changed to impose a duty of care to any person who visits a workplace and knows something is unsafe. Each worker has a duty of care to themselves; and to other workers as well as other visitors to the workplace. (this includes for example - if someone walks onto a building site without a hard hat, and an incident happens where they would have been protected if they had a hard hat - you as a worker are liable for not stopping them from being there unsafely)

Various equipment that has had safety features disabled and a culture of unsafe practices. whenever I mention to either the person doing something unsafe; or the supervisor - the response seems to be, "don't worry" or "the person does that at their own risk".

At some point I believe that an intervention should be made; but I feel like to try any harder would be to overstep my authority in the workplace. (there are systems in place to report a workplace that is unsafe but I don't feel like I can use them).

Another example is that the workplace is a very loud environment (well above safe levels); and people should be wearing ear protection for long exposure. Because there is a culture of unsafe behaviour; any new worker does not start wearing earplugs and just joins the rest of workers in being equally unprotected from loud noise. when I raised this with the highest boss - he replied that they don't wear ear protection when they are provided anyway so they don't bother to provide it any more.

I expect in 10+ years a worker will become deafened and will complain to the workplace; I don't know who will be to blame, but I also don't know what I can do to make a difference. (I wear ear protection always, and surprise myself if I take it off just as I leave)

Dilemma: Things are wrong, people are harming themselves | I can't seem to fix it by talking to them, the bosses or demonstrating the right things to do.

Separate post for a separate top-level moral dilemma.

I have from time to time become aware of the possession of illegal (according to this country's laws) drugs for a person for personal use. While this is a law-breaking behaviour; (either a stranger or someone I know well) I don't feel like it has been my place to make it known to authorities.

Dilemma: Illegal but relatively harmless to others. Dilemma: Ruin the social presence of someone I know for the purpose of upholding the law/Ruin the day of a stranger I barely know (and not have personal consequences).

even if I don't agree with the laws; I should encourage their upkeep; and signal their upkeep wherever possible. (try to act in a way that if all players in the ideal world acted in this way the world would be better) If people more regularly tried to adhere to the law; there may be less car accidents; less drunk driving... less other.. etc.

I start asking myself about what sort of person this decision makes me

Isn't this a case of fundamental attribution error? Kicking one dog does not permanently turn your essence into irrevocable dog-kickerhood.