[extropy-chat] Rational thinking

[Jef Allbright]

Chris Hibbert wrote:
> Jef Allbright wrote:
>> A key difference between the sacrifices of the founding fathers 
>> and those of the kamikaze pilots was that the founding fathers 
>> were taking action on behalf of a wide sphere of self-identity
>> to promote their values into the significant future, while the
>> kamikaze pilots were acting within the narrow sphere of
>> individual identity in fear of societal pressure and dire 
>> consequences in the very near term.
>> (Note that the question asked about the rationality of the 
>> pilots, and not of their commanders. Note also that we have not 
>> addressed factors of pride or patriotism which have little
>> overlap with the domain of individual rational decision-making.)
> 
> This seems to be uncharitable to the motivations of the 
> Japanese pilots, and I can't tell whether the intent is to 
> include all uniformed soldiers, all those acting in the 
> moment, or only conscripts.

I referred to kamikaze pilots in toto, based on my reading and
conversations while I lived in Japan, and my experience of the world in
general and of social machines in particular.

At the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June of 1944, Japan had lost
essentially all of their carrier-borne aircraft (and associated trained
pilots.) With skilled fighter pilots extremely scarce and low
availability of parts and fuel, the Japanese military decided to try a
desperate new strategy of kamikaze suicide bombers.  These roughly 2000
new pilots were not well trained, but they didn't have to be to crash
their planes.

The roughly 2000 kamikaze pilots were all considered volunteers, and
they signed papers to that effect.  However, if you know Japanese
culture you can easily understand that these young men in their late
teens and early twenties, having just received the honor of entering
flight school, could hardly decline when faced with the question of
whether they would "earnestly and wholeheartedly" give their lives for
the emperor.

We should also be able to agree that these young men were not truly
aware of the big picture, able to make a moral choice informed by any
big-picture understanding of world events.

So it would be most accurate to say that they were caught up in the war
machine and rationally did what they could do within that context.

 
> I won't try to argue that those pilots were acting rightly, 
> or that they were fighting on behalf of a noble cause, but to 
> say that they were irrational because their immediate 
> motivations were due to training and group pressure doesn't 
> give any credit to their feelings of patriotism and their 
> desire to support a large cause.

Chris, I'm going to insert here two directly relevant lines from my post
that somehow you neglected to include in your reply:

(1) "Both classes of action were rational within their associated
context.  The actors had no better choice given their values and their
contextual environment."

(2) "Note also that we have not addressed factors of pride or patriotism
which have little overlap with the domain of individual rational
decision-making."


> When phrased that way, all soldiers in combat act for those 
> motivations, but surely some of them have decided to  place 
> themselves in that position.  That was what the founders of 
> the US were doing when they made the aforementioned pledge.  

As explained above, the kamikaze pilots had no real choice in the matter
and had no real understanding of world events. If they were to decline,
the shame would be much worse than an honorable death. Their focus was
on a timescale of weeks and they received intense emotional
indoctrination each day to keep them from thinking too much about the
bigger picture.  They were acting honorably, but with virtually zero
moral context. 

The founding fathers were acting with much greater awareness of the
intended and expected consequences of their actions.  Their actions were
extensively considered and taken on behalf of a much broader
self-identity than their individual persons.  Their actions were
intended to promote their rationally-considered and wide-scoped values
significantly into the future.  Their moral context was very broad.

The situation with regard to career military personnel in the US
military is nearly orthogonal and wasn't part of the earlier discussion.


> Once having done so, they each often found themselves 
> pressured by the force of later events and earlier 
> commitments.  But you give them credit for the noble 
> motivations behind the earlier pledge, rather than the 
> situations the pledge let them into.

If you re-read my earlier post you may notice that my analysis was of a
completely pragmatic nature, talking about rationality necessarily about
what works within a specified context, and about morality being the
assessment of rational action applied to rational goals over increasing
scope.

I specifically stated that pride and patriotism have little overlap with
the rational domain at the level of the individual, and you can include
"noble" motivations in that same category.

I would give the founding fathers a great deal of moral credit for their
rationally considered actions to create a better future for posterity.
I wouldn't think of assigning credit for the "situations the pledge led
them into."  I'm not even sure any of us know what that might mean,
although the pattern is a familiar idiom in popular thought, as in "that
was wonderful how you avoided all those obstacles and got the car back
on road after falling asleep at the wheel."  My point is that it makes
sense to give credit for intentional acts, not those which are
accidental or contra-intentional [better word here?].

 
> Would you like to draw a finer or a different distinction?  

I thought had already made very precise fundamental distinctions at the
beginning of my post.  Since you neglected to include them here, allow
me:

(1) The rationality of any act can be assessed only according to its
effectiveness toward achieving specified goals (creating the desired
future) within context and has no direct correspondence with good or
bad, right or wrong.

(2) However, actions that are seen to work over increasing scope are
seen as increasingly good -- as they increasingly promote the values of
the assessing agent.

(3) And actions that are seen to work over increasing scope are seen as
increasingly moral -- as they increasingly promote the values of the
assessing population.


> How do you want to characterize the actions of an American in 
> uniform, who voluntarily enlists, and later finds him or 
> herself in a battlefield situation, falling on a grenade to 
> save fellow soldiers?  Or soldiers in earlier wars who made 
> attacks against daunting odds in service of a cause they 
> chose to defend?

I wish you had provided here examples of rational altruism so that I
could acknowledge the noble motives that are the crux of your reason for
posting.  Since you didn't, I'll provide some, and then explain why your
examples are not.

Example:
A mountain climber hangs at the end of a long rope, high above the
dessert floor after falling from the rock face.  Above him, also
dangling from the rope are two other climbers: his daughter and his son
in law, both of whom he cares for very much.  [I saw this in a movie.
Don't remember the name.]  The rope is frayed near the top and the
combined weight of three climbers is likely to cause it to break and
send all three to their deaths.  The climber on the bottom acts to
release himself from the rope, causing him to fall to his death but
saving the other two.

Some will argue ad nausem that his was basically a selfish act, done to
satisfy his own emotional needs.  Alternatively, they could argue that
he was simply acting out of biological fatherly instinct, or that it was
a result of more general evolutionary pressures at the group level, and
in any case he deserves no credit for rational altruism. It's the same
business as the free-will problem, another matter of context, and it
gets silly at the extremes.

Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Jesus of Nazareth are well known examples of
rational altruism. There are many more examples in daily life where
people have considered and have decided to act to create a better world
without the requirement that they be there to enjoy it.  Regardless of
any and all arguments as to ultimate causes, the altruistic distinction
remains and is clear *within the context* of human individual
decision-making.

Now with your first example, of the enlisted soldier who throws himself
on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, his action certainly could be
considered altruistic (again within the normal context) but it would be
difficult to show that it was *rational* altruism.  The fact that he
enlisted voluntarily is irrelevant because at the time he made that
decision, it would be reasonable to consider the probability of falling
on a grenade to be nearly negligible, and by a large margin, most
soldiers come home after their term of service.  As for the act of
falling on the grenade, I would consider that to be more a result of
deeply ingrained training than considered rational action.  Numerous
examples abound of similar acts of courage, and the US military,
especially the Marines, trains for exactly that kind of behavioral
response.

With your second example, of soldiers "in earlier wars" who made attacks
against daunting odds in service of a cause they chose to defend, I see
that they made a brave choice to join the fight, a few of them with a
high degree of awareness of the risks and consequences, and many more
because they were expected to, or they were driven by a primal urge to
fight(defend?), or they were looking for adventure and had nothing else
planned, and so on.  Once caught up in the military machine, however,
rational altruism would have very little say in future outcomes.

This post has become much longer than envisioned.  I hope it provides
some clarification.  I could continue with examples of noble and heroic
acts, but again, that wasn't the point of the original post.

- Jef