Momentum Kindness

In his July feature on BigThink.com, writer Kevin Dutton discusses some properties of the psychopathic mind that he says may make it more adept at impartial decision making when morality would stump the rest of us. Should I send troops to war? Should I sacrifice one life for many?

He says it is convenient for leaders to have a bit of this moral impartiality in order to be functional.

Many of the comments following the post argue with the set up of the hypothetical premises that lead to this conclusion. Whether to suffocate baby Hitler with a pillow is more than a straightforward question of about numbers, the, presumably, the psychopathic mind would coolly figure it: one dead, many saved. Readers correctly point out that human moral choice hinges on elements outside of the numerical. Baby Hitler is, after all, a product of his circumstances, too. Many Hitler-like children are born every day, one reader reminded us. Some are put into circumstances that would nurture their tendencies into benevolent fervor and some possibly into not so benevolent.

In any case, normal people who understand these dynamics face moral dilemmas not because the can't add or because some super-human sympathy keeps them from committing murder - I hope it is clear through the casual use of military sport throughout the world that otherwise civil people are easily capable of murder in the proper circumstances. Most people wouldn't suffocate baby Hitler because they believe what their experience routinely shows: that human actions come at the end of a long chain of precursory events whose trajectory depends on long chains of other adjoining events and that every circumstance deserves the benefit of the chances that it is subject to. In other words, we cannot interfere with the wave function of the new life since we do not know what kind of influences it will actually fall under and, therefore, cannot act now on the chance of its future folly.

This reaction is based on something that would also prevent most normal people from shoving someone under a train in order to save five others down the road and that is the faith in forward momentum of a system.

If a train is speeding down a set of tracks and an innocent man is standing on a bridge above it, it doesn't seem to most of us as if it would be a good idea to throw the man overboard in order to stop the train in order to save the people on it or five others on the tracks downriver, because most of us observe what inanimate objects also often observe and that it the inertial states of physical systems.

The train as a trajectory, a speed, a destiny as it were. In physics, this is called momentum, even though I am being a little figurative about it. Just as with baby Hitler, the train has a future path determined by its present circumstances and all the influences that will come in contact with it between now and the future point of interest. To most of us, this path is to be left to the devices of the forces that shape it and, as bystanders, it is difficult to make a decision to interfere.

It's as if, if we had the ability to pump something into the sun to alter its chemical reactability, as some effort and cost to us, would we. Even if it were to be a good thing for our planet, it would seem rather as if we should let the sun do its thing. Interference is added action which, in physics, translates to the introduction of force, an interaction between matter and a change in energy states - in other words, an outside action, an influence. Momentum functions on the energy and trajectory already present in the system. Momentum is a measure of an inertial state, meaning essentially a stable state, a situation that requires interference in order to undergo change.

Again, as is true for when you are watching TV and don't want to stop or are not watching and don't want to start, inertial states are pleasant and attractive, even to active objects like people. In life we call this "routine." We get used a certain way of activity and like to stick to it. It is familiar. It is easy. It is certainly easier than formulating alternate courses at every turn.

I believe it is for this fondness of routine, of the preservation of unaltered momentum, that people think hard about interfering with a speeding train. What will be will be, they say. It is in the cards of the train, they say. Anything could happen between now and then, the moment we are trying to forecast for. Just as you would not interfere with a waterfall that is that you think may break apart a rock that may set off a volcano that may generate an earthquake, you would not throw the guy under the train to help derail it. Not because you are so very kind. If you really thought you would save hundreds by sacrificing one, you could do the math as well as the next person. But because the math is not that simple. And our scruples - indeed what we call moral dilemma or empathy or kindness - is just the consideration that there is no guarantee that interference will help. For all you know, it may hinder. Stopping the waterfall may have consequences you could not imagine that may be even worse than the earthquake.

Secretly, most of us trust this doubt and do not interfere in systems that are on an inertial trajectory for this reason. The effects of interference are unpredictable and we trust that the many points of change they would introduce could generate waves we could control even less.

Indeed, this is the folly of modern engineering and the hubris against which systems scientists warn the didactic structuralists: Be careful how you plan for the change you want to affect. Sure, constructing a bridge may be straightforward in and of itself, but perhaps what happens to traffic and to resulting population patterns will be less easy to quantify, predict or plan for.

Often, systems scientists only ask that engineers and planners be aware of this property, sometimes referred to as emergence. To be aware of the fact that our well-structured and forecast actions result not only in the interference we planned for but in some we didn't plan for as well. And, in the exponential ripple effect of action, into a multitude of other shimmying effects .

Because all systems are physical in the end, somehow, human behavior follows, in consciousness, the contours of physical rules and therefore thinks very hard before poking a finger in boiling pot, even if it appears to mean prevention of a fire. Not so much self-preservation as an awareness that current knowledge of the true system is incomplete and knowledge of the the results of interference far from predictable. Too unpredictable, in fact, to warrant the kind of bold action that would come only through certitude.

Perhaps it is for this reason that psychopaths are more likely to simply to the math and act the action.
They don't understand about momentum. They don't sense inertial systems or interfering systems or the momentousness of effects from just a small addition of energy into a situation. They just count: one person here, five people there. Five minus one = four. I know what to do.

They know what to do but as we see in our current societies, in which this kind of reasoning leads not only to poor political decisions but to truly pathological behavior, the end results of this simplicity are frequently condemned because they are, in the end, dysfunctional.

Kevin Dutton still makes a good point. Noting that some of us think twice while some of us do not is important. But before learning any applicable lessons from those who seem to be able to subdue moral scruples for the benefit of clear-cut benefit, we should ask what moral scruples are made out of and whether they're not related to a larger knowledge that, as yet, we qualify only as intuition, kindness, incertitude or humanity.