Category Archives: Ethics

How the Trump Administration Harms People I Know

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A few news cycles ago, everyone was discussing the Trump administration’s cruel policy of separating migrant children from their parents (and then losing track of them, which cannot be anyone’s ideal of efficient government).  This is a serious issue which deserved significant press coverage.  And a major campaign promise by Trump, to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the US, has resulted in a controversial executive order that was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional (even though I’m sure many of the Justices would have struck down a similarly tainted domestic policy had the government not said it was related to “national security”.)

However, in this post I want to talk about some more minor ways in which Trump’s anti-immigration policies have hurt people I care about.  None of these people have suffered anything as extreme as the asylum-seeking families detained at the border.  But I think it is still important to talk about the lesser ways in which anti-immigrant policies hurt people, especially when I can speak from the experience of people I know personally.

There is a tendency for controversial, hot-button issues to soak up all the public attention.  Because of this, the public debate surrounding immigration usually focusses on illegal immigrants.  But the people I am going to talk about are legal immigrants, whom the government welcomed in, and is now treating badly.

(I will therefore not be discussing specifically the Iranian physicists negatively affected by the so-called “Muslim ban”, even though I do know some individuals who have likely been negatively affected.  In my experience, none of the Iranians living in the US support the Iranian regime.)

As a fairly privileged upper-middle class person, it’s fairly rare for political issues to affect me directly, except insofar as they contribute to my tax bill, and to the government grant monies that have sometimes paid my salary.  I have strong opinions about many of the issues involved, but as far as my life was concerned, the Obama administration was not much different from the Bush administration, except that it changed which news stories I read about on the internet.  So when people I actually know have their lives derailed by politics, I start paying attention!

The information below was obtained by conversations with the victims of these policies.  I assume their information is largely accurate, but I have not tried to check it with independent research.

I. Graduating Students

As you might expect, Stanford University accepts many bright graduate students.  This year, several of the High Energy students have defended their Ph.D.’s and graduated.  They had applied for prestigious postdoc positions starting this Fall, and were accepted.  These are some of the brightest students in the whole world, and they want to contribute their intellectual talent to our nation.

Unfortunately, because some of them are foreigners, from scary countries like China and Canada, rather than US citizens, they are required to get work visas.  In previous administrations, that involved some annoying requirements, such as a rule that you had to go back to your home country and apply from there.  The Trump administration, however, currently has a backlog of around 6 months processing all visas in this category.  Hence they have been unable to start their new jobs yet, even though the academic year started months ago.  During this time, they are:

– forbidden from gaining any income in the United States,
– unable to leave the country or return home, for fear of not being readmitted to the USA, and making their application less likely to be accepted.  (Despite the fact that they are here legally due to their previous visa.)
– advised against moving to their new location for fear of being held to be “working” for their new employer
– advised against doing research (which for us theorists is literally just “thinking/talking about physics”) for the same reasons.

Graduate students are not very likely to be sitting on an enormous stash of savings, so this is obviously a serious issue for these students.  Imagine if the government told you that you are forbidden to work, and on top of that threatened you with dire consequences if you wanted to move back in with your parents, or move to any other country that did allow you to work for them.  I reckon you would be pretty upset.

So why didn’t they just apply for their visa 6 months in advance?  Well, because any application submitted more than 3 months in advance is automatically rejected as being filed to early.  So yes, the Trump Administration is, by underhanded delay tactics, imposing a Catch-22 that makes it literally impossible for these students to start their new job at the beginning of the new academic year.

Since there are statutory quotas for the total number of people admitted, I’m not sure this foot-dragging will even have the effect of lowering the number of foreign workers in the USA.  It is just being jerks for no good reason, to the international people that we were going to hire anyway.

II. A Recent Faculty Hire

What about people higher up the academic ladder?  I was just hearing last night from a condensed matter theorist around my age, who was recently hired for a tenure-track position at a top UC school in his field.  (While there is some subjective element to this judgement, and he is a friend of mine, on almost any view we are talking about one of the top 10 most promising people in his subfield in the whole world.  That’s how good you have to be to be hired at a place like that.)

While he is allowed to work, the backlog for him getting a Green Card (permanent residency) is currently 20 years!  Bear in mind, his employment already puts him in the highest priority category you can possibly get by virtue of employment.  (He could only do better if he was marrying a US Citizen or was a religious worker.)

Why so long?  Well, in its infinite wisdom, the government has decided there should be an equal number of spots for immigrants from every country, irrespective of the population of the country.  As if they were voting on Senators.  So people from India or China have difficulties, whereas somebody from a small Pacific island nation somewhere has no problems.  This is obviously stupid, but past administrations have remedied this by reassigning unused spots from countries like Liechtenstein to the nationalities with higher demand, while still staying under the total national quota.  Well, they aren’t doing that any more.

So this guy, one of the most talented physicists in the world, with a permanent academic appointment, needs to wait two decades (or more likely, until a Democrat retakes the White House) just to be able to be a permanent resident.  In the meantime:

– he is ineligible for many grants
– he cannot return to India to visit his family, without having to go through an extensive, 3 month background check on return (and possibly being denied re-entry).
– his brother wanted to visit him but was denied a tourist visa (due to his age bracket and being from India; however his parents were able to visit him).

III. What God Says

The Bible teaches that we are to treat foreigners fairly and not to oppress or harass them.  This is a major theme in Old Testament, starting with the Torah:

Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.  (Ex 23:9, cf. 22:21)

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.  Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God.  (Lev 19:33-34)

The Law required foreigners to be given full access to justice:

Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.  (Deut 24:17-18)

The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice…

“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”  (Deut 27:14,19)

This included provision for refugees escaping from oppression in other countries:

If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand them over to their master.  Let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose. Do not oppress them.  (Deut 23:15-16)

and for both private and public welfare systems for those who fell down on their luck:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.  (Lev 19:9-10, cf. 23:22)

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.  When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time.  Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.  When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again.  Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt.  That is why I command you to do this.  (Deut 24:19-22)

At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns,so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.  (Deut 14:28-29, cf. 26:12)

as well as a commandment making it illegal to discriminate against immigrants:

You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.  (Lev 24:22)

 For the generations to come, whenever a foreigner or anyone else living among you presents a food offering as an aroma pleasing to the Lord, they must do exactly as you do.  The community is to have the same rules for you and for the foreigner residing among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come.  You and the foreigner shall be the same before the Lord: The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigner residing among you.  (Num 14:6)

although this general principle presumably did not take precedence over other Torah commandments which explicitly treated foreigners differently in specific respects, e.g. the rule against charging interest in Deut 23:19-20 applied only to fellow Jews, not to foreigners.

Of course, the message of welcoming strangers continues with the Prophets and the New Testament, but this is enough to make my point.

IV My Own Opinion

Now I am well aware that the United States of America is not a theocracy like ancient Israel, and that there are plenty of laws in the Torah which it would be inappropriate to enforce (or even follow) in modern day conditions.  But as a Christian, I believe that there are ethical principles to be found in the Bible which I ought to pay attention to.  Charity towards foreigners is one such ethical principle, and it is flouted by so-called Christian “conservatives” who idolatrously say “America First!” instead of putting God first.

Not that I accept for a minute that the immigrants I know are bad for America.  Our scientific preeminence requires us to recruit top talent from around the entire world, to stay on top.  I oppose trying to reserve academic positions for Americans for the same reason I’m not a fan of affirmative action, because I believe that it’s best for jobs to be filled by a merit based system without regard to extraneous factors.  If that means that we get a lot of Indian and Chinese people, good for them!  A bunch of geniuses are coming from all over the world wanting to work for us, and somehow that’s a bad thing?  It’s not like you can just hire some random guy who lost his auto manufacturing or coal mining job.

There is also an enormous humanitarian good to be gained by allowing more people into developed First World countries.  However, I do not believe that the US should have completely open borders.  First, because I think there are valid national security reasons to keep terrorists and other undesirable criminals out.  Secondly, because there may be a maximum rate of immigrants that we can accept without overburdening our society or culture.

Still, there has never been a wealthier society than ours, capable of meeting more people’s needs.  Nor has there been any society with a stronger track record of assimilating immigrants successfully.  And pretty much all economists on either side of the political aisle agree that protectionism in trade is bad for both countries.  It’s almost a mathematical theorem.

But even if you believe differently than me about these broader issues, it’s not like the policy makes sense for any of the academic people I mentioned above.   If the government had legitimate national security concerns about any of them (which would be frankly absurd, given the people in question), they shouldn’t have let them into the country in the first place.  There’s no way that it’s in our national interest to let people into the country, lavish our educational resources on them, and (eventually) decide they can stay, but jerk them around the whole time, and make the process a bureaucratic nightmare.

Respect for the President

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[Historical Note: this blog post was written prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2016.  However, it highlights an issue which I think has been a problem with American politics for as long as I’ve been paying attention to it.]

“You shall not revile God, nor curse the ruler of your people.” (Exodus 22:28)

Treat everyone with high regard: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:7)

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established…. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.  (Romans 13:1, 6-7)

Given the chaos of the election season, I just wanted to write a reminder to my fellow Christians who live in the United States about our civic and Christian duty to respect whichever person ends up being President next year.

I am writing this now, when both candidates have a significant chance of being elected, so that nobody will think I am a hypocrite, who only cares about this issue when somebody I like is in the White House.

(That does not mean I am neutral when it comes to this election.  While I am not a huge fan of either candidate this season, Donald Trump is far more dangerous, irresponsible, and crude than his rival, and I may have some personal difficulty in following my own advice if he is elected.  Although it is conceivable he would keep his promise to appoint justices to the Supreme Court in keeping with my own views, this year the “worst case scenarios” for the Executive Branch seem way worse than for the Judicial Branch.  But that doesn’t change what I am going to say.)

Anyway, the Bible says you are supposed to honor the ruler of your country, because all rulers are appointed by God—not in the sense that God necessarily approves of their rise to power, nor the things they do while in charge—but rather in the sense that it is God’s general will that governments exist and that, under normal circumstances, people should submit to duly constituted authorities.

There are two communities naturally ordained by God, based on the way he created human nature: family and governments.  Similarly, there are two communities that were supernaturally ordained by God: Israel and the Church.  The members of all these communities owe their leaders some degree of obedience and respect, because without that they cannot function as healthy communities.

In every other nation besides ancient Israel, God has left the details of how the government should be structured up to the human beings in that area.  At the time of the Bible, most governments were monarchies of various sorts.  Now we live in a democracy, where we have the privilege of choosing our own rulers.  That is a great blessing, but it does not change the fundamental reality of the situation.  Once we have chosen these rulers, in principle they have the exact same divine authority that would have existed in a monarchy—I mean when they are acting within the scope of their delegated powers; I’m very grateful we don’t live in a society where the president is an absolute dictator!  (The President has no direct authority to command American citizens except where authorized to do so by law.)

Just as it is God’s will that children should obey their parents, and (even after they grow up and are no longer subject to them) give them due honor for providing them with life, sustenance, and upbringing, so too should Christians obey legitimate government authority, and also give due respect to the individuals who exercise that authority, in a way that is appropriate given the democratic customs of our own society.

It does not matter if the individual in question is unworthy of the honor.  As people in the military say: “you salute the uniform, not the man”.  When Sts. Peter and Paul wrote their letters, most likely the man in charge was NERO CAESER, who was not a very nice man.  If you are concerned about infanticide, torture, foreign conquests, denial of religious freedom, undermining separation of powers, or the “Imperial Presidency”, well these things were all much worse in the Roman Empire than they are today, and yet the Apostles still taught that Christians should honor the king!  Jesus himself taught that we should “Render to Caeser what belongs to Caeser, and to God what belongs to God”.

Of course, sometimes other ethical principles must take precedence over that of obeying authority.  If our earthly leaders tell us to sin, then we must “obey God rather than men”.  For example, many early Christians were martyred rather than participating in the cult of Emperor worship.  A more recent American example was the civil disobedience that took place during the Civil Rights Movement.  In some extreme situations, a government may be so tyrannical that armed rebellion against it is morally necessary.  But I take it as obvious that the USA is not currently such a tyranny.

Of course, raw power is not the same as government authority.  To a brigand or conqueror who makes no pretense of ruling in his subjects’ interest, but merely comes to plunder and rape and kill, we owe no respect or obedience whatsoever, quite the contrary!  But once such a person sets up laws and officials in order to promote the common good of society, then to that extent it is a government, and it should be submitted to in ordinary affairs until such time as it can be replaced with something better.

The Bible passages above make it clear that we are required to give respect and not merely grudging obedience to our leaders.  Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the President’s policy decisions, to sound the alarm at usurpations of power, to whistleblow crimes, to reject immorality etc.  You are not required to agree with him or her, any more than the command to “honor your father and mother” means you must always agree with their decisions.

What is not acceptable is to take a constant tone of bitter disrespect, to express continual contempt, to make mean-spirited jokes (a genuinely funny joke is another matter), to make unwarranted comparisons to Hitler and Stalin, to believe every slanderous rumor you hear about them, to despise half the population for voting for them, etc.

Whenever a party’s own politician is in charge, they can see quite clearly just how deranged the critics on the other side have become, and how it harms our ability to unite as a nation and make important decisions.  I urge you all to remember that the same thing is true when the other party’s choice is in charge.  Politicizing every single issue isn’t actually good for the country.  Each of the last 3 Presidents has been hated by the opposition party to a far greater extent than can possibly be healthy.  And “the other party started it” is not a good excuse.

Just as in other areas of life, people tend to rise and fall towards the expectations other people set for them.  As St. Chesterton once wrote:

“It is a practical course to destroy a thing; but the only other practical course is to idealize it. A respected despot may sometimes be good; but a despi[sed] despot must always be despicable.”

[Brackets are my own speculative attempt to correct what I believe to be a 111 year old typo.]

If whatever the President does is viewed as an unprecedented assault on all the liberties we hold dear, the there is no incentive for them to be better than that, because the other side won’t respect them even if they do follow the law.

We should also remember to pray for them, not just that they would do a good job, but also because the job is spiritually dangerous and they risk losing their own souls in the process.  Few Presidents escape the White House without rubbing off part of their consciences, through supporting actions that they would at one time have been outraged at.

Since the President is the representative of the whole nation, whoever curses the President also curses the nation, and therefore curses himself.  So instead be a blessing.  The same principles apply in politics as anywhere else:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil.  Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21)

Some last thoughts about voting:

1) Mathematically, your vote can make a significant difference on average (at least if an election is close).

2) There are other elections on Nov 8 besides the Presidential election, and they are also important!  Please research the candidates and cast an informed vote.

3) But, if you’ve walked into the voting booth just to vote for President, and you have no idea who or what the other things on the ballot are, then I recommend you leave these other ballot questions blank so that the voters who have researched those issues can decide them.  Please don’t cast an uninformed vote; that just adds noise to the system.

In the Red Light District

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I’m in the middle of a six week trip in Europe; currently I’m attending the Amsterdam String Workshop.

I’m reminded of something that happened to me a year-and-a-half ago December when I visited the String Theory group in Amsterdam.  I didn’t realize until I starting doing touring on Sunday that my hotel was close to the main “red light” district, where the alleyways are full of semi-naked women in booths selling their bodies to the tourists.  The main red light district is right in the middle of the oldest part of town, well worth seeing for the architecture, if you can ignore the vice peddling (which is easier during the daytime).

I was absolutely shocked in the red light district—but not by the prostitutes or the drug use, which I had expected.  (Although these things are bad and degrading, don’t do them.)  There is a beautiful old Dutch Reformed church there, dating from the 1300’s, which I wanted to see.  I went in to see the church, but whoever was in charge had allowed an artist to set up a crass avant garde multi-media work of art in the interior, with disturbing images of unwholesome faces projected on the blank walls speaking nonsense phrases, and even representations of bright neon casino scratch pads, glowing on the floor!  I felt it was an extremely disrespectful, if not diabolical, use of a space dedicated to our Father in heaven, and in which faithful Christians were buried.

There were a small number of middle aged couples roaming around looking a bit perplexed.  I was outraged.  I said to myself “How DARE they do this to my Father’s house!” and I couldn’t stay there any longer because I could not contain my rage.  (I said something about it to the poor lady handing out tickets at the entrance.  I tried to make it clear to her that my anger was not directed at her, but I had to say it to somebody.)

As I was wandering around in a daze, I noticed that there was another church in the district, a Roman Catholic church, which was free for anyone to enter.  (The first church had had a 10 euro entrance fee, which is also wrong—what if one of the prostitutes felt a sudden urge to go into a church and pray?—but one quickly becomes desensitized to fees for entering famous churches in Europe).  It was full of tourists but pious ones, and I felt such relief to know that, despite the theological differences, there was some place in the area dedicated to God which was still held sacred, and where the people had natural feelings.  I sat down in an empty pew and wept.

Depression

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I’m not feeling particularly depressed at the moment, but it’s something my personality tends towards in general, and I was just talking to someone about it by email.  I thought I’d collect some thoughts here.

A lot of people are deceived by what I call the “emotional prosperity gospel”, that Christians should expect be happy all the time.  Many of these people would never be deceived for a minute by the financial version of the prosperity gospel—that Christians will become rich.  But both are based on a superficial reading of the Bible which totally ignores the fact that Christ was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.  The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the one who was to come, writes this dialogue between God and our Messiah:

He said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
and my reward is with my God.”  (Isaiah 49:3-4)

This is not, of course, the end of the passage.  God’s plans do end with joy.  But depression is often found in the middle of things, in the difficulty and orneriness of life.

The emotional prosperity “gospel”—which is really no gospel at all—ignores that the Prophets and Apostles often had emotional poverty as well as financial poverty.  2 Corinthians makes it clear enough that St. Paul was not always happy, even though he found joy in his sorrows.

We live in a fallen world, and our bodies and minds are broken in various ways.  Emotions are physiological, not just spiritual; our bodies affect our minds and vice versa.  So depression is partly a medical issue.  If the chemical balance in our brain is off, it can cause us to feel sad, or withdrawn, or lazy without being able to help it.  This web comic is famous for its accurate depiction of what severe depression can be like:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

Because depression is partly a physiological issue, there are physical changes which can be helpful.  Many people find that getting better sleep, exercising more, and/or making dietary changes can help.  I get seasonal depression in the wintertime, and in the evenings, and I have a lightbox which produces bright light, which I occasionally use to feel better.

For severe depression, it can be appropriate to seek medical help, such as drugs or psychotherapy.  (For talk therapy, I would recommend that Christians normally try to find a psychologist who is also a Christian, if reasonably possible.  If you just want someone to prescribe drugs, this might be less relevant.)

This link says more about what to expect if you go to a doctor:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-help-if-youre-depressed/

Many people are resistant to doing this because they think if they get help it means they are “crazy”.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that we’re all a little bit crazy; people should realize that mental issues are normal and common, and not look down on themselves for being born a human being.

If someone can’t walk because they have a broken leg, we wouldn’t just tell them to trust God and snap out of it—we might pray for a miracle, but we should also go to the doctor.  It ought to be the same when the organ that’s broken is our brain.  Also, we wouldn’t say that a crippled person was “irresponsible” and “immature” for using a physical crutch, if it helps them to function better in their everyday life.  So we shouldn’t say this about psychological crutches either.

To be sure, the fruits of the Spirit include joy and peace.  I would question the faith of a supposed Christian who never found any emotional consolation at all in Christ’s resurrection.  Despair, a belief that God can’t make your life better, that is a sin.  And we need to spend time in the Scriptures learning about God’s promises about salvation, prayer, and the redemption of the world.  But there are many moods in Scripture: it contains Lamentations, Eccelesiastes, and the questioning Psalms, alongside the exhortations to rejoice and be glad.  If the Bible had only authorized some kinds of feelings, it would be superficial, unadapted to the world, uninspired.  Fortunately, God gave us something better than this.  Christ was fully human, not just divine.

Emotions come and go.  Depression often dampens all emotions, making it seem difficult to feel anything at all.  It is commonplace that “love”, the primary fruit of the Spirit, has to be regarded primarily as an act of the will instead of an emotion.  I would suggest that “joy” and “peace” are the same way, and that it is possible to be sad or depressed and still have an attitude of rejoicing.  And one can’t forget that it’s the “peace that passes understanding”, not the peace that comes from a well-calibrated cocktail of genes and circumstances.

Some Christians have both kinds of peace and are naturally happy and bouncy all the time; that’s okay too as long as neither kind of Christian looks down on the other kind for being different from them.  Our emotional “set point” is largely the luck of the draw, it’s what we do with it that matters.  Depression can, at times, be a legitimate response to the fallenness of the world.  We are pilgrims on a journey, not yet settlers in our final home.  Sometimes we have no choice but to feel sad.  But we can try to direct our negative emotions towards the things that actually matter in the world.

God can and does rescue many people from depression in this life.  But our faith is not primarily about this life, it is primarily about looking forward to the next, which will last forever.  Remember, St. Paul opined that Christianity just isn’t worth it, if it only helps us in this life (1 Cor 15:19).  This is an increasingly unpopular thing to say in an increasingly worldly age.

But paradoxically, looking forward to Heaven makes us better able to deal with Earth.  Earthly sorrows are not as big of a deal, if we know that they are going to come to an end.  If we suffer with Christ, we will also reign with him.

Why are Internet discussions less polite?

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In the comments section of another post, St. Martel observes that:

Discussion fora on the Internet do have a tendency to make people a little less polite than they would be in person.  Not sure why that is…

[May I point out how glad I am that my readers are capable of noticing this and correcting for tone on their own?  Yes, I may?  Okay, I will then.]

I think there are 3 main reasons why internet discussions are less polite:

1) Anonymity.  People feel free to say things they wouldn’t otherwise say when it can’t be traced back to their “real” identity, so that there are no consequences (for those with limited capacity to feel guilt, anyway).

While this probably accounts for many of the worst abusers, I don’t think it’s all that relevant in the case of a) people like myself who blog under our real names, or b) people with robust consciences who don’t like trolling and insulting people so much.

2) Lack of bodily interaction.  We human beings consist of both bodies and souls.  When we have conversations face-to-face, we aren’t just communicating with words.  Our social instincts, evolved over millions of years, involve all kinds of subtle communications when we talk in person.  Even merely talking over the phone (by voice) provides subtle clues which are not present in internet conversations.  Whereas, on the internet we have a conversation between disembodied minds.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful technology, but it’s missing a lot of color, the sense of the other person as a person, the embodied almost-sacramental aspects of human relationships.

Hence the email convention of including a smiley to say when we are joking. :-)  (That wasn’t a joke, that was just an example of a smiley.)  Although, that doesn’t always work either.  As my father St. Larry once said:

You know how people are sometimes rude on Usenet or on a mailing list. Sometimes they’ll write something that can only be taken as a deadly insult, and then they have the unmitigated gall to put a smiley face on it, as if that makes it all right.

This helps explain why you should avoid quarrelling with somebody by email.  It seldom brings disputing parties into agreement.  Emotionally tense situations are best resolved in more personable settings, if you can handle it.  (Though sometimes email or a physical letter can be useful to broach a sensitive topic if you’re too chicken to initiate the exchange in person.  But that’s different from quarrelling.)

So on the one hand, arguing with somebody face-to-face can trigger an unpleasant sense of  Conflict! Conflict! with an accompanying adrenaline surge.  It’s annoying if your body starts trembling with fear when your mind just wanted to have a nice friendly conversation about how somebody else is wrong about politics or something.  On the other hand, we instinctively know this and most of us adapt in order to be more personable and friendly when there’s an actual face on the other end.   It’s much easier to see what’s going on and correct it mid-stream.  This leads to a 3rd point:

3) Long comments with a delay in responding.  If I speak to you in person, then if I put my foot in it and begin to misunderstand you, or say something insulting, you will immediately respond and I have the ability to self-correct before anything goes too terribly wrong.

But if I’m in an argument on the Internet, that’s not how things work.  Suppose you read a long response from somebody and you start obsessing about in what ways it is wrong and needs correction.  So then you write a long response of your own, but it’s pretty easy to get carried away.  If the tone is wrong, it won’t be corrected until several hours or days later when an equally strongly worded message comes back, and that of course will itself generally be a disproportionate response (for the same reason) which triggers a similar reaction.

Of course, the whole thing can be nipped in the bud if both parties make a conscious effort to be unusually polite and respectful, but it’s surprising just how much greater an effort it takes.

But even if the discussion is totally polite, there’s a downside for philosophy.  Long-winded comments make it too easy to talk at cross purposes, without correction from the other point of view.  After all, when I’m writing a long argument I’m putting myself into the brain state where I am right and the other person is wrong, and one stays there for quite some time.  This is dangerous to one’s sense of balance and fairness.

Psychological studies have shown that when people hear evidence that their own strongly-held political views are wrong, the usual response is to argue against the new evidence.  Paradoxically, this causes them to become more certain of their previous point of view [too lazy to find a link right now, but I promise I’m not just making this up].

From this perspective, arguments are rather dangerous things!  Simply by expressing an argument for X, one naturally causes somebody on the other side to compensate by arguing for ~X.  But this puts them in the position of a lawyer trying to make the best case for one side, not a judge disinterestedly weighing the evidence for and against.  And as we all know, lawyers have a tendency to come to believe that their own side is right (even if it was basically a coin-toss which side they would be assigned to in the first place.)

This is something I worry about quite a bit as somebody who enjoys arguing about religion on my blog (and in person).  Rational people should settle disputes rationally, but what if providing rational arguments don’t tend to actually cause this to happen?  What does one do instead?

One could compensate for this by asking people to argue for the other side of the debate for a change (one implementation of this is the Ideological Turing Test, adapted to religious arguments by St. Leah Libresco.)  But this only works if we presuppose a strong interest in finding the truth.  The “debate team” mentality where the goal is to win by coming up with sophistical bogus arguments, is not really improved by the fact that the positions are assigned randomly.  That just makes it even more relativistic.

To try to get around some of these issues, the Socratic method of dialogue requires that the participants ask each other questions instead of arguing directly, and respond by making short speeches, not long.  The other rule is that you can take things back as needed without any shame, instead of getting stuck defending one’s initial reaction to the question.  As St. Socrates says to Polus in St. Plato’s Gorgias:

SOCRATES: Illustrious Polus, the reason why we provide ourselves with friends and children is, that when we get old and stumble, a younger generation may be at hand to set us on our legs again in our words and in our actions: and now, if I and Gorgias are stumbling, here are you who should raise us up; and I for my part engage to retract any error into which you may think that I have fallen-upon one condition:

POLUS: What condition?

SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which you indulged at first.

POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please?

SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider my case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and Gorgias—refute and be refuted.

So I guess the really philosophical way to argue on the Internet is chat!  Text chats (IM) are still disembodied, but they have a much quicker turn-around time, perfect for Socratic dialogue.  I use gmail chat all the time to talk physics with my physics collaborators, but I don’t usually have philosophical discussions that way.  But maybe I should.