Discussion of Slate Star Codex: "Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice"

I'm going to repost something I posted there:

I think that Scott is looking at Phil Robertson’s literal words and ignoring context, implication, and connotation. It is possible to parse what Phil Robertson said as a thought experiment which questions the logical consequences of an atheistic position.

But even though his literal words have the form of such a thought experiment, that’s not what he’s doing. He’s stringing together a set of applause lights meant to tell his audience that he fantasizes about the outgroup getting punished for being the outgroup in a way that is their own fault.

It is a scourge of the Internet that people are too literal. Scott is falling victim to this trend here. The way Phil Robertson phrased that, and the circumstance surrounding it, make it very clear that it is not just a thought experiment even if you can take it apart and say “well, a thought experiment has A, and B, and C, and Phil is also using A, and B, and C and in exactly the right order."

Yes, people can use extreme scenarios when they are legitimately trying to argue a point. No, this is not a case of that. It's not even a case of atheists in the audience getting mindkilled. It's a case of atheists in the audience correctly understanding what he's saying. In the real world outside LW, most hypotheticals of this sort are attacks and not sincere attempts to make a philosophical point.

The problem with Robertson's thought experiment, I feel, isn't that it's extreme or visceral, but rather that it is strawmanning an overwhelming majority of atheists. (Scott actually coined a term for this sort of thing: weak man.)

Most atheists I know don't in fact believe that God is the only possible source of morality; in fact, many of them hold that even if God existed, they would still evaluate each of His commandments on their own merits before deciding to obey. The mere fact that you don't believe in God doesn't make you a moral nihilist all of a sudden. Robertson's thought experiment relies upon the implicit assumption that atheism implies moral nihilism, making it okay to rape and murder, which is frankly a very old argument that has been refuted a great many times, both on and off the Internet.

My problem with such examples is that it seems more like Dark Arts emotional manipulation than actual argument. What your mind hears is that, if you're not believing in God, people will come to your house and kill your family - and if you believed in God they wouldn't do that, because they'd somehow fear the God. I don't see how is this anything else but an emotional trick.

I understand that sometimes you need to cut out the nuance in morality thought experiments, like equaling taxes to being threatened to be kidnapped, if you don't regularly pay a racket. But the opposite thing is creating exciting graphic visions. Watching your loved one raped is not as bad as losing a loved one - but it creates a much better psychological effect, targeted to elicit emotional blackmail.

Thanks for doing this.

Robertson's point is actually quite relevant for religious folk. When I was still a serious Christian, I too wondered how a purely secular approach to morality could avoid degenerating into relativism or a "might makes right" free-for-all.

Any arbitrariness in one's approach to morality risks relativism, as someone else can take a different approach and so reach a different conclusion. For example, utilitarianism becomes a much different beast if I introduce a caste system wherein I take a weighted sum of people's utilities. I may decide that one group's happiness is worth more than that of a different group.

Cheating is another issue that bothered me. If you can lie, cheat, steal, and kill your way to a good life and avoid all the negative consequences, then why not do it? This is the perspective of someone who does not value other people's happiness and only follows the rules because of the punishments for breaking them.

Contrast with a supreme judge. He's the source of morality, so there's no relativism. He's omniscient, so there's no getting away with doing something in secret. He's almighty, so there's no way to use one's might to avoid consequences. Is it any wonder that the devout can feel underwhelmed by secular morality? They can accept that atheists can be just and honorable, and that some are more righteous than most religious folk. What they have trouble accepting is that those moral precepts have a solid foundation without God.

As someone who has spent a lot of time with religious conservatives, I've heard the sort of argument given by Robertson many times before. And they use it as an actual argument used against nihilism, which they tend to think follows directly from atheism. So Scott is completely right to address it as such.

I think Robertson conflates the two because he (and others like him) can't really imagine a coherent non-arbitrary atheist moral realist theory. Can anyone here give a good example of one that couldn't include what the murderer he depicts seems to believe?

Phrasing the moral example this way is likely to cause participants in the discussion to get mind-killed and not conductive to get them to reason freely.

In particular it distracts here from the strawman he's making. Most atheists do think that there something wrong with rape and murder.

I largely agree with the post. Saying Robertson's thought experiment was off limits and he was fantasising about beheading and raping atheists is silly. I think many people's reaction was explained by their being frustrated with his faulty assumption that all atheists are necessarily (implicitly or explicitly) nihilists of the sort who'd say there's nothing wrong with murder.

One amendment I'd make to the post is that many error theorists and non-cognitivists wouldn't be on board with what the murderer is saying in the thought experiment. For example, they could be quasi-realists. I say this as someone who personally leans moral realist.

You could construct an argument about needing to reinforce explicitly using system-2 ethics on common situations to make sure that you associate those ethics implicitly with normal situations, and not just contrived edge cases. But that seems to be even a bit too charitable. And also easily fixed if so.

I definitely agree with Scott's argument. Using extreme scenarios can help get to the heart of the matter/morality. It's especially interesting because Scott's previous post was... Is Everything A Religion? If everything is truly a religion then Phil Robertson's scenario loses steam. The atheist would simply reply to the intruders that he does believe in God... just not the Christian God. If the intruders pressed the atheist for details... and the atheist was a liberal... then he could tell him that the state is his God. This would be consistent with a paper written by a Nobel prize winning economist...

The state did, indeed, become God. - James M. Buchanan, Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum

It's too bad that Scott didn't share that paper as an additional example of how different beliefs can be considered religions.

But the atheist wouldn't necessarily have to be a liberal to have some degree of faith that the state would track down, apprehend and judge the law-breakers.

Personally, even though I'm an atheist, it's entirely possible that I would totally claim Christianity and quote the heck out of the Bible if I found myself in Robertson's scenario. I would have absolutely no affinity with Kant in this regard. I would lie like a rug if I thought it would save my family. That being said, if we assumed that the intruders were highly intelligent, and/or had a lie detector test on them... then I would tell them that my "God" is progress. Difference is the engine of progress so difference is the engine of "God". If the intruders killed my family and I... then this would decrease difference... and as such, be against my religion. And because everybody benefits from progress... even the intruders.. then it would behoove them not to kill us. In essence I would be making a consequentialist argument against being murdered.

The same thing is true if the leader of China called me on the phone and threatened to invade the US and kill/enslave all Americans. Again, assuming adequate intelligence... I'd make a consequential rather than a deontological argument against the invasion. Sure, China would gain X from having a bunch of additional resources at their disposal... but they would be foregoing Y. What's Y? Y is what they would have gained from American innovations. Progress (innovations, discoveries, cures) depends on difference... and China would eliminate a lot of difference by invading us. Therefore... Y > X.

Perhaps it would be more effective to simply reply that we'd bomb the heck out of China if they invaded us? History clearly indicates that this argument doesn't work in the long run. We're all safer and better off when more, rather than less, people appreciate the value of difference.

This is easily turned into a counterexample to basing moral on God. Say that for what ever reason somebody just hasn't have access to bible/christian teachings. Then the harassers visit this guy. It would still be "If it happened to them, they probably would say, ‘Something about this just ain’t right’". Proposedly later the bible and christian teaching were offered to this guy and he later realises that what the guys did was really really wrong. This is really implausible, it is way earlier that he would suspect that this isn't right and would probably act to stop it. Humans are not that morally clueless without gods. We do not NEED to offload moral judgement to the heavens, we don't turn into such psychopaths for not having access to a bible.

But given the guy would propably "discover" their ethical nature in feeling justified to take action against such attacks and we don''t naturallly come up with good theorethical justifications how things might work out so that something can be bad.

We here are largely aware of Robertson's comments not because they have particular merit as a thought experiment, but because they occupy the sweet spot of maximizing controversy. That is, it is easy to present as objectionable within Blue Tribe, and easy to present as defensible in Red Tribe, and so in the end it's a fairly textbook toxoplasma. This isn't to say that the general question isn't interesting; it's just more important than usual that interested parties treat the thought experiment like a finger pointing to an interesting argument.

Personally, I find it fairly interesting that Robertson (et. al.) is concerned with assigning moral legitimacy to his outrage at suffering these various horrible events. Going to the extreme case has the advantages that Scott articulated, but it also seems to blunt the perceived need for a complex ethic. The things are 'bad' in the sense that any sane person would be deeply unhappy if they occurred; what is the point of invoking a whole metaphysics to justify that near-universal impulse? Wouldn't it be more interesting to focus on the places where an objective moral system would produce different results?

Even if the atheist was a moral nihilist (of course he is conflating atheism and nihilism), it still would not be rational to carry out the action because we would hope that society's condemnation from people with moral systems and appropriate deterrents (e.g the risk of getting caught and getting a life prison sentence) so even saying that moral nihilism will lead to mass murder is wrong, so long as a sufficiently large percentage of the population believe in consistent and sensible moral systems. The moral nihilist would also have to overcome his brain's normal revulsion against killing people which the effort and guilt to do so would probably outweigh the utility gained from doing the murder, so to say moral nihilism leads to murder is a non sequitur.

I also agree that although it can be useful in discussions with people you know are rational to choose extreme examples as a "least convenient world" example, it can be mind-killing for those not sufficiently trained. Certainly that is what has happened to the media in this example, who have focused on the other views and motives of the arguer rather than the content of the argument, which has many flaws.

The only steelman I can come up with here starts by assuming that he considers Authority a terminal or root moral value. Then he could correctly argue that atheism leaves no basis for believing in Authority as a fundamental value. Neither does theism, unless you specifically work that in - but let's ignore this. Certainly I would expect a greater tendency to believe in this value among theists.

The main problem lies in the fact that I don't need to believe in Authority to oppose murder. He picked an example that has nothing to do with it, precisely so that atheists would agree he was talking about something bad. If he chose some 'sin' that only seems bad if we treat Authority as fundamental, then a lot of us would proudly say we don't see a problem with it. And he would more obviously be committing a logical fallacy, in this case begging the question by assuming his disputed morality is better than ours.

Phill presumably believes in Divine Command theory. But its not really obvious why "Divine command theory" really solves the problem. For example consider the following passage: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." - Imagine Phill was an Amalekite. Then the murder of his whole family would be morally righteous?

Egoism demonstrates that my right and my wrong are paramount. Not god, not government, me. An atheist morality with absolute clarity, applicability and consistency. Egoism does not rely on anyone else being an egoist, including myself in the past or future. If I say don't kill, I am right.

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I recall an early couple of comments I made on vegetarianism on LessWrong. The first was a mildly snarky variation of my opinion of what was wrong with a line of reasoning. The second was a rather graphic depiction of one logical conclusion of that line of reasoning. I was worried the snark might be down-voted, but it was instead up-voted rather heavily. The graphic depiction which I thought was much more direct ended up being down-voted rather heavily. I still don't fully understand the norms of discussion at LW.

Phil Robertson may have been correct based on Philosophy norms of debate, but he was incorrect based on popular media norms of debate. I think it's generally better to follow the norms even when you disagree than to go against them. There's a whole bunch of research on this that I think I have a decent understanding of, but this would probably require a comprehensive review. It's a shame popular media is of such a generally poor quality, but Phil Robertson should have known better.

"there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong,"

Here is the flaw in the logic. Of course this behaviour would still be considered wrong, because: 1) It is illegal. It is a violation of criminal statutes that do not appear to be sourced, either directly or indirectly, from the Bible.

2) It is immoral, in that it violates societal mores.

One of the main problems with providing morals/ethics from God, is that the feedback system is very weak. You only find out whether you have violated God's rules until after you have died. If you violate the law (which comes from the state) you find out much quicker.

The legal system, despite its flaws, is more effective in enforcing law and order for this reason. With judeo-christianity, you have this Schrodinger's cat syndrome, where you can't determine whether actions are "good" or "bad" until after death. Thus you have the bizarre situation where eternal damnation could hinge on reading skills.

Or worse, translation skills. It is possible that millions of people will end up in hell based on the translation difference between "kill" and "murder".

something to think about.

Even if they think there's no right and wrong or whatever, they probably still want to live. Otherwise they would've killed themselves already.

More personally:

1. I quite dislike and don't get the point about them being atheists. What's the connection?

2. 1. In addition to that, reductionally (Although perhaps statistically) there's nothing that says "atheist equals [value]". Perhaps statistically on anecedotally, but not reductionally. Unless HE (and only he, because that's what HE's saying. Because he's making the argument and that's what HE believes.) says anything about that (which he implies, but things can clear up with the right question) I don't see the point of mentioning they're atheists. If there's no reason to mention they're atheist, then why did he? Seems like a personal attack.

3. Killing the children in addition seems entirely stupid because children practically always believe whatever stupid stuff you tell them. So they're basically killing someone who can't really make a reasonable judgement.

Well, a common case of people seeing their family get raped and murdered is occurring right now (ISIS related shit) and the raping is done by religious extremists, so...

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