Prospective vs. Retrospective Judgements & What Oughtn’t Happen

Should modernists treat rightness and shouldness interchangeably? What about praiseworthiness and goodness; any interchangeability taking place there?

To answer appropriately, the first step is to deflate the longstanding polarity between deontological and teleological accounts of wrongdoing. Much of this gets inflated by the arguers’ misstep in not honing in on ultimatums modeled after many-worlds thought experiments, ideally the sort I’ve set up here:

•  World A: Tom has been boozing it up throughout the day. Aggravated that his final two-six has run dry, he chucks it out the window despite the intense likelihood of it falling on a random passerby and causing serious harm. Tom lives on the 20th floor of a high-rise in the heart of a metropolis, so the infliction of risk here is weighty. Dozens of passersby saunter by his building on a minutely basis, but he pays no mind to this. Impulsiveness has a way of getting the better of him whenever he’s agitated. Blowing off steam is all he cares for at the moment. By sheer luck, his irresponsibleness ends up harming no one. The two-six lands straight into a dumpster nearest to his building. No one saw or even heard the two-six clash with the squishy items in the dumpster, as the collision coincided with a short-lived lull in pedestrian presence and vehicular traffic. Tom is one lucky bastard. His act was inexcusably inconsiderate, despite not having harmed –– or so much as perturbed –– anyone. Even so, Tom’s unconcern for others ran so deep that he couldn’t have even bothered peeking out the window to check if the bottle had maimed someone’s cranium.
• World B: Tom is enjoying an ordinarily relaxing evening on his balcony. Looking to unwind from a hard day’s work, he pours himself a drink from the same two-six, but is startled by an aggressive crow. The crow charges speedily at him and he instinctually swings his arms upward to protect his face, losing grip of the two-six in the process. The bottle flies past his balcony’s barricade and, after picking up considerable freefall momentum, collides with a random passerby’s exposed cranium. This lands the passerby in the intensive care unit with permanent disfigurements and brain damage. The accident effectively ruins this person’s life. Tom wastes no time following up and feels tremendous guilt once informed of the man’s condition.

These are useful for particularists or anyone fatigued by introductory “What is morality?” discourse. Once the moral agent/patient interplays are spelled out as plainly as above, consensus around oughtness ceases to be illusive and attempts to puncture it come across as moral residue.

Theorists of the modernistic bent should be able to agree that, all else being equal, World A ought to have happened. That is, we should strive to bring about A if the only alternative is B, ceteris paribus. Taking this route doesn’t entail shying away from the fact that A carried all the makings of wrongness as pointedly as it did (with B carrying none). Recall that, after chucking the two-six in A, Tom goes about his business free of regret. His carelessness constitutes a moral blameworthiness of sorts, and yet, in and of itself, it tells us nothing about where A stands in relation to the moral fortunateness vs. unfortunateness axis. Traditionalistic ethicists have too often been incurious about the moral worth of this axis, whereas I allege that its displayed spectrum is what ultimately matters more.

You can refer to textbook-style thought experiments which are more intriguing and complex, but then you’d be obfuscating my endpoint. No one disputes that Tom acted improvidently in A, and blamelessly in B. Notable point being; the deployed ultimatum shares few (if any) characteristics with the breed of moral dilemmas that boomed in use around the Enlightenment, and now seem tritely prototypical. Seeing as not every telic vs. deontic vs. aretaic schism makes for a crowd-splitting moral dilemma, we can formulate rightness (praiseworthiness) and shouldness (goodness) separately and situationally.
 
Talks of “rightness” or “praiseworthiness” would still be gleaned by the acts, motives and characterological tendencies of the human agent privy to reason, compassion, deliberation, forethought, et cetera. I've no bones to pick with this, insofar as it only sets out to establish rightness or praiseworthiness at a practical, non-normative ground-level.

Goodness vis-à-vis shouldness, meanwhile, is to be discerned per the introduced fortunateness vs. unfortunateness axis. Once this takes hold, the modernist can actually start being modernistic with her ethical theorizing, noting that the “moral gridlocks” we keep hearing about (applied even to A vs. B) can be averted once the arguer explains how folk-judgements establishing “wrongness” and sentiocentric-judgements establishing events that “ought not have occurred” may function as isolated verdicts.

Just reflect on how rarely you’ve seen an "introduction to ethics" lecture astutely structured after examinations of many-worlds ultimatums. I’m still waiting on one to pop up in scholarly settings exported online, or even in middle-brow YouTube videos. If you’re a few steps ahead of me and have seen it, please link to some examples in the comments. I'll be right here, not holding my breath. We instead get lectures on (the triteness of) moral edifices and their (prognosticator-problem endowed) species of thought experiments where rightness/praiseworthiness/goodness/shouldness are lockstep and claims to the contrary are perceived as being distillatory of rightness, praiseworthiness, goodness and shouldness (or are simply unheard of).

In addition to downplaying the criterial role of moral fortunateness vs. unfortunateness, the trouble with rank-and-file introductions to ethics is their tendency to invite polemicists and disinvite conversationalists. Regular readers are already familiar with how disparagingly I view these presentations, so I won’t belabour the gripe. There’s reason to be confident in the conceivability of a “Master Key” presentation that sets out to reach modernist sensibilities regarding normativity (now centering on shouldness/goodness, not rightness/praiseworthiness). Nothing stops the modernist from conceiving prospective and retrospective wrongdoings as classificatory rather than as eliminatory. From there, the theorist is afforded the requisite room to tolerate more wrongness/blameworthiness under a state of affairs that ought to have occurred and less rightness/praiseworthiness under a state of affairs that oughtn’t have occurred (not unlike with A vs. B). This only sounds self-contradictory because, confusingly, moral verdicts have always been portrayed as eliminatory instead of classificatory, without justification. Because prospective and retrospective judgements have the cognitive capacity to operate as twofold judgements without the call for mutually-cancelling overridingness, we can ensure against catastrophic outcomes per sentiocentric overviews while accommodating innocuous components of folk morality into those same overviews. (Note: My use of sentiocentric is not a placeholder for Moral Naturalism any more than my use of folk is a plug for non-naturalism, but more on that in a future post.)

It should go without saying that consequentialists presented with A vs. B are concretely on board with the “B oughtn’t occur” adjudication. The ideal consequentialist arrives at this by stressing B’s moral unfortunateness overwhelming whatever shred of unfortunateness arose in A, while openly acknowledging the Tom-directed wrongness in A.

This is where absolutist theories latch onto outdated worries about the character of consequentialist thought, and how its grounding stands to undermine the role of prospective sordidness apparent in A. I see no basis for such inferences. Shouldness inciting A into effect doesn’t translate to a whitewash of the accompanying ill-will on the part of the agent, given the earlier point about classificatory (contra eliminatory) judgements.

Tom is quite the moral fool in A, but a lucky fool at that. He is 100% fool-proof in B, but unfoolishness here comes with the baggage of a mangled skull… surely there’s no slippery slope deluging that which privileges fortunateness over rightness through telic evaluations. I suppose one way to take umbrage with this is by believing that the central role of morality lies in agent-relative procurements of self-idolatry, which is as dubious as any Divine Command Theory. Third-person judgments run afoul of such setbacks and mesh with the 'equal-concern' practices of modernity.

So then, what of the non-consequentialists (or worse, those who identify as anti-consequentialists) and their treatment of an ultimatum like this? So far every deontologist –– or traditionalistic ethicist of aretaic persuasions –– I’ve encountered, when presented with A vs. B, did not push back against the “B oughtn’t occur” ruling despite emphasizing the prospective maleficence beamingly present in A. Wise move, but is it indicative of how most deontologists or aretaic traditionalists think about the ultimatum being toyed with? It could easily be true that the trend I speak of is just down to my not having had the opportunity to engage the big boys in the non-consequentialist tradition. I’m iffy on that though. It may be undue optimism on my part, but I’m unable to wrap my head around even the gratuitously ardent anti-consequentialist being presented with A vs. B and actually uttering something along the lines of: “Yes, World B contains no wrongdoing and should swing into effect if weighed against World A where the wrongdoing actually betides. Prospective and retrospective verdicts are eliminatory, not classificatory, and particularistic attempts to parse them are nonsensical. It’s moral ineptitude to even try.”

By taking exception to final shouldness rulings in favour of A, one saddles one’s judgement with B as the follow-through, which should seem baffling to everyone. Can the reader point to anyone in the anti-consequentialist camp –– past or present –– who’d cite the lack of intentional agentic wrongdoing in B as the basis for why B should actually materialize… intensive care unit and all? I can’t, and this attests to the strength of consequentialist theories whenever noxiousness looms on account of unfortunateness.
 
Maybe I’m mistaken to think that inconveniencing deontologists or aretaic traditionalists with B’s fallout suffices in giving them cause to pause. If this is indeed my error, I’ll nod along to all charges of callousness levied at them going forward. I don’t consider this to be in the cards, because anecdotally, emphasis on B’s injurious outcome has led the ones I’ve bickered with to retreat from the catchall framing of deontology, in the vein of “It’s about the moral status of the act itself, not the consequences of the act”. Instead, the interlocutor, when put on the spot, adopts the refreshingly cautious “That’s a straw man of deontology; deontologists can be pluralists and take into account some consequences”. (Examples @ 1:04:45 & 1:07:30 & 1:10:00 & 1:11:30).

If reverting to pluralism is as common as anecdotes suggest –– and as the hyperlinked podcast shows –– then pluralistic deontologists need to stop self-identifying as non-consequentialists (and esp. as anti-consequentialists), for if this newfound caveat is taken seriously, it severs ties with Kantian absolutism, which in turn earns them a title like quasi-consequentialist. I can’t in good conscience object too harshly to a quasi-anything, as I’m still heavily drawn to particularism, meaning quasi-consequentialism is fine in my book. Avoidance of absolutism and monism is what I’m really after, and new&improved deontic theories allowing for a give-and-take between outcomes and duties can manage this.

This give-and-take, however praiseworthy, does pose a potentially unanswerable question; where exactly on the continuum does a “deontic” theory with some telic adjustments blend into an otherwise “telic” theory with some deontic adjustments? The trickiness with planting such a flag in non-arbitrary ways only flatters the particularist’s framing of ethics, as I’ve come to find.

Whether a definitive line –– superior to all other lines –– is illusory or not, parting ways with absolutism remains an “all or nothing” move if I’ve ever seen one. There’s no such thing as “a little bit pregnant” and there’s no such thing as quasi-absolutism in ethics. Acts like murder, torture, rape are unwaveringly impermissible and should never be carried out irrespective of extenuating circumstances (absolutist view), or they are globally justifiable as a lesser-of-evils based on the morally understandable goal of securing against even more unfavorable outcomes (non-absolutist view). What can possibly be worse than murder, torture, rape? Well, the occurrence of murder, torture and rape tenfold, for starters. If ethicists are going to be serious about reconciling telic and deontic theories, the project will only takeoff by applying non-absolutist iterations of the latter. Absolutists objecting to this are moral fetishists looking to roadblock the project by tarnishing the consequentialist catalog altogether. Fuck ‘em.

As for the hyperlinked podcast; it's sophistic of Tamler to kvetch about straw while in the same breath drawing from absolutist versions of deontology –– which by definition disallow any weighing of negative outcomes against deontological commitments, no matter the severity of the outcome. Pluralism my foot. Guy wants to have his straw man accusation and eat it too.

Even when deontic theories are irreligious from head to toe, their traditionalistic advocates will not view, say, natural disasters luridly impacting sentient beings as events ripe for normative boos. This is our history in ethics, and it's why you get so many people who to this day cannot conceive of normative yays vs. boos unless “free will” (indeterminism/libertarianism) is embraced from the outset. “Ought implies can” and so on. The theorist who looked beyond Humancentrism 101 was the aberrant.

Enter determinism, and the Folk formulations begin to seem suspect (at least by modernists). Posit incompatibilism, and they look profoundly amiss, to the point where moral absolutism –– casting certain acts as verboten regardless of context weight –– is on par with DCT in its zealotry.

The explosion of sentiocentric consequentialism’s popularity as a rival theory to humancentric common-sense morality correlates with determinism gaining ground in public arenas. That’s not to say that determinism is a prerequisite for consequentialism (or indeterminism for non-consequentialism, for that matter) but to deny the correlative effects is to sport a blindfold.

I’m exultant over sentiocentric theories making headway in vital quarters; recognizing animals as moral patients in and of themselves, rather than as accessories through which we humans get to flaunt our moral merit or lack thereof. But the more folky attributions of wrongness can be preserved –– determinism and all –– even if they come at a cost to some categories of undesirable outcomes. I am in rare company when it comes to this, but viewed from an altered A vs. B ultimatum where the difference in B is that the two-six only startles the passerby (falling right in front of him rather than colliding with his head), it seems somewhat credible to contest “B ought not occur” as a ground-level given. Thus we can allow for some overridingness flattering to non-consequentialist theories if the consequence entails trivial levels of hardship (i.e. being startled) and never non-trivial levels (i.e. landing in the intensive care unit). There are admittedly epistemic issues with this, at least if we try hair-splitting the trivial and non-trivial.

So, to appropriately answer the original question with a resounding “No”, I'll freely remind myself that ethical value was traditionally measured not by establishing how the world ought to be for moral patients (sentient beings) and then endeavoring to bring about such a world. Rather, it was about the motives and virtues of moral agents (human beings). Accordingly, wrongdoings and concomitant oughtn't rulings could only be hurled at something a human said or did. Obviously this reads like moral myopia today, as non-human caused hardship (i.e. wildlife predation) is still hardship worthy of stoppage. Thus my pluralistic modernism and promulgation of “rightness =/= shouldness” reasoning. [Add on 2015-09-23: The same is commonly referred to as Dual Consequentialism, already hyperlinked above]

Make no mistake, formulations of rightness [under Dual Consequentialism] would still be rooted in praiseworthiness, just as wrongness would remain rooted in blameworthiness. My purpose here was to explain how none of that has any bearing over goodness overlapping with fortunateness per se and badness with unfortunateness per se (dictated deterministically). This needs to be the baseline because goodness and badness are used, at least on my readings, to refer to general states of affairs, disconnected from agents' actions or motives. When discussing the latter, we'd do well to continue tracking rightness and wrongness as a sort of moral know-how. So even when causality is the name of the game, the case for social censure still holds, thus rightness merits praiseworthiness and wrongness merits blameworthiness. After all, we need to be dissuaded against acting improvidently, seeing as we're seldom bestowed with the sort of moral fortune Tom takes for granted in World A.

 
And no, this was not about Act vs. Rule Consequentialism, since Rule Consequentialism can either be:

• (1) A loosey-goosey rule of thumb, still giving agents permission to violate the rule.

• (2) A rule so rigid to the point where it’s as uncompromising as moral absolutism. Rule Consequentialism that’s absolutist is hardy consequentialist; it’s crypto deontology.

 
Every “act vs. rule” debate I’ve seen has centred on moral tactfulness; a cost/benefit analysis regarding rigidity and flexibility in decision making. Strictly a “Human beings aren’t prognosticators, so how do we act?” scuffle, nothing more. And even this might not be a problem due to the oft-excluded middle; Two-Level Consequentialism. Some think that this synthesis makes the case for non-consequentialism operating as a refuter of unmodified Act or Rule consequentialisms, but at most it's an expander.


 

Endnote: Contrary to the vibe the post gives off early on, I wasn't trying to suggest that we can panoramically assert the existence of vindicatory moral dilemmas; conundrums wherein rightness, praiseworthiness, goodness and shouldness all happen to line up under solitary verdicts (contrary to overused ones about organ transplants or trolleys… telltale signs that, should a final ruling be paraded around a large enough swath of ethicists, bifurcation will follow and resolvability will die. Rinse and repeat. Yawn and repeat).

Implicit Pluralism Starring Truth Valuing Monists

Despite best efforts to spend my online time wisely, I’ve fallen back into the habit of keeping tabs on YouTube videos dabbling in ethics. Nothing new there, but it got me thinking about a string of contradictions that continues to evade participants, capped off by the frequency with which metaethical irrealists are now accused of harboring ulterior motives. This is the stuff of conspiracy-mongers, and though it's not exactly a new phenomenon, it was never this common in the past. I’ll take a stab at pinpointing why caricaturing non-realists in this way only ends up hurting the caricaturist. 

The irrealist position being reachable through uncontaminated motives should register with you regardless of whether you yourself hold the contrary position, or any other position available on the continuum. As a former robust realist turned quasi-realist, I am not here to counter the realist view as advanced by its top-tier exponents (i.e. non-YouTubers), because the relevant literature is prodigious to the point where nobody can do it justice in a single post, and because I don't take umbrage with metaethical realists who stray from wild accusations; who never ascribe ulterior motives to others.

Particularistic Utilitarianism Demystified

My post on the infighting within contrastive utilitarian theories was an attempt to salvage a principled or generalized handle on heterodox modes of utilitarianism. I sided decisively with Average, Negative and Preference antidotes to Total, Positive and Classical orthodoxies. The result was a spirited endorsement of one system; Negative Average Preference Utilitarianism. This would be fine were it not propped up under the guise of Moral Principlism. Given subsequent forays into Moral Particularism, I averred –– albeit far too latently –– that any isolated system of ethics cannot be reconciled with Principlism in good conscience, since the machinery of Principlism is itself worrisome. This naturally extends to NAPU’s compliance to Principlism, meaning aspects of that (otherwise dandy) entry could benefit from modification. As usual, I'd rather just do a new post and not addend old ones.

Indications of tension between NAPU and Principlism/Generalism arise in that very post though, due to my encouraging swift and unapologetic abandonments of NAPU in favor of Classical Negative Average Utilitarianism whenever the moral patient is a non-human animal. If NAPU is abandonable on this score, it follows that CNAU would be as well for the obverse reason. This blog's oft-discussed compartmentalization of human vs. non-human moral patients animated a garish undercurrent of particularism; refusing to hold the Preference side hostage to prescriptive invariability. Having grown fonder of variability in the months that followed, I was pleased to see glimmers of it in the post that's now under refinement. Problem is, the post dealt with the three keystones of internal disputation enclosed by utilitarian ethics, with particularism open-for-business in just one of those [Preference vs. Classical]. This makes it easy for readers to gather that Negative and Average utilitarianisms are unfailingly wiser than Positive and Total utilitarianisms. They aren't. What I should have argued is that they are wiser arguably more often, not in principle, as I intend to show.

Inequality vs. Disutility

Enduring mantras defending or agitating against 'inequality' rarely engage with a careful parsing of egalitarian ethics. The internet being what it is, even a teensy definitional oversight can spiral into wasted energy and communicational brick walls. Debates surrounding the intrinsic status of equality/inequality are not immune to this, as it turns out. Shocker.

To bypass –– in one fell swoop –– the pratfalls of opportunistic demagoguery and mindless sanctimony, we direct people to the segmentations between numerous schools of egalitarianism:

Numerical Egalitarianism:

Treats all moral patients as indistinguishable, apportioning the same quantity of a good per capita.

Proportional Egalitarianism:

Treats all moral patients in accordance to their distinct needs.

It’s hard to overstate how useful it would be to have interlocutors who actually pay attention to “numerical vs. proportional” parameters instead of carrying on as if everyone holds the same idea of what is meant whenever “equality” is uttered. With policy-related discussions, it would be doubly useful to qualify one’s views in this way.

Failure to conceptualize and frame the issue along these lines enables this type of irritable backwardness to turn up as the top result for "equity vs. equality" keyword searches:

There is no need for words like "equity" when we have Proportional Egalitarianism covering the same ground going all the way back to Aristotle. It would be a different story if all modes of equality had been conceived to march to the tune of Numerical Egalitarianism, which they weren't. So as things stand, equity = another case of word-abundance. There isn't a single mention of it in the SEP's lengthy article on equality and related concepts.

There's also the problem of equity being used varyingly depending on the region you're in. In the above image, equity corrects for natural disadvantages in ways that equality presumably cannot. But this tends to not capture ordinary people's view of equality, at least in my experience. People tend to think of equality in proportional terms more often than in numerical ones. Whereas when someone says "equity" or "inequity" around me, it's clear that they're referring to a meritocratic value / unmeritocratic disvalue, reserved mainly for the competitive domains of life.

The winner of an athletic contest, for instance, should be the athlete who outperforms all of the competitors, regardless of each competitor's sympathetic backstory, and regardless of who wanted the victory more. Any privileging of the losing athletes based on their having had worse struggles and sobs-stories would qualify as a strike against equity, rendering the contest inequitable on the whole. No one in my neck of the woods uses the word equity to refer to the elimination of natural bads, but it's how the above image would have us use it. 

At the same time, athletic competitions start to seem insignificant when compared to competing political [distributive] theories. And at the same-same time, it's also crucial to acknowledge that our political aims don’t transition seamlessly into our ethical aims. There is a reason for why political philosophy is little more than a synonym for moral philosophy. A relationship between the two should no doubt exist, but this relationship must be a sinuous one. Legality has to do with civilizational strategy, which may ultimately (indirectly) lend a helping hand to ethical know-how. That's the goal, anyway. As such, every policy comes with telic constraints, provided that politics ought to compliment ethics when all is said and done, which I believe should be the case.

Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism vs. Moral Particularism

Update 2015-10-15: This was written prior to my discovery of Dual Consequentialism which is something of a game changer. Current view: Panoramic attentiveness to outcomes don't necessarily faze out particularistic evaluations of aggregation. A principled devotion to aggregation entails a one-size-fits-all aggregative calculus, which I find morally monstrous. Despite this, there is no immutable antagonism between particularism and consequentialism when one's particularism is sensibly forward-looking. I suppose backward-looking particularism is a possibility, but I am yet to see a deontologist, for instance, shun Principlism in its favor. It's not hard to see why. To ground 'shouldness' in deontic ways entails a deference to principles, which runs contrary to particularism simpliciter. Thus the spat between the consequentialist and the particularist isn't an unfailing one. The forward-looking particularist and the [dual] consequentialist may perceive each other as moral chums, when all is said and done. Still yet, most applications of consequentialism do not encourage dual-ranking verdicts, at least not in the way I construe dual-ranking verdicts, which may well be idiosyncratic. Nor are most consequentialists quick to side with multi-dimensional aggregative schemes over unidimensional ones. In light of this, the below points remain worthy of consideration.

VHEMT Is Worse Than Humancentric Natalism

Originally published on November 30, 2014. Modified on August 29, 2016.

Recent figures released by the World Wildlife Fund have validated a hunch I've long harboured; wildlife is depopulating at an exponential rate. While most of us were well aware that the number of animals in the natural habitat had been dwindling in some capacity, hardly anyone foresaw that the total amount of sentience on earth in 2014 would be sliced in half to the total amount that existed forty years ago. And yet here we are.

[Edit: On further inspection, 50% appears to be something of a stretch. See Brian Tomasik's speculative but detailed breakdown for a fairly lower figure, cautiously keeping species and individual organisms within species separate.]

This is quite the bombshell for preservationists. What's more, according to the findings, it is unambiguously clear that human impact played a pivotal role in the quickened diminution. While human activity isn’t the sole culprit behind every bit of non-human sentience that’s been halved over the last four decades, it does apply to the overwhelming majority it.

Utilitarian Infighting: The Eight Levels

Originally posted on 2014-09-28. Last substantive revision on 2018-01-17.

The inspiration for this post is the dismal state of utilitarian-themed discourse that I spot every so often in my YouTube subscription feed. Scattered insertion of this unspecific 'utilitarianism' type of stuff has to go. Pronto.

To get an idea of some basic oversights, here are the three cornerstones of disputation within utilitarian ethics, in chronological order:

Total Utilitarianism vs. Average Utilitarianism

Positive Utilitarianism vs. Negative Utilitarianism

Classical Utilitarianism vs. Preference Utilitarianism

The oft-neglected implications of these internal frictions are as follows:

When someone says they're a 'Utilitarian' they've only revealed 25% of where they stand insofar as the multi-layered disputation is concerned.

When someone says they're a 'Classical Utilitarian' they've only revealed 50% of where they stand insofar as the multi-layered disputation is concerned.

When someone says they're a 'Classical Negative Utilitarian' they've still only revealed 75% of where they stand insofar as the multi-layered disputation is concerned.

I can go on with the labels’ intersections, but I'm sure you've gotten the gist of it by now. The patterns limn how unavailing all blanket invocations of 'utilitarianism' can be and have been for centuries. To say that the full scope of utilitarianism is scarcely ever taken into account –– even among professed utilitarians –– would be an understatement.

[2015-03-23: Turns out there are additional levels that I made no mention of here. Lesser known levels. If you're interested in what they're about, see the FAQ] 

Unravelling Freelance Ethics

Editorial 2015-07-17: Redirect here for a better (less pedestrian) post on much of the same subject matter. The stuff below is, in retrospect, largely disposable, barring the fine-tuning of anti-natalism. That was the entire purpose of the post to begin with; to improve on my 2012 post covering anti-natalism and the subpar discussions that had formed around it. Should've just stuck to that. Oh well.


In revisiting the second half of my 'AntiNatalism And Dissection' piece from a while back, I noticed that its condemnations of “utilitarian borg-math” come across as unjustifiably abrasive and call for an update. Equating all moral wavelengths which are pro-utility to a sort of 'borg math' or 'borg calculus' doesn’t sit well with me today. Since the borg remarks were attributed to inexorable aggregation, and were meant to exclude non-aggregative, aka average, measures of utility, taking such a fractious tone didn’t strike me as particularly unfair back in 2012. Problem is, I didn't overtly qualify any of this in that write-up. So here I am now.

While the post rightly avoids portraying utilitarian ethics as mandating a monolithic value criterion, it does undermine pressing concerns hospitable towards Negative Utilitarianism –– but more so towards Negative Preference Utilitarianism –– once limited to non-trivial harm in tandem with non-consensual harm. I’ve pounced on those concerns in subsequent posts, making it clear that perpetuating such harm category horrors shouldn’t be tolerated, even if one’s intolerance towards them, which is to say prevention of them, only comes about through the violation of even the most cherished non-consequentialist principles. Retrospectively, I can see how some of the rhetoric in the 2012 post just might leave the reader with impressions to the contrary, where non-consequentialist principles prevail at the expense of perpetuating nadirs of innocent victims, regardless of enormity and frequency. This irks me, because it’s not what I aimed for originally. I won’t delete or edit the post, as roughly 75% of it still registers with me as solid.

Anyway, instead of updating or altering the post, I’ll offer a shorter and hopefully less convoluted account for why I’m partial to value pluralism and why my hostility towards value monism has consumed much of my attentional energies as of late.

By its very definition, pluralism in the arena of ethics flies in the face of unequivocal adherences to Classic Utilitarianism or Kantian Deontology’s brand of non-consequentialism. I’m narrowing in on these two superstructures as they’re probably the most notorious false dichotomy that's been juxtaposed for centuries, making their respective axioms the perfect fodder for this post.

Targeting normative theories that have managed to maintain this much credibility over the centuries comes with much baggage, like being misconstrued as a fatalist or a value-apatheist or an appealer to If-By-Whiskey fallacies… things of that dastardly nature. Very tedious.

Alas, we have the history of moral philosophy to thank for these thought-binaries, if you’ll pardon my impiety. If this is false, by all means, point me to the influential moral theorists who presented “Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism” as a spectrum-based issue that’s multilayered, rather than a commitment-based one for which a constrained “either/or” resolution must be ascribed. I’m not ruling out the possibility of such moral philosophers existing, I just doubt their notoriety; particularly their visibility in moral-philosophy-as-taught-in-academia type environments.

I haven’t physically attended formal lectures on ethics –– the courses themselves vary based on region and the agendas of those at the helm of the institution –– but I have sat through my share of the recorded lectures, totalling to hundreds of hours of minutiae absorption. The more ground one covers when it comes to the pertinent material available to anyone with an internet connection, the more tempted one should be to outline how its agent-centered framings strangulate modern discourse on ethics in the form of comparative global outcomes.

Just consider at how fatuous the cliché trolley thought experiment is when posed to Classical Negative Utilitarians. All that's revealed here is that the Classical Negative Utilitarian (CNU) will side with the Kantian, but for drastically different reasons. If we assume that the CNU is assured that the five individuals tied to the rails will die instantaneously on impact, the Deontologist and the CNU will jointly refrain from pushing fatty onto the tracks. The Classical Negative Utilitarian (who rejects Preference Utilitarianism and even Negative Preference Utilitarianism) will only abstain because five deaths are bound to curtail more harm in the long run compared to one death, as the immediate discontinuation of five lives suggests a lower likelihood of overall longevity (and less cyclical bits of harm accumulation) compared to the immediate discontinuation of one life.

If this overused moral conundrum is ever posed to you, you’d be wise to sit on the sidelines. Authentic cost-to-benefit analyses are impossible here, given the constrictive nature of the thought experiment itself. If pressed for a response, I’d answer with some questions of my own, like "How the hell would I ever know, in advance, that fatty is large enough to stop a running train?". If I'm assured that I'd just magically know this, what's to stop me from asking ''Well then would I also have foreknowledge that the victims will die instantly on impact?''. If the answer is no, the obvious follow-up question would be ''Do I get to know the extent of the pain tolerance dissimilarities between fatty and the five subjects? For all I know fatty could be more sensitive than all five of them combined!''. If the answer to this is also a no, it would be prudent to ask about the number of individuals who are emotionally close to all six subjects, in hopes of ascertaining how this impacts the grieving process (insofar as who ends up dealing with the loss or losses). If this is also unattainable, the next step would be to inquire about all six subjects' worldviews. If fatty is the type of person who believes things like ''Sentient life is worth perpetuating no matter how bad things get'' while the other five individuals are more, ahem, levelheaded, then pushing fatty can be a lesser of evils on the grounds that he can now endure the very “life as a package-deal” gift that he himself professes to be tolerant of in the name of perpetuation, even if it's for a split-second only. If the ideology roles were reversed, with fatty as the cautious one and the other five the avid risk-junkies, I contend that fatty shouldn’t be touched with a 50 foot pole. Other important questions would be ''Why are those people stuck on the tracks to begin with? What did they do? Who did they piss off?''.

Since this is an agent-centered thought experiment designed from the outset to subvert attempts to get past elementary stalemates, merely posing these questions is viewed (erroneously) as exposing the holes in consequentialist ethics. How convenient.

Again, I’m not suggesting that my commentary on this is a novelty. I am, in all likelihood, just echoing the concerns of many self-styled moral theorists who have come and gone over the years; individuals whose influence never reached the crafters of curriculums, as evidenced by students who enroll/graduate yet still construe appeals to consequences as either (A) outright fallacies or (B) the bedrock of ethics.

The dichotomy is counterintuitive and indicates a constringed wavelength having been inculcated in pupils’ minds early on, given institutional strangleholds on ethics.

As with most disputes, there’s a spectrum at play. Convincing traditionalists of the reasonableness behind this spectrum is a daunting task when their minds have already been polluted by “Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism” bifurcation. The case for de-bifurcation should never be mistaken for vapid appeals to moderation, because one can displace oneself from the spectrum’s middle-ground without supergluing oneself onto its terminuses.

Using myself as an example: I’m not an indivisible consequentialist, but I’m certainly not in the middle of the spectrum either. By this I mean: I find it profoundly unreasonable to look at ethical predicaments and conclude –– in the interest of equal-representation –– that motives trump consequences 50% of the time, and vice-versa. But I also find it absurd to stick to "one-over-the-other" in every fathomable ethical dilemma.

Pluralistic Utilitarianism =/= Net-Equationism

Note that ‘Net-Equationism’ doesn’t exist in any scholarly domain. The term is my own invention. That's right; I'll be indulging my very own neologism here, so continue at your own peril.

If you’re sympathetic towards aspects of modern utilitarianism and unsympathetic towards Classic Utilitarianism (as it encompasses subdivisions like ‘Total Consequentialism’), your position stands to benefit from this line in the sand that introduces the qualia derived position of Net-Equationism into the fold.

With this in mind, I will always make it a point to draw a vivacious line in the sand between Utilitarianism (reserved for value pluralists) and Net-Equationism (reserved for value monists).

Ideally, the terminological division would escalate in popularity around idiomatic corners of the internet. Following this, the colloquial effects would sever commonplace obscurantisms evoked by prominent non-consequentialists who like to align value monism with any formulation of utility and depict them as though they’re joined at the hip, so as to pigeonhole manifold dissenters with consequentialist leanings.

Will I succeed at popularising this term? Probably not. The goal is a pipe dream, given my aversion to tenacity, my abject lack of status, and zero connections. Still, I think it’s worth putting out there as it just might resonate with the right people.

In addition to Value Pluralism versus Value Monism, this is how my distinguishing between Utilitarianism and Net-Equationism translates over to disciplinal ethics, if we are to go by pedantic hair-splitting:

Utilitarian = Average Consequentialist

Net-Equationist = Total Consequentialist

Call it a quibble, but I am unwilling to rollover and settle for continued usage of the italicized labels. Circumstantial consequentialists can accept appeals to consequences as sound ethical propositions while maintaining leveled antipathies towards Monist Utilitarianism (AKA Net-Equationism). My issue with the loaded italicized monikers boils down to their being squeezed under the general 'Consequentialist' umbrella. This is irritating because differentiations in measurements of welfare –– namely between the collectivized aggregating of sentience versus the individualized averaging out of sentience –– are profound enough to warrant a robust separation in terminological use. This fracturing should not be reduced to an “internal struggle” within a larger ethical theory encompassing numerous branches and subdivisions; all tethered linguistically by the mere fact that they all happen to prioritize consequences above motives.

As things stand now, newcomers who stumble upon my writings for the first time misinterpret my animus towards aggregate measurements of welfare as mere infighting among consequentialists. This is bizarre because there is more overlap between myself and some pluralist non-consequentialists than there is between myself and esthetic consequentialists, for instance, or between myself and monist hedonists. Even more grinding is the fact that the more academically polished the newcomer is, the quicker the newcomer will be in reaching a reductionist impression along these lines. This tends to be the case irrespective of the ethical position held by the newcomer. Though when newcomers are themselves consequentialists, they’re less likely to (or just less cavalier about) blend the aggregation of welfare and the averaging out of welfare into one of the same. I can't say the same for non-consequentialists, but perhaps that says more about my own past dealings with them than anything else.

At any rate, my intent is not to denigrate every superstructure ever put forth by an influential moral theorist; consequentialist or non-consequentialist, past or present. I’m just pointing to the baggage that comes with interpreting their offerings as the be-all end-all of how we should frame our discussions on ethics in the year 2014. The established frameworks are spectrum-free and this leads to by-the-numbers, eye-roll inducing debates where the same maxims are reiterated back-and-fourth. This goes twice for GoogleTube debates, like so. I couldn't even finish that one. It was that excruciating.

Anti-Feminists tend to understand the need for terminological-separatism of this sort, and they've already taken the steps to fragment themselves into 'PUA' versus 'MGTOW' versus plain old 'MRA' territories. This way, an all-encompassing label like 'Anti-Feminist' doesn't leave them vulnerable to much intersection (at least on the surface) as each of the three subsections seems to have grievances with the other two, despite maintaining the general phobia of Feminism.

Meanwhile, “a feminist is a feminist is a feminist” even though the spectrum of internal dissent within schools of Feminism is far more spacious than the spectrum of internal dissent within voguish Anti-Feminism. It’s hardly a secret that the feminist camp has more infighting. But it doesn’t really seem that way to casual onlookers or newcomers because Anti-Feminists don’t generally self-identify as 'Anti-Feminist', opting to go by diversities like 'MRA' or 'MTGOW' or 'PUA' instead, whereas all categories of Feminism incorporate the same label. This carries subconscious effects with newcomers and onlookers, leaving them with the impression that the unified “hive-mind effect” is more widespread among Feminists than it is among Anti-Feminists, which is laughable. This may be more of a PR issue than anything else though.

It’s also an unflattering analogy, so I won’t run with it.

Anyone familiar with my previous posts can view the ''Utilitarianism =/= Net-Equationism'' line in the sand as being analogous to the following:

AntiNatalism =/= Unconditional Extinctionism


Recall how disfavouring parenthood without favouring extinction does not make somebody an Unconditional Extinctionist, but rather a Provisional Extinctionist. If pluralistic ethicists suddenly found themselves in a futuristic, tech-dominated society with the ability to equip select senior citizens with immunity to death-by-natural-causes, they'd do just that (provided that this is actually what the elderly individual had requested to begin with). The Unconditional Extinctionist would not comply with this request, for obvious reasons. By being unconditionally antagonistic towards life in the first place, it’s internally consistent and well within reason for Unconditional Extinctionists to dismiss anyone’s longevity aspirations as the product of thanatophobia or DNA worship, without even knowing anything about the requester.

Seeing as the word 'Extinctionism' is tied to both provisional extinctionists and to unconditional extinctionists, it makes more sense for those of us who oppose parenthood or Adultism –– without taking issue with the prospect of autonomous immortality or individual longevity –– to simply call ourselves AntiNatalists instead of Provisional Extinctionists. This rings true, despite the fact that we technically are Provisional Extinctionists in the here and now, since procreation is the only means by which humans are presently able to ward off extinction. This will continue to be the case for as long as human extinction is thwarted generationally, rather than individually. The remaining dolorous fact, however, is that procreation is also the only means by which biological parenthood is actualized; its actualization being inimical to our sense of ethics. (Or core sense of ethics, if AN happens to be one’s pet-issue)

The breathing room summarized in the above two paragraphs should not be thought of as an “internal struggle” within blanket Extinctionism because Unconditional Extinctionists are unbridled paternalists who believe in the equal-opportunity indexing of harm and hence straightforwardly view extinction as a Desired Outcome, while Provisional Extinctionists look at extinction as nothing more than a By-Product. Had the label AntiNatalist never been coined, I would be stuck with having to constantly refer to myself as a certain type of Extinctionist, which would naturally open the floodgates to all manners of red herrings. Of course, these floodgates are wide open at the moment anyway, since newcomers and opponents (and even adherents!) habitually merge AntiNatalism and Extinctionism into a neat package, thanks in part to the substantial overlap of AntiNatalists and Unconditional Extinctionists out in full force on YouTube.

To be fair, this slovenly merger might also have something to do with David Benatar –– an Unconditional Extinctionist –– being today’s most well-known critic of procreation. Though it’s technically a toss between Benatar and Doug Stanhope, but I prefer to exclude Stanhope as his shtick is a comedic one (and dare I say one that broaches shock-jock territory).

Returning to formal ethics, a parallel segmentation can be invoked to conclude that popularizing the term 'Net-Equationism' would prove to be useful to value pluralists who have consequentialist leanings but who wish to distance themselves from rigid 'net-product' mandates pitching “utility-as-monolith” type overviews. If Net-Equationists are endowed with value monism as their signifier, all other schools of consequentialist ethics can be reserved for value pluralists. This terminological division stands to finally put a lid on garden-variety objections to 'Utilitarianism' or 'Consequentialism' tirelessly rehashed by the unscrupulous.

For example; Robert Nozick is fancied a paragon refuter of 'Utilitarianism' on account of his ''experience machine'' hypothetical. His conclusion predictably ignores how contemporary Preference Utilitarianism (or even mid-20th Century utilitarianism) doesn’t corner its adherents into the quicksand of value monism where hedonic qualia pursuits are the lone measuring stick of value. The experience machine is a textbook example where a pulverizing blow to Net-Equationism gets passed off as a swift knockout argument against the tenor of Preference Utilitarianism, and it's why formal ethics do a disservice to many of my unorthodox yet sensible compositions.

Other roadblocks would remain for pluralist consequentialists –– some just as insurmountable as the roadblocks standing in the way of Kantian Ethics –– but at least we’d be past rudimentary claptraps like “Consequentialists believe that it’s ok to lie as long as the lie hurts no one” and similar bogosities spewed all too regularly. Conversational progress; imagine that!

To recap: It’s possible to abhor Net-Equationism (Total Consequentialism) and retain an outlook that’s chiefly focused on plucking the pathways towards tragic consequences when it comes to matters of non-consensual harm and of non-trivial physical harm. Should this task ever call for knavery on the part of the agent, the lie can be dubbed a lesser of evils instead of being touted as unambiguously ethical. Contrastingly, the stifling guidelines stemming from what the bulk of celebrated moral categorisations offer would have us conclude that anyone who frets over consequences more so than they do over motives is someone who’s principally okay with willy-nilly violations of all conceivable non-consequentialist principles. This is inane. The violations are not a free-for-all. Lying in order to stonewall undesirable consequences in the form of –– (1) trivial harm (2) consensual harm (3) emotional harm –– does not translate to ethical behavior insofar as circumstantial consequentialists go. I think this leeway stands to resonate with anyone who has stared non-trivial harm in the face and managed to duck out by betraying a high-minded commandment.

There’s an element of casuistry in all forms of non-consequentialist ethics, once held in absolutist/monist terms and never stratified with consequentialist concerns. This is difficult to pinpoint in practice because, for example, not lying generally carries good consequences; and that’s precisely the point. We’re dealing with an ethical system whose consequential pleasantries are papered over in such a way so as to camouflage how, had following Kantian mandates to the tee brought about non-trivial misery for all, it would somehow be reasonable to pine for a do-over wherein said principles are followed in an identical fashion, in place of a do-over where deviating from them just so happens to reduce boatloads of harm.

Under this currency of ought, it just doesn’t matter how much unintended harm is generated by the plausible intention to do good. The consequential goodies being smuggled in from the get-go is the source behind the average deontologist’s undercontemplation of worst case scenarios. This is why no conceptual dedication to non-consequentialist “duty” can be held as sacrosanct independent of layered circumstances we find ourselves in at certain points in our lives. Even stoics-on-steroids will concede that they have to bite the bullet if pushed past a certain point, and under non-consequentialist theories, chalking their surrender up to a “lesser of evils” is impermissible.

The same criticism holds true when directed at Net-Equationists who are stalwartly devoted to safeguarding raw experiences/feelings/brain states/qualia, especially once this is done in the aggregate.

Quick reminder that this line in the sand I’m harping on should not be mistaken for an If-By-Whiskey appeal to doublespeak, and combating knee-jerk impressions of this nature calls for the sort of punctiliousness that I’m offering here.

At most, my agenda teeters on No True Scotsman, since 'Total Consequentialism' is still a form of consequentialism and I’d rather see it called Net-Equationism. But that's precisely why I'm presenting this entry as an in-progress attempt to shift the verbiage in a different direction, rather than peddling my goal as one that’s already been met.

The Woeful State Of Value Discourse In Efil Circles

Disclaimer: I’m beating a dead horse with the following, but bear with me:

Inmendham, for one, is more partial to a Net-Equationist calculus in place of multitudes of modern utilitarian schools giving clearance to pluralism. This is gatherable by his fondness of reducing everything down to the qualia. The moment this obscurantism sets in, dismissing ideological (non-qualia) preferences in favor of strict “sentience-as-a-commodity” metrics is seen as the pillar of ethical thought. His is a form of ultra-paternalistic sentience commodification that most contemporary Utilitarians simply don’t accept (including most Negative Preference Utilitarians!) because the focus lies in the optimization of the aggregative tally, which is qualia-centric in this case. I’m more inclined to side with the tally of averages which leaves some room for idiosyncratic preferences as a form of measure (though it’s technically feasible for aggregation to inure some latitude for idiosyncratic considerations, but I’ll leave that for another post).

In short, the average tally –– insofar as pure welfare is concerned –– favours the distribution of forthcoming (inevitable) harm in such a way so that the individual pain slices are as balanced out as possible among sentient subjects as a whole. Under this axiom, the apotheosis of value is the equal or near-equal consideration with regard to harm's distributive effects, even if it comes with the cost of boosting the totality of the harm once it’s all said and done.

The aggregative tally –– insofar as pure welfare is concerned –– focuses exclusively on minimizing the totality of the forthcoming (inevitable) harm and pays no mind to how said harm is rationed out on an individual-to-individual basis, with the multiplier effect taken into full consideration.

The odious implications of this:

If a 'Net-Equationist' (Total Consequentialist) is presented with a planet that harbours life and aggregates exactly 1000 harm units when it’s all said and done, versus a planet that harbours life and aggregates exactly 999 harm units when it’s all said and done, the Net-Equationist has already been supplied with an appropriate answer as to which of the two planets is more preferable in value terms. There are no additional inquiries worth flustering over, because the Net-Equationist already knows the final score, so to speak. Speaking plainly in terms of qualia metrics (in a numeric fashion for illustrative purposes), the totalized 1000 mess is viewed as being slightly more squalid when pitted against the totalized 999 mess. So the planet with the tallied 999 ought to be declared as the marginally better planet. Under this aggregation premise, no further evaluative criteria is warranted. Easy does it.

If a prototypical modern utilitarian (a descendant of Direct Consequentialism, let’s say) were presented with the same two options, an appropriate answer would not be available as of yet. In lieu of an answer, a host of questions would naturally arise expressing concern over how the forthcoming (inevitable) harm would be divvied up among individuals (and, perhaps, for what reasons).

One can distinguish between these diametrically opposed modes of welfare computation by recognizing that Net-Equationists (value monists) are not to be afforded any wiggle room here, since they’re descendants of Classic Utilitarianism which encompasses Total Consequentialism into its calculus. The motto is interchangeable with ignoble slogans like “Keep It Simple Stupid”. If you’re an Inmendham supporter who finds this benchmark infuriatingly myopic, be sure to challenge him the next time his 'net product' concerns arise. I’m done trying. Despite hours of live conversations I’ve had with him over Skype, the man is still incapable of handling criticisms of “net-product-as-value” axioms with anything other than “selfishness is dumb” diversions.

A Mixed Conclusion

So yes, I’d like to see my 'Net-Equationism' neologism instilled in the conversational limelight because tradition hasn’t done us any favours here. If deviating from traditional wavelengths is an intellectual vice in your mind, you’ve probably noticed by now that you’re on the wrong blog anyway (which is not to imply that this blog is a peculiar snowflake; many other blogs deviate far more).

Here’s a microcosmic example of what I'm getting at: An acquaintance of mine who enjoys writing spent almost two decades placing his commas and periods outside the parentheses, because he found it esthetically pleasing and didn't fuss over the conventional wisdom of how it's supposed to be done. I shared his preference. He went on to post-secondary. I went on to... earn actual money. After a cup of coffee in academia, he finally caved in to the official edict and started placing commas/periods inside the parentheses. His submission was highly disappointing to me. As you may have noticed, I never cowered to commas/periods-inside-parentheses edicts, because it's counterintuitive to me and it looks awful. It killed me to see him conform to this type of stuff, knowing how much he preferred keeping the commas/periods on the outside.

A healthy dose of irreverence towards institutional standardization is a must in my view. I see no reason to pressure any writer –– obscure or otherwise –– to pay everlasting homage to a superannuated mode of discourse; renowned as it may still be. Outsiders shouldn’t be discouraged from coining new terms in a sensible manner, like I’ve done here.

Unfortunately, accomplished go-getters holding worldviews largely shaped by academia have developed a knack for intermingling the endemic sin of anti-intellectualism with the “sin” of insolence towards institutional conventional wisdom. This is nothing more than a roundabout form of character assassination; invidious when it actually succeeds at humbling underqualified (but thoughtful) outsiders into silence and disengagement.

I think we need a meeting of the minds between the formal and the informal. Very few agree.

Elitists and would-be elitists are generally put off by this proposal because they’ve invested so much of their time/money/energy into the academic sphere and don’t exactly revel at the thought of being on equal footing with individuals whose aptitudes aren’t institutionally traceable. By refusing to strike the right balance here, they end up alienating unique individuals with uniquely acute perspectives who are often captivated by questions surrounding ethics, but who don’t have the time or patience or wherewithal to plow through the heaps of material that’s presented as mandatory for cardinal insight (and is, let’s face it, often just cited to score sophistication brownie points).

The only drawback with a formal/informal criss-cross venture is that it can be taken off-balance in chaotic online environments, as seen on a daily basis by the likes of Stephan Molyneux. Once hijacked by the emotionally distraught outsider (or merely a shill), the criss-cross approach opens the door to a blurring of the lines between the rightful reproaching of affectation, and the wrongful sacrificing of substance; intended to make discourse on ethics permeable to the lowest common denominator. This dumbing-down effect would be necessary “for the cause” according to a subset of outsiders; the implacable ones. Molyneux’s UPB shenanigans are a suitable example of this.

Inmendham in particular relies on oratorical style-points to garner strength in numbers. A newcomer might ask why he’s so gung-ho on attaining additional supporters in the first place. The answer is depressingly simple: Inmendham wants to have a war with Natalists (literally) and this is impossible to pull off due to the present-day dearth of recruits.

Make no mistake, the founder of Efilism does have his share of allies, but he has dubbed most of them “useless backseat drivers” because he understands that hardly anyone in his camp salivates at the thought of actual combat with Natalists the way he does.

Keenly aware that he has no chance of recruiting the type of individuals trained in highfalutin mumbo-jumbo, Inmendham sticks to uploading YT videos jam-packed with colorful indignation; designed to entice irascible Injustice Collectors. Seven years and counting. Nowadays he’s quite open about this histrionic-friendly strategy, thinking it makes for a consummate motivational scheme.

Then there's the “garbage out > garbage in” clause, where The Truth is dirt simple and the reason people haven’t absorbed it is because (1) they’re fed brain garbage by cultures and institutions, and (2) because they’re selfish or “nihilistic” or phantasmagorical and don’t want The Truth reigning in on their parade. I think he overestimates the extent to which the former is true, while the latter is a sweeping caricature of the process of belief, as explained in Sections D and J of this post.

Admittedly, my clamouring for a formal/informal criss-cross is a tricky fine line to identify, so I can appreciate how toilsome it would be to actually put it in practice… especially in light of these expropriation vulnerabilities (Molyneux, Inmendham, assorted conspiratards, etcetera)

Doesn’t mean we don't dare try testing the waters.