Ethics in the Information Age
Introduction
In this essay I am going to argue that the Information Age has given rise to a range of popular phenomena, whose negative moral implications are easily overlooked. My argument is inspired by the main principle of evolutionary psychology: we have certain dispositions - including psychological ones - which have risen in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The thesis is twofold: first, that the newest technology has had great impact on the moral landscape, and second, that its efficiency at changing it is heavily influenced by its ability to e x p l o i t our dispositions. Of course, it is not the machines or algorithms that are responsible, but rather our own ingenuity in creating whatever serves its purpose best, regardless of the resulting harmful by-products, whether to the fabric of society or environment. In Section I, I will describe the premise behind evolutionary psychology in more detail and present the case for the relevance and importance of new technologies in that context. Next, I will present how technology is able to exploit our dispositions by the means of analysis of the following two phenomena: “virtue signalling” in Section II and moral shaming in Section III.
I. Evolutionary psychology
Evolution is the most important theory science has yet arrived at. Whether one shares this sentiment or not, there is no need to describe its mechanism in great detail. Organisms pass their genes on by the means of reproduction. Those genes which result in greater reproductive success of the specimen possessing them will be more and more common among the population with each and every next generation, until reaching fixation, that is, becoming common amongst all members. By the same calculation, the genes lowering one’s inclusive fitness will naturally die out, since the individuals possessing them are not as efficient at propagating them as the competing rest.
In the process of evolution, various adaptations have been created. Just like introducing the assembly line, where each worker specialises in only one task was a great improvement in the productivity over the model one-does-all, so we have developed distinct adaptations with very different functions. Lungs are nothing like the heart anatomically-wise and there is no reason why they should be; they have different functions and both are built in a way that manages to perform them optimally.
What evolutionary psychologists believe is that those adaptations are not restricted to the physiological traits, but include the psychological ones as well (Symons, 1992). A good example of such a psychological adaptation is one of the cheater-detection module. In 1966, the four-card problem was invented by a cognitive psychologist Peter Wason (Wason, 1968). There are four cards lying down, each has a number on one side and a letter on another. Then, a rule is given: “if there is a vowel on one side of the card, then there is an even number on the other side” and the subjects are asked which cards have to be reversed (their other side than the one visible at the moment inspected) in order to check if this rule is correct.
It is a simple task in deductive reasoning, but the results were abysmal. What is of our interest, however, is that the success rate of respondents was very heavily dependant on the context given. Two evolutionary psychologists presented a slightly different formulation of the problem, one grounded in the social relations rather than somewhat abstract objects such as signs (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). Consider cards which have a number representing one’s age written on one side, and a drink of choice on another, and a rule “you have to be 18 in order to be able to drink alcohol”. In this case, people showed much more competence at checking whether the rule has been enforced. Furthemore, other, similar experiments took place to rule out such a possibility as one’s former awareness of the rule or cultural familiarity with it. Thus, it seems that we may have evolved what has been called a cheater-detection module: we are able to detect someone’s departure from the rule, but not so much breaking a rule when abstract objects are involved. Figuring whether the person one is communicating with is providing honest or false information has been a fundamental problem throughout our evolutionary history. Therefore, we can consider this module as a psychological adaptation.
Now, the particularly important concept is that of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (henceforth shortened to EEA). Simply speaking, the process of our adaptations evolving was shaped by the environment where that process took place. If there had been no oxygen in the air, we would not have developed lungs. Now, it is patently obvious that our current environment is different from EEA. Of course, it is not as radical a difference as is possibly imaginable, because we simply would not have survived it: for example, consider the average temperature rising by sixty degrees. However, the evolution of culture has had massive impact on humanity, at the moment reaching the stage of the information age. Whichever adaptations we have evolved, they might have been suitable in the EEA, but there is no certainty they continue to be beneficial now or in the future. Particularly, since we see that it is not the biological sphere that has changed abruptly, but the cultural one, it is the psychological adaptations that should be under our scrutiny. And so, I claim that certain psychological adaptations we possess may have become obsolete, if not downright harmful, given our current cultural environment. It is vital to remember that “Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).
I may be accused at this point of conflating two different evaluations. We must clearly differentiate between what is good for survival, meaning increasing inclusive fitness, and what is good in the ethical sense of the word. The adaptations of the past were good or indifferent for survival, not necessarily morally good. Now, it is only a speculation which cannot be falsified yet, that certain psychological adaptations have gone obsolete. It would require another thousands of generation to see if they will truly have atrophied, which would corroborate the hypothesis. My argument is as follows: some of our psychological adaptations motivate us to act in a way, whose utility/moral value we overestimate (I believe the reverse holds as well: we may also be deterred from acting in certain ways which we would follow if it was not for our underestimation of their value). In the following sections, I will attempt to demonstrate how technology manages to exploit these adaptations.
II. “Virtue signalling”
What is “virtue signalling”? It is a relatively new term, which has been popularised by James Bartholomew in 2015 in his article in The Spectator. The idea is fairly simple: it is a morally relevant platitude. It can take form of a corporate slogan; e.g. Whole Foods and the promotion of their motto “values matter” or your friend’s post on facebook reading “say no to X”, where X is an ideology abhorred by each and every of their friends.
The greatest paradox lies in the name of the phenomenon. I have come to the conclusion that the defining features of virtue signalling are as follows. First, it does not have much to do with virtue. Second, it is the weakest kind of signalling.
According to the classical account of virtue, it is fundamentally expressed in agent’s behaviour. We may claim that given person is virtuous based on the fact that they act virtuously. Even if virtue is treated merely as the disposition to act, it is a moot point to debate the courage of a man, who has never had an occasion to act courageously. Such a man’s pretensions to courage must ultimately be contested.
What all cases of virtue signalling have in common, on the other hand, is that they are merely platitudes, fundamentally lacking any reality-changing potential; they are m a t e r i a- l l y i n f e r t i l e. It is a morally loaded statement that is precisely uncontroversial enough not to be significant. It is not a person who opposes the totalitarian regime of their country, but a politician who claims their party cares about the poor, merely expressing certain sentiment, while the party is not necessarily helping the disenfranchised. It is a prominent website setting a special version of their logo for a single day in order to show their support to the minority celebrating on that day, just when the minority has been accepted by the society to the extent that the logo will not rise any meaningful controversy.
Signalling, on the other hand, is a term used in the field of, among others, evolutionary biology. Organisms communicate with each other, for example, in order to advertise their worth in the “reproductive market”. Such signals, however, can be either honest or dishonest. An example of a dishonest signal may be the ability to regrow a part of body that only manages to imitate the old one rather than possess any functionality of the original, e.g. a crab regrowing a claw merely to scare off its enemies. On the other hand, there are honest signals, such as a peacock’s tail. The fundamental idea is as follows: the more costly the signal to the agent signalling, the more likely it is to be honest.
A peacock that is able to develop a tail so mesmerizing that it becomes a handicap to its own functioning shows that it is strong enough that it has been able to develop such a tail in the first place, thus has better success breeding, which results in increasing his inclusive fitness by having more offsprings than other peacocks.
We could also conjure an example that is better related to our everyday, cultural life. Imagine meeting two men on the street. The first one says “I have a lot of money.” The second one invites us to his mansion, whose luxury is breathtaking. We would believe it is the latter who has much more in his bank account, precisely because his signal was reliable: it was costly. The fact that the second man has managed to spend so much in fact informs us, how much he must then have had in the first place, rather than put skepticism in us based on his extravagant spending habits. The first man’s signal, on the other hand, did not cost him anything whatsoever, and so it lacks a great deal in reliability.
It is clear that virtue signalling seems like something the former man would engage in. If there is no action behind the statement and if the statement was free to broadcast, it probably is not worth a great deal of attention. A dishonest signal, however, can still trick somebody, its expected value is still positive to the agent. Why else would anyone engage in it? The agents advertise themselves essentially at no cost, even if the advert is not particularly effective.
A case study of recent empik controversy informs us how fragile the results following this behavior are. Empik received a lot of negative feedback after it has been discovered that they sell a book on the refuted concept of treating homosexuality. Many people appealed to withdraw the book from the store, but empik did not comply. A while later, just before Parada Równości took place, empik changed its logo to a rainbow-colored version in the social media. However, surprisingly, feedback was overwhelmingly negative: not so much from those, who would protest such an initiative from any company, but precisely from the group who expressed their concern in the first situation. It was believed merely to be a “PR move” and in no way compensating for the previous misdeed. However, other companies did not receive such accusations of (in)conspicuous promotion of their own interests while engaging in similar action.
So far we have focused on the cost/benefit, signalling part, but now I would like to analyze slightly further the (in)action problem, the aspect of virtue. I want to suggest the following distinction: action vs information. I believe there has been a recent development of the latter at the cost of the former on two levels: technological and cultural.
Technology has been able to improve the rate of the flow of information staggeringly efficiently. We are able to learn what is happening in practically any place on the planet, right at the moment, at any moment. What is even more important, however, is our role in that flow: we are not merely the audience anymore, but creators as well. It is sharing, commenting and reacting that gives the actual flow to that river and what differentiates the Internet from such a medium as the television. We no longer witness anything happening before our own eyes, or before the eye of the camera, but only images that have been processed thousands of times already. We are encouraged to voice our opinion on any topic, regardless of our expertise on it, and we are more than happy to oblige.
Culturally-wise, postmodernist “end of great narratives” seems to have resulted in the corollary of what I propose to call “tyranny of small narratives”. In no way do I claim that discourse has no power to shape reality. Rather than that, I want to make an observation that never before has our speech been policed in such detail just as never before have we been so free to act in any way desired. It is the result of the struggle between freedom and security: it is believed we can be only free once we are secure, but by trying to attain security, we forgo freedom (on that struggle, but perhaps with quite different interpretation, see Bauman, 2003). By the idea of tyranny of small narratives I mean the value that we have given to information, at the cost of our appreciation for actions. Let me provide an example.
Earlier this year, an interview with a charity aiding people with Down’s syndrome was published. It received very positive feedback on the website. The interviewed people were parents of a child afflicted with Down’s themselves. Their approach is quite unusual: throughout the article, they present multiple cases when they themselves use names considered derogatory, vernacular for people afflicted with this disease. On the other hand, they also describe doing a great deal of work in order to assist those people however well they can.
When I presented that example in the bioethics class earlier this semester, it resulted however in an outrage both from the students and the professor. It is an obvious sociological point that people taking a class in bioethics are not representative for the whole society; it is uncontroversial to point at a political difference between those groups. The class I attended can be put at the end of the spectrum: one embracing the post-modernist, that is, one paying much closer attention to the narrative level. Attention one can give, however, is a scarce resource; it is a zero-sum game. If it is the narracy that is under scrutiny, then necessarily other aspects must be forgone to certain extent. Nobody bothered to ask what the charity actually does.
And thus, we arrive at the problem’s core. The newest technology encourages us to pay the ever-growing amount of attention to information, as opposed to our “traditional” way of life, which focused on the action. That tradition is much larger than merely virtue theory; it is essentially our everyday lived experience embedded by the metaphors we use (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). It is the valuation we give to action, and our skepticism towards the information. Consider the following metaphors:
Actions speak louder than words.
It was just cheap talk.
His words were empty.
Over this part I have been attempting to show that a radical change has taken place in our moral evaluations: more attention than ever is now paid to the language one employs rather than their actions. That leaves us with the final issue, one possibly unable to be resolved: is it a bad thing this change has occurred?
A somewhat disappointing answer I propose, one increasingly unpopular in the ever more polarizing society is: we should strive towards the golden middle between action and narration. The discovery of the language’s reality-shaping power has been invaluable. However, virtue signaling is just one of the examples of overvaluing the narrative, of undeserving forgoing the active part. This problem will be the common thread underpinning the next phenomenon as well, but it is not limited to those. Perhaps the most important example, but one far too vast to analyze here, is the ever-increasing depreciation of freedom of speech.
III. Moral shaming
In this part, I will consider the modern usage of the ancient emotion of moral outrage: one peculiarly efficient at causing distress, but hardly producing any positive effects. While moral outrage is as old as morality itself, I do not claim that the usage of this emotion was always or even most of the time justifiable in the EEA. Nevertheless, it seems to have possessed both certain value from the pragmatic point of view, strengthening the bonds between the society’s members even if at the cost of one’s liberty or happiness as well as it had natural, physical limits to it, which technology has abolished.
I have always, rather naively, believed that taboos belonged strictly to the past, and what seems to define our present times is our liberation from their shackles. The greatest two were sex and dissention on God; since sexual revolution and secularization had had taken place we have seemingly been free to discuss (practise) either. However, at the same time, new taboos have risen. Just because we can make the rational case for their existence, that they should in fact be upheld, does not mean that we are any less keen on punishing those who decide to break the taboo.
So, what is our treatment of the dissenters? We do not burn anyone at stake anymore. However, with the advent of the Internet, and the overwhelming popularity of social networks in particular, the circumstances have radically changed - not necessarily for the better. Nowadays, one can personally shun the other without any communication taking place in the so-called “real world”. There is no longer the spatial proximity required, and no need to risk one’s skin either. One does not need to look in the face of the other, but can safely detach from them, if not straightforward deny their humanity.
In order to analyze technology’s impact on the action of moral shaming, I would like to construct a pattern, according to which it is nowadays usually performed. Consider the following:
The person P publicly utters statement S.
That utterance comes to the attention of the outgroup.
The outgroup expresses their criticism of P for stating S.
The outgroup analyzes other P’s statements (the existence of S suggests there may be equally reproachable statements S’, S’’, etc. they has uttered in the past).
The outgroup punishes P.
I believe this scheme, with all of its elements, applies to most cases of the contemporary public personae’ shaming. Let us see how it is influenced by the technology First, it is person’s ability, whether at the moment desired or not, to reach the world at large; and parallely, everyone else’s ability to listen. Second, it is the rise of groups with common values and interests, no longer limited by physical distance. Third, it is the ability of others not simply to interpret another’s words, but provide personal feedback, reinterpret the text and reach the audience not less effectively. Fourth, it is the new technology’s “memory” expressed by the statement “the internet never forgets”; one’s inability to detach themselves from their past actions due to every word once put online, being saved there for a lifetime. Finally, it is also the punishment that no longer requires the spatial proximity; it often takes the form of convincing one’s boss to terminate his employee due to the controversy.
Some further comments are in place. First, our personal moral evaluation of S is i r r e l e v a n t. It does not matter in the slightest whether we would consider the person has truly done something reprehensible or not. The only factor that matters is the statement’s potential to spite the outgroup.
Second, it is not relevant how much time has passed between (1) and (2). That results in a particularly pernicious situation, due to the ever-moving Overton window: one’s statements are n o t judged in the context, but outside of it, relatively to the rules applying at the given moment. It is not even moral absolutism, because the morals are not believed to be timeless either: they are ever-evolving, and so, what is accepted today may well be shunned five years from now. It is rather overconfidence in one’s righteousness: an absolute faith in one’s moral code a t t h e m o m e n t, combined with the denial of a moral version of “lex retro non agit”. Of course, I am not saying that no one ever does wrong if his contemporaries are sanctioning it. Rather, I am protesting against taking things out of context - something both pernicious and popular.
Furthermore, it is important to analyze the already mentioned concept of an outgroup (Alexander, 2014). Given there are at least as many opinions as there are people, there exists some outgroup in regards to any single individual. However, it is vital to notice than not every outgroup is the same. First, it is safe to slander those, who have no access to the media which broadcast the message: for example, the Amish. Second, there is certain cultural proximity required in order to give rise to the outgroup proper. While Daesh is found by virtually everybody in the West to be the embodiment of evil, I want to draw attention to the following claims in the recent past both from the left: “Fox News is worse than ISIS”, “Trump is more dangerous than ISIS” and the right: “Planned Parenthood is worse than ISIS”. What explains the sentiments behind those examples is that Daesh is simply too exotic, too distant to receive the criticism one’s own compatriots get. Put in terms of religious communities, it is the heretics that are the most abhorred, those who depart from our ways, not the infidels, who have never been close to us in the first place. Hence, the outgroup with the biggest potential to partake in moral shaming is that, which (a) engages in the modern media (social networks), (b) is united under certain moral values, (c) is numerous enough in order to draw attention and (d) is culturally proximate enough to the issue at hand. When (d) fails, the outrage brings no effect, the group is unable to hand out the punishment, for example as in if the objects of the outrage are Kony or North Korea.
It is only thanks to the viral spread of information, enabled by the social media, that allows an outgroup to form instantly, even if temporarily. There is no need for an action more dedicated than expressing one’s outrage. And so we arrive at the most important feature of moral shaming. It carries benefits to the agent expressing the anger, even if at the cost to the society at whole (Crockett, 2017).
Technology manages to select for those issues which are likely to trigger the most negative reaction in given reader. We can refer to the idea of superstimuli: just like McDonald’s is able to cater for our taste better than other food at the cost of health, similarly, the media can engage in narration that the targeted group finds most upsetting. In fact, there seems to be nothing hypocritical whatsoever about producing absolutely contradicting information, given that each “tribe” engages with those that they find relevant. As a documentarian Adam Curtis simply put it, “angry people click more”. We are given a lot of content to be angry about, because we are fond of engaging with that content, due to what brings us to the former issue: the potential to signal our own reputation. We are able to experience that practically imbibing feeling of moral self-righteousness, when we engage in moral shaming ourselves. Furthermore, it turns out that expressing anger only feeds more anger rather than extinguish it (Bushman, 2002).
And there are huge costs of that behaviour to the society at large. It is not only destroying individual lives of those who have been found to have transgressed, both professional (e.g. convincing their employer to fire them) and personal (e.g. afflicting them with PTSD having sent death threats). The general problem is the further polarization of each moral tribe, where lesser and lesser dissent gets progressively more and more frowned upon. It is the decline in freedom of speech and the social capital.
Conclusions
I have attempted to analyze recent phenomena from two different perspectives: that of evolutionary philosophy/sociology and that of ethics. The first one is descriptive: it allows us to explain why things are the way they are, not necessarily committing the natural fallacy, claiming that it how things ought to be. The ethical perspective, on the other hand, has been the normative one: having explained how those phenomena have risen, I argued there have been problems with them, things are not in fact the way they ought to be. Even if one was to deny any value of the science of evolutionary psychology or refute the theory of evolution, it does not impact either the description how things are at the moment or their ethical analysis; merely an explanation of how they have come to be. I believe the technology progresses at a much faster tempo than our capability not merely to use it, but to understand all implications that come with it. Let this be an attempt precisely at understanding at least some aspects of it.
References
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