John G. Messerly's Blog, page 113

Summary of “Illegal Immigrants, Health Care, and Social Responsibility” ~ James Dwyer

I recently read James. F. Dwyer piece, “Illegal Immigrants, Health Care, and Social Responsibility.” Here is a brief outline.

Dwyer begins by asking: “Do societies have an ethical responsibility to provide health care for them and to promote their health?” Nationalists say no; humanists say yes. Dwyer disagrees with both answers. Dwyer’s analysis focuses on illegal immigrants (this is of course a loaded term and not altogether enlightening) and simply assumes that societies have a moral right to provide their own citizens with comprehensive health care.

He notes that migration is not new, but illegal immigration is—since only in the last hundred years or so have nations tried to systematically regulate immigrants. In the past states were more interested in controlling citizenry than residency. Migrant workers do work with the worst pay and the worst conditions—work citizens won’t do and which can’t be outsourced. In recent years, migrants have become primarily female and some of the worst moral offenses in the world occur in human trafficking.

A number of laws have recently been proposed to deny illegal immigrants health care, education, and other social services.  Arguments for this position and responses to them include:

1 – “…illegal aliens should be denied public benefits because they are in the country illegally.” Response – nothing about health care follows from breaking the law. For example, if you receive income without paying taxes—break the law—it doesn’t follow that you shouldn’t get health care.

2 – “Given the limited public budget for health care, U. S. citizens and legal residents are more deserving of benefits than are illegal aliens.” Response – “The narrow framework of the debate pits poor citizens against illegal aliens in a battle for health care resources. Within this framework, the issue is posed as one of desert.”

Opponents say illegal immigrants are free riders sponging off the system; defenders point out they pay taxes and contribute to the economy. So are illegal immigrants a net gain or loss for the economy? Dwyer reframes the question. Rather than using a business model—do I get my fair share of benefits from taxes (or investments)?—other questions about social benefits are more important. Consider a public library. The question is not whether you get your fair of use from a library, but whether libraries contribute to the public good. If they do, everyone benefits from libraries, whether they use them or not.

Professional Ethics – Some physicians argue that denying care is inconsistent with what it means to be a physician, and, furthermore, that it is bad for public health, as in the case of tuberculosis, measles and other communicable diseases. But should illegal immigrants be considered part of the public? Others argue that medical confidentiality prevents reporting facts about patients. Others reply that we need to screen illegal immigrants before they seek care.

The question then is what does professional ethics demand? Emergency care only, at one extreme, or care on the basis of medical need alone, or something in between like basic health care available to all. In the end, professional ethics should oppose health care limitations, but it is does not exactly show how.

In the next section Dwyer expresses supports for the social justice argument for basic international health care. And in the final section he argues that social responsibility supports the claim of health-care for illegal immigrants.

“Providing health care for all workers and their families is a very good way to improve the benefit that workers receive for the worst forms of work, to render workers less vulnerable, and to express social and communal respect for them. These are good reasons for providing health care for all workers, documented and undocumented alike. And they express ethical concerns that are not captured by talking about human rights, public health, or the rights of citizens….”

Reflection – Universal medical care is a moral and economic imperative. And the idea that this is best done through large public health-care systems as they are found in one of their many varieties in advanced countries around the world isn’t even controversial among public policy experts. Such health care systems have better health outcomes for less cost while covering all their citizens then the American health care system. This is not even controversial and anyone telling you differently is either ignorant or lying.

Summary of “What We Owe to the Global Poor” ~ Mathias Risse

Read an interesting article recently: “What We Owe to the Global Poor” by Mathias Risse, Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Here is a brief outline of the paper.

He begins, “this essay defends an account of the duties to the global poor that is informed by the empirical question of what makes countries rich or poor … ” What makes countries rich or poor? Geography, integration, institutions or some combination of the three plus a countries history and choices. Risse argues that wealthy countries have an obligation to help poorer countries build institutions, and to provide emergency aid.  But this does not entail bringing about equality among peoples.

Still it would be in all the USA’s self-interest to reduce global inequalities because: 1) it is in their interest because unstable states make us all worse off; 2) in Rawls’ original position, not knowing which kind of country you would be in, you would want stable institutions; 3) the concept of importance of personhood requires that institutions exist to bring about well-ordered societies—societies where they can truly be persons.

Reflection – Thus morality and self-interest coincide in this case. It is both moral and self-interested to help create institutions that promote human flourishing. Unfortunately, the prisoner’s dilemma suggests the strong pull of self-interest impedes cooperation, even though that when all pursue self-interest it is self-defeating.

Summary of “The Triumph of Just War Theory (and the Dangers of Success)” ~ Michael Walzer

Yesterday I outlined the main ideas of just war theories. Here is my outline of an argument that sits in the middle of the continuum of views on just war theory. It might serve readers as a jumping off place for further study of the issue.

“The Triumph of Just War Theory (and the Dangers of Success)” – Michael Walzer

Just war theory (JWT) was a buffer against Christian radicalism—both pacifism and the religious crusader.  And the theory has had an impact on at least some real life decisions, especially in the 16th century. However the doctrine slipped in influence over the next few centuries, as just war was disparaged as mere idealism, and “Just war theory was relegated to religion departments, theological seminaries, and a few Catholic universities.”

In the United States, Vietnam brought JWT back, inasmuch as opposition to the war was caused in large part by the war’s apparent lack of just cause—especially the brutality and immorality with which it was conducted.  In fact this brutality may have been a major reason for losing the war. By alienating the civilian populations the United States supposedly wanted to help, it lost their support—thus the import of moral concerns in war.

The 1991 gulf war between the US and Iraq, while not a just war by almost any standards, was still somewhat better at shielding civilian populations than previous American wars. The reasons for this included the hope that Iraqis would be US allies, and because those who waged the war weren’t sure their supporters would tolerate total slaughter of civilians. Walzer argues that this restraint will continue, because of media war coverage: “But does this mean that it has to be more just or only that it has to look most just…” My guess is that those who profit from war will merely be concerned with making their wars appear just.

Still politicians and generals have recently talked about just causes and intentions, and the desire to minimize civilian casualties. Walzer argues that moral concerns have become at least a small part of the discussion about war. And he also argues that JWT needs to resist the takeover of JWT by the military. Especially when according to JWT “all killing of civilians is ( something close to) murder; therefore any war that leads to the killing of civilians is unjust; therefore every war is unjust.”

Yet Walzer is no pacifist, as defending yourself is justified as long as the humanity of your opponent is not forgotten. Of course this assumes that the war is just according to the criteria outlined in yesterday’s post. Still, theorists need to be suspicious of all war since it is so costly. Costly not only to a country’s self-interest, but often to its individual and collective moral character.

Regarding recent US wars Walzer notes that: 1) risk-free war can be fought from a distant and be consistent with JWT, especially if humanitarian causes are at stake. To the extent that they cannot: “when it is our action that puts innocent people at risk, even if the action is justified, we are bound to do what we can to reduce those risks, even if this involves risks to our own soldiers.” If we bomb from the air for example, and expose civilian populations to retribution, we are morally negligent if we are unwilling to take on those risks ourselves. And 2) in the aftermath of war a restoration of the status quo is generally called for, and further aggression against the perpetrators would violate JWT. Humanitarian interventions might require the replacement of previous regimes, but the goal ought to be to bring closure and legitimacy to the situation. The benefits of this are the friendship, peace, and stability that results.

In the end, Walzer argues, JWT serves to temper violent human tendencies.

Reflection – We would all do better and none of us would do worse if we all cooperated. That is the lesson of the the prisoner’s dilemma.

Summary of Just War Theory

Just War Theory has a long history in the western intellectual tradition. St. Augustine commented on the morality of war from a Christian perspective, as did several Arabic commentators from the 9th to the 12th centuries. But St. Thomas Aquinas provided the most celebrated and still discussed the main outlines of just war theory.

Just War Theory traditionally has two sets of criteria. The first establishing jus ad bellum, the right to go to war; the second establishing jus in bello, right conduct within war.[10] In addition, some scholars have recently considered a third criteria, jus post bellum, right conduct after war.

While I am aware that in the real world might makes right and considerations of justice often appear irrelevant, that doesn’t mean that considerations of what, if anything, constitute a just war are irrelevant. In fact, looking at the history of slaughter that defines our species, we might all do better to think clearly about when, if ever, violence is justified.

Jus ad bellum

1) Just cause – The reason for going to war need to be just, and can’t be solely for recapturing things taken or punishing people who have done wrong. In addition, innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life. A contemporary view of just cause was expressed in 1993 by the US Catholic Conference: “Force may be used only to correct a grave, public evil, i.e., aggression or massive violation of the basic human rights of whole populations.”

2) Comparative justice –  While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to override the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other. Some theorists such as Brian Orend omit this term, seeing it as fertile ground for exploitation by bellicose regimes.

3) Legitimate authority – Only duly constituted public authorities may wage war.

4) Right intention –  Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose—correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.

5) Probability of success – Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success;

6) Last resort – Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted or are clearly not practical. It may be clear that the other side is using negotiations as a delaying tactic and will not make meaningful concessions.

7) Proportionality – The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms. This principle is also known as the principle of macro-proportionality, so as to distinguish it from the jus in bello principle of proportionality.

Once war has begun, just war theory also directs how combatants are to act:

Jus in bello

1) Distinction – Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of distinction. The acts of war should be directed towards enemy combatants, and not towards non-combatants caught in circumstances they did not create. The prohibited acts include bombing civilian residential areas that include no military target and committing acts of terrorism or reprisal against civilians.

2) Proportionality – Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. An attack cannot be launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).

3) Military necessity – Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of minimum force. An attack or action must be intended to help in the military defeat of the enemy, it must be an attack on a military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction.

Jus post bellum

In recent years, some theorists, such as Gary Bass, Louis Iasiello and Brian Orend, have proposed a third category within Just War theory. Jus post bellum concerns justice after a war, including peace treaties, reconstruction, war crimes trials, and war reparations. Orend, for instance, proposes the following principles:

1) Just cause for termination – A state may terminate a war if there has been a reasonable vindication of the rights that were violated in the first place, and if the aggressor is willing to negotiate the terms of surrender. These terms of surrender include a formal apology, compensations, war crimes trials and perhaps rehabilitation. Alternatively, a state may end a war if it becomes clear that any just goals of the war cannot be reached at all or cannot be reached without using excessive force.

2) Right intention – A state must only terminate a war under the conditions agreed upon in the above criteria. Revenge is not permitted. The victor state must also be willing to apply the same level of objectivity and investigation into any war crimes its armed forces may have committed.

3) Public declaration and authority – The terms of peace must be made by a legitimate authority, and the terms must be accepted by a legitimate authority.

4) Discrimination – The victor state is to differentiate between political and military leaders, and combatants and civilians. Punitive measures are to be limited to those directly responsible for the conflict. Truth and reconciliation may sometimes be more important than punishing war crimes.

5) Proportionality – Any terms of surrender must be proportional to the rights that were initially violated. Draconian measures, absolutionist crusades and any attempt at denying the surrendered country the right to participate in the world community are not permitted. Just wars always lead to lots of conflict.

Finally! The Essence of Critical Thinking in Two Pages

Critical thinking is “careful, deliberate determination of whether one should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim and the degree of confidence with which one accepts or rejects it.” (Parker & Moore, Critical Thinking.)

The problem is that much of our thinking is biased, distorted, partial, uniformed or prejudiced. Yet the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts. Bad thinking costs us time, money, and possibly our lives. Good thinking may be profitable and save our time and lives. But good thinking is hard and takes practice.

Cogent (good) reasoning consists of: 1) believable premises; 2) consideration of relevant information, and 3) valid conclusions drawn from those premises.

Believable premises – This assumes we have some well-informed background beliefs about the world so as to determine whether a premise is believable. No relevant info passed over – We need to avoid the temptation to disregard contrary evidence. Valid reasoning – When the premises support the conclusion, or, to put it another way, the conclusion follows from the premises, the reasoning is valid. When the premises are also true, then we have a sound argument.

Some wrong ideas about cogent reasoning – Good reasoning is not relative to people, cultures, religions, etc. When you violate deductive reasoning you contradict yourself; and when you violate inductive reasoning you deny evidence and experience. The way the world works in not relative to people, cultures, religions, etc. Still, self-interest, prejudice, or narrow-mindedness leads people to reason poorly.

Background Beliefs – Background beliefs are crucial to determining whether premises are believable and whether no relevant info has been omitted. “That is why bringing one’s background beliefs to bear often is the most important task in evaluating an argument for cogency… ignorance is not bliss. It just renders us incapable of intelligently evaluating claims, premises, arguments, and other sorts of rhetoric we all are subject to every day.”

Kinds of Background Beliefs – We have beliefs about both facts [whether the St. Louis Cardinals won the 1964 baseball World Series] and values [whether it is a good thing that people play baseball.] Beliefs can also be true or false. We need to constantly examine our background beliefs to weed out false ones. Education [as opposed to indoctrination] helps us acquire true beliefs and rid us of false ones. Beliefs also differ in how firmly they should be believed. “The trick is to believe firmly what should be believed, given the evidence, and believe less firmly, or not at all, what is less well supported by the evidence.”

Worldviews or Philosophies – Children tend to believe what they are told, thus most of us believe, even as adults, what we were told as children. [For example, an almost perfect predictor of a person’s religious beliefs are the beliefs of their parents.] These basic beliefs we might call our worldviews or philosophies. “They tend to be the most deeply ingrained and most resistant to amendment of all our background beliefs.” We work very hard to keep them [so as not to create cognitive dissonance.] It is crucial that our worldviews, if they are to consist of true background beliefs, “contain at least a few modestly well-founded beliefs about important scientific theories.”

Insufficiently Grounded Beliefs – Most people have strongly held beliefs about things about which they know almost nothing. In order to think well then, we must weed out poorly grounded [false] beliefs. It is crucial—if we are to think well—that we have well-founded [true] beliefs to support our worldview since “…worldviews are like lenses that cause us to see the world in a particular way or filters through which we process all new ideas and information. Reasoning based on a grossly inaccurate or shallow worldview tends to yield grossly inaccurate, inappropriate, or self-defeating conclusions…”

Two Vital Kinds of Background Beliefs – Beliefs about human nature, and beliefs about the reliability of information sources.

Science to the rescue –

the most accurate information comes from the well-established sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, … the scientific enterprise is an organized, ongoing, worldwide activity that builds and corrects from generation to generation…Absolutely no one, starting from scratch, could hope to obtain in one lifetime anything remotely resembling the sophisticated and accurate conclusions of any of the sciences …

Summary of critical thinking – Critical thinking is higher order of thinking as opposed to lower order thinking. Lower order thinking is 1) unreflective, 2) relies on gut intuition, and 3) is largely self-serving. Higher order thinking is 1) reflective, 2) uses logic and reason to analyze and assess ideas, and 3) is consistently fair.

More specifically critical thinking overcomes the most common tendencies of poor thinking: egocentric and sociocentric thinking.

Egocentric thinking is characterized by ideas like it’s true because: a) I believe it; b) I want to believe it, c) I’ve always believed it, d) it is in my interest to believe it, etc.

Sociocentric thinking refers to the extent persons internalize the prejudices of their society/culture. Such persons: a) uncritically accept that their culture is best; b) internalize group norms without questioning; c) blindly conform to group restrictions; d) ignore the insights of other cultures; e) fail to realize that mass media shapes the news from the point of view of their culture; f) ignore their culture’s history, etc.

In contrast to unreflective thinking, critical thinking is fair-minded and open-minded—to think critically is to reason well. It is the kind of reasoning that is the essential ingredient in solving life’s problems. I have written elsewhere in this blog about good thinking, especially in my recent column “We Fear Thought.” But I would summarize my thoughts on the topic, as I did for generations of university students, by saying—good thinking is an essential ingredient in living well.

[All quotes are from the first chapter of Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life)

James Rachels on The Meaning of Life

James Rachels (1941- 2003) was a distinguished American moral philosopher and best-selling textbook author. The final chapter of his book, Problems from Philosophy, explores the question of the meaning of life. The question typically results, Rachels believes, from recognizing the clash between the subjective or personal point of view—from which things matter—and the objective or impersonal view—from which they do not.

Regarding the relationship between happiness and meaning, Rachel notes that happiness is not well correlated with wealth, but rather with personal control over one’s life, good relationships with family and friends, and satisfying work. In Rachels’ view happiness is not found by seeking it directly, but as a by-product of intrinsic values like autonomy, friendship, and satisfying work. Nonetheless, a happy life may still be meaningless because we die, and in times of reflection we may find our happiness undermined by the thought of our annihilation.

What attitude should we take toward our death? For those who believe they do not die, death is good because they will live forever in a hereafter. For them death “is like moving to a better address.” But for those who believe that death is the end, death may or may not be a good thing. What attitude should these people take toward death? Epicurus thought that death was the end but that we should not fear it, since we will be nothing when we are dead and nothingness cannot harm us. He thought that such an attitude would make us happier while alive.

On the contrary, Rachels thinks that death is bad because it deprives us of, and puts an end to, all the good things in life. Rachels, who wrote the book as he was dying of cancer, makes this point in a beautiful passage:

After I die, human history will continue, but I won’t get to be part of it. I will see no more movies, read no more books, make no more friends, and take no more trips. If my wife survives me, I will not get to be with her. I will not know my grandchildren’s children. New inventions will appear and new discoveries will be made about the universe, but I won’t ever know what they are. New music will be composed, but I won’t hear it. Perhaps we will make contact with intelligent beings from other worlds, but I won’t know about it. That is why I don’t want to die, and Epicurus’ argument is beside the point.

Although death is bad, it doesn’t necessarily make life meaningless, inasmuch as the value of something is different from how long it lasts. A thing can be valuable even if it is fleeting; or worthless even if it lasts a forever. So the fact that something ends does not, by itself, negate its value.

There is yet another reason that a happy life might be meaningless—and that reason is that the universe may be indifferent. The earth is but a speck in the inconceivable vastness of the universe, and a human lifetime but an instant of the immensity of time. The universe does not seem to care much for us. One way to avoid this problem is with a religious answer—claim that the universe and a god do cares for us. But how does this help, even if it is true? How does being a part of a god’s plan or a recipient of a god’s love give life meaning. So it is not clear how positing gods gives our lives meaning.

Rachels suggest that if we add the notion of commitment to the above, we can see how religion provides meaning to believer’s lives. Believers voluntarily commit themselves to various religious values and hence get their meaning from those values. But while you can get meaning from religious values you can also get them from other things—from artistic, musical, or scholarly achievement for example. Still, the religious answer has a benefit that these other ways of finding meaning do not; it assumes that the universe is not indifferent. The drawback of the religious view is that it assumes the religious story is true. If it is not, then we are basing our lives on a lie.

But even if life does not have a meaning, particular lives can. We give our lives meaning by finding things worth living for. These differ between individuals, yet most people agree that some things give life meaning—good personal relationships, accomplishments, knowledge, playful activities, aesthetic enjoyment, physical pleasure, and helping others. Could it nonetheless be that all of this amounts to nothing, that life is meaningless after all? From the objective, impartial view we may always be haunted by the suspicion that life is meaningless. The only answer is to explain why our list of good things is really good.

Such reasoning may not show that our lives are ‘important to the universe,’ but it will accomplish something similar. It will show that we have good, objective reasons to live in some ways rather than others. When we step outside our personal perspective and consider humanity from an impersonal standpoint, we still find that human beings are the kinds of creatures who can enjoy life best by devoting themselves to such things as family and friends, work, music, mountain climbing, and all the rest. It would be foolish, then, for creatures like us to live in any other way. 

Summary – Happiness is not the same as meaning and is undermined by death. Death is bad, unless religious stories are true, but those stories are probably not true. Thus, while there is probably no objective meaning to life, there are good things in life. We should pursue those things that most people think worthwhile—love, friendship, knowledge, and all the rest.

________________________________________________________________________

James Rachels, Problems from Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 169.

Rachels, Problems from Philosophy, 174-75.

Four Recent Books About The Rise of the Machines

Prototype humanoid robots at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory in Osaka, Japan

(This article was reprinted in Humanity+ Magazine, May 5, 2015)

There has been a lot of discussion about the rise of intelligent machines in the last year. Here are 4 recent books about the subject with a brief description of each.

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, by James Barrat:

At the heart of film maker Barrat’s book is the prophecy of the British mathematician I.J. Good, a colleague of Alan Turing. Good reasoned that once machines became more intelligent than humans, then the machines would design other machines leading to an intelligence explosion which would leave humans far behind. Is this true? What Barrat finds is that almost half of experts in the field expected intelligent machines within 15 years, and a large majority expected them shortly thereafter.  Barrett concludes that this intelligence explosion will lead almost immediately to the singularity, although we have no idea what these machines will do.

Eclipse of Man: Human Extinction and the Meaning of Progress, by Charles T Rubin:

The political philosopher Rubin’s book explores the roots of our desire to use technology to alter the human condition. This urge has aided humans greatly in the past, but Rubin believes that technologically-minded idealists regard humanity as a problem. This is a mistake, he believes, and allowing machines to make our decisions is problematic. Instead of improving us, our technology might supplant us; it would be like a hostile alien invader.

Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence, by Stuart Armstrong:

Armstrong is a fellow of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford who has thought hard about how superintelligence could be made to be “friendly.” He argues that it would be difficult to communicate with alien beings that have computer minds. We might ask it to rid the planet of violence, and it would rid the planet of us! The point is that values are hard to explain, since they are based on, among other things, common sense and unstated assumptions. To turn those values into programming code would be extraordinarily challenging, and to avoid catastrophe, we could not make mistakes.

In Our Own Image: Will Artificial Intelligence Save or Destroy Us?, by George Zarkadakis:

Most of our ideas about what it would be like to live with superintelligences comes from science fiction, says the AI researcher George Zarkadakis. There can be little doubt that science fiction stories and metaphors have influenced us. As a result, we tend to anthropomorphize in order to make sense of our technology. We imagine robots like Schwarzenegger’s Terminator; we imagine robots and superintelligences with human qualities. But intelligence machines won’t be human, they will not share our evolutionary history, they will not have brains like ours. So who knows their goals and values; who knows how they will regard humans. Perhaps they will have no need for us.

All these books worry that intelligent machines might destroy us, even if only inadvertently. Moreover, many AI researchers aren’t even concerned about the problem of creating friendly AIs. In fact, a large part of AI research is dedicated to developing robots for war—to developing unfriendly AI. Surely things might go wrong if we create mostly machines that kill humans. All of these authors believe that we should be worried.

 

Prison Reform and Karl Menninger’s, The Crime of Punishment

It is hard to adequately condemn the American system of incarceration. It is applied so unfair, so draconian, so unjust, and applied so ubiquitously as to be literally beyond the understanding of civilized persons. Our descendents will look back with horror at the barbarity of the American prison system and its high-tech dungeons. I would encourage all good people to work for prison reform. Here is a list of the many organizations that currently work for prison reform. 

Hopefully, as we progress morally and scientifically, we will adopt a therapeutic model for anti-social behavior, rather than our archaic retributionist model. Then we will finally understand what Karl Menninger was talking about more than 50 years ago in his profound book: The Crime of Punishment.

Does Time Speeds Up As You Age?

The above video suggests that time speeds up as you age. On first reflection, this seems true. I’ve just turned 60, and time seems to pass faster now than when I was younger. As a child a day in school seemed to take forever, but so too did summer vacation. Today a school year seems to fly by for this professor. When I was a kid I thought something twenty years ago was prehistoric, now twenty years ago was 1995. And 1995 seems downright futuristic compared to the 1960s I remember. 

But do we really experience time moving faster as we age? Probably not. BBC science writer Claudia Hammond‘s recent article suggests that the idea that time accelerates as we age is mostly a myth. We measure time’s objective passing about the same at any age. But, as she says in her book, Time Warped: Unlocking the mysteries of Time Perception, the experience of time’s passing “depends on the time-frame you are considering. In time perception studies, adults in mid-life report that the hours and days pass at what feels like a normal speed; it is the years that flash by.”

Hammond believes this is because we assess time in two different ways. We can look at how fast time seems to pass in the present, or we can look retrospectively at how fast previous years or decades seemed to pass.  Looked at retrospectively, time seems to go faster as we age. “The days still feel as though they pass at an average speed, but we’re surprised when markers of time indicated how many months and years have passed or at how quickly birthdays come round yet again.” But why? Hammond hypothesizes:

Part of the reason is that as we get older life inevitably brings fewer fresh experiences, and more routines. Because we use the number of new memories we form to gauge how much time has passed, an average week that doesn’t loom large in the memory gives the illusion that time is shrinking.

To combat this phenomenon Hammond suggests we fill our time with new experiences. On the other hand, “we do have to ask ourselves whether we really want to slow time down. If you look at the circumstances where evidence tells us that time goes slowly, they include having a very high temperature, feeling rejected and experiencing depression.”

Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical College has also found that the idea that objective time is speeding up as you age is illusory. “On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age.” However, “when researchers asked the subjects about the 10-year interval, older subjects were far more likely than the younger subjects to report that the last decade had passed quickly.” So “Why … do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it’s a race to the finish?”

Friedman’s answer is similar to Hammond’s. When you learn something for the first time, says a child, it takes time to learn and “you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.” Then as an adult when “you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire.”

But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.

“Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be,” so perhaps ” learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time.” This may also be part of the solution to the apparent speeding up of time as we age:

if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it.

I think this is right. We can squeeze a bit more out of life by continually developing. After all, the art of staying young is in large part a matter of continually learning new truths, and unlearning old falsehoods.

Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma in One Page

 Game Theory

For our purposes, a game is an interactive situation in which individuals, called players, choose strategies to deal with each other in attempting to maximize their individual utility. There are several ways of distinguishing games including: 1) in respect to the number of players involved; 2) in respect to the number of repetitions of play; 3) in respect of the order of the various player’s preferences over the same outcomes. On the one extreme are games of pure conflict, so-called zero-sum games, in which players have completely opposing interests over possible outcomes. On the other extreme are games of pure harmony, so-called games of coordination. In the middle are games involving both conflict and harmony in respect of others. It is one particular game that interests us most, since it describes the situation in Hobbes’ state of nature, and is the central problem in contractarian moral theory.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The prisoner’s dilemma is one of the most widely debated situations in game theory. The story has implications for a variety of human interactive situations. A prisoner’s dilemma is an interactive situation in which it is better for all to cooperate rather than for no one to do so, yet it is best for each not to cooperate, regardless of what the others do.

In the classic story, two prisoners have committed a serious crime but all of the evidence necessary to convict them is not admissible in court. Both prisoners are held separately and are unable to communicate. The prisoners are called separately by the authorities and each offered the same pro-position. Confess and if your partner does not, you will be convicted of a lesser crime and serve one year in jail while the unrepentant prisoner will be convicted of a more serious crime and serve ten years. If you do not confess and your partner does, then it is you who will be convicted of the more serious crime and your partner of the lesser crime. Should neither of you confess the penalty will be two years for each of you, but should both of you confess the penalty will be five years. In the following matrix, you are the row chooser and your partner the column chooser. The first number in each parenthesis represents the “payoff” for you in years in prison, the second number your partner’s years. Let us assume each player prefers the least number of years in prison possible. In matrix form, the situation looks like this:

Prisoner 2

    Confess
 Don’t Confess


 Prisoner 1
Confess
(5, 5)
(1, 10)



Don’t Confess
(10, 1)
(2, 2)

So you reason as follows: If your partner confesses, you had better confess because if you don’t you will get 10 years rather than 5. If your partner doesn’t confess, again you should confess because you will only get 1 year rather than 2 for not confessing. So no matter what your partner does, you ought to confess. The reasoning is the same for your partner. The problem is that when both confess the outcome is worse for both than if neither confessed. You both could have done better, and neither of you worse, if you had not confessed! You might have made an agreement not to confess but this would not solve the problem. The reason is this: although agreeing not to confess is rational, compliance is surely not rational!

We have now come full circle to Hobbes. The prisoner’s dilemma represents the situation in the state of nature. If the prisoners cooperate, they both do better; if they do not cooperate, they both do worse. But both have a good reason not to cooperate; they are not sure the other will! We can only escape this dilemma, Hobbes maintained, by installing a coercive power that makes us comply with our agreements (contracts). Gauthier argues, as we saw earlier, for the rationality of voluntary non-coerced cooperation and compliance with agreements given the costs to each of us of enforcement agencies. We need to embrace what he calls “morals by agreement.”