[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

4 reasons leaders seem worse than regular people | Brian Klaas

University College London professor Brian Klaas exposes the ugly truth about world leaders.

4 reasons leaders seem worse than regular people | Brian Klaas


University College London professor Brian Klaas exposes the ugly truth about world leaders.

Political scientist Brian Klaas uses philosophical thought experiments like the "trolley problem" to explore the moral complexities faced by leaders when making decisions under immense uncertainty.

According to Klaas, Winston Churchill's World War II choices serve as real-life examples of such dilemmas. Klaas identifies four factors?dirty hands, learning, opportunity, and scrutiny?that may falsely appear as corruption in leaders. "Dirty hands" refers to leaders making harm-inflicting decisions when all options are bad. "Learning" means leaders becoming more efficient at causing harm over time. "Opportunity" signifies the increased chances of those in power to cause harm, while "scrutiny" refers to heightened public examination of leaders' actions.

Klaas asserts that misinterpretations of these factors can lead to incorrect problem diagnoses and solutions. While these factors should not absolve leaders from accountability, they do provide a nuanced understanding of leadership complexities.

0:00 Cracking the Enigma code: Churchill?s WWII trolley problem
2:07 Why all leaders make bad decisions
2:42 4 factors of the corruption illusion
3:12 #1 The dirty hands problem
3:38 #2 The idea of learning
4:09 #3 The problem of opportunity
4:30 #4 The problem of scrutiny

In Churchill example, the inaction was expected to cause less casualties, which is the opposite of the original trolley problem. It is arguably an easier option compared to the thought experiment.

[alancalverd]

"He caused the deaths" is incorrect - but what do you expect from a political scientist?

The German submarine caused the deaths. Churchill (or more properly, the War Cabinet) decided that this was the lesser evil.

Non-combatant casualties have been a feature of war at least since the Siege of Masada and probably a lot earlier. There was a more blatant case in the sabotage of the Rjukan ferry carrying heavy water to the German nuclear weapons program and noncombatant crew and commuters, and it is interesting to note that the Norwegians opted to rescue some of the German soldiers who were on board.

There is no moral problem here. The object of combat is to win, but this may involve sacrifice. 

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The German submarine caused the deaths. Churchill (or more properly, the War Cabinet) decided that this was the lesser evil.

Would he make the same decision if the US president were in that targeted ship?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is no moral problem here. The object of combat is to win, but this may involve sacrifice. 

There would be no war crime then, if anything were permissible in wars.

[alancalverd]

Would he make the same decision if the US president were in that targeted ship?

The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable. Presidents can be replaced immediately (they have vice-presidents)  but it takes a long time to raise an entire battalion. But one way to ensure the Yanks join your war is to allow the enemy to kill their president, so the key to military intelligence is to ensure that nobody knows what you know unless they are committed to your side and need to know. Or you might just tip them a wink. It has been argued that the US Navy had cracked the Japanese codes before Pearl Harbor.

[alancalverd]

There would be no war crime then, if anything were permissible in wars.

It's pretty rare (until recently) for the winners to be prosecuted. And the rules are to say the least bizarre. Decapitating a prisoner is "not cricket" but bombing a city is a legitimate tactic.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

One of the motivations for applying ethics codes for soldiers is to avoid backlash from civilians/peasants, as well as enemy's soldiers. If they see us as immoral group, their opposition will be more fierce against us.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Is EVIL a matter of opinion? Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson

it seems to me and again correct me if I'm wrong is that you made an absolute moral claim in the moral landscape and that's what grounds your argument let's just take this evil piece because it'll be interesting if it's not totally on point Okay the reason why evil is susceptible to Total deflation is if you agree with me uh
evil is a category of human misbehavior human intention that we don't understand significantly at the level of the brain but if we did understand it totally at the level of the brain then every evil person we had in the doc at trial would be just like Charles Whitman with his brain tumor after he shot up everyone at the University of Texas right so like he he's at he's the prototypically evil mass murderer but he's complaining about this change that overcame his personality and he thinks it would be good it would be a good idea that if after the cops kill me you autopsy my brain because I don't know why I'm doing any of this right and lo and behold he had a glioblastoma pressing on his amygdala and all of a sudden it made sense of his behavior in a way that a full understanding of psychopathy or every other variant of human evil would make sense of it in a way that would be deflationary ethically and then you would look at so then you look at someone like Saddam Hussein or the the worst evil person you could imagine and you would say well he's actually unlucky you know there but for the grace of biology go I because if I had that brain if I had those genes if I had those influences that gave me those synapses I would be just like him now if you think there's some other element that gives us Free Will and now then then you and I are disagreeing then that's a factual claim that's at variance with mine but but if we are just on some level malfunctioning biological systems when we're being evil then a complete understanding of evil would cancel that category can you ethically you define evil so we know what you're talking about well just let me take take the just the worst people who have sadistically victimized the most people and those are the evil evilest people we can name so when you say so I think this is actually really important because I think the actual evil of that kind is pretty darn rare and there's a lot of Badness that you mean yeah well the most troubling thing are all the good people doing evil because they're ruled by bad ideas but that I think is more consequential we introduced we introduced a whole set of other things here in the last little round by the Free Will and evil but but just I just want to make it clear why I went there so you were saying this is this is this is I forget the word you used uh inevitable or ineluctable or it's permanent the implications that this category is permanent and I'm saying that I don't think okay but people in that sense is a permanent category for us it awaits more information and insight okay we're going to distinguish for a minute good versus evil and good versus bad just for the sake of conceptual Clarity in the moral landscape you make a fundamental axiomatic claim looks like a moral claim maybe it's claim of fact and the claim is there are bad lives and good lives sure and the claim you make is that that's universally true well it's it's true for the the requisition it doesn't matter okay but evil so yes I'm not

I'm not telling you that you should Purge the word evil from your your vocabulary I use the word all the time and I think it's useful it's a motivating word I'm just saying that it's okay we can understand this Continuum of good and bad or positive and negative in ways that don't use the the certainly don't use the judeo-christian framework for valuing these things because if you if you take the Buddhist framework and map it on to this this Continuum you don't get good and evil you get essentially wisdom and ignorance the evil is ignorance of all the well-being you would you and others would experience if you behaved another way right that's the Buddha's game and and or even within Hinduism and they get this connects to your your love of stories you take the the the the Hindu text the ramayana which is just a foundation you know it's doing the work that the Bible is doing for Jews and Christians in that the worst guy in the ramayana the ten-headed demon ravana the prototypically evil person is at bottom really not a bad guy he's a great Sage who is just you know in a bad mood essentially right he was he was obscured by ignorance and so it is in the Buddhist Canon the Buddhist me the the Buddha meets a a serial killer who you know was wearing a Garland of human fingers around his neck named angulimala but he was just one conversation away from being fully enlightened right I mean he was like this is it's a different picture of of possibility I'm not saying one is right or wrong let's be agnostic about that I'm just I'm challenging your claim that there's something so prescient and useful and durable about the judeo-christian we're stuck with it for all time I was making the claim that in the moral landscape you laid out a distinction between the bad life and the good life forget about rotten evil the bad life and the good life hell in heaven the bad life in the good life and that that distinction was not only factual but Universal and so it is given the right mind so that we could imagine a mind I mean this is an example right mind no no but we could we could create circumstances that seem perverse to us that we would recoil from you could you could create a a universe of perfectly matched sadists and masochists say right so you have the people who are real sadists who in our world would be terrible actors but in their world they're surrounded by people who want to be mistreated now again if you're a real sadist you never mistreat a masochist when he asks okay well these are I'm not sorry I'm not sure I'm not sure the human categories even exist but resist uh uh but in some we undoubtedly we could create something like an artificial intelligence that could be could be paired this way and that would be weird but on my in my framework it is a conceivable space of equivalent well-being and it's it's not matched at all to our space right but it's if if in fact we could inspect the conscious minds of all parties participating in that it is not obviously absurd by in my view to say that they are just as happy as we are in this conversation in fact some moments in this conversation I would say that they might be happier no it's been good it's been good

[alancalverd]

One of the motivations for applying ethics codes for soldiers is to avoid backlash from civilians/peasants, as well as enemy's soldiers. If they see us as immoral group, their opposition will be more fierce against us.

Recent anecdotes suggest a significant change in attitude during the last 100 years. "Visiting" enemy aircrew used to be treated as gladiators and quickly handed over to the army for imprisonment under Geneva rules, but the widespread use of indiscriminate bombing and strafing of civilian targets now means that ejecting over enemy territory will result in a severe beating by civilians and police, and possible torture by the "authorities".

[alancalverd]

Is EVIL a matter of opinion? Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson

Good deeds make people happy, evil deeds make them sad. Yes, the adjective is entirely subjective, and if you need an arbiter, you can argue a serious case in court - allegations of medical malpractice are a good example.

The moment you pretend evil is a noun, you are creating spurious employment for priests, philosophers and politicians. Do not encourage these parasites!

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

One of the motivations for applying ethics codes for soldiers is to avoid backlash from civilians/peasants, as well as enemy's soldiers. If they see us as immoral group, their opposition will be more fierce against us.

Recent anecdotes suggest a significant change in attitude during the last 100 years. "Visiting" enemy aircrew used to be treated as gladiators and quickly handed over to the army for imprisonment under Geneva rules, but the widespread use of indiscriminate bombing and strafing of civilian targets now means that ejecting over enemy territory will result in a severe beating by civilians and police, and possible torture by the "authorities".

I guess that means that indiscriminate bombing and strafing of civilian targets can be seen as neglections of moral codes expected by average civilians.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Good deeds make people happy, evil deeds make them sad. Yes, the adjective is entirely subjective, and if you need an arbiter, you can argue a serious case in court

Emotions like happiness and sadness can be different among different people, in different time, and in different places. You can make the decision based on average or majority, but it could be harmful to minorities.
Courts in different time or different places may make different decisions on the same cases.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

This is why Battlefield 1 makes you hate war...

People who are best known for their warmongering rhetoric are unlikely the ones who have to fight in the front line themselves.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

These videos are good for introducing morality to general audience.

An Introduction to Ethics

An Introduction to Metaethics

An Introduction to Normative Ethics

[alancalverd]

I guess that means that indiscriminate bombing and strafing of civilian targets can be seen as neglections of moral codes expected by average civilians.

Average civilians voted for Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, Milosevic......

[alancalverd]

People who are best known for their warmongering rhetoric are unlikely the ones who have to fight in the front line themselves.

Or get bombed by their chosen enemies. Professional soldiers sign up for a life mostly free from decisions and uncertainty but with a small chance of actual hostile contact, for which they have trained and equipped themselves.  Modern warfare however involves a lot of people who haven't chosen to fight. And neither soldiers nor civilians stand to gain anything from the outcome. So why does it happen?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Average civilians voted for Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, Milosevic......

There were reasons why Plato hated democracy.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Here's another video series on morality, in a more systematic/academic setting.

What is Meta-ethics? (L1-Introduction)

What is Cognitivism in meta-ethics? (L2 - Cognitivism)

Hume's is/ought problem? (L3 - Is Ought Problem - Hume)

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There's also a video trying to refute is-ought problem based on a paper by C. Pigden.

The is-ought gap is vacuous (paper by C. Pigden).

[alancalverd]

When we buy complex medical equipment it comes with a checklist of levels, torques, voltages etc for the  installing engineer to complete. Against each parameter there are two columns: German manufacturers succinctly head them soll (ought - factory limits) and ist (is - actual site measurements).

Not a problem, more of a solution.