A teachable moment

There are two things I want to discuss in this post. Though at first glance seemingly unrelated, they will fit together in the end.

As I already mentioned here, I utterly delighted in Dan Ariely's erudite account of our predictable irrationality. In this book, he reminded me of a thought experiment initially conceived by the recently deceased philosopher Philippa Foot. The problem is usually referred to as "the trolley problem", and can be presented in several ways. Here is how Joshua Greene at Harvard formulates it:

   First, we have the switch dilemma:  A runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. You can save these five people by diverting the trolley onto a different set of tracks, one that has only one person on it, but if you do this that person will be killed. Is it morally permissible to turn the trolley and thus prevent five deaths at the cost of one?   Most people say "Yes."

   Then we have the footbirdge dilemma:  Once again, the trolley is headed for five people. You are standing next to a large man on a footbridge spanning the tracks. The only way to save the five people is to push this man off the footbridge and into the path of the trolley.  Is that morally permissible?  Most people say "No."

    These two cases create a puzzle for moral philosophers:  What makes it okay to sacrifice one person to save five others in the switchcase but not in the footbridge case?  There is also a psychological puzzle here:  How does everyone know (or "know") that it's okay to turn the trolley but not okay to push the man off the footbridge?

Indeed, if the sum total of deaths is the same, how is it that one seems OK, while the other does not? Is this just a bunch of irrational emotional baloney, or is there science that can shed some light on it? Well, as it turns out, Greene has postulated the "dual process theory" of moral judgment. He has performed brain imaging to understand better what is happening physiologically, and here is what he is finding:

   According to my dual-process theory of moral judgment, our differing responses to these two dilemmas reflect the operations of at least two distinct psychological/neural systems.  On the one hand, there is a system that tends to think about both of these problems in utilitarian terms:  Better to save as many lives as possible.  The operations of this system are more controlled, perhaps more reasoned, and tend to be relatively unemotional.  This system appears to depend on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with "cognitive control" and reasoning.

  On the other hand, there is a different neural system that responds very differently to these two dilemmas.  This system typically responds with a relatively strong, negative emotional response to the action in the footbridge dilemma, but not to the action in the switch dilemma.  When this more emotional system is engaged, its responses tend to dominate people's judgments, explaining why people tend to make utilitarian judgments in response to the switch dilemma, but not in response to the footbridge dilemma.

So, here is the science to explain what we already know intuitively. It underscores just how difficult risk-benefit decisions are, and that if we only take into account our rational selves, we will always walk away puzzled as to why it is that there is controversy about stuff, such as, say, interventions in healthcare.

So, this is point one. Point two illustrates how counterproductive acrimony can be in trying to achieve some common ground. There is a response from Orac on Dr. Novella's site here, which calls me on the use of the adjective "rabid" to describe vaccination "defenders". Without explicitly stating it, he also continues to equate me with "anti-vaxers". But also does something else: he provides a link to a previous post that I did in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic. Please, indulge me for a moment while I quote myself:

The H1N1 pandemic is bringing into focus not only the world's vulnerabilities vis a vis the spread of an infectious disease, but also our complete lack of a framework in which to make rational choices about prevention. The cornerstone of preventive efforts for any significant infectious disease is vaccination of a large swath of the population. The rapid development and approval of the H1N1 vaccines is both a blessing and a curse, given the sophomoric level of discussion about its risks and benefits.

Does this look like I am anti-vaccination? Indeed, it looks to me, and this reflects my intellectual stand, that I am in fact advocating for vaccination, as well as for bringing our vaccine discussion to a more scientifically literate level. Feel free to read the entire post, if you do not believe me. But what is obvious is that my name-calling resulted in people, who consider themselves otherwise rational, paying attention only to the insult. Thus, I negated the substance of my post just with one poorly chosen word. Is this a rational reaction to what is otherwise a perfectly pro-vaccination stand? I do not think so, but what it is is a human reaction, and in that it is perfectly understandable and, dare I say it, predictable.

In fact, the post in question ties the two seemingly unrelated ideas, as promised at the beginning.  Although admittedly not very skillfully, in my vaccination post I illustrated the trolley problem, where the accounting of the balance of risk-benefit is not at all straight-forward. I will probably address it more extensively in a future blog post. On the other hand, I also showed how one single insult in a 500-word essay can become the only take-away, thus detracting from the overall message. This is exactly the reason for us to stop the name-calling by both sides, and engage in a discussion to arrive at some mutual understanding of what is really a worthwhile exchange of ideas.