Chapter Review: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Decision-Making

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Decision-Making is chapter 88 of the 2020 book The Cognitive Neurosciences (sixth edition). This chapter was written by Joshua Greene and Liane Young. The book is academic, 1113 pages long and expensive ($233). It is not written for a general audience. It is a fairly detailed review of the state of cognitive neurosciences for academics and researchers.

Moral thinking is whole-brain thinking

Greene is the pioneer of one of the major models of the neuroscience of morality, the dual process model (mentioned in this book review):

Unconscious emotion-intuition and conscious reasoning lead to moral judgment (dual inputs): Reasoning + emotion → moral judgment

According to this hypothesis, both unconscious emotions and intuitions and conscious reason play a role in moral thinking and decision-making. The evidence to support that general thesis strikes me as overwhelming. What isn't known is the details of how the brain does what it does.

One concern about the neuroscience of morality that Greene and Young (G&Y) discuss is the possibility that morality as a separate scientific research field could be in danger of becoming meaningless. Accumulating evidence shows that morality appears to have few or no neural mechanisms that are unique to  moral thinking. In other words, moral thinking appears to rely mostly or completely on the same pathways and brain structures that mediate various kinds of non-moral thinking. G&Y comment: “It’s now clear, however, that the ‘moral brain’ is, more or less, the whole brain .... Understanding this is, itself, a kind of progress .... if this unified [whole brain] theory of morality is correct, it doesn't bode well for a unified theory for moral neuroscience.”

Apparently, there is no specific brain structure(s) that uniquely do the mental data processing involved in making moral judgments.

Morality and moral neuroscience defined; The specter of warring tribalism

If one wants to do research on something, it helps to have a definition or description of it. The description has troubling implications for long-term human survival and well-being. G&Y write:

“... we regard morality as a suite of cognitive mechanisms to enable otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation. Humans have psychological features that are straightforwardly moral (such as empathy) and others that are not (such as in-group favoritism) because they enable us to achieve goals that we can’t achieve through pure selfishness. .... Morality evolved, not as a device for universal cooperation but as a competitive weapon -- as a system for turning Me into Us, which in turn enables Us to outcompete Them. It does not follow from this, however, that are are doomed to be warring tribalists. Drawing on our ingenuity and flexibility, it’s possible to put human values ahead of evolutionary imperatives, as we do when we use birth control.”

Morality and pragmatic rationalism

Based on my limited understanding of history, humans have always been warring tribalists and arguably still are today to some extent. Although it usually doesn’t seem that way, here is less warring between armies and nations going on in modern times than in past centuries.

Other than birth control, G&Y do not give evidence for their belief that ingenuity and flexibility can allow the species to put moral values ahead of evolutionary imperatives. The sentiment seems to be mostly aspirational, not empirical. In view of the major expansion of power that modern communications technologies give to demagogues, tyrants, liars and other bad people, one can argue that democratic, rule of law-driven societies are falling to evolutionary imperatives, including authoritarianism. The rapid rise of modern communications technology has blown right past slow human evolution. Societies have to evolve because biological evolution cannot keep up.

One core goal of pragmatic rationalism’s moral structure is to somehow form a gigantic Us in-group for the human species. As I learn more, e.g., by reading chapter 88 of this book, that seems increasingly unlikely. The next best thing seems to try to unite all people in a single country based on the four core moral values that pragmatic rationalism is based on. Inherent in the third moral value, service to the public interest, is an anti-war bias that is intended to reduce violence generally, including between nations.

The problem with the nation-size In group formation hypothesis is that, as we are witnessing in real time, demagogues, liars and other bad people who rely on dark free speech, can tear the people of a nation to pieces. It is odd because the conservative and GOP side is explicitly appealing to American nationalism, but it nonetheless is tearing us apart. A major reason the modern conservative appeal is tearing us apart appears to be that it is significantly grounded in irrational bigotry, racism, distrust, hate, misogyny and intolerance of Out groups. Dark free speech has created all of that poison in the minds of millions of people.

At present, circumstances and evolutionary imperatives do not bode well for the rise of pragmatic rationalism. In my opinion, that is unfortunate to say the least.

Marge Simpson has something to say to the Trump campaign

 Marge Simpson is feeling a little disrespected.

On Friday, the official “The Simpsons” Twitter account posted a video of the blue-haired matriarch responding to a Trump campaign advisor who appeared to try to insult California senator and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris by comparing her voice to the character’s.

“I usually don’t get into politics, but the president’s senior advisor, Jenna Ellis, just said Kamala Harris sounds like me,” said Marge, who has been voiced by Julie Kavner on the animated Fox series for 31 seasons. “Lisa says she doesn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“If that’s so, as an ordinary suburban housewife, I’m starting to feel a little disrespected,” she continued. “I teach my children not to name-call, Jenna. I was going to say I’m pissed off, but I’m afraid they’d bleep it.”

https://twitter.com/TheSimpsons/status/1294287342144872449

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-08-14/marge-simpson-responds-kamala-harris-trump

Lies Gush Forth Upon the Land

The president is ramping up his lies and using them against his political opposition. The New York Times reports:

"President Trump on Thursday encouraged a racist conspiracy theory that is rampant among some of his followers: that Senator Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee born in California, was not eligible for the vice presidency or presidency because her parents were immigrants. 

That assertion is false. Ms. Harris is eligible to serve. 

Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters on Thursday, nevertheless pushed forward with the attack, reminiscent of the lie he perpetrated for years that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya."

The transparency of his lie is obvious. It is also discouraging because millions of his followers will come to believe it. The president lamely commented: "I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements. I have no idea if that’s right. I would have thought, I would have assumed, that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president."

This lie appears to be based on an August 12, 2020 article in Newsweek that asserted that children born in the US of immigrant residents are not US citizens. That false idea was asserted by a conservative lawyer who has been arguing that for years. Once again, crackpot lies become mainstream conservative politics and their sacred alt-reality. Trump himself has been arguing the same thing for a while.

Regarding COVID-19: It's Worse Than What is Reported

A New York Times analysis of excess deaths data from the CDC indicates that about 60,000 more people have probably died from the pandemic than official statistics are reporting. If that analysis is correct, the number of coronavirus deaths is now well over 200,000. Some of the extra deaths is probably from unintentional under counting of deaths. Some is from intentional reducing the death count for political purposes, especially since the president took the counting away from the CDC and gave it Peter Thiel's company. The NYT writes:

Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus. 

As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.

 

The president's creepy supporter

One source characterized Peter Thiel's involvement like this: "Peter Thiel’s Creepy Tech Firm Is Helping The Government Track Coronavirus." Thiel is a billionaire who made his money by co-founding PayPal. Thiel was a major supporter of the president in 2016, but now fears that he won't be re-elected. Thiel now claims to be backing away from supporting the president's re-election. Given how frequently both the president and the people around him lie, it is reasonable to believe that Thiel is lying about COVID-19 deaths to help his friend get re-elected without donating any cash. Cash donations can be traced back to donors under current law. To hide his support for the president, Thiel's donations are fudged COVID-19 death counts instead of cash. That could be worth more than a pile of gold.

Coronavirus Update 13

Faking the coronavirus pandemic data & lying to the American people: 
“the federal data continue to be unreliable”

A New York Times article reports that experts believe that coronavirus data is being manipulated. In July the president ordered data collection, analysis and reporting to be taken from the experts at the CDC and done by private sector political hacks the HHS hired. Since that time, the infection data veered off the course it was on and infection numbers started to decrease. That was especially true for some red states where the pandemic had spun out of control. The NYT comments:

“Nearly three dozen current and former members of a federal health advisory committee, including nine appointed or reappointed by the health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, are warning that the Trump administration’s new coronavirus database is placing an undue burden on hospitals and will have ‘serious consequences on data integrity.’ 

The advisers, all current or former members of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, issued their warning in a previously unpublished letter [shown above] shared with The New York Times. 

The letter was made public as both hospital officials and independent data experts around the country were reporting kinks in the new system, which critics say is undermining the government’s ability to understand the course of the pandemic. The Covid Tracking Project, a respected and widely used resource, identified “major problems” with the new Department of Health and Human Services system in late July, and reported this week that ‘the federal data continue to be unreliable.’”

Once again, an administration with no respect for truth or honesty with the American people is desperately trying to convert real reality into a fake reality. When that happens, as it is right now, reality becomes fake and fake becomes real.

Coronavirus provides weak cover for a major attack on democracy

One possible long-term effect of the pandemic could be a permanent loss of voting rights for democrats and many independents. A Washington Post article, Trump says he’s blocking Postal Service funding because Democrats want to expand mail-in voting during pandemic, comments:

“Trump said Thursday he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.

‘Now, they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,’ Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: ‘If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped.’”

In view of how blatant this move to suppress voting is, the president, the political right and the GOP appear to have given up on even trying to appear to be pro-democracy. To them, single-party rule is the goal. There is no obvious reason to think that after the president leaves office, assuming he ever does, that the radical right will ever go back to actually supporting free and fair elections. To the radicals, the new model of democracy is single party rule. The pandemic appears to have flushed this long-term radical right authoritarian goal into the open.

That the postal service needs additional money is entirely the fault of the GOP. The GOP has been financially crippling the postal service for years because it wants postal service to be privatized. The New Yorker commented in a May 2020 article: “For the past forty years, Republicans have been seeking to starve, strangle, and sabotage the U.S. Postal Service, hoping to privatize one of the oldest and most important public goods in American history.”

An anecdote: We pay some bills by checks in the mail. It is now taking a few days longer for the checks to arrive. Since the president has already specifically targeted mail-in ballots for slower delivery, it appears that all mail is slowing down as part of the authoritarian assault on elections. Time will tell if the anomaly this month constitutes a new normal.

Regarding Disqus & Social Well-Being

Zeta Global

Context

Yesterday I discussed my triple. I got blocked on three major radical right, alt-reality and alt-reason websites. I guess that Biden's pick of Kamala Harris set off threat sensors on the radical right.

The complaint

I unleashed a minor blast at Zeta Global earlier today. The response so far is zero, no surprise. Maybe later today a deceptive burp will come forth. Maybe not.

Who is Zeta Global? Glad you asked. It owns Disqus.

What is Disqus? Good question. ZG describes itself like this:

"Zeta Global has continued to double down on data, AI and omnichannel activation capabilities by organically developing and strategically acquiring cutting-edge marketing technology. We are one of the first companies to successfully implement industry-leading innovations in big data and AI to be the recognized leader in the convergence of marketing and advertising technology. 

Today, Zeta Global has offices on four continents, serving over 1000+ enterprise clients such as: Samsung, Toyota and Sprint. Our data-powered marketing technology platform houses the third largest data set in the marketplace (2.4B+ identities) and combines with outcome-driven AI to predict consumer intent, personalize experiences across every channel and power business growth for Fortune 1000 companies."

It sounds really big, but it employs less than 1500 people. What does ZG do? It does what Facebook, Google, Apple and most everyone else who is online seems to do. It collects and sells your data. It sells you and me. On December 5, 2017, Zeta Global acquired Disqus. The news of the acquisition was announced in a blog post by Disqus, apparently signalling a penchant for corporate secrecy.

OK, what were you whining about this time?

Good question. Over the years, I've filed about 3 or 4 complaints, mostly about loss of upvotes. Today's blast was about social damage flowing from the Disqus comment platform.[1] Specifically, the damage was related to two deeply flawed aspects of the Disqus comment system, upvotes and downvotes. Since I have complained twice about the upvote problem, today's blast was mostly related to downvotes. Both contribute to the same serious social problem that is tearing Americans apart today.

What social problem? Belief the problem that belief by millions of Americans in disinformation causes. My rationale is explained in footnote 1 below.

OK, what do you base that crackpot theory on?

Another good question. I do not have solid evidence, but others have come to conclude about the same thing. The blog Shelly and Friends said this about that sometime last year:

"The downvotes do effect the persons Disqus reputation and though it makes the publisher have to whitelist a lot more people due to the false information it adds to Disqus's statistics, it does far more harm to Disqus by making their statistics and using those for literally anything, totally invalid and turns them into garbage statistics that is of zero use to anyone."

In short, both the hackability of people's upvotes to drain them all way and, the abuseability of down votes to pile them on, on the Disqus comment system both contribute to maintenance and strengthening of echo chambers where disinformation can live, grow and thrive and where social damage occurs.

As I have argued here before based on the historical record and a lifetime of personal experience, most (not all) American capitalism is usually not about helping society or average people. It is usually about making as much money as possible, as fast as possible, legal or not. In that cauldron, social well-being, the environment, democracy and honest governance be damned to to hell. But to be fair and balanced, there are many exceptions. Many businesses honestly try to give help their employees and vendors and/or be serious about social concerns. Many are beyond the cynical lip service that most big businesses try to con us into believing they stand for.

Questions: Is that too idealistic to constitute a complaint that an honest, serious person should take seriously? Is there a flaw(s) in the facts and/or reasoning? Too little evidence?


Footnote:
1.  Here is my complaint in it's entirety and here is the link: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/bug_reports_feedback_downvote_abuse_social_damage/ :

Wednesday, August 12, 2020 

On partisan politics sites, some of the partisans routinely downvote truthful comments that are inconvenient. Some of those partisans follow the person making inconvenient comments and downvote every comment, regardless of what it is. That makes downvotes a powerful tool for ideologically cleansing partisan sites, because the accumulated downvotes leads to honest commenters being blocked. From what I can tell, none of those sites ever whitelist inconvenient commenters. The people who own such partisan sites want ideological purity. They do not want inconvenient truths or reasoning to be present in the comments. 

In essence, what this does is it makes it easy to keep a site ideologically cleansed. The administrators or moderators don't have to do anything to keep inconvenient content from appearing at all. In turn, that fortifies false narratives that some sites routinely promulgate as "news". In turn, that disinformation tends to further polarizes and deceive the audience. What that boils down to is social damage that is caused by downvote abuse. 

Both downvotes and upvotes should be completely eliminated to foster free information flow among people who want knowledge and not divisive ideological or partisan fantasies and disinformation. People who lost their upvotes due to whatever caused that disaster cannot comment on sites that ignore or do not want to whitelist those people. Now, commenters themselves can further limit exposure to inconvenient truth by just downvoting comments they dislike for any reason or no reason. 

Given the abuses and social damage it causes, why downvotes exist in the Disqus system is incomprehensible from a social well-being point of view. Whatever value some people see in downvoting is far outweighed by the social damage that comes from reinforcing partisan disinformation sources. In view of the large size of Disqus, this is a significant social problem.

Of course, the unspoken criticism is this: What arguably is abuse from the social well-being point of view is good from the Zeta Global corporate well-being (profit) point of view. Zeta wants big sites to be able to keep their big political sites ideologically cleansed from reality- and reason-based inconveniences (mostly facts, truth and sound reason) if that is what they want. That freedom to discriminate inconvenient against reality and reason increases Zeta's revenue flow.

Zeta folks - aw, they're nice