Moral pitfalls

[obyvatel]

I think that, from another perspective, that quote also points out how "moral choices in the face of some emergency" is being thought about in a quite different state of being than the state that one would be in, were one of those situations real.

My understanding, which I get from military, police and factory-related first responder CPR and haz-mat training, is that when an emergency situation happens and the limbic system is active, the usual mode of the slower thinking center is gone - perhaps suppressed or inhibited along with all the pre-screened plans for "what I would do in that situation". That fact is probably the main reason why we had to practice so many of the drills in the first place - to have some response patterns present in our physiological makeup in order to increase the probabilities of a useful response that would maximize the odds of survival. In the absence of any physical training, the idea is to simply "pay attention to all your senses, all the way around you, "know" what and where any threats are and "weigh" how imminent is a particular threat likely to be.

My personal experience with limited emergency type scenarios has been that the thinking center is not necessarily overridden in such situations. Physical training focuses on "how to do" something - but the "what to do" comes first. Someone who has put some thought and consequent preparation for a potential situation is better off than someone who has never considered the possibility of being in such a situation. The real situation does not match what is pre-planned - but any preparation that may have gone into it helps at least in the sense of giving a mental anchor point since something of a similar nature has at least been considered in the mind earlier. Physical training reinforces this sense of pseudo-familiarity and preparedness and also boosts the level of confidence that one is capable of carrying out what one has planned. At least that is my current understanding.

I had one experience many years ago. I was traveling to a distant rural area with a couple of friends. On our way there on a night bus, we sat in the front and saw that there were two armed security guards seated close to the driver. We were all young and naive and none of us had seen armed guards on buses before. We had heard of armed robberies on rural highways in that part of the country - so it made sense. But as the night went on, I was watching the guards doze off with their guns in their laps and could not help thinking that if something happened, they would in no way be able to protect us. Then I started to think what I would do in such a situation. I did not have any self-defence training - so the initial fantasies of me being a hero and beating up bad guys quickly evaporated. I do not distinctly remember all of what I was thinking at that time but one of the things was that I should hide some money in my shoes and leave some in my money bag so that I could get all of us home in the event of getting robbed. This was before the age of cell phones and where we came from, not much was expected from the "system". Another thought was that perhaps sitting in the back of the bus was a better idea. Anyway, I dozed off after this and the first leg of the journey was quite uneventful.

While coming back, we got into seats in the very back end of the bus. It was the night bus again and we dozed off. Suddenly we were awakened by some commotion in the front of the bus and though we could not see much, it was soon apparent that the bus was indeed stopped by an armed gang and we were being robbed. I did what I had thought about earlier - shoved most of the money into my shoes while leaving some in my purse - away from the view of the robbers who had gotten on in the front of the bus . I had a watch which was a gift from a dear aunt and had great sentimental value for me but I decided not to hide it as given my general appearance, it would have raised suspicions. This was a spur of the moment decision for me. Anyway, we were soon made to get down from the bus in the darkness of a deserted road to which the robbers had diverted the bus. They took what they could from us - purses, watches etc while we were getting down and ordered us to leave our luggage in the seats. As we stood outside, a few robbers with guns kept watch on all the passengers while the others went rummaging through the luggage inside the bus. They got a great loot as most of the passengers were small scale traders and businessmen who were traveling to a sort of periodic and temporary market that got set up in rural areas for business transactions. Anyway, they took off with the cash and did not harm anyone except for a security guard who suffered some injuries.

At the end of it all, I was the only person in our group who was left with some money which I had stashed away. It was not a big deal and not a survival based situation with a moral dilemma - but for myself and my friends at that age, it was a completely alien and traumatic experience. I am quite sure that had I not played out the scenario in my head on our way there, I would have gone into a "freeze" state like the others and would not have done what I did - though it was not of any great import in the bigger scheme of things.

fwiw

 

[ana]

Re: Moral pitfalls

Well, if we take into account that cosmic or other catastrophes mirror the human experience then maybe it is reasonable to think that catastrophes are brought due to the same human state, and if this is the case, a society who is living with real knowledge and a specific orientation may not suffer the physical consequences of its own decline...?

Maybe. I would think that even in times of peaceful living in a society with knowledgeable people, there still will be possibilities of catastrophes happening. Not really that much because of them mirroring the human state perhaps in this case, but maybe as cyclical natural happenings? And it really was just an example, I think there are many situations possible in which a person or more people might have to think what the first thing to do would be the best for all considered, in which the third force would play a role.

Another example would be: A mother takes some let's say healing herbs (just to be safe) and some other stuff with her while she goes into the woods with her two sons. And let's say that they decide to make a meal in the woods, of which both sons eat of, but somehow they start showing a certain severe allergic reaction and the mother notices that the amount of her healing herbs is not enough for the both of them. So what would she do? Of course one of the boys might say that the other should have it, because he himself is older and can hold it out a little longer or whatever. Or maybe she could divide the amount, but would that still be effective? So this is just an example in which the mother has to think of the whole situation, in a pretty short amount of time, in order to make the right decision to be able to bring both boys home and safe, and treat them there further.

And you know, one can say that it was the mother's fault for not bringing enough healing herbs, but we're human really, and I think that not everything will go smoothly and perfect all the time, even if we do know better, we can make mistakes. I would think that even in such a society, there can be many everyday challenges for every human being. If everything would go smooth, then there would be little space for lessons to be learned, I think. Perhaps there would be different kind of lessons in such a society, but I think there still will be things to learn from... Just my thoughts here!

I agree, maybe not little space but very gradual change in evolution, and that may be one of the reasons why the C’s say that the Fall is a repeating syndrome and then they also talk about the long wave cycle and the short wave cycle and how this latest speeds up the learning process !

 

[luke wilson]

Interesting thread. An interesting scenarrio that I thought off was that from the Titanic movie, where the ship is sinking - so there is a time constraint, you don't have forever to think of a solution - and there is limited lifeboats. So who gets priority to go on the life boats? The sad fact is, people will sink with the ship as the boats cannot carry everyone. If I remember correctly, in the movie, women and children were prioritised.

In terms of this experiments, I think it is important to realise that limited options are given since experimenters usually start there experiments with the aim of testing something specific beforehand, so they design there experiments to this effect. Behavioural Economics has some interesting experiments

_http://www.altruists.org/ideas/economics/behavioral/

Behavioural Economics seeks inspiration not from mathematical formulae, but from studying how people actually behave. Its results challenge the classical assumptions of homo economicus, that people are 100% rational, perfectly informed self-maximisers.

A typical experiment is the so-called 'Ultimatum Game', which involves two people (A and B) and 10 coins.

# Person A has 10 coins and places some of them in front of him, and the rest in front of person B, who is asked whether or not he accepts the proposed allocation. If B says 'Yes', then both A & B keep the coins in front of them.
# if B says 'No', then neither player gets any of the coins.

Game theory assumes (as do most economic models) that individuals are self-maximising - that irrespective of all else, they seek the most for themselves.

In this example, since 2>0, the theory predicts that player B would say 'Yes', resulting in a payoff of (8,2). Since player A can see this, he is able to simplify the game tree by ignoring branches that the theory predicts that player B will never play. This results in the simplified game tree shown below:


Also a self-maximiser, player A now chooses which of the available outcomes is best for him; he places 9 coins in font of him, and just a single coin in front of player B

This is a fine theory, but unfortunately it's not how real people play the game.

How do people actually play?

Player A usually splits the coins nearly evenly, averaging around 6:4, and player B usually accepts this offer. Interestingly, autistic players are the only ones who consistently split the coins 9:1, as game theory predicts.
Player B usually accepts the allocation when the coins are fairly evenly split. However, with unfair allocations, especially when offered only a single coin, very few people make the 'logical' decision to accept the offer.

Why don't people actually play as the theory predicts?

The answer to this question should be obvious to anyone who has not been trained in game theory. If player B accepts a very unequal offer, this would mean rewarding player A's greed, so instead of cooperating he is prepared to suffer a loss himself. Basically, people like things to be fair, and if they don't perceive what is going on as being fair, they are prepared to suffer in order to punish those they see as the source of the unfairness. In a world in which the gap between the materially rich and materially poor is growing ever wider, this phenomenon - referred to as 'altruistic punishment' - is of great relevance to us all. In fact, it makes sense to ask the question the other way round: "Why not use a theory which predicts how people actually play?"

In reality, people do care about the welfare of others,
so we are developing altruistic economics to deal with this fact.
We're not trying to fit the people to the model, but fit the model to the people.

Pressed Post whilst still making my post so didn't get chance to finish, but the gist of it is that it is hard to predict what is the right/wrong decision. It depends on what point of view one takes.

 

[luke wilson]

The above example is something that you can play easy! Just imagine you are the one with 10 coins, to make it even more emotionally impactful imagine 10 million dollars and someone else has nothing. What would you give them? 4 MILLION? 100000? What is the correct decision and what isn't? How do you justify this? Maybe give them 0 but if forced to give them anything, give them just enough to eradicate your guilt and then that is it! Interesting questions and there are multiple experiments that try to test for this. Usually simple ones that anybody can play... However problems arise since it's hard to mirror realism as it doesn't mirror real life situation especially in situations where the participants know each other or where the objects of trade are inconsequential etc...

But these decisions are made everyday in every corner of life, in wall street, in your dealings with your neighbour etc. Usually small things that pass unnoticed but those wall-street decisions I suppose aren't small... Anways, you get the idea.

Here are some interesting experiments that demonstrate irrationality.

We always seek to draw comparisons, and we are often unaware as to how seemingly irrelvant factors such as the simple presentation of options, actually influence what we select.



Thus, given three choices, A, B (very distinct, but equally as attractive as A), and A- (similar to A, but inferior), we will almost always choose A, because it is clearly superior to A-.

* Say we are trying to decide on a vacation between two choices: a Paris trip with free breakfast and a Rome trip with free breakfast. We cannot decide between the two because we love Paris and Rome equally.
o Simply adding a third option - an "A minus" version of one of the options, will cause us to pick the A version, over the equally atractive B version.
+ Thus, the simple addition of a third "A-" option, "Paris without a free breakfast", will cause us to choose "Paris with a free breakfast", the "A" option, over "Rome with a free breakfast", the equally attractive "B" option.
+ Similarly, had the third option added been "B minus" - "Rome without a free breakfast", we would have selected that "B" option - "Rome with a free breakfast".
o This is irrational behavior because in the presence of two equal options, we couldn't decide between the two, and the presence of a third, inferior option, shouldn't cause us to suddenly prefer one of the two.
* Ariely did an experiment where he used photos of undergrads to test this; 75% of research subjects chose choice A over choice B.
* When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a "deluxe" version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain
* Tversky and Kahneman conducted the following experiment
o When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7
o When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7
o The amount saved and time involved are the same, but people make very different choices

Watch out for relative thinking; it comes naturally to all of us.

Also it is important to keep in mind the very REAL differences of people across different nations, cultures and age groups. For example it has been shown that culture definately does affect decision making... Age groups as well and level of maturity, expertise, training etc.

 

[Buddy]

I like the way you worded that, obyvatel. I tried to account for a variability of response states with "depending on intensity" but used an example at the extreme end of the spectrum.

[quote author=obyvatel]
Physical training focuses on "how to do" something - but the "what to do" comes first. Someone who has put some thought and consequent preparation for a potential situation is better off than someone who has never considered the possibility of being in such a situation. The real situation does not match what is pre-planned - but any preparation that may have gone into it helps at least in the sense of giving a mental anchor point since something of a similar nature has at least been considered in the mind earlier.[/quote]

After some more thought, I do agree there are some people (maybe many) whose confidence can benefit from rehearsal. Even if what they actually wind up doing is totally different from what they rehearsed, I can see how some confidence could make their responses quicker. For one thing, options or possibilities wouldn't have to be filtered through a panic state before arriving at the point of awareness.