Mechanisms of selection. Column in ComputerreOnline #76

←

Dmytro Shabanov

→

Values and Risks

Mechanisms of Choice

The Indulgence Effect

Column in KompyuterreOnline #75

Column in KompyuterreOnline #76

Column in KompyuterreOnline #77

"...science, once an instrument of spiritual development, has turned out to be completely subordinate to material needs. Ideas about the purpose and meaning of existence, higher moral values are drawn from other sources. They consequently end up outside the realm of reason, whose capabilities are limited to the pragmatic side of human existence, leaving spiritual life entirely to the power of the irrational." V.A. Krasilov. Metaecology. In this column, I want to intrude into territory occupied by humanities scholars. This is a logical continuation of the previous step, in which we established that we don't really know how to compare values and their associated risks. Here I propose that you consider each of our actions and inactions as a choice (or its result). Can we return to card analogies for a moment? All your actions in the game can be considered the results of many choices you make at each step. Yes or no? It would seem that if your partner has played a suit in which you have one card, there is no choice. But even in this situation, you can either honestly play the required card from your hand onto the table (follow suit), or play differently (risk being caught), or simply get up from the card table and declare that you are leaving the game. Of course, if you sat down to play, having firmly decided to follow the rules, you have only one option left, but it is also the result of your choice. Of course, you sit down to play for those cases when you can act differently. Sometimes the choice is insignificant (discarding a seven or an eight on a high card), and sometimes the outcome of the game depends on it. Choices that seem insignificant can be made automatically, according to simple rules, or randomly. And when we realize that the future depends on our choice, we make it according to some strategy. A strategy is not a rigid program; a strategy is a hierarchy of priorities in a choice situation. Our choice can concern one move or several (for example, taking trumps and leading a long suit). Having begun to implement a multi-step choice, we anticipate our future actions, just as in the example of deciding to enter the game. Our plans may change if the situation turns out unexpectedly. If you see that your partners no longer have the trumps you planned to take, it will be the best time to reconsider your plan. If you realize that you are playing with cheaters, it will be the best time to get up from the table and stop the game. These are also choices. How does a card game differ from life? At the card table, our actions consist of separate, clearly defined moves; in life, they do not. The set of alternatives at the card table is much narrower than in many life situations. In a card game, the rules are known and agreed upon in advance; in life, they are not. The decision to start a card game is your choice; the beginning of your life is a fact that you did not predetermine. In cards, as we discussed last time, we operate only with values; in life, we also operate with values. And that is why in life we cannot do without calculation alone. Ideally, during a card game, we should be guided only by rational considerations. In reality, this is usually not the case. The clear functioning of our value and risk comparison apparatus for alternative courses of action is hindered by emotions. Where do they come from? As difficult as it may be for humanities scholars, let's not forget that we are animals. No, no, don't look for any evaluative subtext here. We are organisms that function by converting the energy of the food we consume, the result of the reproduction of other similar organisms. Our properties are the result of four billion years of evolution aimed at increasing the efficiency of survival and leaving offspring. Emotions are a biologically predetermined mechanism for controlling our behavior. And if their action breaks through even at the card table, then in a complex and multifaceted life, their effects are even more diverse. And besides emotions, our biological nature manifests itself in numerous limitations to which our behavior is subject. Thus, our actions are influenced by biological, rational factors and... What to call that which makes us treat values, that which is dear to us not for its cost, in a special way? Ethics. Ethos, in Greek – custom, character. This concept was introduced by Aristotle to characterize human qualities that determine his virtues. Ethics defines the structure of values, ideals, and basic aspirations on which moral norms are based. Morality (which in this interpretation is understood as a concept distinct from ethics) is a set of norms that define which actions are appropriate, correct, and commendable. The origin of this word is Latin: moralis – moral. In the vast majority of cases, specialists in ethics and morality successfully ignore the biological nature of man. Humanities scholars, it seems, really believe that man is what he thinks of himself. The foundations of ethics are derived from divine commandments, social contract, or class struggle. Nevertheless, not only human populations are the result of the evolution of ancestral populations. The norms of our behavior are the result of the evolution of norms that govern intra-population relations in representatives of our ancestors. If you wish, the foundations of our morality are the result of the evolution of mechanisms for regulating intra-population interactions of animals. "Ethics is formed in the course of evolution as a mechanism of normative regulation of interactions in a system, necessary for preserving its integrity, be it a natural system, a social system, or a meta-ecological system." V.A. Krasilov In this quote, one word may be unclear. "Meta-ecological," according to Krasilov, refers to the interaction of an individual with its spiritual, culturally determined environment. "A crow will not peck out a crow's eye"... Once I leafed through the magazine "Soldier of Fortune." Not for long (disgust interfered). There was an interview or an article by a commando training specialist. I was struck by the following statement. A true man is only a soldier who can easily kill other people, and if necessary, women and children too. An ordinary pathetic creature who considers himself a man but is incapable of killing without hesitation is simply an "animal." Such an "animal" can be transformed into a human by the mercenary training system. I would translate these revelations as follows. To turn a person into a controllable killer, one must break the biologically predetermined foundations of morality in them. However, cultural ones (which correspond to most stable cultures) too. The innate prerequisites of our morality can be studied. One of the interesting sources dedicated to this topic is Mark Hauser's book "Moral Minds" (here is a review of it). Let's discuss the most frequently cited example from it.

Two choice situations involving values. Should the lever be switched so that the tram goes onto the track that will run over one person instead of five? Should one push a person off a bridge to stop the tram and save five? (taken from there) You are presented with two choice situations. In each you can perform an action that will result in one person dying instead of five. From the perspective of risks and losses these situations are equivalent. Yet people from different cultures and nations somehow evaluate them differently. Switching the lever to kill one person but save five is considered correct. If a tram driver makes such a decision, it raises no doubts. But pushing a person (a very heavy one, one who would stop the tram) onto the tracks to save five is deemed wrong. Why? Before continuing, I emphasize that all situations where one must choose between decisions that lead to human death are tragic situations. None of us wants to face them. Unfortunately, such situations arise again and again. Whom to save in pathological childbirth – the mother or the newborn? Does a woman have the right to an abortion? Are human sacrifices justified in the neutralization of a gang of murderers? Sometimes alternative decisions concern not human lives but other values. May we deprive dogs of free life in our cities for the interests of the people who inhabit those cities? What is more important – the right to freedom and human dignity of "others" or the "right" of an ethnicity to build a mono‑ethnic state? Human rights or state sovereignty? The right to self‑determination or the inviolability of borders? We dislike such choice situations, but that is no reason to abandon the search for a correct strategy in these cases. Forgive me, but I will continue... Perhaps the test situations with the lever and the bridge differ in that, in the bridge case, a person performs active actions on another person. If this hypothesis is correct, then parents’ reluctance to vaccinate their children has another unconscious component. A mother is terrified that her child will suffer complications (real or imagined) from a vaccine she decided to give. A disease (perhaps more dangerous) that could result from her inaction will weigh less heavily on her conscience. Or perhaps the difference in tram test decisions is related to the fact that the person in the second case is used as an object. "Act so that you always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, as an end, and never merely as a means." Immanuel Kant It may also be that in the first case a person, choosing the less dangerous option, can illogically hope that the probable victim will be saved (shifting part of the responsibility away from himself). In the second case such hope does not exist: he himself sends the victim to death. Whether we interpret this phenomenon correctly or not, we may assume that it reflects innate moral norms influencing our behavior. Are they adequate to our reality or not? "In situations that do not exceed the bounds of the ethical experience of our distant ancestors, it is legitimate to rely on the 'heart' rather than the mind, because intuition is stronger than reason here." V.A. Krasilov I have already written about how anachronistic we are. Of course, the explanation of our traits is rooted in our history. However, the world around us has changed dramatically since we were hunter‑gatherers in the African savanna. Therefore many of the adaptations developed in the past turned out unsuitable for today’s realities. We are simultaneously biological and cultural beings. The increasing role of culture in our adaptation to the environment is a consequence of its faster rate of change. Over the past 20,000 years the biologically, genetically determined nature of humans has changed little (no dynamic shift produced a new quality). Culturally, regarding what we learn (including technology), we have changed radically not only over 20,000 years but even over the last 200 years. Culturally conditioned norms can modify the action of innate, biologically predetermined mechanisms that govern our behavior. The question is how. Thus, our everyday and momentous choices, which constitute our entire life, are influenced by our biological traits, innate moral foundations, culturally conditioned ethics, and the reasons of our rationality. How to align this construct with present life? Change what we can change, rationally correcting ethical norms. For the result of such correction to be harmonious, it must correspond both to our biology and to our innate moral foundations. A difficult task? Nothing. At least it is time to think about how to solve it. And the first step we must take is to understand why (besides cost and utility) we can value something.

←