I hereby tender notice of my resignation from summarizing his stuff; he’s just too damn fast. I’d rather argue with him anyway. Today he answers his mail on “ethical cynicism” and most of the stuff he quotes is so bad, so far beside the point, that I don’t blame him for sounding cranky. But suddenly, apropos of no particular piece of correspondence, he posits this post-Bladerunner scenario:

And I’m not aware of any ethical system which even provides an answer to a pernicious problem that we will face sometime in the next hundred years, to wit: which of these is murder when done to a sophisticated computer which has been granted civil rights?

1. Turning it off briefly and on again, without causing harm.
2. Turning it off and leaving it off for a hundred years, and then turning it on.
3. Turning it off and never turning it back on, but leaving it undamaged so that it could be turned on again at any time.
4. Copying its memory to a new unit and then destroying the old one.
5. Copying its memory to data archive, and then destroying the computing unit.
6. Destroying the unit without backup or duplication.

Actually, if you begin with the premise of ethical egoism, which supposes an individual’s absolute right to self-ownership, these questions are reasonably straightforward. (It makes no difference whether you refer this position to Ayn Rand or Herbert Spencer or John Locke or someone else.) The machine has civil rights, it owns itself, and therefore nobody is permitted to tamper with it without its consent. One through six, it seems to me, are all violations of the machine’s rights, although which is murder and which is merely, say, assault, is a dicier question. Six is clearly murder, as Den Beste says. One clearly isn’t; it’s closer to slipping someone a mickey. Murder probably begins around four or so. Nonetheless we have already resolved the fundamental question of right and wrong and we’re merely squabbling about jail time.

Den Beste, however, is not an ethical egoist, although he certainly isn’t an altruist either. He’s not a Rule Utilitarian. He’s an “ethical cynic,” another name for which is “intuitionist.” He reserves the right to override any rule and consult his conscience instead. When people like Peter Singer are revered as moralists it is hard not to sympathize with this position. But if everyone were an ethical cynic like Den Beste, with conscience the final arbiter, discussion would have to cease. So it surprises me that he bothers to argue ethics at all.

(Update: Steven replies, asserting that I am wrong because “[i]f I hand you a pistol and command you to shoot and kill me, and if you do, you would still be committing murder. Except in certain specific cases, my consent is irrelevant.” In other words, Steven claims that assisted suicide is murder, which is an extraordinary position. One might, by analogy, call giving a beggar money robbery, because he might have pulled a gun and taken it. Presumably that is one of the “certain specified cases” where consent figures in. Perhaps it is my bias showing, but I suspect there are a lot more of those than the other kind, and we would do better to catalog the cases where “consent is irrelevant.”)

Stardate: 20021103.1547
Word Count: 2,474
Title: Iraqi Resolution
Impetus: Annoying pro-Arab reporting from Reuters and the AP. And, of course, always, the French.
Thesis: We’re going to war with Iraq, and soon, no matter what France and our other opponents in the Security Council do, and whether the Saudis let us use their airbases or not. Any silly Saudis who decide to wage freelance jihad on Iraq’s behalf will die.
Best Quote: “The next and last US resolution will still effectively grant the US the right to attack on Iraqi failure to comply. And then the US will force a vote. There will be no further important negotiation, and no further revisions. Russia and France and China will have to actually stand up and decide whether to exercise their vetos, on the record and in public. I put the chance of this happening at 3 in 4. I don’t have the slightest idea whether any or all of them will veto it, and ultimately it doesn’t matter…. There’s a 100% chance that this has destroyed any important remaining significance for the United Nations, rendering the veto power of France and Russia meaningless. I’m afraid that the Cowboy hasn’t reformed and does not intend to let France tell him what to do.”

Back early from his holiday with lots of new stuff. A mid-week post when I wasn’t looking, a lengthy discussion of ethics, and that’s not even counting a mere 843 words about the Microsoft trial. So let’s get to it, boppers:

Stardate: 20021031.2219
Word Count: 1,932
Title: Casino Notes
Impetus: Vegas vacation.
Thesis: No thesis today. He’s on vacation, OK? Give the guy a break.
Then What? Den Beste played a weird sort of strip tease slot machine, and some blackjack, and something called Pai-Gow Poker, and lost $500 all told. Chinese uses the English words for “flush,” “straight” and “joker” instead of trying to invent local equivalents so as not to pollute its language, like, of course, the French. (Actually Icelanders are even worse this way.) He hates cigar smoke.
Technical Digression: A discussion of slot machine technology.
Evaluation: A lot more interesting than I make it sound.

And now we get serious.

Stardate: 20021102.1331
Word Count: 2,370
Title: Ethical Selfishness
Impetus: Nothing immediate.
Thesis: No ethical system supplies all the right answers. Even his favorite, Rule Utilitarianism, is “much too susceptible to rationalization.” (Den Beste means utilitarians decide on their answer first and then invent its justification. Since there’s no such thing as “utile” — a commensurable unit to measure outcomes — this is tempting to do.) But altruism is clearly wrong, which means selfishness is at least sometimes right.
Engineering Analogy: Robustness, the ability of a system to handle a new challenge or a high load and keep running. Ethical systems are wanting in this regard.
Best Quote: “I categorically state that Joe is permitted to prefer his own daughter to any other child, and that it is not wrong for him to care more about Jill’s happiness than he does about starving children in Somalia.”
Evaluation: Den Beste tries to get beyond moral intuition and fails, because he asks too much. He expects an ethical system to work like a computer program: the input is the problem, the algorithm is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” or whatever, the output is the solution. But the problem, the input, can never be given with enough precision to permit this. An ethics is a heuristic and a good one helps us avoid the grosser errors. “Act to maximize your rational self-interest” is excellent moral advice; I think it is right and thus am not an “ethical cynic” in Den Beste’s sense. In the same way I think Den Beste’s “Principle of Selflessness” is wrong, and everything in his article indicates that he does too. “Rational self-interest” will save you from many serious errors; but it will not decide how relatively important your family, your colleagues, your countrymen, and your fellow humans are, and no other ethical tenets will either.

Perry of Samizdata worries about what to call a group of jack-o’-lanterns when surely he ought to be worrying about what to call a group of libertarians instead. So far the best I can do is a “spontaneous order,” but I’m sure my readers can improve on that.

(Update: Back at Samizdata, Sasha suggests party of libertarians, the current leader, although I also like fringe.)

I was listening to Jerry Cronin, the Right-to-Life Party gubernatorial candidate in New York, on the radio this morning, and he claimed that the Hippocratic Oath proscribes abortion. This sounded wrong to me, so I looked it up. Turns out he’s right. The injunctions of the original oath are remarkable. They are:

• To tithe one’s income to one’s teacher and his offspring;
• To teach, for free, anyone who swears the same oath;
• To help the sick and not to harm them (the oft-cited “first, do no harm” clause, although it isn’t put exactly that way);
• No euthanasia;
• No abortion;
• No surgery;
• No sex with patients;
• To protect the privacy of patients and their families.

Leaving aside the question of whether this medical advice is actually Hippocratic, it is certainly, for the most part, medical advice. (Unsound and out-of-date medical advice in my view, but that’s another matter.) The modern version, to which the overwhelming majority of medical students are still required to swear, is rather different. There are many but this is among the most popular.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

The tithing and teaching provisions have been reduced to an anodyne exhortation to “respect” and “gladly share” one’s scientific knowledge. The medical advice has disappeared altogether, replaced by vague social duties. What are the “special obligations” that doctors owe to the “sound of mind and body”? To what extent, exactly, is a doctor obliged to account for his patient’s “family and economic stability,” and how is this a medical matter?

Respecting patients’ privacy survives more or less intact; the rest is cuddle clauses. If you want a warm, sympathetic, understanding, humble doctor with awareness of his own frailty, be my guest. I’d prefer a cold, nasty, arrogant doctor whose knowledge if his field is current and who will back, when necessary, his best medical judgment to the hilt. You can have Charles Bovary; I’ll take Monsieur Larivire. Doctors of my acquaintance tell me that no one takes the modern oath very seriously, which is fortunate. But if it isn’t taken seriously why should it be taken at all?