video description: a small bird stood on wooden flooring, singing the iconic high staccato bit from the queen of the night aria. he doesn’t perfectly hit all the notes but still does a pretty good job. there is a human hand shaking a container full of cotton buds next to the bird for some reason.
Cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus)
Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!
It’s a real shame that online reply guys have made ‘thought experiments’ into a constant ordeal of 'would you let me say the n-word to save 5 black children?’ bullshit, when actually, real thought experiments are important training tools to unlearn acting on bigotry, biased instincts and propaganda.
In life you’re going to encounter ethical questions that you’ve never considered before or you’ll find reasons to question ethical questions that you always thought that you knew the answer to.
And when that happens, you have to be comfortable thinking the whole things thru from all angles, even though your gut instinct tells you to settle for the easy answer that makes you comfortable.
You have to be able to ask questions like 'but is anyone harmed by the thing that disgusts me?’, 'is this about improving the world or just about punishment’?, 'what if my assumptions about why people do this thing are wrong’?
You have to be comfortable not being sure yet what your conclusion will be. You have to be comfortable exploring opinions that differ from what your friends think. Thought experiments teach you this.
If you don’t get comfortable doing that, propagandists will trick you into accepting a comfortable answer based on your preconceived biases and whatever new biases they want to slip in there.
I regret to announce that I need to actually explain to insufferable people in the notes why 'would you let me say the n-word to save 5 black children?’ isn’t a clever little thought experiment. Let’s start with a little story:
I work the door at a feminist club sometimes. We’ve got a big sign at the door in bold letters reading “No touch of any kind without consent, you will be kicked out”. When new guests show up, we point out the rule and ask them to confirm that they’ll follow this rule.
Every night, there will be a few guys whose response to this is to immediately put a finger somewhere on my body, like my shoulder or my arm, and ask “not even this?”. If those guys are allowed to enter the club, they ALWAYS end up groping people. Their response to a boundary that was put in place to prevent harm, is to immediately push it, test it, see if they can do a little bit of harm, see how much harm we will tolerate. That’s what that finger and “not even this?” shows.
In this club, little innocent touches without prior consent definitely happen. It’s loud and it can get crowded on the dance floor and around the bar. Shoulders touch, people tap each other on their arm to signal that they want to get through the crowd. No harm is done. But “No touch of any kind without consent” stays up at the door because its an effective filter to keep out the predatory guys.
Social conventions around the n-word are a lot like that. While it is technically true that the sound of the n-word does no harm on its own and it’s the intent that makes a slur into a slur, to point that out is to misunderstand why the “don’t say the n-word ever” social rule is there. It’s a test, like our “No touch of any kind without consent” rule. People who see that rule and respond by pushing its boundaries are telling on themselves. They’re showing that they want to explore how much harm we will tolerate.
So you’re not particularly clever if you invent a thought experiment that shows that the n-word isn’t a magic sound that does harm on it’s own. We all knew that already and you’re not cleverly exposing purity culture or dogmatic liberal behavior. You’re just telling on yourself. The “don’t say the n-word ever” social rule is a filter that exists to get people like you to tell on yourself.
This also branched into a bigger thing about thought experiments: Thought experiments are NOT neutral lenses which reveal inevitable truths. They’re artificial realities controlled by their creators, and as such they’re extremely subjective.
Clever, insightful thought experiments have no clear answer and challenge us to examine all sides of an issue, to dig deeper until we get to a more complex nuanced understanding of moral issues.
Thought experiments whose only purpose is to create a scenario in which we must inevitably say the n-word, or we must torture someone to defuse a bomb, etc. are not insightful, they just reveal that their creator would really like to be alloed to say the n word / torture. They’re blunt manipulations and we have every right to refuse to play that game.
