Jonathan Haidt: creating imaginary victims to justify righteous beliefs

[VWdieselnightmare]

I'm listening to the audiobook of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind for my GC book group (I know audiobooks are cheating, sorry) So far it seems to be about the psychology of belief and why people do terrible things in the name of being moral and righteous.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-righteous-mind/jonathan-haidt/9780141039169

Just come to a bit where he talks about conducting an experiment in the US and South America, among different communities and classes and languages. He found that wherever he looked, certain people (not everyone) always took a moral right/ wrong stance, even if there was absolutely no logical reason to do so. And they did it by creating victims to justify their moral response.

One of the questions that was asked was whether a woman who cut up and destroyed her national flag in the privacy of her own home with no one else to see was doing something bad. Some people said 'Well, if her neighbour had seen her do it, he might be offended, so it's bad'. The interviewer would tell them that there were no onlookers. Yet even when the interviewees recognised that their attempts to create a victim to be offended were bogus, they didn't change their minds that this was wrong of the woman.

Here I'm roughly quoting Haidt:They said things like ‘I know this is wrong but I just can’t think of a reason why.’ They seemed to be morally dumbfounded, rendered speechless by their inability to render verbally what they knew intuitively. These subjects were reasoning, They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it wasn’t reasoning in search for truth, it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. It was reasoning as described by David Hume — a slave to passion.

This tendency to adopt a moral or authoritarian position that can't be justified rationally seems to explain a lot of what we've seen recently with the Jo Phoenix tribunal (We are Right, She is Wrong) and the TRAs, who can't debate so just shout at us. I saw the photos from Filia with the young women outside the venue with the banner saying something along the lines that feminism that doesn't include transwomen isn't feminism. Which I'm sure they sincerely believe.Last year I listened to a Radio 4 programme recommended here about how authoritarianism is a natural trait among 30% of the population.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y7sq

Don't know where I'm going with this, except to conclude that there is a proportion of the population that would appear to be more inclined to irrational moral, religious and authoritarian conviction that they cling to a against all rational debate. And that these are people who will never be won over by debate or logical questioning, because they are working from intuition and passion, not from rational thought. Over to people who know more to pick up the ball or put me right.

Hi VW, another day, another fascinating thread. Little did I know when I registered with MN that I'd get so much food for thought.

Yes, humans are very prone to judgement calls and confirmation bias. Throw in group dynamics inspired purity spirals, this is so visible now in the age of Twitter pile ons.

Helen Joyce talks about human beings across the board thinking that they come to correct value judgements based on the evidence. No, they make judgements, rationally or irrationally, and then crow bar the evidence retrospectively to make their opinions seem thought out and unbiased.

In my case, I've reassessed many long held views, especially political ones, when revisiting arguments don't hold with the mounting evidence and data.

I've attempted this with trans, but it's the first time in a long time that my gut instinct to be suspicious and cynical about it, has been shown not only to be right, but I've then doubled down, and every scrap of evidence and data damns the movement fully, only solidifying my deep skepticism.

Of course, when you see the whole of civic society incl doctors, scientists, civil servants and pretty much the whole professional managerial classes, most politicians, almost every MSM journalist etc, who are privy to the same evidence and data as we are, choose voluntarily to look the other way or formally deny, we're all left in the most cognitively dissonant situation we could ever experience.

Helen Joyce now calls this an existential threat to Western liberal values. I believe she's right.

One or even two generations of damaged individuals who will produce the most scary rage as de transitioning explodes.

An elite who will never admit complicity in their role in damaging their children.

The real possibility of a Right backlash, trashing women's rights, gay rights, as traditional gender roles are weaponised again, Matt Walsh style.

If people have been taught from infancy to honour a flag, the flag becomes internalised for them as eg a sacred symbol.of the nation. Though cutting up a piece of cloth, paper or plastic (depending on what the theoretical flag is made from) harms no one, it feels to those thinking about it as destroying the 'fabric' of the nation: but they do not recognise they are conflating the metaphorical and the actual, and so they cannot distinguish between what the flag stands for in their minds from a bit of stuff.

Tangentially, consider all the stuff people with which people stuff their homes. (Eg tv programme 'Sort Your Life Out'.).

It's because they literally CAN'T THINK about it.

Good thread.

I'm going to take the side that yes, cutting up the flag in private, may well be wrong, and I don't see why that is irrational?

If it's specified that there is no motivation behind the act then sure that doesn't look wrong.

But I'm guessing people would think it's wrong, because they would assume a traitorous motivation? That is, we can rightly expect loyalty within our own societal group, and we dislike people that are breaking that rule.

Now in practice, when it comes to governments that may be doing bad things, sure you could argue that burning the flag is a reasonable act of protest.

But still, we have rules against treason for understandable reasons.

Is it any surprise that a cohort thinks that way? They've internalised the simplistic morality messages they were taught as children; ''X is bad - don't let other people see you do X or they will think you are bad.'' ''People that do X are bad people, we don't want our neighbours to think we are bad'.

Something I find quite fascinating on Mumsnet, is that many thread and comments are about this - people trying to turn irrational like or dislike into moral arguments.

I saw on a thread people trying to explain why they morally judge people who leave their homes without blow-drying their hair after washing it. Those who admitted to judging it, felt that it was evidence of a character flaw of laziness or being disorganised and having poor time-planning - not having a shower in good enough time before they left the house, to be able to blow dry their hair.

To me I can see no ‘victim’ of a person having wet hair in public, but I can see a clash of values.

People feel “It’s just wrong” and you can see how a life can be very efficiently run and high achieving if a person has faultless time-planning, performing all tasks according to plan, and has an unwavering belief they must always being immaculately turned out before leaving the house.

These values would be absolutely central to their life and they would imagine that their lives would totally disintegrate if they stopped - they’d probably be right.

On the other hand, it is also possible to have a fulfilling life being much more laid-back, not sweating the small stuff, intrinsic values over extrinsic, eg- ‘it is it more important for me to be blow-drying my hair now or have a few minutes relaxing with a coffee and checking in with myself?’. There’s nothing ‘immoral’ about it, and such a person might judge the first person (unless it being judgmental is the sort of small stuff they don’t want to sweat), for being uptight, which is also a victimless crime.

What Haidt seems to be saying is that in each cohort interviewed (there were various different cohorts) there were people who thought cutting up a flag was inherently, absolutely, wrong and those who didn't.

I'm absolutely rubbish at philosophy, so I can't argue the details and I'm still slowly and quite painfully working my way through the audiobook. But it rang a bell because I'd heard so many Open University witnesses saying that they felt the way they felt, and treated Jo the way they treated her, in order to protect unnamed 'victims' who were offended by GC belief. And that citing these victims gave them the freedom to treat Jo badly and try to shut her down.

I think that is kind of Deontology versus Consequentialism. Basically are acts right or wrong in themselves (Deontology) or is moral rightness or wrongness determined only by the consequences of the action (Consequentialism).

There are arguments for both really.

For example, I can think of some acts which have no victims as being absolutely awful, terrible, immoral, for example, grave-robbing and interfering with corpses for pleasure, even if no one finds out and is upset or harmed by it.

On the other hand, some acts which seem wrong in and of themselves actually turn out to be the right thing to do according to the consequences, for example telling a child a terrible lie which makes them run for their lives, to protect them from a serious harm they are too young to comprehend and take evasive action from.

With the flag example, I'm not sure this is any more convincing than coming up with a scenario of attempted murder, but specifying that no one was in the slightest bit harmed. Of course people are still going to say that it's wrong, regardless of real world harm.

Destroying a flag doesn't involve harm or even attempted harm to another person, but it can be seen (depending on motivation) as a violation of a contract that we are under for very good reasons.

Maybe other examples they used were better. Can't agree with this one.

Interesting thread. This in particular:

But it wasn’t reasoning in search for truth, it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions.

I'm going to take the side that yes, cutting up the flag in private, may well be wrong, and I don't see why that is irrational?

It's irrational because you haven't really given a reason why it's wrong. 'We have treason laws for a reason' is very vague and isn't an actual explanation of why it's wrong to cut up a flag. You even give a justification of why it might not be wrong - governments doing bad things. 'Bad things' is a subjective judgment. Any government will always be doing things that some people consider bad.

Isn't there an idea for pedophiles to be given access to AI child porn and sex dolls fashioned as under age. How would this fit into these distinctions here?

No actual children would be harmed, either in the making of these formats, or continued behaviour in the outside world.

If such imagery reduced offences in reality, would we approve of the methods?

Or is it all wrong on principle?

For me, as a Brit, I feel pretty much no emotional attachment to flags, where as Americans who pledge allegiance to the flag every day at school as kids, can develop an almost humanised devotion to it, like they would think it could hurt the flag itself if you cut it.

I think unpicking the emotional projection of human feelings from the inanimate object, the flag itself, would be quite a painful exercise. I can imagine the made up victims of the flag being cut up, are probably a way of the study participants deflecting from and not admitting, that they actually believe the flag has feelings, while knowing that is laughably irrational.

It is quite interesting how watching the Boston Dynamics researchers testing their robots’ balance causes an emotional reaction in us, even though the robot doesn’t feel anything. It caused quite a furore.

No actual children would be harmed, either in the making of these formats, or continued behaviour in the outside world.

How would this remotely prevent the harming of children though? The paedophiles would be so happy with their porn or their sex dolls that it would never occur to them to ever seek out actual children? That doesn't make sense. It's not as if porn deters potential rapists and violent sexual offenders from progressing to committing those crimes. Arguably it is probably a major factor in leading to those crimes.

For me, as a Brit, I feel pretty much no emotional attachment to flags

Same here. I think a lot of Brits would consider strong attachment to a flag, and an aversion to it being cut up, as... well... a bit of a red flag!

@AllProperTeaIsTheft

It's irrational because you haven't really given a reason why it's wrong.

So this depends on motivation right; but I'm assuming a scenario that this person has a traitorous heart and has no loyalty to the state and the destruction of the flag is connected to that kind of motivation.

A society can require loyalty, because that's needed for its stability and success, and therefore the well being of its citizens. As an extreme example, if someone turns traitor in war and leaks to the enemy it could contribute to the complete destruction of the society and the mass killing of its citizens.

So I would see it as a contract that citizens are under for a very good reason.

I'm not proposing it. Just part of this philosophical discussion.

If it indeed did mean that no pedophile would ever harm a real child again, and every offender could be IDd (or certainly every recidivist on a register or attested or leaving jail), and these solutions were proposed, would polite society be able to put aside disgust, and say the greater good overrode any objections?

If it indeed did mean that no pedophile would ever harm a real child again, and every offender could be IDd (or certainly every recidivist on a register or attested or leaving jail), and these solutions were proposed, would polite society be able to put aside disgust, and say the greater good overrode any objections?

Hmmm. I'm not sure. I get that it's a philosophical scenario, but it's hard to put yourself in that mindset when it feels so obvious that it wouldn't work in real life. It reminds me a little of the argument for legalising drugs. There is evidence that that is beneficial overall, but it's hard for a lot of people to shake the feeling that the government should not be legalising something which is bad and kills people.

Well, progessives are pushing these ideas. Alongside shit like Trudeau's euthanasia for drug addicts, womb harvesting, womb transplants for transwomen.

No barrier can't be broken, no idea can't be contemplated.

I think there is an element of it not being about the acts themselves.

We are social creatures, so there is an element of morals about ‘not being a wrong ‘un’.

So even if a man is the most impeccable husband in all ways possible, if he is privately fantasising about schemes to build a dungeon, kidnap a child prisoner and torture them daily in it, even if it is not his intention to carry it out, he is still a ‘wrong ‘un’.

So with the flag cutting, a person dispassionately chopping up a flag, which no one ever sees or finds out about, with no more emotional feeling that chopping up an old bed sheet, can really be doing nothing wrong. However if the intention is subversive and it’s the fact that the flag represents what it represents, which makes them enjoy chopping up the flag, for example, a terrorist doing it as part of a ritual, then it arguably becomes an immoral act.

My Grandad said that flags were idolatrous, and I never felt the same about Guides after that. If people think cutting one up in secret is wrong, they have made an idol of it.

Isn't there an idea for pedophiles to be given access to AI child porn and sex dolls fashioned as under age. How would this fit into these distinctions here?

I'm glad you mentioned this, because this has something that has troubled me a lot. If you create child sex abuses that don't involve real children, or if you sell sex dolls that look like children, that means no child is being harmed. So why make them illegal? Yet most of us, I think, would instinctively feel revulsion at the idea of those things being legal - which is the emotional response that Haidt is talking about.

The main argument against them being legal is that you would somehow be legitimising the idea that it's OK to want to have sexual relations with children - or perhaps that once adults had developed the taste for sexual relations with children through using AI porn or sex dolls, they would be more inclined to go on to the real thing.

Yes, there is an element of these rituals having a morally degenerative impact on the person performing them, so they will be more inclined to act them out.

But even if they didn’t lead to the person being more likely to act them out, there is still is the ‘wrong ‘un’ element, that we don’t want people who wish to do such things, to be part of our society.

It is fascinating. If indeed it could be proved that access to AI child porn and child sex dolls massively reduced incidence in the real world, maybe prevented many going from "curiosity/fledgling offences" to serious repeat offenders, would we as a society tolerate this as a policy? If it genuinely significantly reduced real world offences with children.

I think we would want to try anything else to stop it. There must be ways of breaking down the components parts of what would make such a thing lead to the change in behaviour, and to use each element of those components to affect the change in a way which doesn’t involve implicitly condoning child abuse fantasies as part of the ‘treatment’.

Don't know where I'm going with this, except to conclude that there is a proportion of the population that would appear to be more inclined to irrational moral, religious and authoritarian conviction that they cling to a against all rational debate. And that these are people who will never be won over by debate or logical questioning, because they are working from intuition and passion, not from rational thought.

As is oft quoted on here - you cant reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. And in think it’s self evident about a significant portion of the population that are attracted to authoritarianism and/or populism. Whether it’s Trump supporters who are still convinced that Biden stole the election, or Boris supporters within the Tory party who still support him despite Boris being anything but conservative.

A few years ago I visited the Stasi museum in Berlin and it was eye opening how much information was gathered by neighbours spying on neighbours, and even family members reporting in each other. If you can convince people of the moral correctness then yes, you can easily get them to act as moral arbiters in their communities. We even saw that during Covid on here, with some posters almost desperate to grass up neighbours.

It would depend entirely on the quality of evidence though. I know a lot of people think this would be the case, but there are an awful lot of "fond theories" about stuff like this that seem logical and aren't. And ideas about sexual expression and catharsis are particularly prone to this.

For instance, it's long been believed, and much beloved by e.g. Freudians, that expressing anger is cathartic and reduces anger. But there's plenty of evidence from more recent psychological studies that in fact it doesn't reduce anger, it just makes you angrier. Which is pertinent when its applied to ideas about "sexual catharsis" or the idea that, say, if only paedophiles could just "vent" their sexual desires for kids on dolls, they'd be "relieved" and would all be okay for real kids. I'm not sure that's what the evidence suggests, quite the opposite. Sexual desires escalate instead.