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.

How do people living in the modern world get happiness all wrong?

Leah Goldrick provides her answer in this guest post, which is a slightly modified version of an article originally published on her excellent blog, Common Sense Ethics .

We all want to be happy. But could it be that we have our understanding of happiness all wrong? The general definition of happiness is philosophically unsophisticated. It pretty much boils down to the ongoing experience of positive emotions and a lack of negative ones. Life is about more than just moving yourself around, spending money and enjoying your next fix. Is our unphilosophical (and perhaps incomplete) understanding of happiness why so many of us are miserable according to mental health statistics?

Is there a missing moral component at the root of happiness? The ancient Greeks definitely thought so, and it turns out that genomic research conducted by Barbara Frederickson, which has previously been discussed on Freedom and Flourishing, indicates that we may be biologically wired for what they called eudaimonia (from daimon, or true nature). Differing from hedonism (pleasure or self gratification), eudaimonia is often translated as flourishing or living well, with a sense of noble purpose, virtue, and connection to others.

​In other words, real happiness is impossible without virtue - or arete in ancient Greek. Arete means excellent character, or reaching your highest human potential. Eudaimonia not only protects our physical and mental health at the cellular level, it may lead to a long term, more profound sense of well being. 

So what do we do if we want to experience eudaimonia? How do we reach our highest potential?

There are 3 concrete steps that you can take to be happy in the ancient Greek sense. First, you must acknowledge that virtue is necessary for happiness. Eudaimonia is about more than just feeling good, it is about becoming the best person that you can be. Second, you must do the inner work that is necessary to truly "know yourself," as Socrates said when he quoted the Delphic Oracle. And finally, you must take action and apply your unique talents and gifts in life for the good of yourself and others.

​1. Understand That Virtue Is Necessary For Happiness

What is happiness anyway? The experience of pleasure? The absence of pain? Gaining things that bring you contentment? The enjoyment of life? It seems like there is something missing here. An entire industry of motivational speakers and self-help gurus revolve the concept of well being, but each of them probably interprets happiness differently.

Various Eastern and New Age philosophies offer a different definition of happiness, one that is interesting and perhaps more complete - that happiness is the byproduct of our life's journey, and not a destination to be arrived at or something to be gained. But rather a state of mind or a sense of flow. This definition is closer to eudaimonia, but still morally agnostic.

It was the ancient Greeks who offered the most compelling definition of happiness, one that includes an ethical dimension - eudaimonia. Aristotle was the first philosopher to really flush out the concept of eudaimonia, but Plato's writings, as well as Socrates', contained elements of it. Aristotle felt that happiness in the modern, hedonic sense was a vulgar concept. Not all pleasures lead to well-being. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle notes that "Living well and doing good are the same as being happy."

The Stoics went even further than Aristotle and argued that only virtue is necessary for happiness. Aristotle thought that some elements of hedonic happiness, such as having good food, a home, family, leisure, and so on, were necessary for a good life. But a good life was incomplete without also pursuing excellence. We don't live well only by amusing ourselves.

The ancient moral dimensions of happiness through virtue and excellent character were lost sometime in the interceding millennia. But Barbara Frederickson's recent genetic study seems to support Aristotle's position, or maybe the Pythagorean position. While hedonia is somewhat necessary, it is eudaimonia which benefits us the most: 

“We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those ‘empty calories’ don’t help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically,” she said. “At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose. Understanding the cascade to gene expression will help inform further work in these areas,”  Frederickson states.

Frederickson's research may also offer some insight into the theory of hedonic adaptation - that people are observed to revert back to prior levels of happiness soon after experiencing something pleasurable. Pleasures may make us happy in the short term, but they are fleeting and unable to provide us with long term health benefits and a sense of well being that comes from working to improve ourselves and becoming the best person that we can be.
​

2. Know Yourself

The phrase "Know thyself," or Gnōthi sauton in Greek, is typically attributed to Socrates because he often used it. But it has its roots in the legend of the founding of ancient Greece. As the story goes, 7 sages and law givers gathered at Delphi and laid the foundations for Western civilization. They had the phrase inscribed on the entrance to the sacred oracle. "Know thyself," has been the philosopher's clarion call ever since.

Plato believed that the human psyche has 3 parts: logical (or intellectual), spirited (having to do with action and the courage to be good) and appetitive (having to do with desires and emotion). In the just person, all three parts of soul agree that the logical must rule, bringing the other 2 parts - the spirit and the emotions - into a state of good or concordance.

The point here is that if you want to be happy, you can't be internally at war with yourself.  You must bring your intellect, emotions, and actions into harmony with each other. Otherwise, you might experience a situation where you desire something that you know to be wrong intellectually - and the result is often bad decisions and unhappiness. 

The psychologist Carl Jung believed that accepting and Integrating the shadow into your conscious personality is a great way to flush out any internal contradictions withing your psyche. The result of shadow work is the full integration of the self, leading to a better understanding of your true nature, or daimon in Greek.

If you don't know how to begin doing shadow work, my Knowing Yourself Better Questionnaire is a good place to start. I can say that this technique has helped me personally.

  

3. Find Your Life's Purpose

Can you be truly fulfilled without knowing what you are living for? Once you understand yourself at a deep level, you will know where you can best contribute your unique talents in the world. As sense of noble purpose rooted in meaning is the is the final step towards eudaimonia or flourishing. 

​We all have free will to make choices that improve our well-being. This tendency towards growth and flourishing is common to both the Greek philosophical tradition and modern humanistic psychology. The psychologist Carl Rogers states:

‘...man's tendency to actualize himself, to become potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life - the urge to expand, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism and the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defences; it may be hidden behind elaborate facades that deny its existence; it is my belief, however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and awaits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed'.

​

Make sure that your activities in life have a noble purpose. Each of us has special talents that we can use to make the world a better place. The daimon, or true nature, refers to a your highest potential, ​and when you put your potential into action, happiness is the result. 

​A good, happy life, is the result of a virtuous character, self acceptance, and continual striving towards excellence.


You May Also Like:
​4 Life Lessons We Can Learn From The Cynics
​The Shadow: How Introspection Can Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Yourself

Will machine intelligence threaten life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

This post has nothing to do with the influence of political party machines on current election campaigns.

As some readers will already know, Nick Bostrom’s book, Superintelligence, discusses the challenge presented by the potential for machine brains to surpass human brains in general intelligence. Bostrom does not claim that is imminent, but he suggests it is somewhat likely to happen sometime this century. After AI has surpassed human intelligence, the author fears that an initial superintelligence might soon afterwards obtain a decisive strategic advantage and pose a threat to human life. There have been several good reviews of Superintelligence, including one by Ronald Bailey in Reason.

How could a machine programmed by humans come to threaten human life? Some examples mentioned by Bostrom imply that it would be quite easy for that to occur by accident. For example, a machine that was given the simple objective of maximizing the production of paperclips could seek to acquire an unlimited amount of physical resources and to eliminate potential threats, including humans who are likely to try to prevent it from achieving its goal.

People like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who could not be viewed as technophobes, argue that the threats posed by superintelligence should be taken seriously. That didn’t stop me asking myself why anyone in their right mind would program a machine to maximize the number of paperclips. Any sensible businessman would ensure that the machine was programmed with a profit-making objective, rather than a production objective. I have to acknowledge, however, that would still leave the problem of ensuring that the superintelligence doesn’t use unethical means to eliminate competitors. 

There is also the problem that some of the people developing AI might be crazy, or antipathetic towards humans. For example, it does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that a group of extreme Greenies might seek to develop a superintelligence that would pursue the selfless goal of restoring the natural environment to its condition prior to the Anthropocene.

Most of Superintelligence is devoted to a discussion of the difficulty of designing superintelligence so that it would not be a threat to humans. While reading the book I felt that at times I was reading about the problems of designing a god – an enormously powerful entity that would govern our lives. For example, if the AI is given the seemingly innocuous goal of making us all happy it might arrange for us to have electrodes implanted in the pleasure centres of our brains, or perhaps even upload our minds to computers and then administer the digital equivalent of a drug to make us ecstatically happy all the time.

At other times I felt the problems being discussed were more like those which might be involved in establishing the characteristics of a good society. Bostrom seems to favour AI being given a goal such as maximizing our coherent extrapolated volition (CEV). As I understand it the CEV concept implies that if we knew more and thought faster our individual views about the nature of a good society would converge, so that a consensus could be discovered. The author explains that the CEV approach does not require that all ways of life, moral codes, or personal values be blended together into a stew. The CEV dynamic “is only supposed to act when our wishes cohere”.

The CEV concept has some appeal to me because it seems consistent with my own efforts to describe the characteristics of a good society in the most popular post on this blog. However, it does not require superintelligence to identify those characteristics. It would not be difficult to establish through existing survey methods that the vast majority of humans want to live in peace, to have opportunities to live for a happy lives and to have some degree of security to protect against misfortunes. The problem is in ensuring that a superintelligence would interpret such objectives in a manner consistent with individual human flourishing.

The main reservation I have about Superintelligence is that it does not contain much discussion about defence against malevolent AI. As I see it, it is probably worthwhile to undertake collaborative efforts to avoid the accidental development of machine intelligence in ways that might not be benign. But such efforts are not likely to prevent the AI being used unethically by people with nefarious objectives. Our defences against cyber-attack will need to be strengthened to protect against malevolent AI.

We need a Superintelligence dedicated to defending our individual rights. But we should be careful what we wish for! Once upon a time, a few centuries ago, some enlightened people set about establishing forms of government dedicated to protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We ended up with warfare/welfare states.

What is the "bourgeois deal" and why should you care?

The ‘bourgeois deal’ is a term used frequently by Deirdre McCloskey in Bourgeois Equality, the third book of her trilogy which aims to show that it is ethical and rhetorical change that has enabled most humans today to be much better off than their forebears. The bourgeois deal refers to societal acceptance of innovations that compete with and displace old ways of doing things in exchange for widespread improvements in living standards.

Big deal? This has been a huge deal. Deirdre argues persuasively that trade-tested betterment associated with the bourgeois deal was responsible for the massive improvement in living standards enjoyed by vast numbers of people that began over 200 years ago and has now spread to most parts of the world (as shown in the accompanying chart prepared by Max Rosser using Angus Maddison’s data).

There are two aspects to the rhetorical-ethical revaluation discussed in Bourgeois Equality:

• A change in prevailing attitudes gave greater respect to people engaged in commercial activities.
• The development of rhetorically open societies – involving freedom of conscience and greater freedom of speech – propelled the French and Scottish Enlightenments, science, experimentation and invention, journalism, the spread of technical knowledge, and the economic and political dignity of ordinary people.

In emphasizing the importance of trade-tested betterment to economic growth, Deirdre McCloskey’s views are consistent with the mainstream view of economists, who, for the last half century at least, have acknowledged the important role of technological progress (and technological catch-up) in the economic growth process. Anyone who persists in espousing alternative explanations such as imperialism, or capital accumulation by itself, might benefit from reading Deirdre’s demolition of such theories.

The author seeks to differentiate her views from those of neo-institutionalists, such as Douglass North, who have sought to explain economic growth as stemming from institutional change i.e. changes in economic incentives associated with changes in the rules of the game in society (social norms as well as constitutions, laws and regulations). She succeeds in dismissing some factors, including property rights, previously emphasized by the neo-institutionalists. Property rights were reasonably secure in England for centuries prior to the industrial revolution. 

Nevertheless, institutional change was necessary to enable intellectual innovation to be protected from the violent responses that had previously been meted out to heretics and innovators who were perceived to constitute a threat to long-established patterns of production, distribution and exchange.

Some components of relevant rhetorical and ethical changes do not fit under the heading institutional change. For example, changes in perceptions of personal identity that enabled some individuals to take on entrepreneurial roles seem to have been closely related to rhetorical change, but probably had little to do with changes in rules or incentives. Similarly, changes in the rules can have an independent economic impact that does not fit easily under the heading of rhetorical and ethical change. For example, political leaders sometimes get ahead of public opinion e.g. in promoting free trade or privatisation of government owned enterprises.

Perhaps we should be lumping rhetorical, ethical and institutional change together. The author cites an example which seems to involve all three elements. The reduced willingness of courts in England to support the restrictiveness of the craft guilds, from the early 17^th century onwards, has been described by Eric Jones as attributable to “the national shift in elite opinion, which the courts partly shared”. In many instances, however, relevant rhetoric has been directed specifically toward changing the rules of the game. Adam Smith’s influential discussion of the appropriate role of government in Wealth of Nations comes to mind.

Hopefully, some of you - those who are still reading - will be wondering why the bourgeois deal is relevant to you. (I wonder whether any of those who stopped reading before this point will read the 650 pages of text in Bourgeois Equality. It seems to be a big ask to get anyone to read even 600 words these days.)

We should all care about the bourgeois deal because we are confronted with choices among a menu of different deals. Deirdre points out that, after 1848, the Bourgeois deal was challenged by the utopian Bolshevik deal and the Bismarckian (or Beveridge) deal.

The Bolshevik deal promised that all the problems associated with nasty concentrations of power in property owned by the bourgeoisie would be resolved by government ownership of the means of production and that the nature of man would change with the arrival of socialism. That deal was taken off the menu in 1989 (everywhere except North Korea) after it became too obvious that it was an extraordinarily bad deal for everyone except Communist party officials.

The Bismarckian deal stemmed from Bismarck’s scheme to steal the thunder from his socialist enemies by introducing a welfare state. Deirdre describes it thus:

“The deal is that the welfare state will substitute for your own and your family’s voluntary provision for old age or unemployment or medical care, and you will come to view the present state as your noble and benevolent lord” (p 604).

The Bismarckian deal lives on, coexisting uneasily with the Bourgeois deal because the high taxes required to support it act as a disincentive to trade-tested betterment. That is my judgement; I imagine Deirdre would agree, but I can’t see where at the moment. Like all good libertarians (the bleeding heart variety) she supports the provision of a welfare safety net directed specifically toward assisting those in need.

In my view we are now confronted with a third deal, which could be described as the doomsday deal, or if you want to personalise it, the Paul Ehrlich deal (after the biologist Paul Ehrlich who, like many other sect leaders who prophesy imminent doom, seems to have managed to maintain the loyalty of many of his followers even though the doom he predicted did not happen). Deidre describes such prophesies as the “eighth pessimism of our times”, rather than a deal. I see the doomsday deal as offering us the hope of being saved from an imaginary environmental doom if only we are prepared to forgo further economic betterment. Those who accept the doomsday deal deny that the bourgeois deal can be compatible with sensible measures to avert environmental disasters.

We should care about the bourgeois deal because it is constantly under threat. As Deidre McCloskey puts it in the table of contents for her book:

“Rhetoric made us, but can readily unmake us”.


Postscript:

Deirdre McCloskey has provided the following comment:

What an intelligent and penetrating discussion!  You clarify for me what I dislike most about neo-institutionalism, namely, that is always, every time, about incentives.  Humans respond to incentives.  I admit it (I am after all an economist).  But other matters than cost and benefit move people, too.  The Anzac men going over the top at Gallipoli cannot be summarized as responding to incentives alone.

I like your supplement to the Bismarckian Deal--Beveridgean!