Moral luck

"Your troopers actually bother giving speeding tickets to everyone who speeds and aren't just infuriatingly arbitrary about it?"

Hah! No. But to be fair, to catch everyone who was speeding, they'd have to have the ability to be in hundreds of places at once. Pretty much no one follows the "25 mph at a school zone" rule, for example. People actually honk at you for going any less than 35. The best the cops can do is bust random people and hope that the rest are scared into following the law for a few days.

Edit: On the topic of moral luck, this has really bugged me ever since I realized it. So much of what you get in life is luck of the draw, like intelligence.

edited 20th Feb '11 5:04:06 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

Even busting random people who are actually speeding as they're caught is one thing, I get that they can't be everywhere.

No, what I'm talking about is shit like everyone going 10+ the limit on the freeway, a couple people weaving through lanes at 20+ without signals, and the one that gets pulled over is generally someone going the limit itself but momentarily went a couple clicks over the limit from a shallow hill.

edited 20th Feb '11 5:08:12 PM by Pykrete

You know what they should do? When they make people renew their licenses, they should make them take the test again. In fact, make 'em take it every year. And show them gruesome pictures of car accidents like we get shown in Driver's Ed. It pisses me off when adutls are reckless drivers, because they can't blame it on inexperience or "hormones". They're just being inconsiderate.

On a family road trip to the Midwest we were once going 5+ while everyone else was going 15+.

We got pulled over for speeding. Dad asked the officer why we were getting ticketed and the worse offenders weren't — the reply was "you pulled over when I flashed, they didn't."

Three hours later we crossed the state line and got pulled over for impeding traffic under identical circumstances.

edited 20th Feb '11 5:14:24 PM by Pykrete

The worst part is when everyone's speeding so heavily, you'll end up being a danger and a liability if you don't speed yourself.

Which is also a bullshit excuse. If I can slow down around a blind highway curve in time to avoid hitting a semi that barely has enough torque to creep up a hill at half the limit, some impatient asshole can tap the brakes on an open freeway and lose 10-15 mph.

Anyway, I'm rather cynical about mentioning "traffic law" and "morals" in the same sentence if you couldn't tell If there were really any morals in question they'd at least be consistent about it.

edited 20th Feb '11 5:28:17 PM by Pykrete

Okay, it's more like it requires a lot of skill to drive at the speed limit when everyone's speeding. It's kind of like slamming on the brakes when there are cars behind you, just not as severe.

Why should you blame anyone at all if free will doesn't exist?

@OP: I'm (mostly) a consequentialist. I'd offer my opinions, but I doubt they'd be relevant to the discussion as is.

Why do you think free will doesn't exist?

"Why do you think free will doesn't exist?"

Pretty much the classic reasons [1].

It depends on what scale you're talking about, I suppose. You don't choose your genes or your parents or your economic status or your birth environment, and all those things are big contributing factors in your personality. But there is nothing forcing your hand on every single decision you make. You have free will to choose whether to wear the yellow shirt or the blue, and likewise you have free will to choose whether or not to drink and drive, for example.

Well obviously we can make decisions. Nobody disputes that. I just kind of see it as a 'mechanical' process, kind of like a computer. What this 'organic computer' decides is ultimately part of much larger process involving the whole universe. And these physical processes are just that, nothing more. If that makes sense.

Freewill exists simply because we observe it within ourselves. (Yeah, that sounds pretty crazy)

At this moment, you can choose to do all kinds of things. You could get up and get a glass of water, for example.

Might you have been "destined" to drink that water? Yes, you could have. However, you perceive yourself making the decision "I want a glass of water".

I could probably have explained that better, but it's the gist of it.

The problem with saying free will doesn't exist at all is that then you can't blame people for doing wrong, but you also can't blame people for blaming people for doing wrong, nor can you blame people for blaming people for blaming people...

It's possible that free will doesn't exist, but if everyone believed that, it would be even harder than it is now to achieve some rough common morality, and society would be chaos.

There are certainly limitations to how we can exercise our will - we can't flap our arms and fly, for example, though we may have the will to do so. But you agree that the imagination is limitless, right? And just like there are an infinite number of numbers between 0 and 1, our imaginations would still be limitless within those restrictions imposed on us by our psychology/physiology/family/class.

I perceive the color blue, but does that mean it exists as an objective feature of the world as really real 'blueness'? Maybe it's just a mechanism our brain uses to differentiate things? The physical processes underlying this distinction are real, but that doesn't mean 'blueness' is something beyond this.

We make decisions, but we aren't independent agents. We're deeply connected to the universe on a fundamental level.

edited 20th Feb '11 8:49:09 PM by LoveHappiness

But that doesn't change the fact that you are you, and you can control what you do.

You could do the hokey pokey right now.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:01:43 PM by TheMightyAnonym

"The problem with saying free will doesn't exist at all is that then you can't blame people for doing wrong, but you also can't blame people for blaming people for doing wrong, nor can you blame people for blaming people for blaming people..."

Then all is as it should be : - ). To understand is to forgive, everyone should let go of their hate. People do things that hurt each other, but no one's actions are solely their responsibility. Blaming can sometimes do good things for people, but you shouldn't take blame as a property that somehow infuses actions and people. That is both hateful and wrong.

Then how would you have the legal system set up? Should there not be a penal code at all?

And of course, if they did set up a penal code, then you can't blame them because they're not responsible for their actions.

"But that doesn't change the fact that you are you, and you can control what you do.

You could do the hokey pokey right now."

I'm all for the concept of anatta [1].

@On The Other Handle

Whatever works the best for human happiness. I know that's kind of confusing, because it's not focused on revenge : - ).

edited 20th Feb '11 9:17:14 PM by LoveHappiness

But that doesn't change the fact that you are you, and you can control what you do.

What is a man, but a miserable little pile of environmental influences?!

Dude seriously? Compatibalism is sort of obvious. We do things to get what we want, based on the resources and information available. One of those resources is morality, and one of those bits of information is that society'll kick our ass if we misbehave too much. QED, bitches.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:34:06 PM by Roman

A free will derail?

I kinda thought that question had no meaning. Either we have it, and we keep going as we have, or we don't, and it doesn't matter what decision you come to about it. To put it bluntly, no matter how you answer the question it affects nothing.

Not to mention that having a stable society basically rests on assuming it exists, so there is that.

As for the OP: As I read it, "moral luck" is basically saying "you have to treat each situation individually". You have to consider intent and conditions, because the net effect of killing someone in self defense and murder is still the same.

And traffic tickets: They certainly could enforce them a lot better (at least in more urban areas). They could set up more speed cameras; however in the US there are a lot of objections every time they're used. (Mostly, I think, of the "waaah I got caught" variety.) I know Great Britain has a lot of traffic cameras though.

Sure, call dumb animals deterministically doing things 'they feel like' free will. But that's not what people typically mean by it.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:41:55 PM by LoveHappiness

Not to mention that having a stable society basically rests on assuming it exists, so there is that.

Why do people always think this? There are systems of ethics beyond proscribing punishment, you know.