The Nonlinear Library EA - Imperfection is OK by Richard Y Chappell
Jul 6, 2024
10:51
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Imperfection is OK, published by Richard Y Chappell on July 6, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
tl;dr: We shouldn't expect normative perfection of people in general, or pretend to it ourselves. It's OK to be suboptimal: willingness to recognize the state is the first step to (sometimes) doing even better. (But still, be OK with the fact that you'll never be perfect.)
[Probably old news for most of this audience, but it's sometimes helpful to reiterate this sort of thing.]
Intro
A curious feature of human nature is that we're very psychologically invested in seeing ourselves as good. Teaching applied ethics, it's striking how resistant students often are to any hint of moral self-critique. Meat-eaters will come up with the most transparently absurd rationalizations for disregarding all the torture that goes into producing their favorite meals.
Some philosophers deny that having kids is good, simply because they're scared of the (non-)implication that people ought to have more kids.[1] And there's obviously plenty of motivated reasoning underlying dismissals of effective altruism in the public sphere. I wish we were all more OK with just admitting moral imperfection and openly admiring others who do more good than we, in various respects.
The role of social norms
Part of the issue seems to be that people feel strong social pressure not to admit to any divergence between what they (even ideally?) ought to do and what they actually do.[2] Anti-hypocrisy norms seem especially damaging here: there's a sense that it's better to have low standards than to have high standards that you struggle to always meet, even if your actual behavior is better (in absolute terms) in the latter case.
In teaching, I try to push back against this by modelling tolerance of moral mistakes: "I still eat meat sometimes, even though I don't really think it's justifiable." My hope is that this helps to create a learning environment where students can be more honest with themselves - a sense of, "Oh, good, we don't have to pretend anymore." Otherwise, there can be an atmosphere of defensiveness when discussing such topics, as people wonder whether they are going to be subject to attack for their
personal decisions.
That obviously isn't conducive to open-minded inquiry.
So I think it can be valuable to create a kind of "safe space" for moral mediocrity, and that this can even be the first step in encouraging people to appreciate that they could do better (and might even feel better about themselves if they did). In general, I think it's hard for moral motivations to win out over conformity and immediate gratification, so the most reliable way to do better is probably to develop a community of people with shared high standards.
(That's something I find very valuable about the EA community, for example.) It's often easier to advocate that "we all" should do something valuable (pay higher taxes, eat vegan, tithe 10% to effective charities) than to do it unilaterally, when no-one else around you is doing the same.
As a result, I think it makes sense to be pretty tolerant of people in different social circumstances who are just conforming to their local norms. But I'm inclined to take a stricter stance when it comes to intellectual demands: everyone should acknowledge moral truths, even when they struggle to live up to them. Even though I eat meat, I can certainly acknowledge that veganism is better, and celebrate when a community successfully shifts its norms to make going vegan easier.
And I think this is basically the stance that people who don't donate to effective charities should have towards effective altruism, for example. It's fine (not great, but fine) if you prefer to spend your money on yourself. We all do, to some degree. But that's no excuse for opposing effective philanthropy. Just be...
tl;dr: We shouldn't expect normative perfection of people in general, or pretend to it ourselves. It's OK to be suboptimal: willingness to recognize the state is the first step to (sometimes) doing even better. (But still, be OK with the fact that you'll never be perfect.)
[Probably old news for most of this audience, but it's sometimes helpful to reiterate this sort of thing.]
Intro
A curious feature of human nature is that we're very psychologically invested in seeing ourselves as good. Teaching applied ethics, it's striking how resistant students often are to any hint of moral self-critique. Meat-eaters will come up with the most transparently absurd rationalizations for disregarding all the torture that goes into producing their favorite meals.
Some philosophers deny that having kids is good, simply because they're scared of the (non-)implication that people ought to have more kids.[1] And there's obviously plenty of motivated reasoning underlying dismissals of effective altruism in the public sphere. I wish we were all more OK with just admitting moral imperfection and openly admiring others who do more good than we, in various respects.
The role of social norms
Part of the issue seems to be that people feel strong social pressure not to admit to any divergence between what they (even ideally?) ought to do and what they actually do.[2] Anti-hypocrisy norms seem especially damaging here: there's a sense that it's better to have low standards than to have high standards that you struggle to always meet, even if your actual behavior is better (in absolute terms) in the latter case.
In teaching, I try to push back against this by modelling tolerance of moral mistakes: "I still eat meat sometimes, even though I don't really think it's justifiable." My hope is that this helps to create a learning environment where students can be more honest with themselves - a sense of, "Oh, good, we don't have to pretend anymore." Otherwise, there can be an atmosphere of defensiveness when discussing such topics, as people wonder whether they are going to be subject to attack for their
personal decisions.
That obviously isn't conducive to open-minded inquiry.
So I think it can be valuable to create a kind of "safe space" for moral mediocrity, and that this can even be the first step in encouraging people to appreciate that they could do better (and might even feel better about themselves if they did). In general, I think it's hard for moral motivations to win out over conformity and immediate gratification, so the most reliable way to do better is probably to develop a community of people with shared high standards.
(That's something I find very valuable about the EA community, for example.) It's often easier to advocate that "we all" should do something valuable (pay higher taxes, eat vegan, tithe 10% to effective charities) than to do it unilaterally, when no-one else around you is doing the same.
As a result, I think it makes sense to be pretty tolerant of people in different social circumstances who are just conforming to their local norms. But I'm inclined to take a stricter stance when it comes to intellectual demands: everyone should acknowledge moral truths, even when they struggle to live up to them. Even though I eat meat, I can certainly acknowledge that veganism is better, and celebrate when a community successfully shifts its norms to make going vegan easier.
And I think this is basically the stance that people who don't donate to effective charities should have towards effective altruism, for example. It's fine (not great, but fine) if you prefer to spend your money on yourself. We all do, to some degree. But that's no excuse for opposing effective philanthropy. Just be...