After years of toil, I have developed an artificial intelligence that can speak as eloquently as Robin Hanson on any subject.

Disclaimer: I haven’t researched or thought about this much, and a lot of what I’m saying is probably derivative or completely wrong. I just wanted to work through some of my thoughts.

What would happen if we implemented basic income guarantees tomorrow?

Assume we’re just talking about the United States here. Assume we don’t have any major technological advances between today and tomorrow, so we can’t automate every single person’s job. Let’s say that the income guarantee is enough to live off of—maybe $30,000.

What would people do? And would the economy continue to generate enough money to be able to pay for everyone’s income guarantee?

Change in Incentives

When people automatically get $30,000, this dramatically reduces their willingness to work. There are a lot of jobs that people only work because they desperately need a job, and they would really prefer not to. Once they get a basic income guarantee, demand for these jobs will drop dramatically. If the jobs are important, wages will increase until some people once again become willing to take those jobs.

Exactly how much people are willing to work depends on the tax rate. Let’s say we have a progressive taxation scheme which starts much higher than the current tax rate—maybe 50% at the lowest bracket and 90% at the highest (I’m just making up numbers here). That means if you make $30,000 a year for doing nothing and take a job that pays $30,000, now you’re making $45,000 after taxes. People have diminishing marginal utility of money, so people will be less willing to do this, but there should still be a lot of people who want to make more than the basic income and end up taking jobs.

Which jobs will they take?

Jobs

When people have a basic income, that dramatically changes their incentives to work. In economic terms, supply of labor drops. Which jobs continue to be prominent depends on which jobs have high or low price elasticity of demand for labor.

To get more concrete, let’s think about two jobs: garbage collector and fast food burger flipper. Probably a small minority of the people in these jobs actually enjoy them; if these people suddenly had a guaranteed $30,000 a year, how would the market respond?

People really need garbage collectors, so they have a high willingness to pay for their salaries. Or, more precisely, they have a high willingness to accept higher taxes so that the government can employ garbage collectors. In all likelihood, not enough people will be willing to work as garbage collectors for their current salaries. Demand for garbage collectors is highly inelastic, so as supply of willing workers decreases, wages will increase by a lot. The increase in wages should be enough to incentivize people to continue working as garbage collectors.

The labor supply for burger flippers would similarly decrease. Fast food companies would have to raise salaries by a lot in order to get people to keep working for them, which means they would have to increase food prices. The increased food prices would decrease quantity demanded, and fast food companies would shrink (and possibly disappear entirely). I am probably okay with this.

The Broad Market

But since people have less need to work, they should become more willing to work intrinsically enjoyable goods, so we should see an increase in the supply of short films, music, and other similar goods. Interestingly, writing books seems to be so intrinsically enjoyable that the market’s already over-saturated even without a basic income guarantee—publishers get way more manuscripts than they can use.

There’s a spectrum between “everybody intrinsically enjoys this” and “nobody intrinsically enjoys this”, and every job lands somewhere on the spectrum. Even among jobs that most people don’t intrinsically enjoy, we will still see differences. A lot fewer people will work in factory farms, since I can’t imagine that anybody would actually want to do that. But we probably won’t see that big a reduction in the quantity of auto mechanics. A lot of people like working on cars—people often do it as a hobby. We’d expect these people to be willing to work as auto mechanics for only relatively little pay.

Software Development

I want to talk a little extra about software development since it’s my field. Generally speaking, a lot of programmers enjoy programming, but there are a lot of kinds that are more fun than others. We’d probably see more people starting their own companies and fewer people working software jobs that involve a lot of boring repetition.

This changes the incentives for companies hiring developers. Boring routine work becomes more expensive since fewer developers are willing to do it, so companies have stronger incentives to automate as much work as possible.

There probably won’t be a huge effect since developers tend to make well $30,000, so that extra money doesn’t do as much for them; the most affected jobs will be those that pay less than or about as much as the basic income.

Does It Work?

An economy with a basic income guarantee would reduce or remove unimportant jobs while still retaining important jobs. Prices would be higher and people probably wouldn’t buy as much, but the things they’d buy less of would mostly be the things that weren’t really important to begin with. People aren’t perfectly rational; a lot of purchases people make just keep them going on the hedonic treadmill and don’t actually improve their lives.

Perhaps a world with McDonald’s is better than one without, but if it is, it’s certainly not much better, and I wouldn’t feel too bad about it if McDonald’s went out of business after all the low-level employees quit.

Please explain in the comments why I’m wrong about everything. I think the economic effects of a basic income guarantee could be really interesting and possibly surprising, and I want to hear what you think.

Haskell has all these language features that seem cool, but then you wonder, what is this actually good for? When am I ever going to need lazy evaluation? What’s the point of currying?

As it turns out, these language constructs come in handy more often than you’d expect. This article gives some real-world examples of how Haskell’s weird features can actually help you write better programs.

Lazy Evaluation

Lazy evaluation means that Haskell will only evaluate an expression if its value becomes needed. This means you can do cool things like construct infinite lists.

To take a trivial example, suppose you want to write a function that finds the first n even numbers. You could implement this in a lot of different ways, but let’s look at one possible implementation (in Python):

def first_n_evens(n):
    numbers = range(1, 2*n + 1)
    return [ x for x in numbers if x % 2 == 0 ]

Here we construct a list with 2n numbers and then take every even number from that list. Here’s how we could do the same in Haskell:

firstNEvens n = take n $ [ x | x <- [1..], even x ]

Instead of constructing a list with 2n elements, we construct an infinite list of even numbers and then take the first n.

Okay, so that’s pretty cool, but what’s the point? When am I ever going to use this in real life?

Why It’s Useful

I recently wrote a simple spam classifier in Python. To classify a text as spam or not-spam, it counts the number of blacklisted words in the text. If the number reaches some threshold, the text is classified as spam. ¹

Before reading further, think for a minute about how you could implement this.

Originally, I wanted to write something like this.

1. filter the list for only blacklisted words
2. see if the length of the list reaches the threshold

Here’s the equivalent Python code:

class LazyClassifier(Classifier):
    def classify(self, text):
        return len(filter(self.blacklisted, text.split())) >= self.threshold

This code is simple and concise. The problem is, it requires iterating through the entire list before returning, which wastes a huge amount of time. The text might contain tens of thousands of words, but could be identified as spam within the first hundred.

I ended up implementing it like this:

class ImperativeClassifier(Classifier):
    def classify(self, text):
        words = text.split()
        count = 0
        for word in words:
            if self.blacklisted(word):
                count += 1
                if count >= self.threshold:
                    return 1
        return 0

Instead of using higher-order functions like sum, this implementation manually iterates over the list, keeping track of the number of blacklisted words, and breaks out once the number reaches the threshold. It’s faster, but much uglier.

What if we could write our code using the first approach, but with the speed of the second approach? This is where lazy evalution comes in.

If our program is lazily evaluated, it can figure out when the count reaches the threshold and return immediately instead of waiting around to evaluate the whole list.

Here’s a Haskell implementation:

classify text = (length $ filter blacklisted $ words text) >= threshold

(For those unfamiliar with Haskell syntax, see note.²)

Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work. If the condition is true for the first k elements of the list then it will also be true for the first k+1 elements, but Haskell has no way of knowing that. If you call classify on an infinite list, it will run forever.

We can get around this problem like so:

classify text =
    (length $ take threshold $ filter blacklisted $ words text) == threshold

Note that the take operation takes the first k elements of the list and drops the rest. (If you call take k on a list with n elements where n < k, it will simply return the entire list.)

So this function will take the first threshold blacklisted words. If it runs through the entire list before finding threshold blacklisted words, it returns False. If it ever successfully finds threshold blacklisted words, it immediately stops and returns True.

Using lazy evalution, we can write a concise implementation of classify that runs as efficiently as our more verbose implementation above.

(If you want, it is also possible to do this in Python using generators.)

Partial Application

In Haskell, functions are automatically curried. This means you can call a function with some but not all of the arguments and it will return a partially-applied function.

This is easier to understand if we look at an example. Let’s take a look at some Haskell code:

add :: Int -> Int -> Int
add x y = x + y

add is a simple function that takes two arguments and returns their sum. You can call it by writing, for example, add 2 5 which would return 7.

You can also partially apply add. If you write add 2, instead of returning a value, it returns a function that takes a single argument and returns that number plus 2. In effect, add 2 returns a function that looks like this:

add2 y = 2 + y

You could also think of it as taking the original add function and replacing all occurrences of x with 2.

Then we can pass in 5 to this new function:

(add 2) 5 == 7

In fact, in Haskell, (add 2) 5 is equivalent to add 2 5: it calls add 2, which returns a unary function, and then passes in 5 to that function.

A similar function could be constructed in Python like so:

def add(x):
    return lambda y: x + y

Then you could call (add(2))(5) to get 7.

Why It’s Useful

To take a simple example, suppose you want to add 2 to every element in a list. You could map over the list using a lambda:

map (\x -> x + 2) myList

Or you could do this more concisely by partially applying the + function:

map (+2) myList

It might seem like this just saves you from typing a few characters once in a while, but this sort of pattern comes up all the time.

This summer I was working on a program that required merging a series of rankings. I had a list of maps where each map represented a ranking along a different dimension, and I needed to find the sum ranking for each key. I could have done it like this:

mergeRanks :: (Ord k) => [Map.Map k Int] -> Map.Map k Int
mergeRanks rankings = Map.unionsWith (\x y -> x + y) rankings

(Note: unionsWith takes the union of a list of maps by applying the given function to each map’s values.)

With partial application, we can instead write:

mergeRanks = Map.unionsWith (+)

This new function uses partial appliation in two ways. First, it passes in + instead of creating a lambda.

Second, it partially applies unionsWith. This call to unionsWith gives a function that takes in a list of maps and returns the union of the maps.

Notice also how mergeRanks is not defined with any arguments. Because the call to unionsWith returns a function, we can simply assign mergeRanks to the value of that function.

Perhaps this example is a bit on the confusing side; I intentionally chose a complex example that has real-world value. Once you grok partial applications, they show up more often than you might think, and you can use them to perform some pretty sophisticated operations.

And I haven’t even mentioned function composition.

Here’s a more complicated usage of partial application combined with function composition that I wrote this summer. See if you can figure out what it does.

yearSlice year stocks =
  filter ((>0) . length) $
  map (filter ((==year) . fyearq)) stocks

In one program of about 500 lines, I wrote about a dozen pieces of code similar to this one.

Pattern Matching

Pattern matching gives us a new way of writing functions. To take the canonical example, let’s look at the factorial function. Here’s a simple Python implementation.

def fac(n):
    if n == 0:
        return 1
    else:
        return n * fac(n - 1)

And the same program written in Haskell:

fac n =
    if n == 0
    then 1
    else n * fac (n - 1)

But we could also write this using pattern matching.

fac 0 = 1
fac n = n * fac (n - 1)

Think of this as saying > * the factorial of 0 is 1 > * the factorial of some number n is n * fac (n - 1)

So pattern matching is more declarative rather than imperative–a declarative program describes the way things are rather than what to do.

Why It’s Useful

Wait, isn’t this just a different way of writing the same thing? Sure, it’s interesting, but what can pattern matching do that if statements can’t?

Well, quite a lot, actually.³ Pattern matching makes it trivial to deconstruct a data structure into its component values. Haskell’s pattern matching intricately relates to how Haskell handles data types.

Suppose we want to implement the map function. Recall that map takes a function and a list and returns the list obtained by applying the function to each element of the list. So map (*2) [1,2,3] == [2,4,6]. (Notice how I used partial application there?)

You may wish to take a moment to consider how you would implement map.

Without using pattern matching, we could implement map like this:

map f xs =
    if xs == []
    then []
    else (f (head xs)) : (map (tail xs))

⁴

But this is a bit clunky, and we can do a lot better by using pattern matching. Think about how to define map recursively:

• The map of an empty list is just an empty list.
• The map of a list is the updated head of the list plus the map of the tail of the list.

map f [] = []
map f (x:xs) = (f x) : (map f xs)

So much nicer!

This sort of design pattern comes in handy when you’re operating over data structures. To take a real-world example, I recently wrote a function that operated over an intersection of three values:

scoreIntersection (Intersection x y z) = whatever

I could pass in the Intersection type and pattern matching made it easy to pull out the three values into the variables x, y, and z.

Summary

Haskell has a number of language features that appear strange to someone with an imperative-programming background. But not only do these language features allow the programmer to write more concise and elegant functions, they teach lessons that you can carry with you when you use more imperative programming languages.

Many modern languages partially or fully support some of these features; Python, for example, supports lazy evaluation with generator expressions, and it’s possible to implement pattern matching in Lisp. And I’m excited to see that Rust supports sophisticated pattern matching much like Haskell.

If you want to learn more about Haskell, check out Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! Or if you’ve already dipped your toes into the Haskell ocean and want to go for a dive, Real World Haskell can teach you how to use Haskell to build real programs.

P.S. This site is relatively new, so if you see a mistake, please leave a comment and I’ll try and fix it.

Notes

This is a collection of some of my favorite resources on utilitarianism.

Light Books
Practical Ethics, Peter Singer
Animal Liberation, Peter Singer
The Life You Can Save, Peter Singer

Heavy Books
The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick
Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill
The Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham

Introductions
Consequentialism FAQ
Utilitarian FAQ
Common Criticisms of Utilitarianism

Organizations
80,000 Hours
Effective Animal Activism
GiveWell
The High Impact Network
Giving What We Can

Collections
Utilitarian Philosophers
Utilitarianism: past, present and future
Recommended Reading

Communities
Felicifia
Effective Altruists on Facebook Less Wrong

Essays and Blogs
Essays on Reducing Suffering
The Effective Altruism Blog
Reflective Disequilibrium
Everyday Utilitarian
Measuring Shadows
Philosophy, et cetera
Reducing Suffering

If you are a United States citizen and you want to do as much good as possible with your vote, then how should you use it? (These principles apply outside the US as well, but my analysis focuses on US elections.)

Expected Value of Voting

For those who care about maximizing the welfare of society, the importance of voting increases as the population increases. Below is the mathematical justification for this claim. These calculations assume that you know the correct person to vote for. If you wish to avoid math, you can skip to the next section.

Let v = a number representing the expected value of voting.
Let n = the population size.
Let p = the proportion of the population that votes.
Let e = the expected value per person of your voting.
Let f = a number representing the opportunity cost of voting [1].

If v is greater than 0, voting is worthwhile. If v is less than 0, it is not.

If you only care about yourself,

v = e * (n*p choose n*p/2) - f

v is only greater than 0 for unrealistically large values of e or very small values of n.

If you care about every citizen,

v = n * e * (n*p choose n*p/2) - f

In this case, v increases as n increases; that is, the larger the population size, the more important it is that you vote.

Here, (n*p choose n*p/2) represents the probability that the vote will be exactly tied, as this is the only case in which your vote decides the election. This calculation assumes that everyone votes randomly between the top two candidates, which is incorrect but still works reasonably well as a model. The next sections attempt to refine this model.

The following sections assume that the voters must decide between two candidates. Most of the reasoning also applies to voting on a proposition.

Polls

If we know nothing about an election, we simply assume that the population is evenly split among options, in which case our vote has a relatively high chance of swinging the election. But we rarely know nothing about an election. Here I will continue to assume that the election is decided by popular vote, because the electoral college makes things much more complicated.

Let’s look at the 2008 election between Obama and McCain. Imagine that we are back in 2008, and it’s the day before the election. Gallup predicts that Obama will win with 55% of the popular vote, and McCain will receive 44%. Gallup has a history of effective representative sampling, so it’s safe to assume that this poll has no systematic bias.

Gallup’s sample size for this poll is 3050 participants. Remember, the only situation in which your vote changes the outcome is if the election is perfectly split 50/50. If the American population does indeed vote 50% for Obama and 50% for McCain, the probability of Gallup getting the results they did is about 1 in 3 billion (p = 3.0E-8). This significantly reduces the expected value of voting. I do not have the necessary knowledge of statistics to calculate the precise expected value in this case, but I would guess that voting is no longer worthwhile.

The Electoral College

The above calculations assume that we use a popular voting system–which is not always the cause. Under an electoral system, determining whether voting is worthwhile is much harder to figure out.

If you live in a district that consistently supports one party, then there is no point in voting if you are just interested in changing the outcome of the election (although this may not be the only reason to vote, as I discuss below). If, however, you live in a swing state, voting is a smart decision as long as both candidates are about equally favored (that is, the more-favored candidate has less than, say, 52% of the vote). Read the polls to determine whether voting is worth it.

Third Parties

In the United States, third parties have virtually no chance of winning a major election. But by voting for a third party candidate, you express your support for that candidate and platform. The more votes a third party gets, the more likely it is that at least one of the main two parties will adapt itself to move closer to the third party.

Suppose, for instance, the Libertarian candidate gets 5% of the vote. Republicans, who tend to agree with Libertarians on most points, know that they can win over some of those 5% if they change their platform to work better for Libertarians. When I vote for the Libertarian party, I express my support and increase the likelihood that Republican candidates will align their political positions more closely with those of Libertarians.

Furthermore, by voting Libertarian, I express my support to the public. If Libertarians get enough votes, mainstream voters (and especially swing voters) will start to take their opinions more seriously. It may influence more people to vote Libertarian or vote to support libertarian-minded policies within their own party of choice.

Which Party Is Best

I suspect that this section may be the most contentious of this essay. Many people believe that politics is a matter of opinion, and that I cannot tell you which party is best. I disagree. Questions about political policy are simply questions about which policy will best increase the welfare of beings in the world. Answering this question is not always straightforward. For instance, what sort of economic policy will best reduce unemployment? Such questions have empirical answers, but we don’t always know what they are.

Often, however, we do know which policy is best, and people only disagree because some sorts of biases–typically, old-fashioned and religiously-driven conceptions of morality–affect their thinking. For instance, abortion is clearly morally permissible for at least the first trimester and there is no legal or ethical reason to deny homosexuals the right to marry or at least form civil unions. If people didn’t base so much of their ethics on Christianity, which holds all human life as sacred and condemns homosexuality, this wouldn’t be a problem. (Other religions cause similar problems in other nations.)

Selfishness also causes a lot of political disagreement. People often desire their own happiness over the happiness of others, which causes many very wealthy people to oppose tax increases for the upper brackets (even though evidence suggests that, over a certain level of income, money has no effect on happiness). People also value the citizens of their own nation over the citizens of other nations, causing them to support foreign policies that hurt the citizens of other countries. Additionally, they value the present over the future, causing them to neglect long term problems such as environmental issues.

Democrats have better policies than Republicans on the majority of issues that have a clear right or wrong answer (e.g. abortion, gay rights, animal welfare, stem cell research, the existence of anthropogenic global warming, etc.) [2]. They disagree on a lot of issues that are much harder to judge, such as welfare, fiscal policy, and national defense spending. (If you have some way of objectively determining the best policy on one of these issues, by all means let me know.) But among those issues where the correct policy clearly follows from some basic tenets of morality, the Democrats have the advantage [3]. Given what information we have, the Democrats look like the party whose policies best improve the well-being of society.

But neither party effectively addresses the issues that matter most. Wild-animal suffering represents the biggest source of suffering we know of, but neither party cares even remotely about it [4]. The next biggest issues at present are human mistreatment of non-human animals and impoverished humans in the developing world. Democrats tend to care more about these issues than Republicans, but neither party cares nearly as much as they should. It appears that the party that gives the most attention to these issues is the Green Party of the United States. It gives a great deal of attention to environmental issues; in addition, it is the only national party that seriously addresses animal welfare in its platform:

Cruelty to animals is repugnant and criminal. The mark of a humane and civilized society lies in how we treat the least protected among us. To extend rights to other sentient living beings is our responsibility and a mark of our place among all of creation. We call for an intelligent, compassionate approach to the treatment of animals.

We reject the belief that our species is the center of creation, and that other life forms exist only for our use and enjoyment. Our species does not have the right to exploit and inflict violence on other creatures simply because we have the desire and power to do so. Our ethic upholds not only the value of biological diversity and the integrity and continuity of species, but also the value of individual lives and the interest of individual animals [my emphasis].

The bold section is critical. Many politicians accept the value of biodiversity, even if they do not push for policies to support it; but very few recognize that individual animals have interests that matter.

The Green Party platform not only proposes actions to reduce animal suffering, but also acknowledges the moral significance of animals and calls for an end to the homo sapiens-centric way of thinking that is the norm. This position is extremely important in that it helps cultivate people’s feelings of caring for animal suffering.

Which Party to Vote For

Although the Green Party appears to increase the general welfare more than any other party, this does not mean we should necessarily vote for them. Rather, we must consider the political climate of the United States, and try to put our vote where it will have the greatest positive impact.

If you have the chance to vote for a Green Party candidate who actually has a high probability of winning, then by all means do so. But in most elections, the Green Party nominee is a fringe candidate with little hope of victory. In such a case, it still makes sense to vote for him or her–as was discussed above.

We usually cannot do much good by voting in the primaries for the Green Party (GP). We ought to support the Green Party message rather than any particular candidate–as far as I can tell, no single GP candidate stands out as having far better policies than the others. We support the GP message by voting for them in the general election, but voting in their primaries does not do much good.

Instead, we should vote in either the Democratic or the Republican primary, depending on which is more strategically advantageous. You could vote for the mainstream candidate that you most support or for a candidate in the opposing party whom you expect to lose to your preferred candidate in the general election.

In the primaries, a vote does the most good in one of the mainstream parties; but in the general election, you should express support for your favorite candidate overall, irrespective of how few votes you expect them to get.

Local Elections

Local elections have low turnout (often around 5 to 10 percent), so your vote has a greater impact. Voting for a strong third-party candidate in a local election, even if she has little chance of winning, this will push her up in the ranks and cause her to be taken more seriously. Should she receive enough support, she may choose to campaign vigorously during the next election season and may even win. Your vote has a relatively high chance of giving her the support she needs to make a serious local impact.

If anything, voting for third-party candidates in local elections is more important than in national elections. I think the best way to increase support for a party’s platform is to vote to support that party in local elections and try to get the party in control of certain districts. Once the party is considered mainstream in those districts, it can more easily spread its influence to other districts.

Is Voting Worthwhile?

It is unclear exactly how much good voting does, but donating to an efficient charity probably has a much bigger impact. If it takes you a half-hour to vote, and you had spent that time working instead, the money you would have earned likely could have done much more good than your vote.

Of course, it’s not always possible to get paid for just half an hour’s work. If you can find some way to do that, great. Otherwise, voting may still be a good idea because it would have a low opportunity cost.

It is definitely more worthwhile to vote in local elections, especially if you live in a district where you expect your third party candidate to be able to get some serious support. (A GP candidate probably has a much better chance in Berkeley than in Lubbock.)

In summary: Vote for a major party in the primaries and the best party in the general election. Don’t neglect local elections. Vote Green when possible and Democrat otherwise.

Notes

[1] When I refer to a thing’s “value”, I mean the extent to which it improves the well-being of individuals in the world. It may not be possible to strictly quantify the value or the opportunity cost of voting; even if it is possible, it is certainly not easy. But we can make estimations, which is sufficient to make this equation useful.

[2] Here I will briefly justify the claim that each of these issues has a clear right or wrong answer.

abortion: For about the first half of pregnancy, a fetus cannot suffer and cannot have interests. Therefore, we do not violate its interest when we kill it. Once the fetus develops the capacity to feel pain, abortion becomes more questionable, but I still think it is permissible. For a more in-depth explanation as to why, see Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics.

gay rights: Allowing homosexual couples to participate in society in the same ways as heterosexual couples makes them happy, and has never been demonstrated to have negative effects.

animal welfare: See Animal Suffering.

environmental issues: All scientific evidence points to the fact that human actions are having a significant negative impact on the environment, which will greatly harm both humans and other animals.

anthropogenic global warming: Scientists agree–global warming is real, we are causing it, and we need to act fast to prevent it.

stem cell research: The only argument against stem cell research (as far as I know) is that it violates the sanctity of human life, which is an unjustified position.

[3] The only exception I know of here is that Democrats often support government involvement on economic policy where most economists believe that free-market solutions work better. For example, most economists agree that school vouchers improve the quality of schooling, whereas many Democrats disagree.

Of course, Libertarians deviate even further from mainstream economic opinion. Nearly all economists support government stimulus in response to economic recession, a policy that Libertarians tend to oppose. Furthermore, Ron Paul and his supporters advocate for the gold standard, but close to 100% of economists believe it will not increase price stability or employment.

In reality, it’s not as simple as “more government” or “less government,” and a party that simplifies it so much–as Libertarians often do–misses many important nuances.

[4] We do have plenty of laws about how to treat endangered species, but the intention here is to conserve biodiversity, not to promote the well-being of the animals. Such laws are either motivated by anthropocentrism (i.e. we need certain species to provide us with resources) or by the strange belief that biodiversity is inherently valuable.

Free will is an illusion [1]. What does this say about moral responsibility?

If the purpose of morality is to maximize the happiness of sentient beings, as I often claim, then whether free will exists is irrelevant. In fact, whether free will exists does not matter as long as morality focuses on the consequences of actions, rather than their motives.

The traditional argument goes: if free will is an illusion, then we are not in control of our own actions, which means we cannot be held responsible for them. So it doesn’t matter what actions we take, right? We can run around killing people, right? Well, no. Our actions still matter just as much as they ever did: they affect the outside world whether they are the product of free will or the result of deterministic processes. Others are still affected by our actions. We still feel emotions, even if those emotions arise deterministically.

Right and Wrong

The question of what is right or wrong is still relevant. Some actions make people happy, and other actions cause people to suffer. A “good” action increases well-being, and a “bad” action decreases it.

The non-existence of free will has some implications regarding the definition of “ought.” Without free will, it does not make as much sense to ask what we ought to do, since we are unable to freely control our actions; we can only ask what we do do. One might conclude that morality itself is meaningless; but good and bad still exist, whether we are freely able to create them or not.

It is possible to make sense of “ought” by defining it in terms of consequences rather than strict moral rules. The question of moral obligation relates to what actions will likely bring about the best outcomes–we ought to increase happiness, and we ought not increase suffering, in the sense that increasing happiness is good and increasing suffering is bad.

It also makes sense in some situations to treat people as “good” or “bad.” People may not freely choose how they act, but giving them different kinds of feedback (for example, punishment and reward) causes them to behave in certain ways, and the best possible social arrangement would be one in which the feedback consistently encourages morally desirable behavior.

Justice

Once free will is out of the picture, we can actually make more sound moral judgments. Anthony Cashmore wrote an excellent paper on how free will affects the criminal justice system. In the paper, he argues that we should eliminate “the illogical concept that individuals are in control of their behavior in a manner that is something other than a reflection of their genetic makeup and their environmental history,” and that once we do so, the justice system will be much improved.

It is better to acknowledge the truth regarding free will and adjust our judgments accordingly than to continue to base so many important moral decisions on such a nebulous concept. We can make judgments on a purely consequentialist basis, and choose whichever course of action we decide will do the most good.

Let us ask the question: how might we change the justice system if we focus solely on consequences, and give no regard to the notion of free will? It might not actually be that much different. Our goal is to maximize happiness for as many people as possible (including the convicted). Sometimes the best way to do this is to imprison a dangerous criminal, not for retribution [2] but for the good of society. That said, prisons should be made as comfortable as possible for the benefit of the people in them (keeping in mind certain considerations, e.g. prison should not be more comfortable than poverty–otherwise, poor people would break the law specifically so they could go to jail). For more on this subject, see an essay by Cody Franklin.

Cashmore has a list of purposes for imprisonment, none of which has anything to do with free will:

To a), protect society; b), protect the offending individuals from society; c), provide such individuals with appropriate psychiatric help; d), act as a deterrent (the act of incarceration and the presence of a criminal code forming part of the environment [that influences people’s actions]); and e), alleviate the pain of the victim.

Society ought to use these principles to enact a justice system, rather than focusing on retribution.

Moral Responsibility

It is commonly argued that if we do not have free will, then we cannot be held responsible for our actions. In some sense this statement is correct, but in another sense it is meaningless.

The traditional definition of moral responsibility would hold responsible the person or persons who caused some event. However, without free will, this definition does not make sense. A man who shoots his wife caused the trigger to be pulled, the trigger caused the bullet to fire, and the bullet caused the woman’s body to cease functioning. If the man was the first cause, he can be held responsible. However, he was not the first cause: his action was the direct result of previous actions, and completely determined by his genes and environment. The processes that caused the man to pull the trigger were the same sorts of processes that caused the trigger to make the bullet fire. The man did not kill his wife any more than did the gun, the trigger, or the bullet.

This traditional definition of moral responsibility is nonsensical. It has no concrete definition; arguments about whether someone holds moral responsibility cannot be resolved, because different people may adopt different definitions of the term.

Fortunately, the concept of moral responsibility is not concrete; it is an abstract idea created by humans to try to make morality easier to understand. It does not exist in reality. Once we understand that responsibility is a human invention, we are free to use it to whatever ends we want. Therefore, we should define moral responsibility in the manner that brings about the most favorable consequences.

It makes sense in some cases to treat people as though they are morally responsible for their actions, even though they aren’t. Similarly to why we identify good and evil, we can identify moral responsibility because doing so helps to clarify our ethical judgments.

Consider some concrete examples, taken from an article by Sam Harris:

1. A four-year-old boy was playing with his father’s gun and killed a young woman. The gun had been kept loaded and unsecured in a dresser drawer.

2. A twenty-five-year-old man, who had been raised by wonderful parents and never abused, intentionally shot and killed a young woman he had never met “just for the fun of it.”

3. A twenty-five-year-old man, who had been raised by wonderful parents and never abused, intentionally shot and killed a young woman he had never met “just for the fun of it.” An MRI of the man’s brain revealed a tumor the size of a golf ball in his medial prefrontal cortex (a region responsible for the control of emotion and behavioral impulses).

In the case of the four-year-old, it does not make sense to treat him as responsible for his actions. He is unable to fully understand what he did, and holding him responsible would not teach him anything. To revisit Cashmore’s five reasons for imprisonment, none of them apply to this case, so it does not make sense to imprison the child: (a) he will soon grow up and learn to examine the consequences of his actions, and this event is unlikely to repeat itself, so society does not need protection; (b) children are easily forgiven, so he needs no protection from society; (c) his mistake did not stem from psychiatric troubles, but merely from ignorance; (d) four-year-olds are not in a suitable environment for deterrence to be effective (they are not usually familiar with the laws regarding four-year-olds), nor could they necessarily comprehend the concept of deterrence even if they were; (e) the family of the victim is unlikely to hold a grudge against a young child. Note, however, that some of the five reasons for imprisonment do apply to the father who left the gun unlocked, so it makes sense in some ways to hold the father responsible. Imprisoning the foolish father could potentially do some good.

For the second example, where the twenty-five-year-old shoots a young woman for fun, all five of Cashmore’s reasons are applicable. It makes sense to hold this man responsible for his actions because he was fully aware of what he was doing, and holding him responsible could prevent murders like this from happening in the future.

In the case of the man with the tumor, he may be likely to kill again, but he is not sane. Holding him responsible makes partial sense: society needs to be protected from people like him, but there is no way to deter his behavior since people like him are not acting rationally. Removing the tumor would be far more effective a response than imprisonment.

On some level, the absence of free will means that moral responsibility does not exist. However, it often makes sense to act as though rational people are responsible for their actions, because treating them as such will improve society.

Notes

[1] The compatibilist position has merit, and I can understand why one may prefer a definition of free will that allows for its existence. However, the definition I use–“the capacity to make a choice that ultimately is not influenced by any outside entity and completely unpredictable, but also is completely rational from the perspective of the entity making the choice”–makes the most sense in the context of this essay. Every time I refer to free will, I refer to this definition; all my arguments still hold water even if you prefer to use a different definition of free will.

[2] Here is an interesting piece on Less Wrong that helps to explain why so many people believe in retributive justice (i.e. “criminals deserve punishment”). To paraphrase:

Saying “People who commit crimes deserve to get hurt!” is not tough-minded. It is a way of refusing to live in an unfair universe. Real tough-mindedness is saying, “Yes, prison is harmful, and no, criminals do not deserve to get hurt, but we’re going to imprison them anyway because we did this cost-benefit calculation.”

Ethical Background

We have an obligation not to cause suffering. Furthermore, we have no reason to limit this obligation to members of the human species–any sort of suffering is morally relevant, and the importance of the suffering derives not from who experiences it but from how severe it is [1]. If animals can suffer then their suffering deserves equal consideration.

Many non-human animals (including most vertebrates) are definitely capable of suffering–physically, and often emotionally. True, most animals cannot know the range of suffering that humans can, but they still feel pain, discomfort, and distress, and they experience such feelings as acutely (or at least approximately as acutely) as humans do. (For those who doubt that mammals and other vertebrates feel pain to the extent that humans do, see Do Animals Feel Pain?.) We owe it to all animals–human and non-human–not to inflict painful experiences upon them. Furthermore, we have an obligation to prevent the suffering of animals in the wild.

Practical Considerations

If we grant that the suffering of all beings holds equal value, then what must we do to remain consistent with our morals?

It has been well-established that factory farms–through which nearly all domesticated animals (excluding pets [2]) are raised–cause animals a great deal of suffering. This essay will not go into details, as facts about such animals’ treatment are readily available (in many books as well as on the web; I recommend Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, an excerpt of which may be found here). All that need be said here is that animals on factory farms experience an enormous, almost incomprehensible amount of suffering for their entire lives.

So-called “free range” or “cage-free” farms, while they often improve conditions, still create considerable suffering. It is difficult to find farms that raise animals humanely, and even certified “humane” farms create conditions that I would not wish for any sentient being to endure (for example, castrating animals without anesthetic). It may be possible to find happily-raised animals in stores, but I warn the reader to be skeptical of any products that claim to be humane. For more information, see “The Truth Behind Labels: Farm Animal Welfare Standards and Labeling Practices.”

In light of these considerations, we hold an obligation to avoid animal products, especially food. Of course, reducing the quantity of meat one eats–while not as good as removing it entirely from one’s diet–does a great deal of good. For those who wish to prevent animal suffering but find it difficult to do so, there are a lot of resources out there that can help you. I recommend The Ultimate Vegan Guide by Erik Marcus.

Of all the animal products we consume, chicken and fish suffer the greatest total harm. A cow or a pig can feed many more people than a chicken or fish, so not as many have to be raised and killed in cruel conditions. And when industrial fishing boats capture fish, they end up killing many times more fish than they actually intend to harvest, simply by accident (Foer 49). Together, chicken, eggs, and fish probably account for over 95% of the suffering that the food industry creates. For more information on this subject, see “How Much Direct Suffering Is Caused by Various Animal Foods?”

One should avoid animal products not only to reduce suffering, but to make a statement. We will make serious progress toward reducing animal suffering when caring seriously about animals becomes a widely-accepted position. As it is, people who concern themselves with the suffering of non-human animals are considered radicals and often looked down upon–many consider it rude to even bring up the fact that you’re vegan. Every person who joins this “radical” position helps push it toward the mainstream; and the more mainstream the position becomes, the easier it will be to reduce animal suffering. Similarly, it is important to behave respectably when it comes to animal welfare issues; if you behave respectably, your position will get more respect. Incendiary organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals can hurt the credibility of the animal welfare movement.

Other actions we can take include political action (such as lobbying for stricter legal standards for factory farms) and donating to charities that support animal welfare. Effective Animal Activism continually invests effort into identifying the most effective animal welfare charities, and they publish their recommendations on the front page of their website.

I frequently hear people give reasons why they cannot be vegetarian or vegan. It goes beyond the scope of this essay to address them all, but it is worth saying this: (a) extensive research has shown that a vegan diet can be healthy for humans in every stage of their lives (see this report by the American Dietetic Association); (b) I have never heard someone raise a problem that could not be solved by searching online for five minutes or less. (For example, a common complaint goes, “I can’t get enough protein.” Myriad sources in bookstores and on the Web explain how to eat adequate protein with a plant-based diet.) I recommend Vegan Health as a quick source on how to maintain a healthy diet.

The Importance of Animal Suffering

Given the sheer volume of factory-farmed animals, the meat industry represents one of the most serious problems facing the world today. Most people–including many vegetarians–grossly underestimate the importance of this issue.

Non-human animals clearly have many differences from humans: they cannot vote, they cannot attend school, and they cannot in most ways participate in human society. However, many species can suffer just as we can, and as such deserve moral consideration.

As Jeremy Bentham put it in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:

The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Any fair-minded ethical theory must grant that suffering is equally significant no matter who experiences it, and that includes non-human animals.

Humans living in factory farm-like conditions would probably suffer worse than other animals because out higher reasoning capacities would create additional forms of suffering. However, the great majority of human suffering in such a situation would arise in the very same manner in which animal suffering arises: continual physical pain and discomfort, inability to form social connections, and severely limited emotional freedom. Considering the tens of billions of animals raised in such conditions for their entire lives, it should be no surprise when I claim that factory farming represents one of the greatest evils in existence.

Wild-Animal Suffering

That said, the single most important source of suffering that we know of must be wild-animal suffering. Due to the sheer number of wild animals, they experience far more suffering than animals in factory farms.

Unfortunately, it does not look like we can do much about it right now, as we are not very good at predicting the impact of our actions. It is likely that our efforts to help will only make the situation worse. So consider this an open problem. We ought to spend time considering what we can do to alleviate the suffering of wild animals without inadvertently creating more. Perhaps we do not yet know what to do, but we have not spent much time considering the problem.

For now, we should stop using animal products, help promote moral sentiments that give consideration to animal suffering, and consider donating to effective animal-welfare charities.

Notes

[1] When I spoke to a friend of mine about the subject of this essay, he argued that human well-being is necessarily more important because humans have a greater impact on the global well-being than other species. If this is true, it does not give greater _inherent_ value to human happiness, but rather gives them greater value because they create more significant _side effects_.

If a single human becomes more happy, his happiness spreads to other people–and hence, increasing a human’s happiness by X amount generally does more good than increasing a non-social animal’s happiness by X amount. But the added impact from a human’s happiness still does not compare to the extraordinary amount of suffering a human can prevent by taking on a few minor inconveniences (as described later in this essay).

[2] Factory farms represent the biggest source of suffering that humans inflict upon animals. This essay does not address the exploitation of animals for clothing, experiments, zoos, etc., because the sheer number of animals in factory farms far exceeds the number of animals in zoos and laboratories. And this essay excludes pets because we treat pets much better than most animals.

References

Foer, Jonathan S. Eating Animals. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group USA, 2010. Print.

Why should one adopt utilitarianism rather than some other moral philosophy? This essay explains four simple principles from which the utilitarian position follows.

First, the purpose of morality is to do what is good and prevent what is bad. I hope no one disagrees with this.

Second, I define good in relation to myself by my interests or preferences. The things that I value for myself–physical health, intellectual engagement, human connection–I consider to be good for me. The things I want to avoid, I consider bad.

Third, all beings who hold interests deserve moral consideration. While I cannot experience anything beyond my own consciousness, I still must recognize the existence of consciousness outside of myself. Even though I cannot directly experience the good that others feel, I must acknowledge that good exists for others just as much as it does for myself. I hold certain interests and other sentient beings hold their own interests; I ought to respect their interests just as much as I respect my own [1]. I want to do the most good possible–even if the good affects others and not myself.

Fourth, an interest holds value in proportion to the strength of the interest. My desire for life overrides my desire for an adrenaline rush, so I do not jump off of a cliff. Similarly, different beings’ interests may be compared by considering the strengths of their interests.

Those who do not accept this claim have no way of judging one particular good as more significant than another. However, I cannot deny that some of my interests are more important than others, and it is worth violating a lesser interest to serve a greater one (e.g. giving up my temporary happiness by cleaning the dishes so that I can use them later). From this fact, it follows that some people have some interests that outweigh other people’s interests. For this reason, tyranny of the majority is unjustifiable, as the minority’s stronger preferences outweigh the majority’s weaker preferences. (For a more detailed explanation of why it is possible to judge one good as more significant than another, see “Measuring Happiness.”)

This is not to say it is always easy to determine which interests matter most. Doing so is often difficult, but rarely (if ever) impossible.

Utilitarianism is simply the combination of these four simple premises. Good is defined by individuals’ preferences; all beings capable of having preferences deserve moral consideration; some preferences take precedence over others. From these principles, one may determine (or at least approximate) the most ethical choice in every situation.

Notes

[1] Here, "respect" simply means an acknowledgement that the interest holds value. Some interests promote the general good more than others; for example, a desire to provide for one's family does more good than a desire to indiscriminately murder people. If someone wanted to commit murder, I would try to prevent him from doing so, but only because the potential victim's desire to live overrides the potential murderer's desire to kill, and not because his interests do not hold value.

In response to the utilitarian school of ethics, people often object that it is impossible to measure happiness, or to weigh the interests of two or more different sentient beings. A previous essay addresses this objection in brief; this essay will examine the issue more deeply.

Even if we cannot evaluate happiness, this in no way invalidates the principle of utility. If I lose the ability to perceive other people, they do not cease to exist; similarly, if I cannot perceive others’ happiness, their happiness still holds importance. It would indeed be tragic if we had no way of knowing how our actions affect others, but if this were the case, it would not constitute an argument against utilitarianism. At best, it could serve as a case for ethical egoism as the best method of increasing utility (see Argument 3 in “Using Utilitarianism to Argue Against Utilitarianism.”)

Observing Well-Being

Fortunately, we know a good deal about how our actions affect others. While we cannot precisely feel what another person feels, we can make inferences as to others’ internal states. Animals (human and non-human) communicate their feelings and preferences through their behavior: if you step on a cat’s tail, it cries out and darts away from you. This indicates that it strongly prefers to avoid having its tail stepped on.

Of course, a rock may roll downhill, but is this because it desires to be at the bottom of the hill? Indeed, if you drop a cat off a building it will fall, but is this because it desires to reach the ground? No, because these actions are not voluntary. A cat cries out intentionally or instinctively to express its pain. Some plants let out distress calls when damaged, but this does not indicate pain because plants do not possess consciousness or the capacity to feel pain. It is unclear where the line lies between an unconscious reaction as an evolutionary adaptation and a conscious response to pain, but it is clear that vertebrates feel pain and plants do not. Do insects feel pain or pleasure? Maybe. But the only important facts for the purposes of this argument are that many animals suffer, and they express their suffering in a manner that we can observe.

We can indirectly infer the internal states of others–not just pain, but every emotion on the spectrum. As social creatures, we have evolved to perceive each other’s feelings. We can gain knowledge as to what sorts of actions promote well-being and use this knowledge to increase the total happiness in the world.

Accumulating Knowledge

John Stuart Mill responds to a related objection in his definitive work, Utilitarianism:

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this- that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent. People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness. Even then I do not think that he would find the question very puzzling; but, at all events, the matter is now done to his hand.

Each individual person has spent considerable time learning what makes others feel pleasure and suffering, both through personal observation and through instruction. Parents teach their children how to respect others; “respect others” is another way of saying “do not cause others to suffer.” And throughout our lives, we learn through experience what sorts of behaviors promote others’ well-being. We learn to consider others’ interests and act to help others rather than hinder them.

And most of us become very good at it. You not only know what makes humans in general happy, but you know specifically what to do to make your mother happy, or your brother, or your husband. Perhaps your mother particularly dislikes when you chew your food loudly, or your husband greatly enjoys foot rubs. We accumulate such knowledge about our friends and relations, and can use it to increase utility.

We can also increase the well-being of those people with whom we do not have close relationships. Most people share certain tendencies as to what promotes their happiness. For example, nearly everyone dislikes physical pain [1]; so if I see a complete stranger who is about to walk through poison ivy, I can redirect her and feel confident that I have helped her. There is a small chance that she enjoys feeling poison ivy on her skin, but that is a risk worth taking.

Although we cannot be absolutely certain that a particular action will increase utility, absolute certainty is not necessary. Indeed, we cannot be absolutely certain about any empirical question. Gravity may cease to work tomorrow, but we still behave as though it will continue the way it has. We can make educated guesses as to what will increase utility and we will be correct most of the time.

Precision

Some may object that we cannot precisely measure happiness, and thus cannot weigh one person’s well-being against another’s. While there are limits to our capacity to measure happiness, we can indeed measure it (as discussed above), and some sorts of preferences clearly outweigh others. My personal desire to avoid significant injury outweighs my desire to shoot someone in the leg for fun (I do not happen to desire this at all, but suppose I did for the sake of argument); from this, and from my knowledge of other people’s desires, I can infer that another person’s preference to avoid injury outweighs my preference to shoot him for fun. In other words, the happiness I might gain from shooting someone pales in significance to the suffering he would experience if he sustained a major leg injury.

Some cases less clearly reveal which action best increases utility, and such situations are the source of much debate. For instance, does raising taxes on the wealthy improve the general welfare of society? We do not know the answer, but we do have evidence that points one direction or the other and we can collect still more evidence so as to better answer the question. However, irrespective of such cases, in many situations we can clearly observe that one choice increases utility to a greater extent than another. Additionally, people make many choices that clearly decrease utility, and we can improve the world by altering such choices.

Science

Recently, science has begun to directly investigate the question of what makes us happy. Every day, the science of positive psychology wades deeper into the sea of human happiness, and we learn more and more. Many popular science articles have been written on the subject. The field is still in its early stages, but as it develops, I think we will become very good at scientifically measuring happiness.

We know, for example, that many small experiences make people happier than a few big experiences. Money brings happiness up to a certain level of income, and then plateaus. Science has provided many insights into happiness, and will continue to do so. Indeed, this is the thesis of Sam Harris’s recent book, The Moral Landscape.

Empathy

Science tells us much about how to increase utility. But to effectively support the well-being of our communities, we must understand how our actions affect others on a personal level. Empathy is one of our best tools for this. When we can comprehend others’ positions, we can act in ways that support their interests. Empathy is the primary means through which we understand what makes others happy. If someone claims that we do not know how to make each other happy, she must claim that we have no empathy.

We can measure the well-being of the people around us, whether through science or through our personal capacity for empathy. We cannot measure happiness precisely, but we still know what sort of impact our actions have on the emotional states of those around us.

Notes

[1] It may seem that physical pain decreases utility by definition, but this is not so. It is important to distinguish between suffering and physical pain. Suffering _does_ necessarily decrease utility, but some forms of pain are enjoyable. For instance, stretching one's muscles hurts, but that hurting often brings pleasure--it hurts "in a good way."

Masochists get pleasure out of physically painful experiences that cause most people to suffer. It is not inconsistent with the idea of utilitarianism to inflict physical pain upon a masochist.

When I took physics, I learned that stars radiate light all throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, and radiate the most at some point in the visible spectrum. Our sun radiates more yellow than any other frequency; blue stars radiate more blue; and red stars radiate more red. Given that visible light falls in such a narrow range (with wavelengths ranging from 400 to 700 nanometers), why do all stars’ peak frequencies occur in this range? It seems like a remarkable coincidence.

I wondered about this question for some time, until yesterday I finally realized the answer.

The sun radiates light mostly in the visible spectrum; when this light hits objects on earth, some of it is absorbed, and some is reflected. Most of the light that gets reflected is in the 400 to 700 nanometer range, so any device that picks up light will be most efficient if it can pick up this range. Our eyes evolved to use light to perceive objects, so they evolved to see light in this range. In other words, the reason we see light in the 400 to 700 nanometer range is because that is the range where the sun emits the most radiation. And we can see other stars because stars’ peak radiations do not vary all that much, so they all fall within the visible spectrum.