I wonder what to do / where to go at Christmastime? (Now that my family lives in the same city as me.) Anyone have a suggestion?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
System Morality
It's frequent to hear that you shouldn't support a large system because it's corrupt or is causing some sort of harm. Probably I've fallen victim to this fallacy myself. Although it's good to try to take down utterly corrupt systems, it's problematic to claim that because a system is causing some sort of harm, we must entirely avoid supporting it.
A simple counterexample, which made me realize the error in my previous thinking, is to consider humanity. Humanity is clearly causing (a lot of) harm, and all life would be better off without the harmful system of humanity. But it doesn't follow that I shouldn't aid the survival of individual humans, or even act in ways which aid the survival and well-being of society as a whole. The reason is that those individual acts can do more good than harm, and as far as it depends on me, they can be beneficial. In other words, morality must consider the pros and cons of the individual acts themselves, in the context of understanding the system, regardless of the effect of the system itself. A "system" is just a human concept for a bunch of stuff, and does not have a morality in and of itself.
By the way, humans frequently make the mistake of mistaking an indirect harm for a harm done by a system. For example, factory farming is an evil system, but buying meat from factory farms doesn't just contribute to an "unstoppable system". It actually causes (indirect) harm to a fraction of a poorly treated animal. So, the fallacy that "it feels hopeless to ever stop this system, so I'm not going to bother trying" doesn't apply here. Buying less meat from factory farms directly causes less harm, regardless of whether the system will ever be stopped, and is therefore a moral imperative.
Or take pollution as another example - regardless of whether the world is going to end soon because of pollution, a person's individual pollution still kills a fraction of a person (yes, people are dying now because of pollution, not at some mysterious point in the future). So avoiding needless pollution still directly avoids the harm to that fraction of a person, regardless of the effect of the entire system of pollution, and is therefore a moral imperative.
In contrast, Facebook is an system that's causing harm, but it does not follow that using Facebook is immoral. The reason is that an individual use of Facebook can have more pros than cons, can do more good than harm. It's a terrible way to communicate, it alienates people from each other, it results in pride and self-centredness and wasted time, but it isn't necessarily immoral. Rather, we should understand the entire system of Facebook (that it's trying to control personal information, that it's ad-supported and therefore using it causes more ads), and take that understanding into consideration when considering a particular use of Facebook.
The same can be applied to any technology or organization or system in general. The moral approach is to understand it, then use that understanding when making individual choices, rather than avoiding a "system" altogether because the "system" is causing some harm.
A simple counterexample, which made me realize the error in my previous thinking, is to consider humanity. Humanity is clearly causing (a lot of) harm, and all life would be better off without the harmful system of humanity. But it doesn't follow that I shouldn't aid the survival of individual humans, or even act in ways which aid the survival and well-being of society as a whole. The reason is that those individual acts can do more good than harm, and as far as it depends on me, they can be beneficial. In other words, morality must consider the pros and cons of the individual acts themselves, in the context of understanding the system, regardless of the effect of the system itself. A "system" is just a human concept for a bunch of stuff, and does not have a morality in and of itself.
By the way, humans frequently make the mistake of mistaking an indirect harm for a harm done by a system. For example, factory farming is an evil system, but buying meat from factory farms doesn't just contribute to an "unstoppable system". It actually causes (indirect) harm to a fraction of a poorly treated animal. So, the fallacy that "it feels hopeless to ever stop this system, so I'm not going to bother trying" doesn't apply here. Buying less meat from factory farms directly causes less harm, regardless of whether the system will ever be stopped, and is therefore a moral imperative.
Or take pollution as another example - regardless of whether the world is going to end soon because of pollution, a person's individual pollution still kills a fraction of a person (yes, people are dying now because of pollution, not at some mysterious point in the future). So avoiding needless pollution still directly avoids the harm to that fraction of a person, regardless of the effect of the entire system of pollution, and is therefore a moral imperative.
In contrast, Facebook is an system that's causing harm, but it does not follow that using Facebook is immoral. The reason is that an individual use of Facebook can have more pros than cons, can do more good than harm. It's a terrible way to communicate, it alienates people from each other, it results in pride and self-centredness and wasted time, but it isn't necessarily immoral. Rather, we should understand the entire system of Facebook (that it's trying to control personal information, that it's ad-supported and therefore using it causes more ads), and take that understanding into consideration when considering a particular use of Facebook.
The same can be applied to any technology or organization or system in general. The moral approach is to understand it, then use that understanding when making individual choices, rather than avoiding a "system" altogether because the "system" is causing some harm.
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