He had doubts, he extinguished them, and that’s what makes him guilty.
This is not the whole story. In the quote
He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.
you’re paying too much heed to the final clause and not enough to the clause that precedes it. The shipowner had doubts that, we are to understand, were reasonable on the available information. The key to the shipowner’s… I prefer not to use the word “guilt”, with its connotations of legal or celestial judgment—let us say, blameworthiness, is that he allowed the way he desired the world to be to influence his assessment of the actual state of the world.
In your “optimistic fellow” scenario, the shipowner would be as blameworthy, but in that case, the blame would attach to his failure to give serious consideration to the doubts that had been expressed to him.
And going beyond what is in the passage, in my view, he would be equally blameworthy if the ship had survived the voyage! Shitty decision-making is shitty-decision-making, regardless of outcome. (This is part of why I avoided the word “guilt”—too outcome-dependent.)
The next passage confirms that this is the author’s interpretation as well:
Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out.
And clearly what he is guilty of (or if you prefer, blameworthy) is rationalizing away doubts that he was obligated to act on. Given the evidence available to him, he should have believed the ship might sink, and he should have acted on that belief (either to collect more information which might change it, or to fix the ship). Even if he’d gotten lucky, he would have acted in a way that, had he been updating on evidence reasonably, he would have believed would lead to the deaths of innocents.
The Ethics of Belief is an argument that it is a moral obligation to seek accuracy in beliefs, to be uncertain when the evidence does not justify certainty, to avoid rationalization, and to help other people in the same endeavor. One of his key points is that ‘real’ beliefs are necessarily entangled with reality. I am actually surprised he isn’t quoted here more.
The key to the shipowner’s… blameworthiness, is that he allowed the way he desired the world to be to influence his assessment of the actual state of the world.
Pretty much everyone does that almost all the time. So, is everyone blameworthy?
Of course, if everyone is blameworthy then no one is.
I would say that I don’t do that, but then I’d pretty obviously be allowing the way I desire the world to be to influence my assessment of that actual state of the world. I’ll make a weaker claim—when I’m engaging conscious effort in trying to figure out how the world is and I notice myself doing it, I try to stop. Less Wrong, not Absolute Perfection.
Pretty much everyone does that almost all the time. So, is everyone blameworthy?
Of course, if everyone is blameworthy then no one is.
That’s a pretty good example of the Fallacy of Gray right there.
I would say that I don’t do that, but then I’d pretty obviously be allowing the way I desire the world to be to influence my assessment of that actual state of the world.
How do you know?
Especially since falsely holding that belief would be an example.
Lumifer wrote, “Pretty much everyone does that almost all the time.” I just figured that given what we know of heuristics and biases, there exists a charitable interpretation of the assertion that makes it true. Since the meat of the matter was about deliberate subversion of a clear-eyed assessment of the evidence, I didn’t want to get into the weeds of exactly what Lumifer meant.
This is not the whole story. In the quote
you’re paying too much heed to the final clause and not enough to the clause that precedes it. The shipowner had doubts that, we are to understand, were reasonable on the available information. The key to the shipowner’s… I prefer not to use the word “guilt”, with its connotations of legal or celestial judgment—let us say, blameworthiness, is that he allowed the way he desired the world to be to influence his assessment of the actual state of the world.
In your “optimistic fellow” scenario, the shipowner would be as blameworthy, but in that case, the blame would attach to his failure to give serious consideration to the doubts that had been expressed to him.
And going beyond what is in the passage, in my view, he would be equally blameworthy if the ship had survived the voyage! Shitty decision-making is shitty-decision-making, regardless of outcome. (This is part of why I avoided the word “guilt”—too outcome-dependent.)
The next passage confirms that this is the author’s interpretation as well:
And clearly what he is guilty of (or if you prefer, blameworthy) is rationalizing away doubts that he was obligated to act on. Given the evidence available to him, he should have believed the ship might sink, and he should have acted on that belief (either to collect more information which might change it, or to fix the ship). Even if he’d gotten lucky, he would have acted in a way that, had he been updating on evidence reasonably, he would have believed would lead to the deaths of innocents.
The Ethics of Belief is an argument that it is a moral obligation to seek accuracy in beliefs, to be uncertain when the evidence does not justify certainty, to avoid rationalization, and to help other people in the same endeavor. One of his key points is that ‘real’ beliefs are necessarily entangled with reality. I am actually surprised he isn’t quoted here more.
Pretty much everyone does that almost all the time. So, is everyone blameworthy?
Of course, if everyone is blameworthy then no one is.
I would say that I don’t do that, but then I’d pretty obviously be allowing the way I desire the world to be to influence my assessment of that actual state of the world. I’ll make a weaker claim—when I’m engaging conscious effort in trying to figure out how the world is and I notice myself doing it, I try to stop. Less Wrong, not Absolute Perfection.
That’s a pretty good example of the Fallacy of Gray right there.
How do you know?
Especially since falsely holding that belief would be an example.
Lumifer wrote, “Pretty much everyone does that almost all the time.” I just figured that given what we know of heuristics and biases, there exists a charitable interpretation of the assertion that makes it true. Since the meat of the matter was about deliberate subversion of a clear-eyed assessment of the evidence, I didn’t want to get into the weeds of exactly what Lumifer meant.