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maus_merryjest has a blog post where he posts answers to "controversial" questions. These include questions like "Do you believe in God" and "Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?"I responded that I found those to be some of the least controversial questions I'd ever seen (any quiz that begins with something like "Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?" already exempts itself from being taken seriously).
Maus replied I might be able to come up with some better ones.
Better is in the eye of the beholder of course (and you'd better hope it's not that death-ray eye, geez) but I did give this some thought. I think that a controversial question forces the answerer to make some choice and, ideally, defend it (to an extent).
I use as my prototype a question from Chuck Klosterma's Sex, Drugs, and Cocopuffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (paraphrased as I don't have the book handy): "If you could free every political prisoner on earth but you had to beat to death with your bare hands a completely restrained clydesdale horse, would you?"
I think that's the kind of "Gettin' to know you" question that really has teeth.
So here goes. Assume if you don't make the choice someone else will make it for you:
- Life Savings. You must choose to spare one life: either a religious leader who to all known facts is a good and decent man who has brought solace to thousands or a scientist who tests as brilliant but has never accomplished anything in their field. Who do you save and why?
- 'Til They Glow. You have one city-buster nuclear weapon. You must use it on a major metropolitan area. There will be no direct repercussions. Who do you nuke?
- Convert The Infidel. You have a machine that will mentally swicht all adherents from one religion to another (it cannot make them atheists, it must be a real religion--with church-like infrastructure, no flying spaghetti monsters). Which religion is the target. What do they believe now?
- Criminal Intent. You can make something that didn't used to be a criminal act and choose the penalty. What would you criminalize?
- Yo ho! Yo HO! You have a choice between stopping all internet piracy or all speeding on the highway but the cost is that your favorite living artist will be forever put out of business. Is it worth it to you to stop either of those at that cost?
- One Makes You Larger. (Stolen from someone else): There is a 100% safe procedure that will ensure that your child will be hetrosexual. Do you use it on him/her? Do you release it to the world at large? What if it is 90% safe?
- Choose Your Punishment You are convicted of speeding while on vacation in another country. You are given a choice of 10 lashes with a cane or 90 days in jail. Which do you think you'd choose? (Assume the jails are relatively safe but only to a 'realistic' degree--no perfect guarantee).
- Crazy! You get to choose our next president: Bob Barr or Ron Paul! Ready, set, go!
I'll think on these and post answers if anyone else does.
-Marco
October 17 2008, 13:45:19 UTC 3 years ago
October 17 2008, 13:47:33 UTC 3 years ago
-Marco
October 17 2008, 17:10:07 UTC 3 years ago
October 17 2008, 17:50:27 UTC 3 years ago
-Marco
Anonymous
October 17 2008, 15:20:16 UTC 3 years ago
Does Scientology count as a "real religion?"
Or does the "flying saucer" rule apply?Yer Bro
October 17 2008, 15:27:34 UTC 3 years ago
Re: Does Scientology count as a "real religion?"
Scientology is a real religion for these purposes. They have churches and stuff.-Marco
October 17 2008, 18:34:04 UTC 3 years ago
Also, this article is somewhat on topic:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/10/e
October 17 2008, 18:45:41 UTC 3 years ago
What else but the ends possibly could justify the means?*
-Marco
* there's an answer I find easy and acceptable but it won't appeal to athiests ;)
October 17 2008, 22:49:36 UTC 3 years ago
That's the point of the article, and he deals with it early on. The point is not so much as whether or not the ends justify the means (because the answer is, as you say, "nothing else could").
Instead, he argues thusly: You, as a fallible human, probably don't understand the ends (or the means for that matter) perfectly. Thus, when making any judgment call that's close or tricky, there's a very good chance that you will be incorrect in determining the ends/means ration. Therefore, your statement of "the ends justify the means" can be false in reality.
Basically, he's making a practical argument, not a logical one.
October 17 2008, 23:04:30 UTC 3 years ago
After all, we can get "For the good of the village do not suffer a witch to live for the good of the village." How do you distinguish that (bad rule) from any good rule if you can't trust yourself to do the math?
The answer is you can't: you abdicate hard choices since you can't be trusted to make nearly impossible choices. Baby and bathwater.
Other possibility: I did not read the article carefully enough.
-Marco
October 18 2008, 01:03:11 UTC 3 years ago
I think that the solution is to have some sort of objective principle to apply -- one that goes beyond personal judgment calls.
The article was written as a follow-up to one about corruption via power. The gist was that power corrupts; it ultimately serves itself at the expense of the subjects. Therefore, a decision that's made "for the good of the village" will tend towards being "for the good of the elder" instead, even though that's not what the elder himself believes.
You can apply the anti-power principle to the objective rule principle to get potential solutions to tough problems.
So, to address your example: killing people is the ultimate expression of power. If you're the elder, you may believe that killing the witch is a net benefit to the village. However, if you apply the objective principle of less-power, you rule out the death penalty. That may not be satisfying, and it may be detrimental (suppose she's really a witch), but it's probably the approach you could take (you'll avoid killing X non-witches at the expense of setting 1 witch free).
That's pretty much what the Founding Fathers had in mind with the US: make rules, not rulers.
The linked article talks about having a non-human superintelligent and incorruptible AI do the decision making. That's obviously a stretch, but the same idea is what we have now in our constitutional systems.
I'm sure there's lots of holes in this approach (I haven't given it a full logical treatment yet) but I think it's at least pointed in the right direction.
October 17 2008, 18:51:41 UTC 3 years ago
For example, if someone gleefully answers "Paris!!" to number two, we cannot hold that as a serious moral statement that they wish to kill French people--about the most we can take it as is some French-bashing unless they are the sort likely to acquaire and use a nuclear weapon.
Finally, if you think they produce no meaningful challenge, I point you to Daniel's answers below: he has already made me re-think some of my answers to the questions and provided me with something interesting to think about.
(I was going to bomb the captial of North Korea on the hope that the massive aid influx would do more eventual good--but his basis for the answer is better than mine).
In short, I think the article linked too is too clever by half ;)
-Marco
October 17 2008, 18:45:23 UTC 3 years ago
1. Scientist. While the religious guy may be decent and good, you don't specify that he goes out of his way to help the world aside from personal decency (my answer might change if we establish that, say, he runs an almshouse). The scientist has a shot at doing something that will bring greater benefits, and you didn't sharpen the question by making him a bastard.
2. The least-populated area you'll let me count as a "major metropolitan area." Note that I would make the choice myself if I thought your imaginary backup chooser would pick anything larger.
3. Given your answer to my earlier question, I wouldn't bother converting anyone. I'm not convinced that particular metaphysical beliefs are what make any important difference. I'd bet that if Westboro Baptist Church becomes the Westboro Ashram, we don't gain much.
6. I wouldn't use it on my own kid. I'm torn about whether to make it available to the world, but I'm inclined to say "no." In a world where parents could change the orientation of their children, I think homosexuality would likely be even more stigmatized. On the other hand, the march of general innovation requires a high degree of openness -- I don't think you could likely suppress one sort of information on how biology worked without potentially screwing up others.
October 17 2008, 18:56:31 UTC 3 years ago
1. I considered making the scientist a bastard but I felt that genius scientists probably already get too bad of a rap as is.
2. I like this better than mine (capital of North Korea).
3. I will restrain my answer to this one--but I will say this: would you risk putting the power in someone else's hands if they were going to do Christian->Islam?
6. This is a terrible question. If you use it, you are condemning gay people, even in this hypothetical. If you suppress it, you are suppressing knowledge. I think my answers are (1) I would use it if it was out there. I'd feel I had no choice. And (2) I would walk away from it if it wasn't well known.
I think of the parallel to deaf people who feel that advanced medical procedures are destroying deaf culture. They are--but I don't know that culture has the right to exist in the face of technological change. This unfortunately compares homosexuality to deafness--which I don't think is quite fair--but it's the closest analogous situation I can come up with.
-Marco
October 17 2008, 19:08:40 UTC 3 years ago
If I must convert someone... maybe let's convert Scientologists to Santeria. I don't think it'll make much difference in the world, but it should be a relatively non-disruptive change (compared to all the Christians disappearing), and I'd be much more amused by John Travolta.
October 17 2008, 19:10:13 UTC 3 years ago
-Marco
October 18 2008, 00:39:36 UTC 3 years ago
Hard Questions, Telling Answers