How fortunate we are to be right

How fortunate I am to be among those—like my friends—who understand the world correctly.

We know who to trust and who to doubt.

We study the facts. We weed out errors. We reason carefully. And as a result, we arrive at conclusions that are best for all.

We don’t base our conclusions on what is good merely for ourselves, but for what is good for our neighbors, and for the entire world.

We align ourselves with like-minded individuals who have independently arrived at the same conclusions.

How lucky that I’m not part of the half of the population that sees things differently.

And how fortunate I understand not only that they are wrong, but why.

Why they’re wrong

Some are wrong because they are evil and corrupt. Some are wrong because they are lazy and unprincipled. Some because they are naive and ignorant.

The evil and corrupt know what’s right. They have gone through the same reasoning process that we have. They know that our conclusions are correct. But because they are greedy and selfish and power-hungry and evil, they sacrifice the good of the world to their own interests. They lie. Shamelessly and constantly.

The lazy and unprincipled could discern the truth if they took the trouble. But they don’t. They don’t care enough about learning what’s right to sift through issues. They trust the liars when they should not.

The naive and ignorant follow the crowd around them, also naive and ignorant, led by the lying, lazy, manipulative, corrupt people that they trust. They don’t question what they are told. They are impervious to reason, and unlike us, they are incapable of learning what’s correct.

How fortunate we are to be among the half of the population that is right.

We are the virtuous ones

It’s not a matter of intelligence: there’s no significant difference in IQ among the two groups. Nor is it just education: both groups have both highly educated and uneducated people. It’s not wealth and income: both groups have wealthy members and poor. It’s not just geography: plenty of both groups live in cities and rural areas. It’s not a matter of belief: both groups contain people from all religions, people who are spiritual but not religious, and people who subscribe to no religion.

The only real difference between our group and the other is our virtue.

My friends and I have the virtue of sound judgment. We choose wisely who to trust. They do not.

We have the virtue of unselfishness. We are concerned with the greater good. They are not.

We have the virtue of diligence. We work hard to find the facts and avoid ignorance and delusion. They don’t.

We have the virtue of rationality. We reason carefully and thus avoid the errors that the evil perpetrate, and the others accept.

How sad to think that unless we were one of the evil, lying, selfish people who lead the other half, we wouldn’t suspect that some of what we believe is incorrect, that some of our reasons are wrong, that some of our conclusions are not for the best of all.

How sad to think we might be wrong in countless ways, and not know it.

How fortunate we are to be right.

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Games people play

I’ve gotten interested in games as a way of understanding some of the things that fascinate me. Politics. Economics. Personal interactions. The list goes on.

What is a game? I started by looking for a good definition. Wikipedia had lots. And they were fine. But none of them suited me. So I made up one that I liked. Because I can. You got a problem with that?

So here’s the definition of “game” that I’ll be using. When I say “game” I mean this:

A game is an activity, defined by a set of rules, in which participants interact with one another and with the environment and produce quantifiable outcomes.

On this definition, football, baseball, and other sports are games; so are chess, checkers, and poker. Even activities with a single participant—like solitaire—meet the definition.

Let’s go bigger. An economy is a game, intertwined with other games—for example, every economy is intertwined with a political system. And every economy or economic segment is intertwined with other economies and segments. And each of these games is composed of internal sub-games.
The aggregate of all economies is a game, which is embedded in a set of still larger games.

The biggest game I can name is the physical universe. We are al participants. It has a set of rules, known as the laws of physics. Until recently they were not known to the participants—at least the ones who play where I play. And for all practical purposes, they are not known—or even necessary—to the participants. But my definition of a game doesn’t say anything about participants knowing the rules. There just need to be participants and rules.

Most of the participants in the physical universe game are not conscious,. But my definition does not require that participants be conscious. Participants participate. They don’t have to be aware of participation.

Within the game of the physical universe is a game called “the game of life.” Within that game is the game of life on earth. It’s possible that the only place in the universe where the game of life is played is this little planet. It seems unlikely, but it’s possible. What’s certain is that we play it here. I like it.

What are the quantifiable outcomes of the game of life, economics, politics and more? We’ll come to those in due time. Be patience, grasshoppers.

Let’s consider a game called Nomic. I found it by searching for “games where you can change the rules.” Technically, you can change the rules in almost all games. For example, the rules of chess are set by FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs), the international governing body for chess. They haven’t changed rules in a while, but in theory, they can do it tomorrow.

Nomic is a game to explore changing the rules of the game while playing it. It was created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber.
Here’s how it works. You get a bunch of people together who agree to follow the default initial Nomic ruleset—or some similar set of rules. A good ruleset for a nomic-like game would contain all of the rules for playing the game, including the rules for keeping score, for winning, and, importantly, the rules for changing the rules.

The winner of a game, according to Rule 208 in the default initial ruleset, is “the first player to achieve 100 (positive) points.” But that’s just a rule, and that can be changed—but only according to the rules for adding, modifying, and deleting rules. The winner could be the first person to get to 200 points. Or it could be the second person to get there. Any modification that’s consistent with the rules for making changes is a valid modification.

The initial rules tell how a player gets points. The rules of nomic don’t define the number system to be used, so technically 100 could be binary. Nor do they include the rules of integer arithmetic which are required to add to one’s score. Nor does it include the rules that would tell you the criteria for deciding when a player’s score met the criteria for “having achieved 100 (positive) points.” These rules could be added, for clarity, if the players cared to do so. I wouldn’t bother.

A game of Nomic is played in rounds, as described in the rules. On each around the person whose turn has come (as described…) proposes a change in the rules. The players discuss the change and vote to accept the proposal or not. There are rules for voting, of course. And players may get points according to whether the rule is accepted and how they voted. Then the person whose turn it is throws a die which gives a number of additional points to be added to their score, even though the rules for addition are undefined and only inferred.

The rules further specify that some of the initial rules are immutable, and some are mutable. An immutable rule cannot be changed. But it can be “transformed” into a mutable rule, and once it is made mutable, it can be changed. To transform a rule requires unanimous agreement. (Rule 109) A simple majority can create a new (mutable) rule or modify an existing mutable rule or repeal a mutable rule. But until the second complete round, it takes unanimity and not a simple majority (Rule 203) unless Rule 203 is amended. And so on.

For a simple example of how this might work, consider Rule 208 which says: “The winner is the first player to achieve 100 (positive) points.” Suppose you have reached 97 points, and the rest of us have no more than 50, and it’s my turn. I might propose to amend Rule 208 to read “The winner is the first player to achieve 150 (positive) points.” If you want to win, you might vote against that rule, and the other players might vote for it. But Rule 204 says “If and when rule-changes can be adopted without unanimity, the players who vote against winning proposals shall receive 10 points each.” So you’d get 10 points for voting against. But since Rule 205 says “An adopted rule-change takes full effect at the moment of the completion of the vote that adopted it,” the goalpost gets moved before you get the extra ten points. So haha you don’t win!

But if everyone was sick of playing, or felt it that my proposal to change the criteria was something like cheating they might vote my change down. Of course, it wouldn’t be cheating. No cheating is possible. It’s just exploitation of the rules to achieve the desired end.

Is cheating possible in Nomic? That’s a philosophical question. Technically, anything that is allowed by the rules, however “unfair” you might consider it, even if you feel it “violates the spirit of the game” would not be cheating. If I figure out a way to win that goes against your idea “the spirit of the game” then haha I win. You can bitch about it. I can laugh at you. We can change the rules so I can’t do that next time. Or you can refuse to play with me. We have options in Nomic. But not in some other games.

What about moves that are not covered by the rule set? For example, suppose you decided that the best way to win is to insert electrodes in the brains of other players to make them vote the way that you want. I don’t see a rule in Nomic against that, so from a “strict constructionist” point of view, it’s fine. But Nomic is played in the context of national or international law, and I think that putting electrodes in someone’s head without permission might get you thrown in jail. But you could still win. There doesn’t seem to be a rule that disqualifies you if you’re in jail.

Suppose you hypnotize some of the other players so you win. There’s no law against hypnotizing people. And it doesn’t violate the laws of Nomic. So does that make it cheating?

Or supposing you manipulate them? Is that cheating. We’ll see how this is a problem in some other games.

Rules might be ambiguous or in conflict with one another, but that’s not a problem. Nomic has rules (which can be modified, of course) for resolving such situations. Just like a legal system.

The analogies between playing Nomic, and manipulating a legislative and legal system, are pretty obvious. In fact, the name Nomic comes from νόμος (nomos), Greek for “law”.

Nomic reveals some serious, and perhaps intractable problems in any system of law. At the object level, the goal of playing Nomic is to win—by reaching 100 points or as otherwise defined. At a meta-level, the goal is to have fun playing nomic.

The rules let you change the object level goal, and that’s relatively straightforward. There are no rules for quantifying the meta-level goal, but it could be quantified, and it matters. On the meta-level, the other players might change the rules so that they have more fun. But more fun for them might be less fun for you. If your meta-level goal becomes unobtainable, you might choose to quit the game. Assuming they don’t want you to quit, they will try to make the game fun. Or you’ll quit.

And you can quit. It’s in the rules. Rule 113 says you can forfeit. And it also says no penalty worse than losing can be incurred if you forfeit. That’s an important rule. It means that if you quit that the other players can’t, for example, beat the shit out of you. Because losing and getting the shit beat of you would probably be worse than losing and would violate Rule 113.

But Rule 113 is just a rule. It can be modified so that you can’t quit, or you can quit and get the shit beat out of you. That would be no fun. Fortunately, Rule 113 is immutable. That means that it can’t be changed to mutable without unanimity. I don’t know about you, but I’d veto any proposal to make Rule 113 mutable on the off chance that a simple majority of fellow-players would want to beat the shit out of me if I quit.

The game of life (within the game of the physical universe) has its own rules. It’s fun for many of us, You can quit, but according to the rules of the game, if you quit, you’re dead. You can’t just sit and watch. Seems harsh. I’m not sure I would have voted for it. But those are the rules.

For most of the history of the universe, all of the rules of the games were unknown to participants. Even now most are unknown—even to the few conscious participants. The underlying laws of physics are immutable (as far as we know) and many of the rules of life may also be immutable—even with a majority vote.

Human knowledge has turned many previously unknown rules into known rules. And many rules that were thought to be immutable have now become mutable. The rules of the game of life are changing, according to the rules of the game of life for changing the rules.

The game of American government (within the game of life) has its own rules—including rules for changing the rules. There are immutable rules based on the immutable rules of physics and mathematics. There are rules derived from the known and unknown rules of life. Many of the rules of government are written down, but there are so many rules that for no one knows them all.
The rules of government are there for a purpose—not just so that lawmakers can have fun. In the case of the United States Federal government, it’s said to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The rules for what can be done and not done, and how to interpret ambiguities and for deciding what these things mean are embedded in the initial rules and in the rules that have been modified and added. The rules that govern the legislative system (making new rules) and the judicial system (deciding if rules are consistent and how to apply them) continue to be modified. There are rules for changing all those rules, and none of the rules are immutable. Some require a simple majority of eligible voters others require more. Few, if any, require unanimity.

In some extreme cases there just nine eligible voters who decide on rules that affect 300 million people. Some rule additions and changes require a supermajority of a small number of eligible voters. Many of the definitions of eligibility can be changed by a simple majority of eligible voters.

A system of government is a game. You can play the game. You can also game the system. That’s a problem

We can learn a lot by comparing government, politics, economics, law with other, simpler games. Nomic is a rich enough game to help us understand that a system that lets you change the rules might be “gamed” to undermine what most people would agree was its “spirit” and “intent” even while everything that was done was according to the rules.

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Russell conjugation and Eric Weinstein

Daniel turned me on to Eric Weinstein and I’ve been mainlining his ideas for the past dozen hours. The guy is brilliant. See note at bottom of the post.

Discursions out of the way, here’s what I came here to write about. It’s from Eric Weinstein’s answer to the Edge question for 2017 “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known.”

His answer is “Russell Conjugation.” What? I never heard of it, either. But I’d seen the concept in passing, and Wikipedia has heard of it too. Of course.

The example I’ve come across:

I am firm, You are obstinate, He is a pig-headed fool.

Here’s a sentence from his article with so much packed in it that I could write a long essay about every phrase. Assuming that I can get myself to write anything at all.

In an era in which anyone can publish anything, the quest to control information has largely been lost by institutions, with a race on to weaponize empathy by understanding its basis in linguistics and tweaking the social media algorithms which now present our world to us accordingly. As the theory goes, it is not that we don’t have our own opinions so much as that we have too many contradictory ones, and it is generally our emotional state alone which determines on which ones we will predicate action or inaction.

What leaps out is the idea that people are working to weaponize empathy. And that’s because we don't have our own opinions so much as that we have too many contradictory ones.

That’s because of a bug in the human mental machinery. We think that we take in facts and then evaluate them. But research tells us otherwise. There are a couple of mechanisms at work. One is demonstrated in Daniel Gilbert’s work, which I wrote about here. His research concludes that we start by believing what we read (or hear) before we analytically decide that something is wrong. His paper is “You can’t not believe everything you read.pdf).”

But if the idea gets activated and the annotation “this is a false idea” is not activated, then we will act as though we believe what have decided we don’t believe.

To compound the problem, we can be convinced that things that are false are true if we’re exposed to powerful enough arguments. In this post I wrote about “Epistemic Learned Helplessness” a post in which Scott Alexander argues that we’re not necessarily right to accept even the best rational arguments because anyone who is not expert in an area can be convinced by someone who is an expert. Convinced, in this case, is a proxy for “being overwhelmed by verifiable facts that support an argument that is, in fact, flawed, but you don’t know enough to see the flaws.”

So taking these together: every conclusion we’re exposed to is stored in our minds as true along with its supporting arguments, also labeled true. even if our System 2 has concluded (as a result of other arguments and facts labeled “true” whether or not they are) that they are not true. “Weaponizing empathy” exploits yet another a bug in our cognitive apparatus that causes us to override the System 2 evaluation (“this is wrong”) with the emotional overlay “this feels right.”

There’s more to his Edge answer, and I’ll maybe write more later. And much more to the whole idea of gaming the mental systems of others.

Also for future reference: In looking for a link to his homepage or something, I found a brilliant idea on international migration summarized on his site and with a paper published in full in full here. In case I die or ADD strikes me before I write my review of the article, those are the links.

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The politics industry

Our political system isn’t broken, it’s evolved. It’s no longer simply a system but an industry. Our political system has been replaced by an industry connected to a set of industries that we can call the “politics industrial complex.”

Calling it the “political industry” connects us to other ideas that can help us better understand what’s happening. We have tools for analyzing industries and their behavior. We have tools that help us understand the effect of competition and the lack of competition in industries. We can use those tools to understand the political industry. Industries can be competitive or monopolistic, regulated or unregulated. Most industries seek to grow—to generate more and more economic activity.

The political industry is a growth industry. Each election cycle the industry gets larger. It consumes more resources and produces more—what? A well designed political system would produce solutions to problems that can’t be solved by individual and market means, and can only be solved collectively. An effective politics industry doesn’t have to do that. It just needs to grow, and it does that by producing politics.

I didn’t make up the term “politics Industry.” I got it from a paper, “Why competition in the politics industry is failing America,” by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter. Katherine Gehl (website, Wikipedia) was the fourth-generation President and CEO of Gehl Foods and is now a policy activist and political reformer. Michael E. Porter (Wikipedia) is an American academic known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes.

They say:

The starting point for understanding the problem is to recognize that our political system isn’t broken. Washington is delivering exactly what it is currently designed to deliver. The real problem is that our political system is no longer designed to serve the public interest, and has been slowly reconfigured to benefit the private interests of gain-seeking organizations: our major political parties and their industry allies.

Most people think of politics as its own unique public institution governed by impartial laws dating back to the founders. Not so. Politics is, in fact, an industry— most of whose key players are private, gain-seeking organizations. The industry competes, just like other industries, to grow and accumulate resources and influence for itself. The key players work to advance their self-interests, not necessarily the public interest.

But unlike many other industries with many competing organizations, the politics industry is a duopoly. Two brand-named political organizations dominate the industry. And while they appear to compete, they have an important shared interest: to keep other competitors out of the industry. In this, they’ve done an outstanding job. And it means that they can compete much less than they’d have to if others were allowed into the industry.

Kehl and Porter say:

The politics industry is different from virtually all other industries in the economy because the participants, themselves, control the rules of competition. There is no truly independent regulation of politics that protects the public interest. Free from regulation and oversight, the duopoly does exactly what one would fear: The rivals distort the rules of competition in their favor. Examples of this includes controlling access to the general election ballot, partisan gerrymandering, and the Hastert Rule, which puts partisan concerns above legislating for the public interest.

To see how badly the politics industry works, compare it to really competitive industry: groceries. People choose the grocery store that they shop at based on convenience, products and price. Because competition is fierce the grocery industry is a low-margin business and as a result, consumers win. Once inside the store, shoppers have more choices. For each kind of good stores don’t just give you one brand—they give you several. A store that gave you only one choice would soon be out of business.

Imagine if the grocery industry ran the way the politics industry runs. Supposing there are two grocery chains: Super Foods and Friendly Shopper. Instead of competing by giving you variety, each store would put together a weekly basket of goods and let shoppers choose which one they prefer. If the majority of shoppers in an area decided on the Super Foods basket, then every shopper would get that basket. Even the shoppers who preferred the Friendly Shopper basket get the Super Foods basket. That sounds pretty bad.

But it’s even worse. Because almost no one who chooses the Super Food basket likes everything in it. You might like 90% of what’s in the basket. I might like 50%. To the Super Foods basket-maker all that matters is that more than 50% of shoppers like the Super Foods basket better than the Friendly Shopper basket. The goal is no longer to maximize shopper satisfaction—it’s to do just a little better than your one competitor.

And it’s even worse. Because once you choose which basket you prefer, then you, and everyone else in that region gets that basket for the next two, four, or six years.

And it’s even worse. Because Super Foods and Friendly Shopper are national brands. Local store managers have some ability to modify the local basket to match local tastes, but the national organization discourages that. They want brand consistently as much as possible. Why? Becuase they want to advertise their basket nationally, so they need consistency. They want the brand to mean something. So they push to have the Super Foods basket in Florida and the Super Foods basket in Maine as close as possible.

This is obviously a horrible system. There is some choice, but it’s minimal. But that’s what the politics industry delivers. There are two national brands: Republican and Democrat. You don’t get to choose the policies (groceries) that you want. The brands make up a national basket of policy choices, make minor local adaptations, and then offer you a candidate—that’s the basket—designed to get 50% of the shoppers in a the region to choose it over the competition. Whatever the majority of shoppers choose is what everyone gets for the next two, four or six years.

The paper is well worth reading. It’s not our broken political system: it’s our anti-competitive, duopolistic politics industry. Seeing it through that lens suggests some solutions.

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Modes of reasoning

In the world of science, we've come to agree on the way we reason. Our modes of reasoning have converged because science has a clear objective: correct and accurate predictions. All other scientific endeavors are aligned to that objective. to the degree that they contribute to correct predictions, we keep them. To the degree that competing methods are better, we adopt them. To make accurate predictions we need to make accurate measurements; we need to organize data in ways that permit us to analyze it; we need to select mathematical techniques from the much wider universe of abstract mathematical tools based on their ability to facilitate the tasks of science. Most important, we need to reason correctly. Scientific reasoning is the subset of reasoning processes that contribute to correct and accurate predictions.

In the world of politics, things are not so simple. We imagine that we all have the same objective, but we do not. We don't have unambiguous ways to measure the degree to which we've met even the objectives we agree on. And we don't have ways to identify and measure, with high certainty, the factors that contributed to whatever about the objective we measured.

People choose the reasoning methods that lead to the results that they like. Liberals choose reasoning methods that are likely to support liberal goals. Conservatives choose reasoning methods that are likely to support conservative goals. Before motivated reasoning comes motivated choice of how to reason.

Liberals and conservatives have different objectives. They have different ideas of what a just world would be like. There's nothing wrong with different objectives, as long as we are clear about what those objectives are, and how we go about achieving them.

The notions of contextualism, legal pragmatism which are favored by liberals make it easy to interpret laws flexibly, adapting them to current circumstances, and determining ambiguities and gaps in favor of liberal objectives. The notions of original intent, original meaning, and textualism, which are favored by conservatives, make it hard to interpret laws in those ways, leading outcomes consistent with conservative values and objectives.

I'm a liberal for tribal reasons, for philosophical reasons, and for historical reasons. My choice of how to reason about law and morality is driven by consequential and pragmatic concerns.

1.
Most people would say that one of their objectives is a just world. We assume that when people say they want a just world that they mean the same thing--or something close to it. But people have vastly different and often incompatible ideas of what such a world would look like. Some people are meritocrats: they believe that in a just world, outcomes would be based on the talent that people have and the effort they expend in applying their talent. Others are aristocrats: they believe that in a just world, outcomes should be based on membership in ancient lineages. Others are theocrats: they believe that God rules the world and the world is just because God makes it so; our duty is to follow God's law, and God will take care of the outcomes.

Our intuitions about justice are the result of our upbringing. Most children have the same intuitions as their parents; some are rebellious, and develop intuitions that are in opposition. Some read widely and critically and end up adjusting our views. But we know--those of us who have studied human cognition--that confirmation bias is a powerful force. It's hard to overcome confirmation bias even when you know it exists. Trust me. I've tried and I've confirmed that it's hard. Oh, wait.

Confirmation bias includes the way we evaluate the facts that we already know and the new facts we choose to consider. It also affects the way in which we reason about facts and theories. Even when we agree on the reasoning process to use--say statistical analysis, confirmation bias gets in the way. It's hard to get around it.

To reach the same conclusions people have to have the same data and follow the same reasoning process. To have the same data people have to have the same facts available and the same criteria for determining what facts to accept and what level of credibility to assign to them.

People don't decide what a just world looks like, then independently choose the system of evidence evaluation and the systems of reasoning they will use. Instead, they buy a package: a set of objectives, evaluation techniques that support their objectives, and reasoning processes that lead in the desired direction. It's one-stop shopping. Buy the objectives, and the rest comes for free.

2.
I'm a liberal and like most liberals, I'm a utilitarian and a consequentialist. So I judge an act by my best efforts to predict or assess its consequential effect on human well-being. Sometimes I will be wrong; something that I expected to have good consequences turns out to have bad consequences that outweigh the good. Sometimes there will be consequences that I did not anticipate that reduces the benefit of the good.

Those of us who are not omniscient should always expect unintended consequences. Those of us who have heard of entropy should expect that there will be more bad unintended consequences than good ones because there are many ways to make things worse, and few to make them better.  But my intention is clear: to reason about ways to maximize human well-being. I particularly want to choose paths that maximize human knowledge because I believe that is the key to human well-being.

And I want a system for reasoning about legal and moral matters lets me interpret laws and standards as flexibly as possible because it maximizes my freedom to craft beneficial solutions.

3.
Legal reasoning and moral reasoning are different, but people tend to choose similar systems of reasoning for both. The legal reasoning problem easier: given this set of laws, what is the right thing to do. The moral reasoning problem is harder: given the universe, as we know it (including the existence of a deity) what is the right thing to do? The crossover problem is even harder: given our moral sentiments, the existing body of law, and the nature of our fellow citizens, what should the laws be?

There are two major schools of moral reasoning: according to one school, moral precepts are the starting point. The precepts might be community standards, religious doctrine, or existing law. Given the precepts, one has a duty to follow them. An act is judged as moral--or not--to the degree that it conforms. The largest branch of the school is called deontology, from deon, or duty. The other major school judges the morality of an act by its benefit or harms it causes. Utilitarians consider the direct benefits and harms; consequentialists consider longer-term benefits and harms. Some consider benefit and harms to humans; others take the environment into account.

Here's a simple example showing the difference between deontological vs consequentialist reasoning. If the rule is simply "do not kill," a deontologist argues that killing is wrong, period. Circumstances don't count. But a consequentialist argues that even though the rule clearly states "do not kill," sometimes killing is the ethical thing to do. It is ethical if the expected consequences of killing are judged better than the consequences of not.

The real world is too complicated for a simple rule like "do not kill" and deontologists understand that. Killing in self-defense is a rule that makes an exception to the "do not kill" rule. And there are cases in which the self-defense exception might itself superseded. But no set of rules can possibly cover every contingency. The deontological view is to limit interpretive flexibility. If there are gaps or ambiguities so that an act does not closely match a rule then use the next highest level rule. If the highest level rule in law is: "do nothing" then do nothing.

Consequentialists also see that there will always be gaps in the rules. Even rules that grant exceptions have gray areas.  Consequentialists use laws as guiding principles to be applied in context. If there are extenuating circumstances, ambiguous rules, and circumstances that the rule makers did not anticipate then judges should "do what makes sense" according to the consequences of what you decide.

4.
Liberals like me are consequentialists. We choose a legal framework that lets us interpret ambiguous parts of the law to will maximize what we think will be beneficial consequences. If the people who wrote a law did not anticipate a future circumstance in which that law would be applied, we want to weigh the consequences of various ways of reading the law and choose the one that seems most likely to serve those beneficial goals.

Conservatives tend to be deontologists. They choose legal frameworks, like textualism and originalism and strict construction, that lead to their preferred outcomes: less intervention; stability; traditional forms; preservation of existing rights, rather than the creation of new rights.

Liberals are interventionists. On liberal theory, if something is wrong, unjust or unfair, and the existing system of laws permits--but does not mandate correcting it--then it should be still be corrected as far as the law allows. Conservatives point out that interventions have unintended consequences. Of course, they do! And the unintended consequences are bad. Of course, they will be bad! But not intervening has unintended consequences, and these may be worse. The question is: are the intended, beneficial consequences greater than the unintended, harmful consequences.

Consider pollution laws. The intended consequences have included fewer poisons in the environment, fewer birth defects, fewer cancers, and so on. But there are unintended consequences, of course. Some polluting industries didn't clean up their act--as intended. Instead, they moved to pollution-friendly countries taking both their pollution and their jobs. Neither was intended. Another consequence was more research into pollution-removal and pollution mitigation, which created new jobs, though probably not as many. Both of these things might or might not have been foreseeable, but they were not intended. But doing nothing about pollution also has unintended consequences. The poison stays in the air, babies are born with birth defects, people get cancer. No one who opposes pollution control would admit to intending those consequences. Yet they are the foreseeable, unintended consequences.

Bad unintended consequences is not an argument against action. You can find any number of cases where a liberal interpretation had worse consequences than a conservative interpretation would have had--according to agreed-on interpretive frameworks. You can also likewise find any number where the interpretations had better consequences. On the whole, liberals tend to believe that the unintended negative consequences are a fair cost for the intended positive consequences of a liberal interpretation and conservatives the reverse. In some cases, that's because the objectives that they have are different, and in some cases, it's because their criteria for judging the consequences is already tuned to their favored outcome.

5.
But there's another problem that conservatives point out. Who judges the expected consequences?

A liberal would argue: people generally know right from wrong and will make the right decision more often than the wrong one. They will choose good judges more often than bad ones, and the good judges will make good decisions more often than bad ones. Liberals acknowledge that from individual to individual and time to time they will decide badly.

A conservative would argue that judges are human, and humans are flawed, and judges with too much power to interpret the law will be corrupt or be corrupted by outside forces. Thus they will make harmful decisions more often than good ones. We are better off sticking to the rules than allowing interpretation.

This seems reasonable, but it's ironic. The system of reasoning that rejects the consequential interpretation of laws seems forced to justify itself on consequential grounds. If we avoid consequentialism I think the argument is "You follow the rules (law) because there's a rule (originalism) that says that's what you do." Regardless of the consequences of any particular application.

The entire theory of the judicial system, to which both liberals and conservatives seem to agree to is based on error correction. The Supreme Court's responsibility is to try to correct errors made by all other courts that they choose to consider; appeals course are responsible for correcting errors of lower courts; federal courts to correct errors of state courts; state courts correct errors made by city and town courts.

The underlying assumptions I think are these: it's easier to corrupt a judge in a lower court than in a higher court and it's more likely that a judge in a lower court will be ignorant than a judge in a higher court. So all sides, I think, agree that this system of error correction makes sense and--with exceptions--will work well.

Liberals like me argue that the marketplace of ideas is also self-correcting--although there will be market failures from time to time. If the market works as intended, then better ideas will win. Failures are notable and regrettable, but over greater spans of time, and larger bodies of government, the consequences of liberal interpretations will be more beneficial than harmful.

6.
Then there's history.

If you examine the historical consequences of following the rules you'll see some patterns. In the pre-civil war Deep South, the political and economic system was unjust and corrupt. I hope we can all agree on that. A hundred years later Civil War the people who had been removed from power regained it. They consolidated their power by changing the system so that Negros could not vote and convincing the remaining voters (whites) to vote to maintain that system. I hope we can agree that's what happened.

They argued that policies of segregation, poll taxes, unequal schooling, unfair literacy tests, and worse were States Rights. They argued that the Federal government had no right to intervene under a strict reading of the Constitution.

This changed because a liberal Supreme Court interpreted the constitution according to liberal principles and held that these practices had to stop. A conservative Supreme Court would likely have found otherwise--and conservative justices voted to try to preserve what I think we all see as injustices. The Constitution says nothing forbidding States from charging poll taxes, so poll taxes are fine. In Harper vs the Virginia Board of Elections the Court found the state's poll taxes unconstitutional. Three conservative justices (one a Southern Democrat) dissented. Justice Hugo Black, the Southern Democrat dissented "mainly on stare decisis basis. As a textualist, he also criticized the majority for expanding the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment by using what he called the old "natural law due process formula". He emphasized that new meanings can be added to the Constitution only through amendments."

And of course, they can be. But let's remember how the Fourteenth Amendment was passed:

State legislatures in every formerly Confederate state, with the exception of Tennessee, refused to ratify it. This refusal led to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. Ignoring the existing state governments, military government was imposed until new civil governments were established and the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. It also prompted Congress to pass a law on March 2, 1867, requiring that a former Confederate state must ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before "said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress"

And then there's the Thirteenth Amendment, the one that freed the slaves, which was passed by skirting around states-rights objections and selling the idea that the rights of the newly freed slaves could still be constrained by the states--a gigantic loophole that the Fourteenth Amendment closed and the reason it took draconian measures to pass it.

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments would not have passed without such liberal interpretive Shenanigans. Suppose that the liberals (Republicans, at the time, curiously) had not gotten away with it. Would we still have slaves if states had the right to decide? Would parts of the South still have white and colored restrooms, ridiculously unequal public schooling and other services, and all sorts of institutionalized discrimination upheld and protected by State and local government? I think the answer is, yes.

The liberal Supreme Courts of the 1960's eliminated many of the vestiges of the Old South. As a result, some Northern businesses relocated or expanded into the South. They brought prosperity and liberals with them. Without those changes, the South would have continued to be as impoverished as ever  But the people in power in the South would not have cared. They have continued to remain in power by convincing sufficiently many white voters: "Things may be bad for you, but at least you're not a nigger."

8.
The way that liberals and conservatives reason about law and morality is not abstractly correct. It's a chosen mode of reasoning. In the liberal case, it's helped bring about a world that's closer to the one that liberals viewed as good and just--one without slavery. With greater equality. The way that conservatives reason about law and morality has helped bring about (or tried to preserve) a world that's closer to the one that conservatives view as good and just. One with less government intervention and greater individual freedom.

I agree with conservatives in some cases, but I don't entirely share their view of freedom. You might be free to vote, but if you can't take the time to get to the polls, or the lines are too long, your freedom doesn't mean much.

History leads me to see the conservatives of the South--once Democrats, now Republicans--as the enemies of fairness, justice, and even freedom as I conceive of them. Overt racism doesn't play well in public, even in the South, and some accusations of signaling are unfairly made. But racism is alive and well and so is signaling.

I amid viscerally disliking Southern conservatives. It comes from my understanding of history and my lived experience. In the '60s, when I was working for civil rights I read a pamphlet from a Southern racist group--maybe the KKK, maybe not. It explained that things in the South were just fine. Colored folk and white folk got along great. Because colored folk knew their place. Then that changed. Why? Because outside agitators started stirring up trouble. And who were those outside agitators? Jews. Jews were the enemy. Jews and communists--who were all Jews. See George Lincoln Rockwell at the end of this post.

I didn't much like them before that. I liked them a lot less afterward. Some, I assume are good people. But en masse they were a vile bunch who elected vile people who pandered to and further inflamed their vilest sentiments.

I've got plenty of complaints about the behavior of some of the people who call themselves liberals today. And I did back in the day when left-wing bombings, and occupying and trashing university offices were the thing to do. Still, when I was in college we were generally the ones who wanted to make our voices heard and they were the ones who were shouting us down. Sad that we've adopted their tactics.

Conservatives are not all alike. The conservatives of the West have different values than the conservatives of the South. But they have made common cause with them, and that matters. What do I make of that? If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, is the friend of my enemy my enemy?

Virtue signaling

Bobbi and I are planning on attending the March March. That's the March 24th "NeverAgain" March for Our Lives in Washington, and a ton of other places, including Boston. What motivates me to do that? Someone suggested that it's virtue signaling. Why else drive to a far-off city and show up?

And they're right. 

(TL;DR: it's virtue signaling, but these are not the virtues you are looking for.)

Maybe everything we do is a form of virtue signaling. After all, why signal your lack of virtue, unless you think warning people off is a virtuous thing to do. But there are other virtues to signal than the obvious ones. So let's explore what motivates me.

I like going to Boston. The March gives me an excuse. Bobbi doesn't like it so much. But she's willing to go (for her own reasons, which are irrelevant here.) So, yay! We both win. Isn't it virtuous for me to want us both to win? You've been signaled.

I like attending events with lots of people. Concerts. Marches. You name it. Bobbi, not so much. But she's willing (for her own reasons.) So, yay, again!  We both win.

And especially I like being with her when she's doing something that makes her happy. Will this make her happy? Good chance. So, yay! Once again we both win.

But what about conventional virtue signaling? Most of my friends and most of my family are liberal. They support this Cause. I could proudly say that I showed up. And they may think better of me. Virtue signaling at its best. Except I have better ways to signal liberal virtue. Like writing blog posts explaining liberal virtue.

Daniel Dennet has techniques that he calls intuition pumps. One goes like this. You imagine a device that has a bunch of inputs--in this case, the degree to which I support the cause, degree of (dis)approval from friends and family--one knob per person, travel inconvenience, size of the event, interestingness, and so on. Each input has a knob. There's one output: I attend the event or not. So if I turn the event-is-interesting knob, I'm more likely to go despite other knob settings. If I turn up the support the cause knob and the approval knobs I can play with the inconvenience and interestingness and the size of crowd knobs and see how they affect my behavior. For some settings I might travel to Bangor and Boston, but not Washington, and certainly not London. OK, maybe London. But not Cairo. OK, Cairo. But I'm not traveling because I support the movement. My decision is largely insensitive to that knob setting. It's more interesting.

What if I had a friend who wanted to go to an event for a cause that I did not support--say a march to roll back Roe v. Wade. Say it's the one held in DC each year. Or suppose there was one in Boston. Or Bangor. How far would I travel (inconvenience) to go? If the march was in Bangor and my friend cared even a little, I'd probably go. And it would be virtue signaling. The virtues would be "support your friends" and "be interested in everything." If I turn up the inconvenience knob--say the march is in Boston, then the relative settings of the "Bobbi is against it" dial and the "my friend cares about this" knobs would affect the output. At some settings, I would go. At others, not.

The knobs that matter are the "Bobbi is against/for" knob, the "a friend is for it" and the "this looks interesting" knob. Signaling to my liberal friends? Hey, I love you, but your knob does not move the needle. Sorry. Signaling to my conservative friends. See message to liberal friends.

When I was at the University of Hawaii, George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, came to speak. My buddy and I went to see him before he spoke. My friend was there to compensate for my passivity, to bear witness to my virtue signaling, and to give me a friend to support. Rockwell was a nice, perfectly polite guy, despite being an actual Nazi. He carried on a civil conversation with my buddy and me--two Jews wearing stars-of-David on our arms. Lots of virtue signaling.

Afterward, Rockwell gave a surprisingly (to me) thoughtful speech articulating his beliefs. IIRC he denied that any Jews had been killed in Germany, or if they had been, they deserved it. He's on the record saying he'd treat Jews like any other Americans--he'd have them killed if they were traitors. Otherwise, he'd leave them alone. He's also on the record saying he thought that 90% of Jews were traitors. So yeah, there might have been Jews killed in Germany, but if so, they were traitors.

My attending the event was virtue signaling. I was not signaling support for the American Nazi party. I was signaling the virtues of civic engagement, polite discourse, and facing the enemy. And supporting your friends. Also the virtue of having a good story to tell. It's a good story.

So if it's a nice day, and you're my friend, and you care about something and you want me to show up with you at an event, and it that looks as though the event will be interesting, hell, yes, I'm there, no matter what I think of your cause. Want me to come with you to church to hear your minister talk about--whatever he wants to talk about? No problem. No probs with your minister. I'd even go here if I had a friend to take me. I showed up to see an actual Nazi, FFS.

If I go to an event whose cause I do not support, do I feel the need to wear a button that signals "I'm against this shit"? Like my star-of-David stunt? No. I'm willing to show up to support you and to learn something. I'm willing to have people who I don't know think I'm with them when I'm not. Especially if they have guns. Who cares? Not me.

When I was twenty, I would have given a different answer. I would have worn a rude button to signal the virtue of standing up for what I believed in. But that would be my cover story. My twenty-year-old self's real reason would be signaling the virtue of doing whatever the fuck he wanted to do, and not giving a fuck whether he offended you. You bourgeois asshole.

I'm glad I'm not that person anymore.

You should be, too.

And now I will email and post this, and signal a whole raft of virtues.