Marco has cooked up some ethical questions designed to push ethical boundaries, spark debate, and generate insight. He’s written up a good “why ask these questions” already so I won’t repeat it here. Instead, I’ll dive right in with my responses.

Disclaimers

1. Obviously, the situations invented by these questions mostly suck. However, trying to avoid making a decision defeats the purpose, and so I won’t take that option.
   1. Whenever Marco says “you must” I’ll follow that direction; in real life I’d of course be looking for other options.
   2. I won’t use randomness to make a decision, even though that might be a preferable result.
   3. I just read a very interesting article (courtesy J.) that’s very relevant to these types of questions. Based on that article, the answer to all of these is “I refuse the answer because, as a fallible human, I cannot accurately predict the consequences of major actions like these.” In real life that’s a good policy, but as above it defeats the purpose of asking the questions in the first place… so I won’t follow it here.
2. I’ll also expand a bit with explanations of my thought process (which is really the whole point of this exercise).
3. I can give an intellectual response from behind the safety of fictional circumstances. Often when confronted with real decisions, I’ve found my responses to be more emotionally charged. If I was ever actually in one of these situations, I might react very differently than what I say here.
4. A bit more information could easily prompt me to flip my answer the other way. We don’t have more information than this though, so I’ll operate as best as I can in its absence.
5. These are all rationalizations. I’m aware of that. I don’t have much confidence in any of them.

Life Savings

You must choose to spare one life: either a religious leader who to all known facts is a good and decent man who has brought solace to thousands or a scientist who tests as brilliant but has never accomplished anything in their field. Who do you save and why?

I vote to save the scientist. Presumably, as a scientist, he has a more realistic/truthful view of the world than the religious leader (the truth of this statement is a whole other discussion; I won’t go into it here). We don’t know how the preacher brought his solace. It could very well have been at the expense of others, and at the very least is probably based on false premises. Basically, I’m voting for truth (even if harsh) rather than falsehood (even if comforting).

‘Til They Glow

You have one city-buster nuclear weapon. You must use it on a major metropolitan area. There will be no direct repercussions. Who do you nuke?

I’ll go with “the city that has the least worldwide impact.” I started thinking along the lines of “least worldwide economic impact” (ie: poorest); dikaiosunh posted a less-assholish version that involved the lowest population that still qualified. Let’s mix in cultural value as well (ie: don’t nuke Rome because of the huge art history that resides there). I don’t know which city that is but I’m sure Wikipedia could tell me.

Convert The Infidel

You have a machine that will mentally swicht all adherents from one religion to another (it cannot make them atheists, it must be a real religion–with church-like infrastructure, no flying spaghetti monsters). Which religion is the target. What do they believe now?

Firstly, let me start off by saying that this would probably not have much effect. The differences between various religions are dwarfed by the differences in degree of religiousness. That is to say: an extremist probably won’t stop being an extremist simply because the particular beliefs change.

However, if I have to choose…

I gotta go with Sam Harris and pick Islam as the “from” religion, because:

1. It’s big. The goal here is to have a positive effect, and since I want the biggest positive effect possible, I have to pick one of the big ones. That limits me to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and perhaps Chinese folk religion. All of the other religions might be “more deserving” candidates but they’re smaller and thus don’t have as much of an impact.
2. It’s somewhat more exclusionary than the others. It’s less tolerant of other views, especially relative to Buddhism.
3. It’s very authoritarian. It’s less so than Christianity, but moreso than Buddhism.
4. It’s militant. This is especially true when you consider recent history relative to the other religions. For example, Christianity has plenty of blood on its hands but a lot less has been spilled in the past fifty years; Islam encourages plenty of violent behavior here-and-now.

As for the “to” religion: I want something that’s the exact opposite: nonviolent, nonexclusive, egalitarian, and accepting of outsiders. Again, I’m not sure which religion best qualifies. I don’t think Marco would accept any of my favorites picks as “religions:”

1. Secular Humanism
2. Humanistic Naturalism
3. The Brights Movement

Marco suggested Unitarian Universalism, and I think that’s a good pick. The Quakers are pretty close too. I’ll give a shout-out to the Doukhobors (of which my maternal ancestors were members) for their staunch pacifism. However, all of these groups still fall short on their supernatural / nonscientific worldviews. Maybe when the Brights get a building I’ll be able to switch my target.

Criminal Intent

You can make something that didn’t used to be a criminal act and choose the penalty. What would you criminalize?

Unfortunately, criminalizing something doesn’t keep people from doing it, so this is not necessarily a worthwhile action. I’m tempted to pick something ridiculous (ex: “simultaneously being in two places at once”) in order to prevent any unintended consequences, but that’s goes against the spirit of not weaseling out of an answer. If I view this as “what would I really like people to stop doing”, I’d chose “believing things that aren’t supported (or are contradicted by) reasoning and evidence.” Penalty: you have to sit through lessons by Sagan, Dawkins, Randi, Douglas Adams, Penn & Teller, and others until you stop.

Yo ho! Yo HO!

You have a choice between stopping all internet piracy or all speeding on the highway but the cost is that your favorite living artist will be forever put out of business. Is it worth it to you to stop either of those at that cost?

My answer is no, because I’m not certain that all piracy and speeding are bad. Putting my favorite (and thus IMO valuable) artist out of business definitely is. So, doing this might very well mean a double-negative, which is thus a no-brainer to vote against. On the other hand, if the question was phrased “stop the bad aspects of piracy and speeding” then I’d probably say yes; one artist’s preferred livelihood (note: not only livelihood) isn’t worth far-reaching social implications. (Besides, my favorite artist is already dead.)

One Makes You Larger

This one has multiple aspects so I’ll split them up.

There is a 100% safe procedure that will ensure that your child will be hetrosexual. Do you use it on him/her?

If I was 100% sure that this was also 100% without other consequences, then I’d probably say “yes”. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with homosexuality or bisexuality, but a lot of people do, and I’d prefer my child didn’t have to face that. He or she would presumably gain a slight advantage for it, and that’s good.

But that’s a big “if”. More than likely, I could not be 100% sure of zero other consequences. In that case the answer is definitely “no”; in this day and age (and location) it’s not a big enough advantage to risk the consequences.

Do you release it to the world at large?

Here I say “no”, mainly because it’s unlikely to see how the lack of other consequences could ever be achieved. The same prejudices that cause me to consider it in the first place pretty much guarantee that it would be abused by at least some portion of the rest of the world. I realize that this approaches hypocrisy. Note that if you said “you can use it, but only if you give it to the world at large” then my answer would be “no, I wouldn’t use it, and then wouldn’t release it either.”

What if it is 90% safe?

A one-in-10 chance of real harm isn’t worth it when the benefits are so minimal. If I was living in in a place where homosexuality meant a horrible death, then I might take that risk. Here and now though it’s a no-brainer.

Choose Your Punishment

You are convicted of speeding while on vacation in another country. You are given a choice of 10 lashes with a cane or 90 days in jail. Which do you think you’d choose? (Assume the jails are relatively safe but only to a ‘realistic’ degree–no perfect guarantee).

I’d pick prison. I haven’t had any pain approaching a cane (at least I don’t think so; maybe it’s not all that bad) so it’s hard imagine what that would be like. I think that, on average, prison would be better. There’s actually some good that could come out of prison time:

1. Pick up useful skills and contacts
2. Exercise
3. Do community service (if allowed)
4. Spend time reading, writing, and reflecting

Heck, that’s nearly a holiday!

On the other hand, caning is done in a matter of minutes, so maybe it’s better to get it over with and move on.

Crazy!

You get to choose our next president: Bob Barr or Ron Paul! Ready, set, go!

I don’t know many specifics about either of them. Obviously I’d research both before choosing. If I couldn’t do that, I’d pick Ron Paul just because he’s the wisdom-of-crowds pick. From the little I’ve read they both seem to be very close politically. I don’t think either would be horrible (both would probably be better than GWB).

That’s it! Now it’s your turn.

During our recent blargument Marco wrote:

Facts say what the speaker wants them to (like statistics).

I responded:

This is an abuse of the word “fact” (and “statistic”). I know that your idea of what’s “fact” and mine do not necessarily like up exactly, but there’s no sense in trying to make “fact” mean “objective” and instead make it “subjective”.

We already have a word for that: “opinion”.

I might like to *say* that my opinions are facts, but that doesn’t make it any more true than if I say my car is a Ferrari. It may or may not be, but it would be silly to take my word for it without some sort of evidence (a peek in my garage, my vehicle registration, or perhaps a look at my bank account).

Persuasive arguments are not always false or misleading, but I am at a disadvantage if I take persuader’s word for it that his statements are true (ie: are facts). I need to take other information into account. Part of that may be experience (how accurate has he been in the past, is he drawing reasonable conclusions based on the evidence he’s presented), but outside evidence and/or well-reasoned counterarguments are even more reliable.

(I’ve added the emphasis in my reposting here.)

A week ago the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a study about corporations (both US-based and foreign-controlled) and the taxes they pay. It was factual, apparently objective, and probably accurate (I don’t know how well the GAO does their job, but for the purposes of this argument I’ll assume it’s correct). It specifically did not draw any conclusions from the facts that it presented.

The news media took the report and wrote hundreds of stories on it. Many (most?) of them had the theme “Corporations use tax loopholes to pay less than their ‘fair share’”., lead by the Associated Press who claimed that two-thirds paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005. Even my favorite business news source, APM Marketplace, did a bit about big evil pampered corporations, leading off the story by saying that if real people were dodging their taxes on this scale, there would be public outrage.

The very first thing I thought of when I read the first of these GAO news stories was “were the corporations that aren’t paying taxes also not earning income?

In the U.S. (and in Canada, and probably most other developed nations), corporations pay “income” taxes on their profits, not their sales. This makes sense to most people when you explain it to them. “Sales” refers to the amount of money a business takes in. Subtract “costs” (what they pay out) from that, and the leftovers are what they keep: “profit”. Taxing based on sales (which would ignore costs and profitability) isn’t very effective, because it would hurt a an already struggling company with high sales and low or negative profitability (think GM) yet give a company with small sales and great profitability. There are such things as taxes on certain assets (which would effect business which own those assets, which may tend to be larger), but that’s not what the study was about.

Most people think of corporations as big entities with thousands of employees, woldwide reach, and millions (or billions) in sales — and thus want them to pay millions of dollars in taxes. The truth is that most corporations are small and local; many have only one employee. Many are short-lived too (many don’t survive beyond five years, although the actual numbers vary depending on the study). A lot of them don’t have profits in every year. The laws allow a business who has a loss in one year to apply it against their profits in another year for the purposes of taxes (allowing that business to “catch up” from a business slowdown). Some (similar to my own business, although I’m not incorporated) pay out all of their post-expense sales money to their employee(s) (who then pay personal income taxes on it), and thus show no profit and pay no corporate tax.

As it turns out, what I wrote above is probably a better explanation for the results than “corporate tax-dodging loopholes”. The GAO report itself wrote, in the very first paragraph of the summary:

Most large [foreign-controlled] and [US controlled corporations] that reported no tax liability in 2005 also reported that they had no current-year income. A smaller proportion of these corporations had losses from prior years and tax credits that eliminated any tax liability.

However, that’s not the story you got from most of the news articles.

A few sources did try to offer counterarguments to the popular story. Fark summed it up nicely:

Do corporations really pay no taxes? Or is it just a bunch of overhyped media BS on a slow news day? The real numbers indicate the latter

This is yet another example of why counterarguments are necessary in most (if not all) discussions. Facts don’t speak for themselves (in fact, they don’t speak at all; they don’t have mouths), but everyone with an opinion or an agenda will be quick to offer theirs as the “correct interpretation” of the facts.

It’s too much to ask for an unbiased interpretation of the facts from any one source (as evidenced by the countless examples of biased interpretations) so your best bet is to get multiple interpretations, analyze the reasoning behind their conclusions, and determine the best conclusion based on the strength of the arguments.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean picking the best argument out of the group of all arguments. Each argument should have some aspect of the truth in it (if it’s completely faulty then you can discard it). Conclusions will usually only be true if their assumptions are correct, and often decision making comes down to picking from the most probable (but not necessarily correct) assumptions. If it comes down to a choice between one good argument with bad assumptions and one bad argument with good assumptions, you might get the best results by combining the two.