Should Remorse Mitigate a Criminal Sentence?

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Remorse is a much-touted and widely-respected virtue. If you do something wrong, we often think you should feel remorseful about it. Indeed, if you feel remorseful about it, we may be less inclined to punish you for what you did.

That we value remorse in this way is clear. Sentencing decisions at criminal trials are influenced by ‘mitigating factors’. These are factors — often specified by some legal instrument — that should reduce or lessen the sanction imposed upon a convicted criminal. Many jurisdictions explicitly identify remorse as a mitigating factor. And in some of those jurisdictions it plays a central role. For example, in a 2011 survey in England and Wales, remorse was found to be the most commonly invoked mitigating factor in six out of eight offence types. In other jurisdictions it has been found to make a difference between a life sentence and the death penalty.

All of which raises two questions: What exactly is remorse? And why should it influence decision-making in this way? This is something that the legal and bioethical scholar Hannah Maslen has thought about at length. In this post, I’m going to briefly sketch out the answers she gives to both question. I do so on the basis of an article she co-wrote with Jonathan Pugh entitled ‘Drugs that Make You Feel Bad’? Remorse-Based Mitigation and Neurointerventions’. The article is a fascinating exploration of the potential ways in which neurotechnologies could be used to induce remorse in criminal offenders. I might cover this aspect of the article on a later occasion. For now, I want to focus purely on what it says about the nature of remorse and the reasons for its invocation in criminal sentencing decisions.


1. A Three Part Account of Remorse
To explain what remorse is, we will work with an example. My partner really liked a flower plant that she bought. She put it on the windowsill in our room. I happened to hate it. While she was away I neglected to water the plant. The plant died. When she got back I told her how sorry I was: I had been very busy and totally forgot to water it. She accepted my apology. Secretly, I was glad the flowers were gone.

Since I told her I was sorry, I gave one of the common outward performances of remorse. But was I really remorseful? Hardly. Most people would agree there was something deficient about both my thoughts and my actions. But what exactly was missing? Maslen argues that there are three crucial elements to any true instance of remorse. These elements define, if you like, the necessary conditions for genuine remorse.

The first is the cognitive element. This refers to the kinds of beliefs we must have in order to be genuinely remorseful. There are two main categories of belief that we must have. First, we must have non-evaluative beliefs regarding the actions we performed. There are two of these:

(a) ‘I performed X’

(b) ‘X affected another identifiable agent’

So to turn to the example of the unwatered flowers, I would have to believe that I failed to water them (that’s technically an omission rather than an action) and that my failure to water them had an effect on my partner. Now, given the way in which I described it, it’s probable that I did have these two beliefs. But I wasn’t truly remorseful, so they cannot be what marks the difference between genuine and non-genuine remorse.

This brings us to the second category of belief. Maslen argues that we must also have evaluative beliefs about our actions. In other words, we must believe that our actions had a particular moral quality that warrants the remorse. Again, there are two of these evaluative beliefs:

c) ‘Performing X significantly wronged the victim’ (i.e. the identifiable agent)

(d) ‘I am blameworthy for wronging the victim through performing act X’

Do these apply in the unwatered flower case? Maybe. I might really believe that failing to water the plants is wrong and that it deeply upset my partner. I might also believe that I deserve to be reprimanded for it. But I suspect this is unlikely. I suspect I didn’t really believe that what I did was wrong. I might have thought that she thought it was wrong — hence my apology — but I don’t think it’s wrong. Or I might think that it is a little bit wrong, but that there was an outweighing good at stake: getting rid of the flowers that I don’t like.

The second element in Maslen’s account is the affective element. It is not enough to have the correct mix of evaluative and non-evaluative beliefs. You must also have certain feelings with respect to your actions, the agent affected by them, and the wider situation in which you both find yourselves. Maslen suggests that three feelings in particular are apposite:

(a) You must have sympathy for the plight of the victim.

(b) You must have self-hatred for your own malevolence.

c) You must have sorrow, despair and possibly fear regarding the wider situation.

I suspect all three of these things are absent in the unwatered flowers case. I didn’t feel any genuine sympathy for the plight of my partner. I’d probably prefer if she was not unhappy, but I wasn’t deeply moved by the possibility of her being unhappy. I also had no sense of self-hatred for the malevolence of my omission. On the contrary, I was happy to be rid of the flowers. And I certainly didn’t have some profound sense of sorrow and despair about the wider situation. I was happy to be given the opportunity (and excuse) to end the flowers’ lives.

The third element in Maslen’s account is the motivational element. On top of having the right mix of beliefs and emotions, you must also be motivated to do things to make up for your wrongdoing. In particular, you must:

(a) Have the sincere intention not to do X again (this need not be a successful intention — you may lapse or slip-up — but you must have it)

(b) Have the desire to atone, which most commonly involves apologising for what you did.

It goes without saying that both were absent in the unwatered flower case. After the wrongdoing, I didn’t form an intention not to do X. If I were given the opportunity, I would undoubtedly do it again. I really didn’t like those flowers. Also, although I did apologise to her, I didn’t really have the desire to atone. I was merely going through the motions — kowtowing to social convention.

One final point. In certain parts of Pugh and Maslen’s paper it is suggested that the three elements by themselves are insufficient for remorse. The elements must also relate to each other in the right way. Quite what that relationship is, is a little bit unclear, but at a minimum it seems to require that the cognitive element drives the affective element, and that these in turn give rise to the motivational element.

I have tried to illustrate this account of remorse in the diagram below.

2. Why should we value remorse?
Now that we have a clearer sense of what is required in order to be genuinely remorseful, we can focus on the more important question: why should we care? There is, no doubt, an interesting psychological and sociological tale to be told about how we as a society developed a fondness for remorse. But let’s set that to the side and focus on the normative justification for remorse in criminal sentencing.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to defend punishment in the criminal law. There is the consequentialist way and the retributive way. According to the consequentialist, punishment is justified if it helps us to achieve various desired consequences. The most widely desired consequences would include: deterrence (both general and specific); social safety; and rehabilitation. To take just one example (deterrence), the consequentialist might say that punishment is justified if helps to deter both the punishee and other would-be offenders from committing the same crime in the future.

Contrast this with the retributivist. According to them, punishment is justified intrinsically, not instrumentally. In other words, it is right and proper to inflict harsh treatment (i.e. punishment) on some offenders because they deserve it (and irrespective of any desirable consequences this may achieve). There are all sorts of accounts of desert in the literature — I’ve written about them before — but most commonly they involve offenders who knowingly and willingly perform wrongful acts. There is some evidence to suggest that we are innate retributivists and hence quite comfortable with the retributive justification for punishment.

These two normative justifications are relevant here because mitigating factors are understood to lessen the justification for imposing punishment on a particular offender. So if an offender appeals to mitigating factors they are, in effect, arguing that the typical rationales for punishment are less applicable to their scenario: that punishment is less warranted in their case. All of this implies that remorse, when it is present, must undermine the warrant for punishment.

This is easy enough to understand in the consequentialist case. It is possible to see how someone who believes they did wrong, has profound feelings of sympathy for their victim, and forms a sincere intention not to do wrong again, might be in less need of punishment than someone who lacked these mental states. For instance, remorse might function as its own deterrent and might make the offender less of a social risk and more amenable to rehabilitation. In this manner, the presence of genuine remorse might allow us to achieve the desired consequences without the need for punishment.

It might be less easy to understand in the retributive case. If I willingly performed (or omitted) some wrongful act, then I deserve to be punished (according to the retributivist). It’s hard to see how genuine remorse lessens my desert. After all, retributivism is an inherently backward-looking justification for punishment: you did the crime so you must do the time. Post facto remorse doesn’t change the past. But there are aspects of the retributivist view that lend support to remorse. One slightly paradoxical idea is that retributivism is a better justification for punishment than consequentialism because it treats the offender with dignity. That is to say, it respects the offender’s agency and responsibility more than consequentialist. Part of respecting that agency might involve respecting the fact that they themselves have come to understand how problematic their act was and respecting the fact that they are now experiencing some psychological anguish as a result. This psychological anguish might be thought of as a kind of auto-retributivism (self punishment) that means the state is less warranted in imposing harsh treatment.

So those are some possible grounds for accepting the mitigating role of remorse. I’m going to leave it there for now. Hopefully this post has shed some light on the philosophical nature of remorse and its potential justifications.

New Paper - An Evaluative Conservative Case for Biomedical Enhancement

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I have another academic paper coming out. This one tries to argue that there is a strong conservative case for favouring biomedical forms of enhancement. I don't really endorse the conservative moral framework outlined in the paper. My goal is simply to show how that outlook can be used to defend biomedical enhancement.

You might think it is odd for me to argue in this way - to defend a position using a set of moral principles that I don't accept - but I think this kind of faux sincere argumentation is valuable for two reasons. First, it shows how many different moral perspectives converge on the same conclusion -- this can be useful for both political and pragmatic reasons and can help to achieve a wide reflective equilibrium in ethical analysis. Second, and more selfishly, I think it helps you to develop your intellectual muscle. You are forced to

The paper will be published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The official version will be out soon. Full details are below:

Title: An Evaluative Conservative Case for Biomedical Enhancement

Journal: Journal of Medical Ethics

Links: PhilPapers; Academia; Official

Abstract:  It is widely believed that a conservative moral outlook is opposed to biomedical forms of human enhancement. In this paper, I argue that this widespread belief is incorrect. Using Cohen’s evaluative conservatism as my starting point, I argue that there are strong conservative reasons to prioritise the development of biomedical enhancements. In particular, I suggest that biomedical enhancement may be essential if we are to maintain our current evaluative equilibrium (i.e. the set of values that undergird and permeate our current political, economic, and personal lives) against the threats to that equilibrium posed by external, non-biomedical forms of enhancement. I defend this view against modest conservatives who insist that biomedical enhancements pose a greater risk to our current evaluative equilibrium, and against those who see no principled distinction between the forms of human enhancement.

Does Self-Tracking Promote Autonomy? An Initial Argument

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Seneca was a wealthy Roman stoic and advisor to the emperor Nero. In the third of his Letters from a Stoic, entitled ‘On True and False Friendship’, he makes the following observation:

As to yourself, although you should live in such a way that you trust your own self with nothing which you could not entrust even to your own enemy, yet, since certain matters occur which convention keeps secret, you should share with a friend at least all your worries and reflections.

I doubt it was foremost in Seneca’s mind, but I see in this short passage some useful reflections for current debates about privacy and autonomy in an era of mass surveillance. Seneca says three important things in it. First, he suggests that the ideal life is one in which you have no real secrets (i.e. there is nothing that you do that could not be entrusted to your own enemy). Second, he acknowledges that this ideal is unrealistic and that convention requires some degree of secrecy. And third, he suggests that controlled disclosures of private facts to discrete others (in this case close friends) is part of the well-lived life.

All three of these ideas surface in Marjolien Lanzing’s paper ‘The Transparent Self’. In the paper, Lanzing takes issue with some of the claims underlying the quantified self (or self-tracking) movement. Some of you will be familiar with this movement; some of you may even utilise self-tracking technologies on a daily basis. The gist of Lanzing’s paper is that there is a tension within the quantified self worldview. Although many of its proponents think that self-tracking enables greater autonomy, the reality is that it serves to undermine autonomy. The reasoning can be summarised in the following (informal) manner:

Claim₁: According to its proponents, self-tracking enhances one’s autonomy.

Claim₂: Informational privacy is a necessary condition for autonomy.

Claim₃: Use of self-tracking technologies undermines informational privacy.

Conclusion: Contrary to its proponents, use of self-tracking technologies undermines autonomy.

Now, to be clear, Lanzing isn’t quite as explicit about the reasoning in her paper, but I think this is a pretty fair reconstruction. I want to go through each step in the argument. I’m going to spread my analysis out over two posts. In this post, I’ll focus on the first claim: the alleged link between self-tracking and autonomy-enhancement.


1. What is autonomy anyway?
I outlined a simple pro-autonomy argument for self-tracking in a previous post. I want to be a bit more thoughtful and systematic in this post. To do that, I will start with a particular account of what it means to be autonomous and modify it in light of some concerns.

Anyone who is familiar with the literature, will know that ‘autonomy’ is a contested concept. It is supposed to refer the concept of self government but there are several different accounts of self-government means in practical terms. Picking one particular account out of the morass might seem a little arbitrary, but it’s exactly what I am going to do here. I am going to pick out Joseph Raz’s definition of ‘autonomy’ and use it as the basis for an argument in favour of self-tracking. I do so because I think his account is reasonably expansive, and appropriately vague as to what is meant by some of its key conditions. Here it is:

If a person is to be maker or author of his own life then he must have the mental abilities to form intentions of a sufficiently complex kind, and plan their execution. These include minimum rationality, the ability to comprehend the means required to realize his goals, the mental faculties necessary to plan actions, etc. For a person to enjoy an autonomous life he must actually use these faculties to choose what life to have. There must in other words be adequate options available for him to choose from. Finally, his choice must be free from coercion and manipulation by others, he must be independent.

(Raz, The Morality of Freedom 1986, 373)

There are three important conditions of autonomy embedded in this quoted passage. They are (a) the person must have the minimum rationality to plan actions that will allow them to achieve their goals; (b) they must have adequate options available to choose from; and c) they must be independent, which Raz takses to mean free from coercion and manipulation when making and implementing their choices.

You can understand these as minimal or threshold conditions for autonomy. In other words, you can say that once a minimal degree of rationality is achieved, once there is an adequate range of options available, and once there is independence from others (in some appropriately defined sense) then there is an autonomous life. That’s all there is to it. It is also possible, I believe, to understand these three conditions as defining a dimensional space of possible degrees of autonomy. In other words, to hold that the higher the degree of rationality and independence, and the more options available to you, the more autonomous you become. That said, if one embraces this dimensional view of autonomy, one must be sensitive to the possibility that once you go beyond a certain level of independence, rationality (and so on) you may start to experience diminishing marginal returns. Indeed, at extreme levels it is possible that there is an inverse relationship between an increase along those dimensions and autonomy.

An example of this inverse relationship might be the so-called ‘paradox of choice’. This is an effect that has been discussed by psychologists which suggests that if you have too much choice you become unable to make a decision. You become paralysed by excessive choice. Think about those times when you sit down to watch a movie on Netflix and can’t make up your mind because there is a seemingly endless list to choose from. Since the ability to execute a decision is (presumably) central to being the author of one’s life, excessive choice may consequently undermine autonomy. I return to this point later.

It is also worth thinking about the complexities that arise in relation to Raz’s third condition (the independence condition). This states that in order to live an autonomous life you must be free from coercion and manipulation by others. While this certainly seems like a plausible requirement, it should be noted that some degree of external coercion may be necessary in order to achieve one’s goals. This is the central paradox underlying liberal modes of government. Many prominent liberal authors argue that some coercion by the state is necessary if you are to be free from coercion and manipulation by your fellow citizens (the classic Hobbesian argument). There is undoubtedly something faintly paradoxical about this but it seems to be borne out by our collective history: a lingering threat of coercive interference by the state (or other institutional actor) seems to be integral to maintaining peace and stability. Another important point is that not all autonomy-undermining manipulations are going to come from other people. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We have cognitive and motivational biases that draw us away from doing what we most want to do. Weakness of the will and procrastination are obvious examples of this. It’s possible that by consenting to some degree of external manipulation we may be able to overcome these biases and allow ourselves to do what we most want to do.

We can reformulate the Razian account of autonomy to take account of these considerations:

Autonomy: If you have (a) the rationality to select the appropriate means to your desired ends; (b) an adequate range of options; and c) are free from most external and internal sources of interference with, and coercion and manipulation of, your will, then you are autonomous. Indeed, the more you have of each, the more autonomous you are (up to some point of diminishing returns).

I’ll have more to say about autonomy as the post develops, but that suffices for the introduction.


2. Does Self-Tracking Enhance Autonomy?
With Raz’s definition in tow, we can start to build a case for the autonomy-enhancing powers of self-tracking technologies. Let’s start by getting a clearer sense of what these technologies do. There are many examples out there, at least some of which will be familiar to readers. Smartphones and other wearable technologies now contain within them a variety of sensors. These sensors enable the devices to collect information about the user’s activities. The FitBit is an obvious example. It collects information about heart rate, number of steps taken, distance traversed, sleep movements, calories burned and so on. When this information is processed by appropriate software, it enables the user to build up a sophisticated profile of daily activity. Other wearables can do similar or indeed more impressive things. Since the number of such sensor-laden devices and the array of sensors with which they are equipped is growing, we can expect to have even more self-tracking power in the future.

What’s more, most self-tracking technologies are not purely about self-tracking. They typically incorporate some element of behaviour change into their design as well. The idea is that the information collected and processed by these devices can be used to motivate you to change your behaviour in various ways. This desire for behaviour change is very clear from the marketing on the FitBit webpage. The makers hope that by collecting more detailed information about your physical activity they will be able to prompt you to become fitter, sleep better and generally improve your well-being. Makers of such devices often achieve this through some degree of gamification, i.e. by using the data to create a game-like motivation system in which you are rewarded when you achieve certain goals (that are tracked and verified by the device).

Understood in these terms, there are two important ways in which self-tracking technology could be said to enhance autonomy:

Gaining insight: The devices allow you to learn more about yourself, i.e. what you actually do, what prevents you from doing what you want to do, and so on. This information can facilitate self-experimentation, which allows you to gain even greater insight into what works for you and what doesn’t. All of this supports your autonomy by enhancing your means-ends reasoning power (i.e. rationality), which was the first of Raz’s three conditions.

Motivational scaffolding/outsourcing: The devices provide an external motivational scaffold that allows you to overcome internal motivational biases. This facilitates autonomy by ensuring that you are able to pursue your goals with minimal interference from your internal biases. In other words, it enables greater independence, which was Raz’s third condition (as modified by my comments towards the end of the previous section).

(There are also ways in which these technologies could alert you as to the existence of additional options or choices. Thus, they may enhance autonomy along the third dimension too, but I won’t develop that idea in this post.)

The upshot of this is that we are able to make the following pro-autonomy argument in favour of self-tracking technologies:

• (1) If you have (a) an ability to select the means appropriate to achieving your goals; (b) an adequate range of options to choose from and c) you are free from most forms of internal and external interference with, and coercion and manipulation of, your will, then you are autonomous. Indeed, the more of (a) - c) you have, the greater your autonomy (up to some point of diminishing returns).

• (2) Self-tracking technologies enable you to enhance your ability to select the means appropriate to achieving your goals (by helping you to gain insight into yourself) and provide motivational scaffolding that minimises internal sources of interference with your will.

• (3) Therefore, self-tracking technologies enhance your autonomy.

Is this argument any good? There are some obvious criticisms. For starters, as noted above, the account of autonomy I have defended is far from being the only game in town, and my modifications of the basic Razian position are not uncontroversial. I think they are defensible, but there are undoubtedly flaws that need to be ironed out. That would create problems for premise (1). It’s also possible that self-tracking apps are not that good at helping us to gain insight into ourselves or in providing valuable motivational scaffolding. For example, there has recently been some criticism of Fitbits on the grounds that the data they collect is not that accurate. If this is true, then they may not enable much insight. Furthermore, I have some psychologist friends who argue that the behaviour change aspects of many self-tracking apps are not appropriately grounded in the science of behaviour change (though some apps are better than others). So they may not be great at providing motivational scaffolding either. This would cast premise (2) into doubt.

These criticisms are worth pursuing, but I set them to one side here. This is because Lanzing’s argument against self-tracking is largely willing to grant that the apps enable insight and help with motivational scaffolding. She simply argues that the devices undermine autonomy in other ways. We’ll address those in part two. Doing so will bring us back to Seneca’s thoughts about privacy, controlled disclosures and the well-lived life.

Is Effective Altruism Fair to Small Donors? (Guest Post by Iason Gabriel)

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(NOTE: This is a guest post by Iason Gabriel from St. John's College Oxford. I recently did a series on Iason's excellent article 'Effective Altruism and its Critics'. In this post, Iason develops his counterfactual critique of effective altruism. Be sure to check out more of Iason's work on his academia page.)


In a recent article about effective altruism I argued that the impact of individuals giving to EA-recommended charities is often tiny or non-existent. Even without the contribution of small donors their funding needs are likely to be met.


1. The Counterfactual Problem
I supported this claim with three further observations:

• The top charities have limited room for more funding – given organizational constraints there is only so much money they can spend effectively. 

• Large donors such as GoodVentures and the Global Fund are attentive to EA recommendations or use similar evidence and standards to allocate funds. 

• The amount of money they have at their disposal vastly exceeds the funding needs of these top charities. 

As a result I argued that even if individuals gave less, it’s very likely that large donors would step forward and fill any gap.

As John notes in his own analysis of this problem it has disturbing implications. It means, among other things, the impact of giving to a ‘top charity’ is not in distributing new mosquito nets or medicines, as EAs have claimed. These things would have happened anyway. Rather, it’s the transfer of funds from individuals to large donors who already have a surfeit of funds.

Of course, one might hope that large donors pass on additional funds to projects that are equally effective further down the line. But this is unlikely to be the case. High-impact proven interventions are rare, foundations often struggle to allocate the resources they already have, and it’s possible that the money will never be spent at all.

A proper grasp of these dynamics could deter people who are rational and informed from following EA recommendations in the future.


2. The ‘Splitting’ Strategy 
Recognizing this problem, GiveWell and GoodVentures have recently changed their approach to funding – and committed to a strategy of ‘splitting’. Each year they’ll announce in advance what the funding needs of their top charities are, declare what portion they intend to meet, and make a commitment not to do any more than this – even if there is a shortfall within that funding cycle.

This approach has certain advantages. On the one hand, the money that GiveWell and GoodVentures allocate directly will help their charities perform important activities and reward good performance. On the other hand, their declared limits provide other donors with an incentive to contribute. This also means that top charities should be able to access diverse funding streams – something that is good for their organizational health.


3. Effectiveness and Fairness
Yet splitting also has major problems.

To begin with, it does not fully address the counterfactual problem for individual donors. Even if GoodVentures no longer intends to pick up the slack caused by a shortfall in individual donations, other large donors are still prepared to do so. So long as they are prepared step up to the plate, concerns about the impact of small donations remain in place.

More worrying still is a situation in which other large donors also hold back resources. If their policies really would lead to a collective shortfall in funds for top charities, then individual EAs have reason to feel aggrieved.

On the one hand, they are now truly in a position where they must provide funds, given that failure to do so would lead to significant suffering or loss of life. On the other hand, this situation has been foisted upon them. They are required to provide assistance – at considerable personal cost – while billionaires and foundations stand idly by.

A basic principle of fairness is that those who have the greatest capacity to pay should do so, all else being equal. Yet this principle is violated by the distribution of costs I have mentioned. Why should college students have to pick up the slack, when others could provide life-saving assistance at little or no personal cost?


4. Giving Gladly?
When asked about their giving habits, many EAs answer that they incur no personal cost – because it is something that they find rewarding and they ‘give gladly’. But it is a core tenet of EA that consequences matter. EAs are happy to give because they believe that their actions make an important contribution to the lives of poor people.

Yet if the present analysis is correct, then either the marginal impact of giving is negligible, or it is impactful – but only because other actors are not doing their fair share to support these causes. This is something that we should all care about.

Algocracy: Opportunities and Risks (videocast with Adam Ford)

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Myself and Adam Ford just had a long conversation about algocracy. The discussion centred around my paper 'The Threat of Algocracy' but we took many interesting diversions into topics relating to algorithmic governance, moral agency and moral patiency, sousveillance, the extended mind, the hackability of algocratic governance systems and more. Unfortunately, our skype connection cut out about half way through the conversation so this is divided into a part one and a part two.

Embedded videos are below, followed by some relevant links.

Relevant Links

• 'The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation'

• The Logical Space of Algocracy

• The Three types of Algorithmic Opacity

• Neural Enhancement and the Extended Mind

• Are we heading for a singularity of crime?

• What's the case for sousveillance? Part One

• What's the case for sousveillance? Part Two

• My interview on Review the Future about the threat of algocracy

• My interview on Review the Future about the future of work and the meaning of life

• Algocracy and Transhumanism Podcast #2 with James Hughes on transhumanist politics and algocracy

• Algocracy and Transhumanism Podcast #1 with Tal Zarsky on the ethics of big data and predictive analytics

Interview with Futurezone about Technological Unemployment and the Meaning of Life

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I recently had the privilege of being interviewed for the Austrian website Futurezone about the future of work and the meaning of life. The interview was translated into German from a conversation conducted via email in English. The official published version is available here. I have reproduced the English email responses below. There are some discrepancies between them. I don't really speak German (minimal, direction-seeking competence) so if anyone does and can produce a better re-translation, I'd be interested in it.

Here it is...

1. Do you think that we are headed towards a world of technological unemployment? If so, by when might it reach a critical point?

I'm wary of making predictions about this, particularly since similar historical concerns about technological unemployment have always proved to be unfounded. There are some reasons to think that 'this time it's different'. If we create AI with general and not simply narrow intelligence then I think we are heading for a radically different world. But I'm not sure when this will happen.

I do, however, think that irrespective of achieving general AI, technology is dramatically altering the types of jobs that are done by humans (e.g. Autor's polarisation effect). This is happening already and is having a noticeable impact on job stability and income.

2. What would it mean for your argument if only part of the world would reach a point where machines take over most of the work?

My argument is about the impact on meaning and human flourishing. If only part of the world reaches a point where machines take over most work, then presumably the same issues would arise in that part of the world. The only thing that would disrupt the analysis is what is happening in the rest of the world and how they react. Will they be jealous of those who have achieved technological unemployment or thankful that they still have jobs? Will people try to migrate away from or to those regions? I can see arguments for both sides, and I try to outline them in paper (i.e. reasons why people would want to have jobs and want to avoid them).

I should also add that the international picture would depend very much on how the income distribution problem is resolved.

3. What would happen to the quest for social status in a world where differences in income and class would presumably be leveled?

People will fight for status in other ways, I suspect. One thing I didn't discuss in the paper in much detail, but which I have discussed elsewhere (see here and here) is the suggestion that games and other leisure activities will become a major outlet for the unemployed. I imagine that success and proficiency in these games could be a significant source of status.

One minor point: I'm not sure that 'class' would be leveled in a world of technological unemployment with income redistribution. It depends on what you mean by 'class', but my interpretation of the term doesn't rest everything on levels of income.

4. Is the concept of “meaning in life” even valid in a world where machines optimally manage societies?

As long as there are humans around to ask questions about what it is all for, then I think the concept has validity. Unless you mean something by 'validity' that I don't quite grasp. To me, it just means whether or not it is sensible to ask the question and look for an answer. I think meaning will always be important to humans because it has been since the birth of civilisation.

5. Do you think these intelligent machines might have their own agenda?

'Agenda' might be the wrong way of putting it. Machines could have goals that are antithetical or inconsistent with our own, and if they have great power and adaptable intelligence this could lead to problems. This is something that is widely discussed in the literature about AI risk and motivates the doomsaying pronouncements of people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

6. If people can no longer contribute to objectively “good” developments and their activities become restricted to the domains of arts and culture, what happens to those that don’t have talent?

I could probably write many thousands of words about this. It depends on a couple of things. Is talent innate and fixed? If not, then people could use their free time to learn and master new skills in the worlds of art and culture (or games, as I mentioned above). If it is fixed, how exactly is it fixed? Is it genetic or biological in some way? If so, then developments in human enhancement technology might enable people to overcome those limitations. But then we get into questions about whether enhanced artistic or cultural creation is as valuable as unenhanced equivalents. Maybe it is less authentic and meaningful. Contrast the achievements of an athlete who wins based on innate talent with an athlete who uses performance enhancing drugs. Do we value the former more than the latter? My sense is that we do, but I'm not sure that it is a defensible distinction.

7. In how far could eastern philosophic approaches help to find meaning without the need to actively contribute?

I think there is great wisdom in some of the Eastern approaches to enlightenment and self-transcendence, particularly in the Buddhist tradition. This could be a major source of inspiration and meaning for people. My friend and colleague James Hughes (from the Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies) explores the intersection between buddhist thought and transhumanism in his work.

8. Is the ceding of control of our society to computers a bigger limitation to our freedom than compulsory work?

Potentially. I wrote another paper about this that you might be interested in. It's called 'The Threat of Algocracy' and discusses ways in which the takeover of public decision-making by machines could threat core values in liberal democratic society, specifically values associated with the participation in and comprehension of decision-making processes that interfere with our freedom.

9. Could technological unemployment pose a threat to the future of mankind, by breaking our “spirit”?

This is an interesting topic. If we feel completely inferior to machines and are unable to find another source of meaning in life, then it is possible that we would end up in a state of listless, frustrated boredom. I think that would amount to breaking our spirit.

10. Wouldn’t VR as an escapist solution invalidate the need for technological progress to reach a point where machines do the work?

I'm not sure I understand this question. First, I'm not convinced that VR is an escapist solution. This is something I discuss briefly in the paper (the 'primacy of the real' objection) and in more detail in this podcast. In other words, I'm not convinced that the kinds of experience and meaning found in a VR world are necessarily less meaningful than those in the real world. Second, as long as there is a demand/necessity for people to work in order to secure basic needs, then VR couldn't function as an escapist solution.

11. In your paper you assume that we will find a way to ensure egalitarian distribution of the gains from automation. How confident are you in that outcome, especially in light of political willingness, economic motivations, developmental differences and the elites’ willingness to give up their relative advantage?

I have some optimism - several countries in Europe are either experimenting with or seriously considering something like a basic income guarantee, and the cultural conversation about the idea is really taking off. But I doubt that we would ever achieve an egalitarian distribution (if by that you mean parity of income). I think there will always be some relative advantage. In the paper I don't assume egalitarian distributions of the gains; I only assume that people will have access to everything they need, i.e. that they live in a world of relative abundance.

Is Effective Altruism actually Effective?

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(Part one; part two; part three)

This is going to be my final post on the topic of effective altruism (for the time being anyway). I’m working my way through the arguments in Iason Gabriel’s article ‘Effective Altruism and its Critics’. Once I finish, Iason has kindly agreed to post a follow-up piece which develops some of his views.

As noted in previous entries, effective altruism (EA) is understood for the purposes of this series as the belief that one should do the most good one can do through charitable donations. EA comes in ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ varieties. The thick version, which is what this series focuses on, has three key commitments: (i) welfarism, i.e. it believes that you should aim to improve individual well-being; (ii) consequentialism, i.e. it adopts a consequentialist approach to ethical decision-making; and (iii) evidentialism, i.e. it insists upon favouring interventions with robust evidential bases.

Criticisms of this ‘thick’ version of EA can be orgainised into three main branches. The first argues that EA ignores important justice-related considerations. The second argues that EA is methodologically biased. And the third argues that EA is not that effective. I’ve looked at the first and second branches in previous entries. Today, I take on the third.

In many ways, this might be the most interesting — and for proponents of EA the most painful — criticism. After all, the chief virtue of EA is that it is supposed to be effective: it allows its adherents to claim that they are genuinely doing the most good they could do through their actions. But what if this is false? What if following the EA philosophy turns out to be relatively ineffective?There are three ways to flesh out this concern. I’ll go through them in turn.


1. Does EA neglect important counterfactuals?
Counterfactual analysis is at the heart of the EA worldview. Suppose you meet a homeless person on the street and they are begging for money. You have £1 in your pocket. You could give it to them, but the EA proponent will urge you to think it through. What could you have done with that £1 if you donated it elsewhere? What was the opportunity cost of giving it to the homeless person?

When you engage in this kind of counterfactual analysis, the EA proponent is confident that you’ll see that there were better ways to allocate that money. In particular, the EA proponent will suggest that there are charities in the developing world where the same £1 could have done orders of magnitude more good than it could do for that homeless person in your home country (assuming you live in a developed nation). You shouldn’t succumb to the proximate emotional appeal of your interaction with that person; you should be more rational in your decision-making. That’s the way you will do the most good. This is illustrated in the diagram below. It shows how you could give your money to the homeless person or to GiveWell’s top-ranked charity. When you think of it in these terms, the rational (and most morally effective) choice becomes obvious.

This kind of counterfactual analysis doesn’t just apply to decisions about how to allocate your spare cash. It also applies to decisions about how to spend your time. Many altruistically-inclined people might like to spend their time and energy working for a worthy charitable cause. But the EA proponent will argue that this isn’t necessarily the best use of their talents. Again, you should ask: what will happen if I don’t work for that organisation? Will someone else fill in for me? Are there better things I could be doing with my time and energy? One of the leading EA organisations is 80,000 hours, a charity that helps young people make career decisions. One of their more well-known bits of advice (which, to be fair, can be overemphasised by critics) is that many people should not work directly for charitable organisations. Instead, they should earn to give, i.e. take up a lucrative gig with an investment bank (or somesuch) and donate the cash they earn to worthy causes.

There is a seductive appeal to this kind of counterfactual analysis, particularly for those who like to be thoughtful and rational in their decision-making. But it cuts both ways. It can be used to call into question the advice that EAs give. After all, there are many possible counterfactual worlds to consider when making a decision. EAs emphasise a couple; they don’t emphasise all. In particular, they don’t often pause to ask: what would happen if I didn’t donate to GiveWell’s top-ranked charity? What would that counterfactual world look like?

This is where Gabriel makes an interesting argument. He doesn’t explain it in these terms but it’s like charitable variant on the efficient market hypothesis. In very crude terms, the efficient market hypothesis tells us that we can’t beat the market when making investment decisions. The market factors all relevant information into market prices already; we can’t assume that we have some informational advantage. This idea is often illustrated with the story about the man seeing a five dollar note on the street. He’s tempted to pick it up but his friend is an economist and a fan of the efficient market hypothesis. The friend tells him that the fiver must be illusory: if it really existed it would already have been picked up.

When you think about it, the market for charitable donations could be susceptible to a similar phenomenon. If you see some apparently worthy charitable cause — such as GiveWell’s top-ranked charity — going under-funded, you should ask yourself: why isn’t it being funded already? After all, there are a number of very wealthy and well-staffed philanthropic organisations out there. If they are rational, they should be donating all their money to GiveWell’s top-ranked organisations. Your donations shouldn’t really be able to make any significant difference:

The Efficient Charities Problem: If large philanthropic organisations are trying to be effective, and if they accept that evaluators like GiveWell are correct in the advice they give, then they should be giving all their money to the top-ranked charities. This would mean that your individual decision to donate to those charities won’t make any (counterfactual) difference.

How seriously should we take this problem? As you can see, there are a number of conditions built into its formulation. Each one of those conditions could be false. It could be that large philanthropic organisations are not trying to be effective (or are so irrational as to be incapable of appreciating effectiveness). This is not implausible. The efficient market hypothesis is also clearly vulnerable to this problem: people are not rational utility maximisers; investors constantly believe that they can beat the market. The same could be true for philanthropic organisations. That said, and as Gabriel points out, it is unlikely to be true across the board. There are at least some well-known philanthropic organisations (the Gates Foundation springs to mind) that do try to be rational and effective in their decision-making.

This leads us to the second possibility: they do not accept the evaluations given by organisations such as GiveWell. This is also not implausible. As noted in previous entries, there are reasons to question the value assumptions and methodologies used by such organisations (though GiveWell is responsive to criticisms). But this should not be reassuring to proponents of EA. The Gates Foundation is well-staffed and has a huge research budget. If they aren’t reaching the same conclusions as GiveWell and other EA organisations, then the counterfactual analysis of how to do the most good may not yield the clear and simple answers that EAs seem to promote.

There is, however, a third possibility. It could be that large philanthropic organisations do not donate to the top-ranked charities because they want to assist the EA movement. In other words, they want to grow EA as a social movement and they know that if they donate all their resources to those charities they would risk crowding out the people who want to do good and make it more difficult for them to identify other effective interventions.

Interestingly, Gabriel argues that there is some evidence for this third possibility. GiveWell has received considerable funding recently — enough to allow it to fully fund its top charities for a couple of years. But it has chosen not to do so, thereby retaining the need for ordinary and enthusiastic EAs to donate to those organisations. This may be a clever long-term strategy. It may allow the EA movement to grow to a scale where it can do even more good in the future. But if this is what is happening, it has two slightly disturbing features: (i) it undermines the EA claim that individual decisions really can make a big difference; and (ii) it is resting hope on a speculative future in which EA achieves mass appeal, not on the goodness of individual charitable donations.


2. Does EA neglect motivation and overemphasise rationality?
This criticism was cut out of the final version of Gabriel’s paper (in response to reviewer comments) but he thinks (personal correspondence) that it is still worthy of consideration. The gist of it is that the EA movement underplays the psychological barriers to achieving the kind of social change they want to achieve.

As we just saw, its possible (maybe even probable) that the current goal of the EA movement is to change the societal approach to charitable giving. This widescale change will require a lot of people to change the way they think and act. In encouraging this change, the EA movement prioritises rational, evidential, counterfactual analysis. It highlights neglected causes, and urges its followers to do things that may seem initially counter-intuitive (e.g. earning to give). How successful is it likely to be in achieving this widescale social change?

Two problems arise. First, the EA movement may be underestimating the difficulty in sustaining a counter-intuitive lifestyle choice like earning to give. Some people may not be able to stay in the highly lucrative career, and others may find their attitudes altered by working in some ruthless and highly competitive industry like investment banking. They may consequently lose the desire to earn-to-give. Gabriel notes that EA proponents respond to this criticism by highlighting apparently successful individual cases. But he urges proponents to be cautious in using these examples. The members of the EA movement at present are largely self-selecting. They tend to be wealthy, largely male, highly-educated, non-religious and so forth. If EA is to succeed it will have to attract more adherents and they are less-likely to be drawn from this demographic. It may be more difficult for such people to sustain the compartmentalisation inherent in the earning to give mentality.

To be fair to EA proponents, I think the importance of the earning to give approach tends to be over-emphasised by their critics. The 80,000 hours site does try to give career advice that is based on the individual’s characteristics. The earning to give approach is only really recommended for those with the right mix of attributes. Still, it has to be said that there is something in the logic of the EA position which seems to favour the suppression of one’s personal desires for the greater good. But this is a general feature of utilitarian ethical theories.

The other problem is that by emphasising cold rational analysis, EAs may be underplaying the importance of moral sentiment, particularly when it comes to creating a movement with mass social appeal. Again, the relatively self-selecting group that currently embraces EA may love to engage in detached, evidential assessment of charitable causes; they may love to second-guess their emotional reactions to some charitable nudging; but whether others require some emotional seduction is a separate matter. This is something that EAs may need to ramp up if they want to achieve the kind of social change they desire.


3. Do EAs neglect the importance of systemic change?
We come, at last, to the most popular critique of the EA movement. This one has featured in virtually every critical piece I have read on the topic. Others have assessed it at length. I will only provide a rough overview here.

The gist of the objection is that EAs are too conservative and individualistic in terms of the interventions they promote. They focus on how individuals can make a difference through the careful analysis of their charitable decision-making. But in doing this they take as a given the systems within which these individuals operate. They consequently neglect the importance of systemic change in achieving truly significant improvements in the well-being of the global citizenry. In its most common form, this criticism laments the fact that it is the institutions of global capitalism that are responsible for the welfare inequalities that EAs are trying to mitigate through their actions. If we really want to improve things we must alter those institutions themselves, not simply try to make incremental and piecemeal improvements within those systems.

Critics go on to argue that EAs, through their methods of evaluation and their general philosophy, don’t simply ignore or downplay the importance of systemic change, they actually hinder it. One reason for this is that EAs are too responsive to changes in evidence when it comes to issuing recommendations. This means that they shift their interests and priorities over time. Achieving systemic change requires constancy of purpose. It means ignoring the naysayers and critics; ignoring (at least some) of the facts on the ground until you achieve the desired change.

Now, as I say, I think others have dealt with this criticism at admirable length. I’ll mention two possible responses. First, I think it is possible for the EA to acknowledge the critic’s point and argue that nothing in the EA philosophy necessitates ignoring the importance of systemic change. It is perfectly coherent for the EA to (a) think carefully about how their charitable donations could achieve the most good and pick the ones that do; and (b) think carefully about how to initiate the kinds of systemic change that might improve things even further. In other words, I don’t think that EA has the corrosive effect that the critics seem to believe it does. This is one of those cases where it seems possible to sustain both goals at the same time.

Second, I think proponents of systemic change often underestimate (or simply ignore) the moral risks involved in their projects. Not only is it likely to be difficult to achieve systemic change, it is also uncertain whether the outcome will be genuinely morally better. Communist reformers in the 20th century presumably thought that their reforms would create a better world. It seems pretty clear that they were wrong. Are proponents of systemic change in the institutions of global capitalism sure that their preferred reforms will make the world a better place? I think there is reason to be cautious.
Again, this isn’t to dismiss the importance of systemic change, nor to reject the value of utopian thinking, it is simply to suggest that we should inject some realism into our aspirational thinking. This applies equally as well to those who think EA will achieve dramatic changes in global well-being.


4. Conclusion
Okay, that brings me to the end of my contribution to this series. I’ll let Iason himself have the last word in the next entry.