Can your view of external factors affecting human flourishing be summed up in a collection of quotes?

Just as sunshine, water and nutrients are necessary for plants to flourish, so too are external factors necessary for human flourishing. Aristotle was criticized by some other ancient Greek philosophers for holding that view, but it is hard to see how it could be contentious if human flourishing is viewed as the exercise of practical wisdom to pursue goals that each individual values in the circumstances in which they find themselves. The extent that we flourish - the quality of our lives - is not entirely divorced from the outcomes of our efforts to obtain the goods we value.  

As in the preceding post, which focused on the internal (personal development) aspects of human flourishing, the quotes I have selected below have been chosen on the basis that they support what I hope is a coherent set of propositions about external factors affecting individual human flourishing.

1. Human nature is probably shaped by multi-level evolutionary processes.

“Natural selection works at multiple levels simultaneously, sometimes including groups of organisms. I can’t say for sure that human nature was shaped by group selection – there are scientists whose views I respect on both sides of the debate. But as a psychologist studying morality, I can say that multilevel selection would go a long way toward explaining why people are simultaneously so selfish and so groupish.”  Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 2012, p 218.

2. There seems to be broad agreement about virtues among almost all religious and philosophic traditions.

“Led by Katherine Dahlsgaad, we read Aristotle and Plato, Aquinas and Augustine, … Buddha, La-Tze, … the Koran, Benjamin Franklin … some two hundred virtue catalogues in all. To our surprise, almost every single one of the these traditions flung across three thousand years and the entire face of the earth endorsed six virtues: … wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.” Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, 2002, p 132-3.

3. Our social interactions encourage us to judge our own conduct as impartial spectators.

“Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so. … If he would act so as that the impartial spectator may enter into the principles of his conduct, which is what of all things he has the greatest desire to do, he must … humble the arrogance of his self-love, and bring it down to something that other men can go along with. … In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments, he may run as hard as he can … in order to outstrip his competitors. But if he should jostle, or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play that they cannot admit of.” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759/1984, II.ii.2.1.

4. Freedom was made possible by the evolution of abstract rules of conduct which enabled mutually beneficial transactions among strangers.

“Man has not developed in freedom. The member of the little band to which he had to stick in order to survive was anything but free. Freedom is an artefact of civilization that released man from the trammels of the small group, the momentary moods of which even the leader had to obey. Freedom was made possible by the gradual evolution of the discipline of civilization which is at the same time the discipline of freedom. We owe our freedom to restraints of freedom. ‘For, Locke wrote, ‘who could be free when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?’ …

The great change which produced an order of society … for the preservation of which he had to submit to learnt rules which were often contrary to innate instincts, was the transition from the face-to-face society, or at least of groups consisting of known and recognizable members, to the open abstract society that was no longer held together by common ends but only by the same abstract rules.” Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1982, VIII, p 163-4.

5. The concept of natural law was important in opening the way to recognition of the right to liberty.

“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions … (and) when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.” John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government, 1689, II, 6.

6. The “progress of society toward real wealth and greatness” is hindered by restrictions on natural liberty.

“All systems either of preference or of restraint … being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring forth both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.” Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776, IV.ix,50,51.

7.  The economic betterment that has vastly improved the lives of an increasing proportion of the world’s population over the last 300 years can be attributed to the ‘bourgeois deal’.

“Then after 1798 … life in quite a few places got better. Slowly, and then quickly, and by now with unstoppable, ramifying worldwide force, it got much better. Material life got better not merely for Europeans or imperial powers or Mr Moneybags, but for ordinary people from Brooklyn to Beijing.

The betterment stands in human history as Great Enrichment, the most important secular event since we first domesticated squash and chickens and wheat and horses. …

The real engine was the expanding ideology of liberty and dignity that inspired the proliferating schemes of betterment by and for the common people. Liberty and dignity for ordinary projectors yielded the Bourgeois Deal: ‘You accord to me, a bourgeois projector, the liberty and dignity to try out my schemes in voluntary trade, and let me keep the profits, if I get any, in the first act – though I accept, reluctantly, that others will compete with me in the second act. In exchange, in the third act of a new, positive sum drama, the bourgeois betterment provided by me (and by those pesky, low quality, price-spoiling competitors) will make you all rich.’ And it did.” Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, 2016, p 21.

 8.. Economic betterment has been associated with the emergence of emancipative values, and social movements to promote civic entitlements.

“Most people in … [technologically advanced] societies have a high living standard, are well educated, and can easily connect to like-minded others, irrespective of locality. In these situations, and in many societies approaching these conditions, people recognize the use of universal freedoms and value them accordingly: emancipative values emerge. Inspired by emancipative values, people take action on behalf of freedoms. This is evident in all kinds of social movement activity, the most vigorous of which voice emancipative goals: people-power movements, equal opportunity movements, civil rights movements, women’s rights movements, gay rights movements, children’s rights movements, and so forth. … This is a virtuous circle that describes thriving societies.” Christian Welzel, Freedom Rising, 2013, Loc 9324.

9. Classical liberalism is not an all-embracing ethic.

“As liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements. Freedom as a value in this sense has to do with the interrelationships among people; it has no meaning whatsoever to a Robinson Crusoe on an isolated island (without his Man Friday). … Similarly, in a society freedom has nothing to say about what an individual does with his freedom; it is not an all-embracing ethic. Indeed, a major aim of the liberal is to leave the ethical problem for the individual to wrestle with.”  Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962, p 12.

10. Individual rights answer the question of how it can be possible for the flourishing of individual humans to be self-directed without conflicting.

“Individual rights are an ethical concept different from those concepts generally found in normative ethics. They are not needed in order to know the nature of human flourishing or virtue, or our obligations to others, or even the requirements of justice. … Rather, individual rights are needed to solve a problem that is uniquely social, political and legal. … How do we allow for the possibility that individuals might flourish in different ways … without creating inherent moral conflict in … the structure that is provided by the political/legal order? How do we find a political/legal order that will in principle not require that the human flourishing of any person or group be given structural preference over others? How do we protect the possibility that each may flourish while at the same time provide principles that regulate the conduct of all?”  Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty, 2005, p 78.

11. The liberal order can only succeed if sufficient people want to be free to make their own choices, and are prepared to enter into relationships with others on the basis of fair dealing, reciprocity and mutual respect.

“I have suggested that the liberal order that embodies political democracy and a market economy must be grounded in two normative presuppositions: first, that all persons are capable of making their own choices and that they prefer to be autonomous and, second, that most if not all, persons enter into relationships with others on a basis of fair dealing, reciprocity and mutual respect. I have also suggested that, from certain perspectives, observed reality in politics and economics may not seem to square with those presuppositions. My argument is that, nonetheless, and regardless of what may be observed, we must, within limits of course, proceed as if the presuppositions are satisfied. …

Properly designed institutional-constitutional safeguards against deviations from the norms can be effective … only in settings where the share of participants who might behave in violation of the norms of autonomy and reciprocity remain relatively small. Generalized or widespread failure of persons to adhere to these norms, along with widespread recognition that others also disregard the standards, will ensure that the liberal order itself must fail, quite independently from any institutional safeguards.” James Buchanan, Why I, Too Am Not a Conservative, 2005, pp 26, 28.

Can your view of human flourishing be summed up in a selection of quotes?

The quotes selected for this post are related specifically to individual flourishing or personal development. I will follow this up later with a selection of quotes relating to the social conditions that favour human flourishing.

Rather than selecting the most inspirational quotes I can think of I have selected quotes that seem to support what I hope is a coherent set of propositions about human flourishing.

       1. Happiness is the final end to which humans are naturally attracted.

“Since there is evidently more than one end, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes …) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are final ends; but the chief good is evidently something final. ...

Now such a thing happiness [living well and doing well], above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else …” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, 7.

2. Reflection tells us that there is more to happiness than having a successful life.

“For both ancients and moderns, the starting point for considering happiness is a conventionally successful life which the agent finds satisfactory. … We have no concept which readily covers both the unreflective notion of success in life from which we start, and the revised notion of success in life with which we end if and when we have appropriately revised our priorities, and given morality its appropriate place in our life. The fact that we lack such a concept doubtless owes something to our tendency to see the pursuit of morality as being always likely to be in tension or conflict with the pursuit of other ends.” Julia Annas, philosopher, The Morality of Happiness, 1993, p 453-4.

  3. Human flourishing is the exercise of practical reason to actualize human potentialities.

“Ontologically considered, human flourishing is an activity, an actuality, and an end that is realized (or a function that is performed) through the self-directed exercise of an individual’s rational capacity. … As an actuality, human flourishing consists of activities that both produce and express in a human being an actualization of potentialities that are specific to the kind of living thing a human being is and that are unique to each human being as an individual.” Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, philosophers, The Perfectionist Turn, 2016, p 45.

 4. We feel elevated when we contemplate the natural beauty of our world and the kindness of other humans..

Many words have been written to express such thoughts, but the those that come to mind at the moment are the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World”, a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss, first recorded by Louis Armstrong, and released in 1967. You can view the lyrics and listen here.

 5. We are responsible for setting the internal rules that determine our behaviour.

“The brain is an evolved system, a decision-making device that interacts with its environment in a way that allows it to learn rules to govern how it responds. It is a rule-based device that works, fortunately, automatically.” Michael Gazzaniga, neurologist, The Ethical Brain, 2005, loc 1278.

 6. Individuals flourish as their reason and emotions learn to work in harmony.

“We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider, and we are the elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills” p 22.

“Reason and emotion must work together to create intelligent behaviour, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) does most of the work” p 13.

“virtue resides in a well-trained elephant” p 160. Jonathan Haidt, psychologist, The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006.

7. Unpleasant thoughts and feelings are a natural part of life.

“So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings – but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create” p 40.

“As you open up and make space for these feelings, you will find they bother you much less, and they ‘move on’ much more rapidly, instead of ‘hanging around’ and disturbing you” p 45.

“A rich, full and meaningful life comes about through accepting your thoughts and feelings instead of fighting them, and taking effective action, guided by your deepest values” p 74.  Russ Harris, MD, The Happiness Trap, 2007.

 8. Grant yourself the freedom to pursue your goals.

“The easiest way to convince yourself that you don’t have mobility is to form ironclad concepts of yourself and how you do things …  . Freedom is about realizing that you always have the choice to start moving in any desired direction regardless of your past.” Timothy Gallwey, coach, The Inner Game of Work, 2000, p 126.

9. You get to choose whether to be content with past achievement or to stoke motivation.

“Once you have taken the first two steps in self-control – setting a goal and monitoring your behaviour – you’re confronted with a perennial question: Should you focus on how far you’ve come or how much remains to be done? There is no simple, universal answer, but it does make a difference … . For contentment, apparently, it pays to look how far you’ve come. To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.” Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, psychologists, Willpower: Rediscovering our Greatest Strength, 2011, Loc 1804

10. Be yourself!

“The paradox that frees you from all the prisons of self and the worries about image and approval is that the highest development of self is self-forgetfulness. When you fully integrate the awareness that it’s not about you, your focus shifts. Now you realize it’s about the experience, the contribution, the exploration, the discovery, and transformation. Now you’re free to be fully present without double-tracking in your head worrying about whether you have their approval.” Michael Hall, psychologist, Unleashed, 2007.

Can creative destruction be an inclusive process?

This question is prompted by my reading of Innovation and Its Enemies, Why people resist new technologies, a recently published book by Calestous Juma. The author takes much of his inspiration from Joseph Schumpeter, who famously described the innovation process as one of creative destruction. Juma argues that new controversial technologies are likely to enjoy more local support “where the business models include provisions for inclusive innovation”. I will explain later.

As the title suggests, the book explores resistance to introduction of new technologies. It does this mainly by telling the stories of nine innovations: coffee, printing of the Koran, margarine, farm mechanization, AC electricity, mechanical refrigeration, recorded sound, transgenic crops, and AquaAdvantage salmon.

Anyone who has an interest in innovation is likely to enjoy reading the stories presented in this book. Without reading a book like this one it would be difficult to fully appreciate that goods, like coffee, that are now commonplace, were once highly controversial innovations. The stories told in the book make me wonder whether future generations will look back with bemusement about my concerns about artificial intelligence and neural lace.

Although Calestous Juma delves into history in these case studies, he does not seek to provide much historical perspective on changing societal attitudes toward innovation. I doubt whether he believes that we are living in a time when opposition to innovation is particularly great by historical standards, but his views on such matters are not obvious from this book. Readers need to look elsewhere (e.g. The Enlightened Economy, by Joel Mokyr) for an understanding of the industrial enlightenment that began to occur in western Europe around 300 years ago. The author’s neglect of this big picture of attitudinal change is surprising in view of his acknowledgement that he obtained “early inspiration” from an article by Joel Mokyr on innovation and its enemies.

   

The stories told in Juma’s book are enlightening about the nature of resistance to new technologies. The general message is that resistance should not be lightly dismissed as irrational fear of change:

“Many of these debates over new technology are framed in the context of risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. But behind these genuine concerns often lie deeper, but unacknowledged, socioeconomic considerations. This book demonstrates the extent to which those factors shape and influence technological controversies, with specific emphasis on the role of social institutions”.

One of the things the book demonstrates is that resistance to innovation is often fuelled by people who have reason to fear competition from new products and new ways of doing things. Those faced with potential for economic loss have used every trick available in an attempt to protect themselves from the consequences of innovation. It is certainly true that many members of the public have genuine concerns about the potential impact of innovations on public morals, health and the environment, but the losers from change often exploit such concerns mercilessly to persuade governments to protect their interests. Thankfully, since the industrial enlightenment, the efforts of the losers to protect themselves from new competition have not been particularly successful.

Although he has chosen a similar title for his book, the author is clearly not a fan of Virginia Postrel’s The Future and its Enemies (which I discussed here).  He has little faith in the capacity of the spontaneous processes of free markets to manage innovation:

“Managing the interactions between change and continuity remains one of the most critical functions of government”.

Again:

“Political leadership on innovation and the existence of requisite institutions of science and technology advice are an essential aspect of economic governance. Such institutions need to embody democratic practices such as transparency and citizen participation that accommodate diverse sources of expertise”.

The author’s apparent faith in government regulation of the innovation process sits oddly with his acknowledgement of shortcomings in existing regulatory processes which focus largely on the risks of introducing new products. He acknowledges that these processes often fail “to compare the risks and benefits associated with the new product to those of existing production systems, even though it is precisely this difference that should form the basis of a regulatory decision on new technologies”. The author also acknowledges the potential for consumer protection regulation to be used for protectionist purposes:

“What may appear as a legitimate appeal for the right to know may in fact be driven by an effort to brand a product so it can be rejected by consumers for protectionist reasons”.

I agree with the author that sensible political leadership is a fundamental requirement, but sensible political leaders will aim to confine regulatory interventions to those circumstances where there are good reasons to fear that spontaneous processes might lead to outcomes that will be widely regretted. When political leaders set out to manage interactions between change and continuity they open their doors even further to interest groups seeking preferential treatment. It would be nice to think that sensible policies and social harmony will emerge from citizen participation that accommodates diverse sources of expertise, but experience suggests that elected politicians are more representative of broader community interests than are the interest group spokespersons that governments select as citizen representatives. The most likely outcome is for the interests that would be represented in such forums (e.g. consumer, environmental, industry and union groups) to conspire to protect their interests in regulating markets, at the expense of the interests of the broader community in allowing free competition to determine outcomes under most circumstances. The critical requirement for sensible policy development is for the claims of interest groups to be subjected to critical scrutiny within the context of a public inquiry process that is capable of providing trustworthy independent advice to governments. (Australia’s Productivity Commission may provide a useful model for other countries to consider.)

Calestous Juma suggests several ways in which innovation could be made a more inclusive process: greater involvement of public sector institutions in providing training in the emerging fields; creation of joint ventures; equitable management of intellectual property rights; segmentation of markets to enable the technology to be used for non-competitive products, and improvement of the policy environment to support long-term technology partnerships.

Smoke and mirrors may help political magicians to appear to be ‘inclusive’, but they cannot alter the fact that some people are adversely affected by innovations that provide widespread benefits to the broader community. In her book, Bourgeois Equality, discussed on this blog a couple of months ago, Deirdre McCloskey uses the term, ‘bourgeois deal’ to refer to societal acceptance of innovations that compete with and displace old ways of doing things in exchange for widespread improvements in living standards. I doubt whether ‘inclusive’ innovation policies - even if designed by intelligent and well-meaning people - can do much to help sustain public support for the bourgeois deal. Ongoing support for the bourgeois deal depends on expectations that innovation will continue to generate widespread improvements in living standards.

Postscript:
Calestous Juma has responded as follows:

"I appreciate your thoughtful review of my book. You raise important points that need addressing. First, you wondered why I did not address the question of whether public attitudes on new technologies have changed over the centuries. I address this issue by showing that the public responses to new technologies appear to be conserved over the 600 years that the case studies cover. At face value this may appear not to be the case because of the remarkable proliferation of technology into every aspect of human life. I think that the change has been in the availability of technologies due to the exponential growth in science, technology and engineering. Public perception of technological risks has not changed, mostly because as humans we have not changed in any discernible way over the last 600 years. We have not found a way to reprogram the amygdala, to simplify a little.

Now to your more complex question: is inclusive innovation compatible with creative destruction? My answer is yes. In many cases disruptions, to use the term in a more prosaic way, is largely a result of the business model used. There are two examples that illustrate this. The introduction of mobile phones in Africa was by any measure disruptive. But it was also inclusive because from the outset the focus was to ensure that the poor had access to the service. Inclusive innovation was achieved through low-cost handsets and pre-payments for airtime. The early concern that mobile phones would be toys for the rich never came to be. The second example involves the strategies adopted under the Montreal Protocol to develop alternatives to the ozone-depleting substances. In this case those firms such as DuPont that were likely to be disrupted by alternative chemicals were included in new research efforts. The Protocol went further and introduced an amendment that promoting the sharing of the new technologies with developing countries.

Both examples involved private-public partnerships that were committed to promoting inclusive in innovation. In both cases incumbent technologies were displaced. Both case provide lessons of inclusive innovation. We can trace other examples of inclusive innovation in history. We have café au laite, as the name advertises, because of compromise to create a recombinant product. Proposals for co-existence are not new. It was tried, without success, to leave a niche for horses in American agriculture in light of the relentless march of tractors. The proposal came too late and the superiority of tractors over horsepower illustrates that there are many areas of technological transformation where inclusive innovation is not a viable option. In other cases there has been a long period of co-existence between butter and margarine. This wasn't a result of an inclusive innovation strategy but it offers some lessons worth considering."

Does your flourishing depend on having a meaningful life and being true to your self?

The idea that people gain happiness by acting in accordance with their perceived identity has interested me since I read (and wrote about) Identity Economics, by George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton quite a few years ago. The idea was used in their book to consider the incentives that people have to conform to the norms and ideals of the social categories to which they belong (e.g. gender, race, social class, age group) but I wonder whether the idea of being true to one’s self might shed light on the relationship between happiness and deeper concepts of identity related to personality, signature strengths and values.

A search of the relevant literature in psychology has not uncovered any direct tests of this idea, but I have found a couple of articles that seem to point in the direction of a hypothesis that might be worth testing.

My starting point is that the extent to which people assess their lives as being meaningful seems to be closely related to their perceptions of their identity. We know from research by Roy Baumeister (with Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky) that the extent to which people view their lives as meaningful is closely related to doing things that express themselves (for a summary discussion see Baumeister’s essay entitled The Meanings of Life).

The research by Baumeister et al was focussed on the differences between happiness and meaningfulness of life as assessed by the individuals in their survey. The two states overlapped substantially: almost half of the variation in meaningfulness was explained by happiness, and vice versa. The researchers used statistical techniques to abstract from this interdependence and to look for factors that had different impacts on happiness and meaning.

The research suggested that the extent to which people identify as being wise or creative was associated with them viewing their lives as meaningful, but did not make them happier. Other factors adding to meaningfulness but not happiness included working, exercising, meditating and praying. Stress, negative events, worrying, arguing, and reflecting on challenges and struggles all seem to be part and parcel of a highly meaningful life.

Factors that added to happiness that had little impact on meaningfulness of life included satisfaction of desires, having enough money to buy the things one wants, good health, and the frequency of good and bad feelings. There is a trade-off between happiness and meaningfulness of life because people have to choose at the margin whether to allocate more time and other resources to the things that make them happier or to things that make life more meaningful.

Unfortunately, the research I have been discussing did not consider to what extent people perceive themselves as actually acting in accordance with the values that add meaning to their lives. It might be possible for some individuals to feel that their lives are highly meaningful but to be unhappy because they lack the self-control to live up to the high standards that they set themselves. Alternatively, greater self-control may make it possible for people to attain more meaningful lives through a smaller sacrifice of happiness.

There is some research which shows that inadequate self-control has a deleterious effect on happiness. Psychologists define self-control as the ability to override or change one’s inner responses as well as to interrupt undesired impulses and to refrain from acting on them. An article entitled “Yes, But Are They Happy? Effects of Trait Self-Control on Affective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction” by Wilhelm Hofmann, Maike Luhmann, Rachel Fisher, Kathleen Vohs and Roy Baumeister concluded: “our data clearly indicate that people who have more trait self-control feel happier and are gladder about their life”.  The authors found that “many benefits of high self-control are linked to handling and avoiding conflicts among goals”.

Adding all that together suggests to me that it might be reasonable to hypothesize that an individual’s happiness depends on: (1) the extent to which they perceive their life to be meaningful (this variable accounts for factors that jointly influence the meaningfulness of life and happiness); (2) factors that add to happiness that have little direct impact on meaningfulness of life; (3) self-control.

That relationship could be turned around the other way to view meaningfulness of life as a function of happiness and the other two variables (with opposite signs expected for the estimated coefficients expected for those variables).

The important point is that there may be potential for many people to flourish to a greater extent by improving their self-control. Roy Baumeister and Ron Tierney wrote a book about how to do that, which was discussed on this blog a few years ago. 

Postscript:

After writing this piece I had some doubts about whether it makes sense to suggest that people with self-control problems would claim that their lives are meaningful. Then it occurred to me that just about everyone I know is a reforming sinner – a fallible human trying to live a better life. I don’t know many saints!

Introspection can’t take me far, but it does tell me that sinners who try to reform themselves often do so because they feel their lives are meaningful and should not be wasted. Introspection also tells me that reforming sinners cannot live with no regrets unless they are willing to expose themselves to temptation, and that when people are tempted they find themselves outside their comfort zones - they tend to succumb to temptation from time to time and feel somewhat unhappy.

For example, while I was giving up smoking I would have certainly said that my life was highly meaningful. However, in order to live a normal life I had to expose myself to situations where I was tempted to have a cigarette. So, I spent a fair amount of time suffering from withdrawal symptoms and would probably have rated my happiness somewhat lower than when I was smoking full-time.

That story has a happy ending. For many years I have been able to observe other people smoking without craving for a cigarette. I would now give myself a higher rating for self-control, but I’m still a fallible human trying to live a better life! 

Does stasis now make more sense than dynamism?

It is now about 18 years since Virginia Postrel suggested in The Future and Its Enemies that our political, intellectual and cultural landscape was increasingly being defined by “stasis” and “dynamism”:

“How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis – a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism – a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition?”

The author was writing about the United States, but the ideas in her book have much wider application. The old political divisions seem to breaking down all over the world. On many issues there is not much political distance between social reactionaries, green reactionaries and technocrats. The social reactionaries yearn for the kind of world our parents lived in, green reactionaries yearn for a premodern society and technocrats fear change that is not managed by governments. They all see virtue in government regulation of innovation. As a result, we see strange alliances forming on issues such as fracking.

By contrast, dynamists share beliefs in a spontaneous order. They emphasize individual flourishing and individual responsibility, and the possibilities for progress that emerge when people are free to experiment and learn. They care about “protecting the processes that allow an open-ended future to unfold”.

Virginia suggested that dynamists don’t yet share a political identity. She notes that they may view themselves as libertarian, progressive, liberal or conservative. That still seems to be true. Many dynamists eschew politics. Of those who take an interest in politics, people who see themselves as libertarians or classical liberals would have least objection to being labelled as dynamists - if they understand what the label is intended to mean.

Misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘dynamist’ might be a problem. To the uninitiated, the word could appear to refer to history’s hastening agents who seek to activate what they perceive as ‘historical forces’ to achieve a particular vision of future society. I can’t think of a positive word that adequately captures the idea of allowing an open-ended future to emerge. A new word might be required: e.g. ‘catallaxist’ - a believer in catallaxy, or spontaneous order.

Advances in technology have helped those who believe in spontaneous order to achieve some important victories over the last 18 years. For example, the emergence of services such as Uber are helping to break down regulation protecting incumbent service providers.

Yet, on balance, it looks to me as though the stasists have been winning the economic policy debate. In the aftermath of the GFC, deregulation has often been perceived as a cause of economic crisis, overlooking the effects of the regulatory environment in encouraging some financial institutions to believe that they were too big to be allowed to fail. The actions of some leaders of the economics profession in distancing themselves from market liberalisation policies has lent weight to populist demands for a return of stasist policy prescriptions.

As I see it, identifying myself as a believer in spontaneous order does not involve an ideological commitment never to advocate government intervention under any circumstances. It has to do with where the onus of proof should lie. In the case of migration, for example, I would argue that the onus should be on those favouring restrictions on international movement of people to justify why such restrictions should exist. It is argued that free international movement of people is incompatible with welfare systems in which immigrants can qualify for social assistance, but it is not obvious why immigrants should qualify for social assistance.  A more persuasive argument immigration restrictions can possibly be mounted in terms of potentially adverse social consequences of a large influx of migrants with different cultural traditions.

Similar considerations apply in relation to new technology. It is easy to mount a persuasive argument for regulatory restrictions on access to nuclear technology, but that is obviously an extreme example. Some statists have argued that innovations in home entertainment should be regulated to avoid adverse social impacts, but they imply that individuals are not capable of learning how to make sensible decisions for themselves and their families about use of new technology. Some of us had difficulty in making good decisions about use of our leisure time following the introduction of television, but that is not a powerful argument for the government to make such decisions for us. Of course, as suggested by Daniel Lattier, we have a responsibility to learn to use technology wisely, i.e., temperately. Similar considerations have applied in many aspects of life, e.g. food, beverages, sex, since ancient times.

How should we view decisions about whether to enhance brain power with neural lace? I ended a recent post on this topic suggesting that neural lace will not be worth having unless it can be developed in such a way as to enable humans to protect the privacy, autonomy and responsibility that is integral to their individual flourishing. I should have added that the decision to have a neural lace implant will be best left for individuals to make for themselves. Anyone wants to argue that choosing to use some particular form of neural lace would be tantamount to selling oneself into slavery, is of course free to try to make a case for regulation or prohibition.

My reading about potential consequences of artificial intelligence (see blog posts here and here) has left me feeling somewhat more cautious about new technology, but that does not mean that stasis now makes more sense than dynamism. Virginia makes some relevant points. She acknowledges: “the open-ended future can be genuinely scary, the turmoil it creates genuinely painful”. However, she follows with the observation:

“Statist prescriptions … stifle the very processes through which people improve their lives – from the invention of new medical treatments to the creation of art. In their quest for stability, statists make society brittle, vulnerable to all sorts of disasters”.

Like other technological innovations, the advent of super-intelligent machines has potential to expand the possibilities for human flourishing. It will also expand the range of technology by which the flourishing of individual humans could be threatened by other entities, including governments.  New technology will not alter the fundamental principle of liberalism and that adult individuals should be free to flourish as they choose, provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

Does individual human flourishing require entrepreneurial qualities?

Source: Gifts for professionals

When I was young it seemed possible for most people in relatively high income countries to choose a career suited to their personal abilities and inclinations, obtain the qualifications necessary to pursue that career and then look forward to working in the same occupation until their retirement. It seemed possible for people to plan their lives around stable career paths, in order to obtain the optimal combination of income, interesting work, job security, or whatever else they were seeking. Educational opportunities depended to a larger extent on wealth and/or ability, and career opportunities for women were more restricted that at present. Nevertheless, everyone who applied themselves diligently was predicted to end up having a successful career.

From an individual's perspective, such predictions were always problematic. For one reason or another, some people were more successful than predicted. Others made mistakes in their career choices and either changed paths, or came to perceive themselves as square pegs trying to fit into round holes. There was always a lot of adjustment going on in the labour market as people moved between firms and industries in search of better opportunities, or as a result of retrenchments. Most people ended up with satisfying careers, but some didn’t.

These days there is much greater uncertainty about whether young people will be able to pursue the careers they prepare for, even though educational opportunities are more widely available. Predictions can be made about the kinds of skills that are likely to be in demand in future (see, for example a post I wrote last year on this question) but we cannot be confident that any particular academic pursuits (including STEM subjects) will necessarily produce the skills that potential employers might want.  Acquiring useful skills and obtaining rewarding employment seems to be becoming more akin to an entrepreneurial process of discovering and gearing up to supply a market niche.

In thinking about the process of skill acquisition and job search it may be helpful to reflect upon Israel Kirzner’s view of the way entrepreneurial decision-making differs from economizing decision-making i.e. efficient use of known means to achieve known ends. Kirzner notes that entrepreneurial decision-making requires a posture of alertness:

‘In addition to the exploitation of perceived opportunities, purposive human action involves a posture of alertness toward the discovery of as yet unperceived opportunities and their exploitation. This element in human action – the alertness toward new valuations with respect to ends, new availability of means – may be termed the entrepreneurial element in the individual decision’ (Perception,Opportunity and Profit, p 109).

Of course, occupations are just one aspect of life. How does the forgoing discussion relate to the question I asked at the outset was about human flourishing? Is it reasonable to argue that the entrepreneurial alertness discussed by Kirzner is an important component of the practical wisdom required for individual human flourishing?

In my view, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen make a strong case for that in their recently book, The Perfectionist Turn, aspects of which have been briefly discussed in the last two posts on this blog (here and here). After acknowledging Kirzner’s insights, the authors suggest that just as entrepreneurship involves a discovery process, so too does human flourishing. This is contrary to the view of people who imply that pursuit of our final end in life is merely an optimisation process:

‘Knowing what our end is, so it is said, will leave us only the task of utilizing the means at our disposal to effectively achieve that end. Yet, as we have tried to show in our various discussions of freedom and self-direction, our end of a perfecting or flourishing life is not like one of using known resources in their most effective manner. Rather the perfecting is more like discovering means available to such an end that are as yet unknown, or only partly known, to us. Moreover, once those means are discovered, it is equally mistaken to suppose that efficient usage is the only remaining challenge. Because perfecting or flourishing is not a passive state but an activity, there is virtually a constant reassessment of the adequacy and appropriateness of the means; this, as a consequence, suggests openness and alertness to new opportunities amidst changing circumstances. Finally, optimization suggests efficiency along only one dimension, but flourishing (at least in our view) is inclusive of multiple dimensions’ (p 287-8).

While such observations about the qualities required for individual human flourishing would probably have been as relevant in ancient Greece as they are today, we are helped to comprehend them by a sympathetic understanding of the qualities required for successful entrepreneurship. 

Can I maintain the view that human flourishing is the exercise of practical wisdom whilst remaining a fan of the social intuitionist model of ethics?

Source: Gifts for Professionals

If you want to understand individual human flourishing it is desirable to study the contributions of different academic disciplines. That is how I justify the eclectic approach adopted on this blog. That raises the possibility, however, that the views I find persuasive from different disciplines could sometimes be irreconcilable.

The above question arose because I am attracted to the view of individual human flourishing, as the exercise of practical wisdom within a teleological process. This view was presented by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen (hereafter referred to for brevity as D&D) in their recently published book, The Perfectionist Turn, which I have not long finished reading. The teleological (developmental) aspect was discussed briefly in my last post.

I have previously been persuaded that the social intuitionist model, presented by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind, seems to pretty well fit known facts about moral reasoning. Haidt observes:

‘Moral reasoning is part of our lifelong struggle to win friends and influence people. That’s why I say that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” You’ll misunderstand moral reasoning if you think about it as something people do by themselves in order to figure out the truth’ (p 49).

On first appearances, it does look as though it might be difficult to be a fan of both social intuitionism and D&D’s philosophical approach:

‘Succinctly stated, human flourishing is understood by us to mean “the exercise of one’s practical wisdom.” (p 33)

Again:

‘Practical wisdom, as understood in our account, is the central integrating virtue of a good human life’ (p 57).

However, Haidt also recognizes the role of practical wisdom. He uses the metaphor of a rider and an elephant to discuss the relationship between moral reasoning and intuitions. The rider represents reason and the elephant represents intuition. As well as performing a public relations function in explaining and justifying the elephant’s actions, the rider can also help the elephant to reach its goals and avoid disaster because it can look further into the future and learn new skills.

As previously discussed on this blog, I think Haidt’s rider and elephant metaphor is much more realistic than Plato’s metaphor in which reason, the ‘human charioteer’, controls the dumb beasts of passion.

Haidt’s social intuitionist approach recognizes that the rider evolved to serve the elephant. It explains why people tend to have strong gut feelings about what is right or wrong, which they maintain even when they struggle to construct justifications for those feelings. Importantly, however, Haidt also recognizes that the rider is responsible for training the elephant. He suggests in his earlier book, The Happiness Hypothesis that ‘virtue resides in a well-trained elephant’:

‘The rider must take part in the training, but if moral instruction imparts only explicit knowledge (facts that the rider can state), it will have no effect on the elephant, and therefore little effect on behavior. Moral education must also impart tacit knowledge – skills of social perception and social emotion so finely tuned that one automatically feels the right thing in each situation, knows the right thing to do, and then wants to do it. Morality, for the ancients, was a kind of practical wisdom’ (p 160).

D&D argue that practical wisdom has three dimensions: the effective and excellent use of practical reason (the intellectual faculty used for guiding conduct); the development of character; and self-understanding. The authors view self-understanding as particularly important:

 ‘In sum, self-understanding is at the centre of practical wisdom because one’s self is, finally, the object of ethical reflection; and to reflect well is what it means to perfect one’s self’.

As D&D explain it, making norms of behaviour one’s own involves more than choosing to accept them. It involves self-realization – realization of their value given one’s own dispositions and circumstances, and the contribution they make to one’s own personal development.

How should we view Haidt’s moral foundation theory in the light of the role of practical wisdom in individual human flourishing? Haidt and his colleagues have identified moral foundations by connecting the adaptive challenges of life that evolutionary psychologists frequently wrote about to the virtues that are found in some form in many cultures.

They have identified six moral foundations:

·         Care/harm makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need.

·         Fairness/cheating is concerned with reciprocity. It makes us sensitive to issues relating to trustworthiness, opportunism and punishment.

·         Loyalty/betrayal makes us sensitive to group interests.

·         Authority/subversion makes us sensitive to issues relating to rank and status.

·         Liberty/oppression makes people notice and resent signs of attempted domination by bullies and tyrants.

·         Sanctity/degradation evolved to help us meet the challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It makes it possible to invest objects with irrational and extreme values, which in turn helps to bind groups together.

Stemming from the preceding discussion about self-understanding, one point that could be made about moral foundation theory is that it might be useful for readers of this blog to do the test at yourmorals.org, and reflect on the results. I was surprised by the results when I did the test a few years ago.

Finally, it seems to me that an important moral foundation is currently missing from the list. It is still universally (I hope) considered a virtue for individuals to accept responsibility for realizing their potential or, to use more ancient language, developing their own talents and abilities.   

How can we know what we ought to do?

Dear readers, I would like you to consider a particular approach to the question of how we can know what we ought to do. I have used James’ reasoning about whether or not he is a good person in order to illustrate this approach. In case you are wondering, James is a figment of my imagination.

When you ask James whether he is a good person, he says he would like to think of himself as a good person, but he is not as good as he would like to be. He will tell you that he doesn’t claim to be righteous, but neither does he pursue his own pleasure without regard to other people and the norms of the society in which he lives. He says he is happy most of the time, satisfied with his life as a whole, and his conscience does not trouble him much.

James has been fairly successful in his life so far. He was moderately successful in sporting and academic pursuits. He is a friendly person and his relationships with other people are generally cordial. He loves his family. His marriage might not be blissful, but it has survived longer than the marriages of most of his friends. He has been a dependable and caring father to his children, but regrets not spending more time with them while they were young. James has pursued a successful career, which has been a source of great satisfaction to him.

James has a healthy lifestyle. He says that this is about cultivating good habits rather than following a strict diet and exercise regime. He claims that having a healthy lifestyle is just a matter of being the person he has potential to be.

This idea of being the person he has potential to be seems to motivate James’ behaviour in many other aspects of his life including management of finances and work habits. James says that most of the time he can manage himself best by reminding himself of his aspirations and exercising a gentle discipline, rather than by setting detailed rules and attempting to use willpower to comply religiously. He likes the idea of being spontaneous. Nevertheless, he says that there are some lines that he will never cross in his personal behaviour. He regards himself as personally responsible for his conduct, but is inclined to listen politely when people disapprove – at least until he decides whether or not they should be told to mind their own business.

James has always perceived himself to have potential to express many of the traditional virtues. It has been integral to that perception for him to develop and make good use of his reasoning powers and self-knowledge, and to develop his own character in ways that he values. As well as temperance, he has shown a great deal of integrity and courage in many aspects of his life. He takes pride in being honest and trustworthy.

James is also kind. He has not sought a reputation for kindness. He objects to being told that he has an obligation to help those less fortunate than himself. He explains his altruism – he would not object to my use of that term – as being in his nature. His acts of kindness come from the heart, without him expecting anything in return, except for the people he helps to be willing to help themselves to the extent that they are able. He is not a “soft touch”.

James says that becoming a good person is like playing cards well. He says that rather than bemoaning the fact that you have not been dealt a better hand, it is better to maintain good humour and focus on how best to play the cards you have been dealt. You never think of cheating and you avoid playing with people who cheat. You like to win, but you participate mainly to enjoy the social interaction. Playing the game is also a learning experience. You learn how to perceive opportunities, develop strategies, cooperate with others, and to win and lose graciously. As you learn to play well you become a better person.

You might be surprised that the line of reasoning James employs in evaluating whether he is a good person is somewhat controversial among philosophers. I have constructed his line of reasoning so that it is broadly consistent with the ethics of responsibility as espoused by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in their new book, The Perfectionist Turn.

The “perfectionist turn” referred to in the title is a turn away from the ethics of respect, which views personal ethics in terms of norms of social interaction, toward the Neo-Aristotelian, eudaimonic, naturalistic ethics of responsibility. This is called “perfectionist” because it is grounded in a developmental (teleological) process which serves to orient a person towards her or his flourishing. The perfectionism referred to has nothing to do with the psychological usage of the word in terms of striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards.

The reason why many philosophers would suggest that James is confused in his explanation of the motives for his good behaviour is because it is teleological.  James seems to be committing the error of attempting to derive an “ought” from an “is” because he has not provided a reason why he ought to be the person that he has potential to be.

From my reading of The Perfectionist Turn, I think the authors would defend James' reasoning on the grounds that he is describing his natural inclination to engage in activities that constitute the actualization of his potential or his fulfillment. Awareness of his potential for flourishing provides James with reason and motivation, and is the basis on which he determines what he ought to do.

Some critics will probably suggest that if we view individual human flourishing as our measure of goodness we have no way to judge that a person like the great Mongol warrior and emperor, Genghis Khan, was not a good person. I am not sure whether Genghis Khan believed his military conquests were helping him to achieve his potential as a human, but it seems reasonable to argue that he was deluded if that was what he thought. The authors acknowledge that through lack of awareness or misapprehension of what their good consists of humans often make the wrong decisions. They have an Afterword in the book devoted to “big morality” and the potential for some individuals to do great harm, or great good. The thrust of their argument there is that it is to the particular individual soul that one must appeal in the final analysis because “it is the nature and quality of that particular soul which will produce the actions that are to become the objects of moral concern”.

However, the authors also note that the perfectionist turn “is not a turning away from metanorms”, which were the subject of their earlier book, Norms of Liberty (2005). As I see it, there will always be some deluded egocentric leaders who will need to be prevented from impeding the flourishing of other humans. Even the activities of rational self-directed humans seeking to flourish in their own way will sometimes clash with the activities of other rational self-directed humans. As Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen still acknowledge, we need a political/legal order that answers the questions that they asked in Norms of Liberty:

“how is it possible to have an ethical basis for an overall or general social/political context -a context that is open-ended or cosmopolitan - that will not require as a matter of principle, that one form of human flourishing be preferred to another? How, in other words, can the possibility that various forms of human flourishing will not be in structural conflict be achieved?” 

Will neural lace save us from the super-intelligent robots?

Source: Gifts for professionals

If neural lace sounds like something out of a science fiction novel that is probably because that is where the idea originated. A couple of months ago, however, a group of scientists published a paper about injecting an ultra-fine mesh into brains to create neural lace. The mesh has been tested on mice, which survived the implantation and are thriving. Suggested uses for neural lace include “monitoring brain activity, delivering treatment for degenerative disorders like Parkinson’s, and even enhancing brain capabilities”.

In terms of economics, innovations to enhance brain capabilities seem to have many characteristics in common with other innovations. It seems reasonable to expect that, as with other successful technological advances, entrepreneurs developing the technology will initially be able to charge a high price for it. As suggested by Anders Sandberg, of the Future of Technology Institute at Oxford, the price of some brain enhancements (pills and gadgets) can be expected to fall as a result of competition, while the price of service-heavy enhancements (genetic engineering) is more likely to stay expensive. On that basis, there could be potential for the price of neural lace to fall fairly rapidly and for it to become widely used within a few decades, if it offers substantial benefits to users.

 Another reason to expect the price of neural lace to fall rapidly is that research in this area is likely to be undertaken in several different countries. It seems unlikely that the government of any one country will be able to protect the rents of entrepreneurs who develop the technology by suppressing international competition for a prolonged period.

Elon Musk’s proposal to develop neural lace to prevent humans becoming house pets of intelligent machines provides a further reason to expect neural lace to be priced for the mass market. Elon has several other highly ambitious projects on his plate, but he seems willing to add neural lace to the menu. His attitude: “Somebody’s got to do it. If somebody doesn’t do it, then I think I should do it”.

Elon Musk established OpenAI as a not-for-profit venture, so his neural lace project would presumably not be aimed at maximizing shareholder value. Perhaps Elon can attract sufficient potential investors (or donors) to be able to fund the necessary research and development.

So, why not join Elon’s fan club and help him begin work on neural lace as soon as possible to save our descendants from the robots? Michael Cook, a bioethicist, has given three good reasons to proceed cautiously:

“Take privacy. If you can hack a computer, you can hack a brain. Integrating your memories and cognitive activity with the internet allows other people to see what you are doing and thinking 24/7 — a kind of upscale parole bracelet.

Take autonomy. In our culture, this is the most cherished of our personal values. But once brains are integrated into an information network, they can be manipulated in increasingly sophisticated ways. And since technology always serves its owner, we could easily become the tools of Google or the government.

Take responsibility. There might be no crime, as the neural lace could shut down the ‘hardware’ whenever passions threaten to overwhelm social norms – as defined by the network.”

Elon Musk’s claim that humans are already cyborgs should be rejected. The fact that we, as individuals, may have a presence on social media does not mean that we have ceased to be uniquely human. Individuals can have brain implants and still be uniquely human.

Neural lace will not be worth having unless it can be developed in such a way as to enable humans to protect the privacy, autonomy and responsibility that is integral to their individual flourishing.  

What did Australian soldiers on the Western Front write home about?

A century ago Australian soldiers were in France and Belgium fighting on the Western Front. It is worth remembering that these young men were facing a much more imminent existential threat than most tourists who visit Europe today. They would probably be inclined to brush aside our concerns about the current threat posed by terrorism, and would almost certainly be amused by alarmist reactions to the EU’s ongoing existential crisis.

This post focuses on what two of my relatives wrote about in their post cards. Readers who are looking for a more representative answer to the question might be interested in Miss Lynch’s letters.

In May 1916, Harry Bates (my father’s uncle) wrote a card to his sister-in-law, Jessie, who was the local school teacher at Dobie (a township near Ararat in Victoria, that has since ceased to exist) and the Bates family’s letter writer. Harry, shown in the photo, was 35 years old when he sent the card.

At the front of the card is a picture of the cathedral in Marseille, which looks much the same today, so I haven’t reproduced it here.

Harry’s card to Jessie was mainly about the weather. That is not surprising because Harry was a farmer, and like a lot of other farmers in Australia, had been affected by the Federation Drought (1911-16). Harry mentions that in an earlier letter Jessie had told him that the preceding harvest had been good, which is consistent with the good seasonal conditions in Victoria during 1915.

It is interesting that Harry writes of France: “This place is all the world like home”. As I watch the Tour de France, I can see why he would say that. Much of the countryside does look similar, except for the castles and the villages.

The second card was written by Frank Lowe to his cousin, Ethel Vernon, my grandmother, who lived at Crowlands (a township north-east of Ararat). I am grateful to Tom Grieves for his help in identifying Frank Lowe as the author of the card and helping me to decipher the writing. The card was probably written in the latter part of 1917 (following the battle of Messines in June 1917). Frank mentions that he “got through the Messines stunt alright”. Frank would have been 22 when he wrote the card; Ethel was 17.

Frank begins by writing about the card itself: “They have some very pretty things in this line over here.” The card is embroidered with a pocket at the front.

Much of Frank’s card is about relatives and friends who had also enlisted, including Ethel’s brother, Arthur Vernon and Bill Croft, her brother-in-law.

The card asks Ethel to convey a message to her sister, Margaret and brother-in-law, Ivan Frost: “Tell Mag and Ivan never to let their son go to the war if he ever grows up as it is a very poor sort of a game”.

Sadly, Frank’s message was not heeded. Margaret and Ivan Frost’s two eldest sons, Ted and Henry, died as prisoners of war of the Japanese at Sandakan POW camp in north Borneo in 1945.

Will the Ems flourish?

You should be interested in this question because some of your descendants might become Ems during the next century or so. 

Ems are the human-like robots that will be created by emulation of human brains. The emulation process will involve scanning an individual’s brain to record its particular cell features and connections and then building a computer model that processes signals according to those same features and connections. Ems will think, feel and behave like the humans from whom they are created. They will assume they have consciousness and free will, just as humans do.

That view of Ems is presented by Robin Hanson in his recently published book, The Age of Em.

The Age of Em is not the most difficult book I have ever tried to read, but of all the books I can claim to have actually finished reading, I have possibly had greatest difficulty finishing this one. It wasn’t the technical material in the book that put me off. Robin has explained enough of it well enough for non-technical readers like me to get the gist of the scenario being portrayed. I just became bored reading about the Ems. I persisted only because I feel that more of us (humans) should be taking an interest in the future of human-like entities.

Others also seem to have become bored reading about the Ems. In the Finale of his book Robin indicates that a “who cares” attitude was common among people who read early drafts of the book, and among those who declined to read. It would certainly have been easier for me to adopt that attitude than to finish reading the book.

In writing about the Ems, Robin Hanson has attempted to predict what is likely to happen, rather than to present a vision of what he would like to happen. He suggests that the Ems will mostly live in a few tall, hot, densely packed cities, which will seem harshly functional when viewed in physical reality, but will look spectacular and stunningly beautiful in virtual reality. Humans will live far from the Em cities, mostly enjoying a comfortable life on their Em-economy investments.

A distinguishing characteristic of the Em economy will be the ability of Ems to replicate themselves at relatively low cost. Robin suggests that there will be enough Ems willing to make copies of themselves to greatly lower wages to a level near the full cost of computer hardware needed to run Em brains. Under that Malthusian scenario, wages of most Ems will be so low that they will barely be able to afford to exist, even though they will be working hard half or more of their waking hours.

Most Ems will have office jobs, and work and play in spectacular virtual realities. Many of them will enjoy high status during their working lives because they will have mental capacities many times those of human brains. They will be slowed down after retirement, but will have the opportunity to live for as long as Em civilization persists.

Robin suggests that the Em future, as he portrays it, might look pretty good in terms of utilitarian evaluation criteria. Even with wages close to subsistence levels, Ems would have great opportunities for entertainment via virtual reality, and they would live long lives. If there are many billions or perhaps even trillions of them, as Robin suggests, utilitarian calculus would conclude that the Age of the Ems would see a big increase in total happiness relative to our world today.

That view seems to me to highlight the deficiencies of crude utilitarianism. The quality of life of the typical Em, as portrayed by Robin, strikes me as being lamentable. I predict that most humans faced with the choice of whether to live such a life, or the life of an average human, would choose to live the life of a human. Since Ems would inherit our values, I predict that most of them would also reject the life offered by their hot houses of virtual reality in favour of a more authentic life closer to nature. The choices involved are similar to those posed by Robert Nozick in his famous experience machine thought experiment (discussed previously on this blog in a post that has recently been re-published on Common Sense Ethics).

That brings me to what seems to me to be a major flaw in the scenario that Robin Hanson posits. I think he misjudges human values and preferences when he suggests that large numbers of humans and Ems would be willing to make copies of themselves under circumstances where Em wages were low and falling. As advances in technology have made it easier for humans to exert greater control over their own reproduction they have used that power to ensure their offspring have good prospects to have lives they will value. Ems might view their replication decisions differently, but I don’t see why they would choose to bring into the world large numbers of twins earning subsistence wages.

The other problem I have with Robin’s scenario is that I think he may be too pessimistic about the potential for Ems to increase their productivity by expanding their use of non-Em robots, as an alternative to replicating themselves. As Ems obtain more advanced capital to work with (including non-Em robots) their marginal productivity could be expected to rise, thus tending to raise wage rates.

This book is based on the assumption that brain emulation is likely to happen before artificial machine intelligence develops to the point where machines will achieve broad human level abilities. I don’t have the technical competence to comment on whether that is likely. Some issues relating to the latter possibility were discussed in my review of Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence. The idea that human-like robots may be created through brain emulation at some time during the next century does not fill me with joy, but life might be better for humans (and Ems) if the Ems are created before the intelligent machines, so they can prevent them from running amok.

Despite my reservations about this book, I recommend that readers should buy it in order to give Robin Hanson appropriate encouragement for his efforts in attempting to foresee the future of human-like creatures. An even better reason to buy the book is to try assess for yourself whether Robin’s base-line scenario is plausible.