This week's thought experiment brings up the age old questions of free will and determinism. See what you think of this variation.

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     For the seventy-third series of Big Brother, the producers had introduced a fiendish new toy: Pierre. The show's consultant psychologist explained how it would work.
     'As you know, the brain is the engine of thought and action, and the brain is entirely physical. Our understanding of the laws of physics is such that we can now accurately predict how people's brains will react - and thus how people will think - in response to events in their environment.
     'On entering the Big Brother space station, a brain scanner maps the brain states of all the participants. Our supercomputer, Pierre, monitors the various stimuli the contestants are exposed to and is able then to predict what their future behaviour will be.
     'Of course, all this is so fiendishly complicated that there are severe limits. That is why the technology works best in a controlled, enclosed environment such as the Big Brother space station, and also why predictions can only be made for a few moments ahead, since tiny errors in predictions soon compound themselves into large ones. But viewers will enjoy seeing the computer predict how the contestants are about to react. In a sense, we will know their minds better than they do themselves.'

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 25.
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What do you think? How accurate will Pierre be? Would you enjoy seeing this?

     "You don't believe in God?" the devout Christian asked the atheist. "I don't think I could trust someone who doesn't worry about heaven and hell."
     "So you're only good because god has promised you a reward?" the atheist asked in return. "That doesn't sound like anything more than bribery."
     "Of course not," spat back the devout Christian. "I'm good because it's pleasing to God."
     "How do you know that it is?"
     "Because the bible tells me so."
     "Do you follow everything the bible tells you? Like slavery, and torturing infidels, and killing babies for revenge? Because if so, I should probably call the cops."
     "No, not those parts," the Christian said in a huff. "The church has moved on from those bad ideas."
     "So you listen to your community?" the Atheist asked with careful emphasis.
     "Um, yeah."
     "Well so do I."

This week's thought experiment came straight from Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma so I was inspired to write a little dialogue in honour of Plato's usual format. Let's look at the one written up in the thought experiment.

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     And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, "I am the Lord thy God, and I am the source of all that is good. Why does thy secular moral philosophy ignore me?"
     And the philosopher spake unto the Lord, "To answer I must first ask you some questions. You command us to do what is good. But is it good because you command it, or do you command it because it is good?"
     "Ur," said the Lord. "It's good because I command it?"
     "The wrong answer, surely, your mightiness! If the good is only good because you say it is so, then you could, if you wished, make it so that torturing infants was good. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?"
     "Of course!" replieth the Lord. "I tested thee and thou hast made me pleased. What was the other choice again?"
     "You choose what is good because it is good. But that shows quite clearly that goodness does not depend on you at all. So we don't need to study God to study the good."
     "Even so," spake the Lord, "you've got to admit I've written some pretty good textbooks on the subject..."

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 22.
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This is quite clever. Using the Socratic method on God to make him wink right out of existence. Poof!

I've written plenty about the universal definition of good that arises from nature. I managed to turn this idea into a peer-reviewed academic paper and an essay for a popular website. And I've recently been told I'll have an article In the July/August issue of a major humanist magazine about this subject. So, rather than bore you with another recap of why the survival of life over the long-term of evolutionary timeframes is the best objective basis for morality that we have, I'm instead going to try to rouse my puppy from his musical dreams and go enjoy a nice Spring afternoon. You should do the same...even if god didn't tell you to.

This week's thought experiment is based on one I've written a lot about recently. If you've been keeping up with my other articles, you shouldn't have any problem with it.

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     And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, "I am the Lord thy God, and I am the source of all that is good. Why does thy secular moral philosophy ignore me?"
     And the philosopher spake unto the Lord, "To answer I must first ask you some questions. You command us to do what is good. But is it good because you command it, or do you command it because it is good?"
     "Ur," said the Lord. "It's good because I command it?"
     "The wrong answer, surely, your mightiness! If the good is only good because you say it is so, then you could, if you wished, make it so that torturing infants was good. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?"
     "Of course!" replieth the Lord. "I tested thee and thou hast made me pleased. What was the other choice again?"
     "You choose what is good because it is good. But that shows quite clearly that goodness does not depend on you at all. So we don't need to study God to study the good."
     "Even so," spake the Lord, "you've got to admit I've written some pretty good textbooks on the subject..."

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 22.
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So what do you think? If we don't need god to tell us what is good, then what do we need him for? Or do you have another answer to this dilemma?

Author Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980, but after rebels invaded his hometown in 1991 he was separated from his family and forced to flee. After wandering for a few months, he ended up conscripted as a child soldier for the government, fighting against the rebels for three years before UNICEF workers rescued him. "During his time in the Sierra Leonean government army, Beah says he doesn't remember how many people he killed. He and other soldiers smoked marijuana and sniffed amphetamines and "brown-brown", a mix of cocaine and gunpowder. He blames the addictions and the brainwashing for his violence and cites them and the pressures of the army as reasons for his inability to escape on his own: "If you left, it was as good as being dead."" After his rescue, Beah underwent counselling, made his way to the United States, graduated from Oberlin College, and became a human rights activist.

Can a person come back from committing war crimes to lead a positive life that contributes to the good of society and the long-term survival of life? Of course they can. With Beah's story in mind, let's read through this weeks' thought experiment again.

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     Private Sacks was about to do a terrible thing. He had been ordered to first rape and then murder the prisoner, whom he knew to be no more than an innocent civilian from the wrong ethnic background. There was no doubt in his mind that this would be a gross injustice - a war crime, in fact.
     Yet quickly thinking it over he felt he had no choice but to go ahead. If he obeyed the order, he could make the ordeal as bearable as possible for the victim, making sure she suffered no more than was necessary. If he did not obey the order, he himself would be shot and the prisoner would still be violated and killed, but probably more violently. It was better for everyone if he went ahead.
     His reasoning seemed clear enough, but of course it gave him no peace of mind. How could it be that he was both going to do the best he could in the circumstances and also a terrible wrong?

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 19.
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If we take Private Sacks' certainty at face value that "it was better for everyone if he went ahead," then it's not difficult at all to see how he could be doing a "terrible wrong" as well as "the best he could." In my post on justice, I noted how we must separate actions from intentions and judge them both independently. I said:

Intention and causation are not necessary for an action to be judged good or evil. Those judgments are based on objective reality and whether or not the actions promote or hinder the long-term survival of life. Praise or blame for these actions is tied to intention or neglect of intention. The magnitude of reward or punishment doled out from society should be proportional to the intention or the neglect.

As described in the thought experiment, Private Sacks' rape and murder would clearly be an objectively evil act, but his intentions would be good, which, while not exactly praiseworthy, do mitigate the blame and punishment he should receive for them, depending on the rest of Sacks' life story. He probably made other more blameworthy decisions in the past that led up to this moral dilemma, and he had better make some better choices soon after this one if he is to deserve any exoneration for this particular act, but the war crime might just be the least bad option.

So, paradoxically, it seems harder to think of a reason that Private Sacks should refuse to commit these war crimes. As it stands, he certainly didn't think of one. But perhaps he wasn't truly thinking of "everyone" when he said "it was better for everyone if he went ahead." Remember that we are a species governed by the survival and evolution of both our genes AND our culture. If Private Sacks refused the orders from his commander, his genes and those of the prisoner would both die off (and potentially quite gruesomely). But maybe their story of sacrifice would live on in the culture and inspire the saving of many other lives in this or other conflicts. Would that long-term benefit outweigh the short-term costs to Sacks and the prisoner? It might. Many other such acts have had this effect on humanity. Or it might go to a silent grave just as countless others have as well. This fate also depends on the rest of the private's circumstances. Is he a famous person? Would his act be witnessed and retold? In other words, how strong are his ties to society? Since this option didn't occur to Private Sacks in the thought experiment, I'm deducing that his ties weren't so strong, but then that's just another illustrative point to take away from this exercise: that we should perhaps work to strengthen our moral ties to others.

In that vein, I'll finish by recommending a recovery from this morbid experiment with a quick read of David Brook's op-ed in last week's New York Times: The Moral Bucket List. The essay lists six characteristics that Brooks has gleaned from interactions with "deeply good" people who have made an impression on him. Following the advice of his column may not stop war crimes from being committed in the world, but it could just stop you or someone you know from doing more minor wrongs under the influence of companions. Thanks for reading and continuing to question these problems with me!

From a simple math problem last week, to a rape and murder this week. You never know where these thought experiments will take you.

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     Private Sacks was about to do a terrible thing. He had been ordered to first rape and then murder the prisoner, whom he knew to be no more than an innocent civilian from the wrong ethnic background. There was no doubt in his mind that this would be a gross injustice - a war crime, in fact.
     Yet quickly thinking it over he felt he had no choice but to go ahead. If he obeyed the order, he could make the ordeal as bearable as possible for the victim, making sure she suffered no more than was necessary. If he did not obey the order, he himself would be shot and the prisoner would still be violated and killed, but probably more violently. It was better for everyone if he went ahead.
     His reasoning seemed clear enough, but of course it gave him no peace of mind. How could it be that he was both going to do the best he could in the circumstances and also a terrible wrong?

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 19.
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I generally haven't found the answers in Baggini's book to be very helpful for these thought experiments so far (they're usually just a few paragraphs of raising more questions), but there is an important point about how to deal with problems like this in the response for this one. I thought I should share it with you now to help confine your thinking for the week. Baggini writes:

The temptation to imagine a third possibility - perhaps just shooting the prisoner and himself - is hard to resist. But resist it we must, for in a thought experiment we control the variables, and what we are asking in this one is what he should do if the only two possibilities are to carry out the order or to refuse to do so. The whole point of fixing the dilemma this way is to force us to confront the moral problem head on, not think our way around it.

So how would you confront this? What should Private Sacks do?

We had a very easy thought experiment this week, one that actually has a black and white answer! But before I discuss it, here's a quick reminder of what it was:

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     Marge was no mathematician, but she knew she had just discovered a foolproof system to get rich paying roulette.
     She had been observing the spin of the wheel at the casino for several days. During this time she had noticed that it was surprisingly normal for there to be a sequence of spins when the ball fell into only black or only red slots. But five in a row of the same color was very unusual and six in a row happened only a couple of times a day.
     This was going to be her system. The chances of the ball falling into a slot of the same color six times in a row were tiny. So, she would watch, and once it fell into, say, red, five times in a row, she would bet that the next one would be black. She was bound to win more often that she lost because six in a row was so rare. She was so confident that she had already started to think about how she would spend the money.

Baggini., J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 16.
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As admitted, Marge is no mathematician. And she doesn't have a very good understanding of causality either. Previous spins of the wheel have no effect on future spins, so the odds of winning any one bet revert exactly to their mathematical calculation each time the table boss picks up the roulette ball. On an American table, with 2 green slots for the house and 16 each for red and black, that means a 5.3% chance the house will win and a 47.4% chance a bet on one of the colors will win. Just to see this in action, I spent a bit of time this morning putting together a spreadsheet that picked random numbers and awarded wins exactly like a roulette table. Then I ran the calculations up to 10,000 times. Here's what I saw:

                                                           No. Times Same Win In A Row
     No.    House     Even     Odd         2            3          4         5          6  
       50         3          26         21          20           8         3          1         0
     100         8          48         44          42         18         5          3         1
     250       16        121      113        102         47        22       12         7
     500       28        239      233        246       125        61       30       14
  1,000       65        445      490        466       225      109       60       33
  2,500     151      1175    1174     1144       544      263     126       62
  5,000     255      2401    2344      2301    1105      522     249     132
10,000     543     4717     4740     4440     2047     938      431     202

When I calculated the percentages of wins here, I saw that they converge almost perfectly to the mathematical odds predicted. Note too how every streak gets cut almost perfectly in half as it continues growing. I didn't count how many streaks were busted by house wins, but if Marge always bet the 5's in a row would end on the opposite color, she would win slightly less than 50% of the time most of the time she played this way, exactly like everyone else. It was fun to see that the longest streak in 10,000 spins was actually 13 in a row too, so if Marge had happened to try her scheme during that streak, she'd have lost 8 times in a row!


Exercises like this are good to go through every once in a while since our brains can understand the math, but our emotions sometimes lead us to believe otherwise. We haven't evolved very good "gut" reactions to questions of probability as has been shown in many different experiments. Whenever an outcome has a highly emotional positive or negative payoff, our rational responses are easily skewed.


She might randomly win a bit more or lose a bit more than average, but that also is just like everyone else at the casinos. 

This week's thought experiment is a straightforward math problem. Can you solve it?

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    Marge was no mathematician, but she knew she had just discovered a foolproof system to get rich playing roulette.
     She had been observing the spin of the wheel at the casino for several days. During this time she had noticed that it was surprisingly normal for there to be a sequence of spins when the ball fell into only black or only red slots. But five in a row of the same color was very unusual and six in a row happened only a couple of times a day.
     This was going to be her system. The chances of the ball falling into a slot of the same color six times in a row were tiny. So, she would watch, and once it fell into, say, red, five times in a row, she would bet that the next one would be black. She was bound to win more often than she lost because six in a row was so rare. She was so confident that she had already started to think about how she would spend the money.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 16.
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What do you think? Will Marge strike it rich with this plan? I'll be back on Friday with a quick response to this one.

I got a few good responses on Facebook about this week's thought experiment, but now it's time for me to try to make some sense of it for myself by getting my thoughts clear enough to write them. Here goes! First, a reminder of the text being considered:

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     After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon, and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But now he was able to eat meat with a clear conscience.
     The sausages and bacon had come from a pig called Priscilla he had met the week before. The pig had been genetically engineered to be able to speak and, more importantly, to want to be eaten. Ending up on a human's table was Priscilla's lifetime ambition and she woke up on the day of her slaughter with a keen sense of anticipation. She had told all this to Max just before rushing off to the comfortable and humane slaughterhouse. Having heard her story, Max thought it would be disrespectful not to eat her.
     The chicken had come from a genetically modified bird which had been 'decerebrated'. In other words, it lived the life of a vegetable, with no awareness of self, environment, pain, or pleasure. Killing it was therefore no more barbarous than uprooting a carrot.
     Yet as the plate was placed before him, Max felt a twinge of nausea. Was this just a reflex reaction, caused by a lifetime of vegetarianism? Or was it the physical sign of a justifiable psychic distress? Collecting himself, he picked up his knife and fork...

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, 2005, p. 13.
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I've never been exactly in Max's shoes, but I was a vegetarian for 10 years after reading Diet for a New America way back in the mid-1990's. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time and several of my volleyball friends read this book and passed it around to each other. Quite a few of us ended up switching to vegetarian diets even though we were serious athletes training several times a week to compete at the highest levels of amateur volleyball. The details in the book, however, about the horrors of America's factory farming system and the dangers of ingesting too much protein (antibiotic and hormone filled protein at that) were just too much to ignore. The book also made an important observation that although we are omnivores who seem to live quite happily for an average of 70-80 years whether we're on strict vegetarian diets (in India for example) or mainly subsist on milk and meat (as in Mongolia or the Arctic), our long digestive tracts are not the same as those of carnivores who tend to have short straight shots from stomach to anus to avoid too much contact with rotting meat. The book made the case that while we *can* eat meat, we probably shouldn't be eating nearly as much as we do. It didn't ask everyone to become a vegetarian, but I became one anyway due to health concerns about the industrial farming practices in America. I did recognise that a little bit of meat every now and again probably wouldn't be bad for me though.

Over the next decade, America's farming ideals saw some big changes. More people were demanding and raising organic vegetables, grass-fed beef, and free-range chicken, pork, and veal. Food writers like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman emerged. Movies like Food Inc. rode at the crest of a wave of activist documentaries. I remember reading an article describing some of the people in this movement as "conscientious omnivores" (Con-Oms for short) and decided I wanted to help their cause by supporting these new, small, but more sustainable businesses with my money. After 10 years, I started to eat meat again, but always by trying to push sustainable and ethical sources to succeed and become even more conscientious.

Why do I bring up that whole personal history? Because I want to point out how just the basic question of eating meat does not have a black and white answer for me even before introducing talking pigs and zombie chickens into the equation. The evolutionary history of life on earth is one filled with different species eating other species in a generally sustainable circular food chain. It is much easer to obtain certain nutrients by eating other animals, and ecological systems tend to find ways to remain in balance, even if that means there are times of booms and busts outside of the average existence. But it's a fallacy to say that what has been seen in nature is necessarily moral. And if the objective moral goal of life on earth is to remain alive for the long term of evolutionary timespans, then what works best? Riding out these booms and busts? Removing ourselves from the previously natural food cycle? Or replacing it with monoculture agricultures? Check out these photos of feedlots and greenhouses in the recent article "Over population, over consumption in pictures" and see what you think.

Whatever the best answer is for how we ought to feed ourselves, it probably doesn't involve many of our current "best practices" that simply aren't extendable and sustainable for 6-10 billion people. But that's a topic for more depth at another time.

Now about that talking pig Priscilla. Max was right to have twinges of nausea when considering eating her. We human animals aren't genetically programmed robots - we have genes that give us a propensity to act in certain ways, but freedom to adapt to the rules that society places on us for all manner of societies that we are born into. If we genetically modified a pig to talk, it similarly would be unlikely to operate solely by genetic commands. Surely we could convince it to strive for much higher purposes in life than simply to end up on our plate. Just look at the possibilities that Babe showed us for goodness sake! We don't let people in religious cults give themselves up to the leader of their group. We shouldn't let a super smart pig be convinced it has no better purpose than that either.

As for the "decerebrated" bird, I'm not sure what that means exactly. If it's just bird-meat grown in a petri dish, and we're certain it's safe to ingest, then I don't see any problem with eating that. If it's a live animal roaming around a barn or field, filling up on gravel and grubs, laying eggs and hatching chicks, then I presume it couldn't do all that and really be "living the life of a vegetable", and so we'd be back to all the questions I raised above about the current state of the meat industry.

What do you think? How do you eat now and why have you made that choice? What would make you change your mind about your current eating beliefs? And if you could, what one question would you ask a talking pig? I think I'd ask Priscilla if she liked people.