Inspired by listening to an episode of
“Hidden Brain” on the effects of the Lazarus Drug, (This whole long post is better if you listen to this podcast. It is actual story proving the assertions and math I referenced a few weeks ago, I felt by using the
base topic as a common issue, I could achieve a few goals. First,
how it is that on many social issue I, with my (self proclaimed) analytical truth
driven mind can come to the same conclusions as those who are driven
by “faith based” conclusions. How it is that I agree with
legislation that are more often associated with this conservative platform and philosophy.
Second, how it is that simple solutions like found in Memes, slogans,
and any format that give ideas of how to reduce symptoms, ultimately
leads to the thing you were trying to avoid in the first place. Third, how "individual freedoms" can lead to the destruction of a whole society. There will be a fair amount of philosophical math involved.
Moral Hazard By Definition:
First off, the definition of, and
deeper explanation of, “Moral Hazard”. It is often used as an
“economic term” but in a way that really doesn't refer to
“Morals” or “Hazards”. However, it is also (not enough) used
as a “sociology/ psychology term”. It is defined as "the
risk that an individual (or organization) will act irresponsibly or
recklessly if protected or exempt from the consequences of an
action.” In simple terms it looks like this. If you know
something would be fun or pleasurable, but would most likely lead to
a bad after effect, then you won't do it. Sure, going home with that
woman hitting on you at the bar would be great immediate, BUT, if your wife
found out, you would lose all your money and she and the kids would
hate you. And there is a good chance she would. BUT, if you had
access to one of those “mind erasing pens” from MIB, then your
risk of pain would be reduced and you would be more likely to do it,
NOT because she wouldn't find out, but because you could nullify the
negative effects. However, that would lead to more people going home
with cheap bar flies. And there are other consequences that come
with that. The risk that the action preceding the negative
consequences will rise because a solution to reduce the risk is
introduced, is the “moral consequence”. If the mind erasing
trick worked 100% of the time, then anybody who didn't fear the other negative consequences, would certainly do it. Those who held that as a factor would be more likely to do it. However, if it worked only 1% of the time, nobody would trust it. If
it worked 50% of the time, more people would trust it, but not all,
if it worked 99% of the time, but everybody was now doing it, That
would mean still there is people suffering from the negative
consequences (STD, Pregnancy, physical harm) but not the divorce and hatred part..
Moral Math:
Get yourself a cup of stimulant. This is going to be some mind numbing philosophical math. Which contain the two best reasons for getting up in the morning... philosophy and math!.
In the opening graphic you see a basic truth in life. That when the pleasure of an action outweighs the pain, we will choose that action. In a sub-equation is "opportunity cost" of not doing something else at that moment. "There is no free will. Humans will always choose to do the thing that they perceive will bring them the most pleasure and avoid the most pain." Controlling another human is as simple as controlling their perception of what to fear. There is in our heads a list of priorities that are shuffling moment by moment. But let us say at this very moment, you could have sex, eat a taco, shoot heroin, or read a "Logic And Politics (LAP)" blog post. in your head you have these rated . Say reading LAP is a 2 (least desirable) on your list while sex is just a 10 (most desirable). Without any fears, you are going to read the LAP blog first and then maybe eat a taco, then have sex, then shoot up smack. But everything in life always has conditions. Maybe to read the LAP blog you have to start up a Windows 98 computer and get online. But all the sudden a super model jumps out naked with a taco... Clearly you are moving taco eating up on the list. In that moment you are choosing the least energy most pleasurable option at the cost of reading the post. If I knew that about you, and I didn't want you to read the post, I would throw tacos in front of you often as a distraction. In your (and any living organism's decision centers) head at an time, you have a list of priorities. Some people don't have their priorities straight. This is often caused by underestimating the risks of an action while overestimating the intensity and longevity of the pleasure.
Likewise, every action has perceived negative (costs) reactions. "I can read LAP but it will cost me time to do my laundry." "I can have sex, but it will cost me money." "I can eat tacos, but it will make me fat." "I can shoot heroin, but it will kill me." Say Reading LAP is a solid 6 on your pleasure rating, but having dirty laundry with no clean cloths causes a negative 2 pain factor. So even though can choose to read a LAP post, you will choose to not have dirty laundry. But the moment you realize that you have enough for 2 more days, you may find you want to read instead because laundry doing has dropped some to equal the cost of having dirty laundry. Then it comes to a priority.
Some general designations.
- Action(a) is pleasurable to all people.
- For every action there is a reaction of some sort. They can be put in three general classes. Functional/ healthy/ causes contentment or joy (good), dysfunctional/ unhealthy/ causes physical or emotional pain (bad), inert (indifferent) causes no further consideration. However, logically speaking, there really are only 2. If pleasure continues as a consequences, it is seen as a continuation of the initial action. This will continue until either extinction or some adverse effect changes the phase from “action” to “reaction”.
- Consequence (b) is dysfunctional/ displeasurable (physical/ social/ emotional) and if it is the only outcome for every time action (a) is taking, then nobody (of normal mental capacity) will choose to do action (a).
- Most actions have a mix of positive and negative perceived outcomes.( If we could identify every one, we could developed sentient computers.)
It would take forever to get into more definitive details. But these are some basic.
Huffing Carbon Monoxide will give you a state of euphoria every time. But it
will kill you every time. So nobody (not intent on deriving pleasure
or ease from pain from killing themselves) huffs CO.
- However if consequence (c) is inert, and also an independent and separate outcome, the number of people who participate in actions (a) will react in an inverse proportion as (c) rises and (b) is reduced.
If
(a) = (b)% + (c)% = 100% Then if (b) happens 90% of the time, then
(c) happens 10%. There will be very few people who do this. (This
would be an “extreme sport” at best. More along the lines of
reaching the summit of Mount Everest. ) However, if (b) gets down to
5%, then most people will be willing and able to engage in action
(a). Let's call this the Risk rating.
For this next part it is going to have to be a little more discernible
about the type of consequence (b). The negative consequence. Hard
to grasp but probably the most profound point of the post.
In a group of 100 people, because the risk is that 20% would suffer
consequence (b) only 5 people (5%) are willing and able to take the
risk. Of those 5, only 1 will actually suffer from it. 95 will avoid
the action, 4 will engage in the activity without consequence, and 1
will suffer. But if those risks are reduced to 2%, 60 people are
willing to engage in the behavior. 60 people (known in some circles
as “everybody does it.” or “you can't stop people from doing
it.) with only 2% of them suffering form the negative consequences
(b) still means 1.2 of them will suffer the negative consequences.
Which is not a big deal until you are talking about millions of
people. Every 600 occurrences of that action 2 will suffer. 6000 will
mean 20 suffering. 600 million means 200,000.
Experiencing a negative consequence means those are forced into a new series of
choices designed to rectify the consequence(b) dealt them.
(C3) = artificially reduces the social ire/ emotional harm
(C4) = Artificially reduces the financial harm.
"What is not natural is artificial. What is artificial consumes resources. What consumes resources is not sustainable. What is not sustainable eventually much collapse" -Pete Cammarata (One night at the Feve after he got back from South Pole Station.)
Just as there are artificial remedies to the negative consequences of an action, so there are artificial punishments that amount to negative risks. This happens when the overwhelming good feeling seems to make people forget the long term effects. “Negative reinforcement” is the common title. Fines, grounding, spankings, prison are all forms of this type “artificial risk”. They are not only meant to influence the offender, but make the other monkeys anxious about undertaking the action. And “monkeys” is a good term for introducing the idea “transferred anxiety” as a tool for keeping a community healthy. So there is a famous thought experiment often referred to as the “Banana, Monkey, ladder, water spray” experiment. Which is just about what it is. The assertion is that and experiment is conducted with a congress of monkeys and put a ladder up to a platform where there was a bunch of bananas. Every time a monkey climbed the later in pursuit of the bananas, the entire congress would get sprayed with water (which monkeys do not like). Soon they figure this out, and anytime a monkey tries to climb a ladder they get nervous. Then they basically make a “law” that anybody on the ladder will bet confronted. After they have been successful and fully conditioned, they start swapping out monkeys. The old monkeys training the new ones the “law”. After a while, there are no monkeys left that actually ever experienced the water spray. In fact many “generations” have passed and still the law stands.
So what a “moral hazard” is in the frame of a society that tries to address a problem by introducing and embracing artificial choices. In the case of the podcast, heroin use lead to death (for example) 5% of the time. Say there were a million doses per year being taken. This was a problem. The instant detox drugs and application methods were developed and would remove that outcome causing the number of deaths by heroin to drop down to just 2%. Which would be great if the number if does taken (times (a) is engaged in) remained constant or dropped. But they didn't since the risk of death dropped to 2% (a 60% reduction in negative consequence of death), then the number of people willing to take the risk increased and then all the sudden the equivalent (accounting for the new potency levels) to 3 million doses are being taken. Simply because that choice exist and is effective. So while there were 50,000 deaths when the risk was 5%, there was 60,000 (that is more not less) when the risk dropped to 2%.
When a person chooses to engage in action (a) and “consequences (b)” is the result, then it is time to make another choice. Perceived “Risk” is directly related to knowing those choices. Education leads to a better understanding of the actual risk and the choices. Not all education leads to better choices. This is where “moral hazards” come in. “Not doing (a)” has no cost to the individual or society. When you walked by all the other fruit in the store to pick up an apple, not buying the other food options cost you nothing in the pleasure/ pain formula. (This is baring counting “opportunity costs” which are a nonissue in this discussion.) So “if I choose to do action (a) there is a 50/ 50 chance that after I experience the pleasure of (a) that I will experience the pain of (b). Then what are my choices to end it quickly and resolve back to neutral.” If there are none, then the equation is pretty simple and pure. “what does 50% chance mean to me?” But if there are choices to alleviate by shortening the intensity and the time that the individual feels (b), in which (b) has an effect on the individuals decisions, then the number of people willing to risk the pain to gain the pleasure of (a) increases. As access and availability becomes easier then the number who will engage in (a) increases.
So
what is a governing authority to do?
If (a) Action = b (Negative consequences) 2% of the time, that might not seem like much of a problem. Which, if it is ridding a unicycle on train tracks while juggling is the (a) and getting killed by a train is (b), then really it isn't. BUT, imagine if it was determined that sugar was the thing causing cancer. The amount of damage that cancer causes in our society is pretty devastating. But 320 million people consume sugar. 98% of the people that eat sugar are fine. Nobody knows which until it is too late. Should the government ban sugar? Save the lives of 6,400,000 people? We have sent men to war to save less.
Lets go back to our choices for the unlucky % that suffer from (b)
(b)
C1 is “live with it until you die”. In the case of heroin. Death
comes quickly. Shooting yourself in the head ends pretty quickly. But say you break your leg kicking a soccer ball? While that most likely kill you these days, you will have to live the limp for the rest of your life. Once upon a time a broken leg might have been a death sentence, slow and painful.
(b)
C2 is an antidote that ends the risk of death immediately. This is
very important to the individuals and their family. Many of the family
members can either directly or indirectly relate to taking a similar
risk. They think “It could have happened to me.” But as a
government you realize that while you are saving more people in real
numbers, you are also physically losing more people in percentages.
The problems caused by the fact that there are more users are on the rise, causes other non-deadly concurrences to rise beyond straight up
death. There are a few reasons to explain
this increase in user, but "exposure bias" is one that is not often mentioned. Simply
put, when less people are dying, it leads to more people misjudging
the risk. An example of this can be found in the projects. People who don't live in poverty can't understand why so many people would risk selling drugs or other illegal activity. But the reality is that to a kid growing up in the projects, the only people he sees are successful criminals. The "unsuccessful" ones are either in jail or incarcerated. So they don't see the "risk" as profoundly as those of us who only seem to know the unsuccessful criminals.
What if
(b)C3
is legalizing (a). Making it socially acceptable, making it even
marketable. By normalizing and giving “safe spaces” to do (a),
by teaching it as an “option” in elementary school, more
(b)
C4 is socially funded rehab. It is expensive, it makes the
individuals and their caregivers happy in the short run, but overall,
there has been a lot of money spent on it and deaths have not gone
down. In this instance we can talk about the governments
“opportunity costs”. Where they could have used that money on
other issues with more effective outcomes. Even though these members
of society are not dying, they are also, in large percentages, not
out there acting as functional members adding to the community. In
fact, we have a population growth problem.
Politician's
Finger Trap:
What if you understood this math. That doing the simple thing, the
“obvious” thing and creating a program that provides this life
saving drugs to all that need it. But you see the research coming
back saying that “when we do this, the increase in actual deaths
will be nearly 15%.” So you are standing there in a room of 1000
constituents, the news cameras are on you, and one crying screaming
mother chastising you, “My son would have lived, would have been
alive today if you had given the police money so they could all carry
doses of Narcan!” And there is a good chance she was right, that
time. But the outcome of her son's life was made more likely ended the same way. The
“moral blow back” of an idea that makes the individual happy by
reducing natural consequences, but cost the community in both lives
and resources overall. So is the government being “oppressive” by
keeping this "life saving drug" out of the hands of those that need it? The science
says “no”. But that is not how CNN is going to report it. That certainly is not how NPR is going to do heart warming stories about it.
A Note on Morality
Morality and ethics at the core is ones ability to “self regulate”. When somebody asks, “don't you have any morals?” What they are saying is, “Sure that behavior is pleasurable to you, but it is bad for the community and that is the reason you should not do it.” Anything that is “immoral” the child in us wants to do, perceives we would find pleasure in it. Stealing something we want, hitting somebody who makes us uncomfortable, lying to avoid punishment, sex with the neighbors ox. It is best if we are self regulated not to do these things. Regulations come through conditioning of life experience. “What doesn't kill you makes you more ethical”. Babies are born “unethical”. Legislation is required for those who are incapable of self regulation. It also shows those who do not have as strong of a fear of the natural consequences that there are artificial ones that should embellish that fear.
Action and outcome:
In the podcast referenced, they talk about the Lazarus drug and the unexpected effects it has had on the opiod addiction problem. Let's consider the possible outcomes in the long and short term. There are multiple studies linking opiod addictions to unemployment in a circular dependent relationship. Becoming unemployed and unemployable is only one of the outcomes. It is safe to say that the most undesirable outcome of taking a hit of heroin is death. Let's look at that as they did in the Hidden Brain piece.
If the action of taking a hit of opiod is one of the following negative outcomes:
First: you have a good time with no ill effects. It is safe to assume, this probably happens more often than any other outcome or the problem would be way bigger.
Second: Financial downfall ensues. This could be getting arrested, failing a drug test at work, or becoming addicted and spending the majority of your money chasing the high. Then there is rehab. All the trappings of being an addict.
Third: You overdose and live with a does that was not quite fatal. Hospital bills are accrued, social sigmas attached, a whole new world is associated to you.
Fourth: You die, everybody is sad, investigations happen, the same answers are found but nothing new is done about them.
These are a very generic 4 negative outcomes. If overdoes are at 2% of uses, the effects of the other outcomes might raise that to a much higher rate of generally undesirable and costly outcomes. Clearly if more people were becoming social outcasts, unresponsive parents, and unemployable, or bankrupt, there are even more costs to the community besides death. News and legislators capitalize on fear. Not unlike gun bans are focused on mass shootings even though there are a 100 other negatives of unregulated gun ownership.
Before naloxone was regularly carried by paramedics, opiod use and overdoses were less than cocain by about 25%. Once the opiod addition became a problem, cities started having their EMT and Police carry the shot and then the easy to induce nasal version of Narcan. That happened in 2014 in direct conjunction with the rise in riskier synthetic drugs hitting the market. The advent of introducing the nasal spray to the open public hasn't seen the number of overdose deaths drop, in fact they are rising at an even faster pace. The only explanation is that reduction of risk of death has caused more people to feel comfortable with taking the risk. The loss of the stigma as heroin use and deaths have been normalized has lead more from the pool of “would not consider doing it” to “would consider but afraid of the overdose death.” pool. The number of user between 2003 and 2014 went from 300,000 to over 1 million. And the number of deaths increased 5 times. What that means is for some reason, all the sudden people were less afraid of dying from heroin and more people did it. The result was a skyrocketing of the other lesser tragic consequences AND an equally devastating increase in deaths. Deaths not only attributed to basic heroin, but all the sudden people were willing to try more powerful synthetic versions. Why was there a market need for this new version? What caused this boom is a theory, but the one that keeps coming back to is “Moral Hazard”. We introduced a “super hero” in Narcan, but that hero is not being paced with the increase in crimes and train wrecks all expeting salvation.
Moral Hazards and extrapolation to other social problems:
Addictions in and of themselves are not damaging to the society. It is the effects, that next actions-consequence pair that happens when addiction goes wrong. Sex, drugs, and violence are the big 3 precepts that lead to social discourse. It isn't the addiction to the tools and ritual simulations of violence that cause the problem. But when it becomes a plague that kills 30,000 Americans. It isn't the actual consumption of heroin, pot, alcohol, or sugar that is the problem, it is the physical, economic, and production value of the users that consume resources but never give back to the family/ community. It isn't the acts of sex that goes on in the bedrooms, shadows, and alleyways that causes the issue. It's the unintended pregnancies, violent altercations, spread of diseases, and destruction of families that is real cost of sex.
Here are some quick under explained observations of the moral hazards of guns. First, gun ownership has caused suicide to be in the top 10 causes of death over all for more than 30 years. Suicide itself is not new. But the access to guns has far offset the number of people saved in various other attempts by medicine. Gun use in conjunction with other crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, drug dealing, and crimes of intimidation are also at all time highs. The most profound gun related moral hazzard realized is deaths related to robberies.
A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research has revealed that the introduction of CCW's has caused a 15% increase in crime rates. This is a studddy that has been going on since 2004. Another related factor “muggings” have become more fatal. Studies have shown that under the new CCW states, muggers with actual guns have increased shooting their victims by 30%. In the good old days, a mugger didn't have to worry about a CCW, now, a flinch in the wrong direction and the mugger can't take a chance that their victim doesn't have a weapon. So where a mugger would not have shot before, there is a moral hazard that allowing CCW will get not only gun carriers shot, but twitchy unarmed victims. We see this in our police and the emergence of BLM. You are not worried about a gun coming out of an Amish buggy. They have limited their acces and social acceptance to guns. Cops arresting an Amish dude is unlikely to falsely expect a gun.
In spite of the great meme slogans about “Good guys and bad guys with guns” the evidence shows that increasing access to gun ownership increases the likelihood of the negative effects not only in your home, but also in your community.
Let's open the Abortion Can
I have tried to write this section 3 times. It is one of the “hot button” issues in our society. No matter which side you fall on, cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. I am going to try to approach this as sterile as possible, then field future posts and discussions from the research I have done.
First, let you (the reader) and me (the writer) establish that abortion is not a “desired” action. It is not the (a). If you are one who enjoys having a baby sucked out of your uterus or thinking that telling everybody that you did is fashionable, then we can not have this conversation. The desired action (a) it sex. Abortion is one “Choice” made when sex end in negative consequence (b). It is one that is not available to any other species. It was not always available to humans. Requiring knowledge, expertise, and other humans, it is not a natural event. I have never heard people recommend, and often hear people say the opposite that it should be used as “birth control”. So it is a different option then controlling birth by their own definition. Abortion does require one human to end the life process of another human. Left to nature, the product of the sexual encounter that created it will end with a natural human death.
So the assertion is that sex outside a committed relationship (casual sex) is something that provides individual pleasure but absolutely no benefit and often at great cost to the community. Unintended pregnancy is the consequence (b) of offering abortion as a means to remedy the dysfunction. (This acknowledges that this is a female specific equation as the choice of the pregnant will effect (or not) the male. Meaning that is she never tells him, he never knows, and ignorance changes perception of the consequence of action. Nature didn't observe this “fair and equal” clause when it came to having kids.)
People make the assertion that “sex is my business the government should stay out of my bedroom” and “you should be in favor of abortion if you are worried about human population growth”. So let's go to the math and the science.
After 100,000 year of human existence the math looked like this for women. 6 out of every 100 had consensual sex. 30% of those 6 ended resulted in an unintended pregnancy. Was there a “moral hazard”? Since we are referring to (b) being “unintended pregnancy” we will assume the “pull out method” as the only means of birth control.
(b) = .333(a) or Unintended Pregnancy = 6 * .333 = (about) 2
Under those conditions the community had to absorb just 2 unintended pregnancies per 100 females. This takes some real reading and digging as most studies group a handy and a BJ that same category of “premarital sex” as physical intercourse. Nobody who has limited themselves to the first two has sought an abortion. Well except the 1% of virgin US births reported each year. Proving even God has a 1% failure rate when it comes to birth control. So people already having other forms of sex, certainly could be swayed by more dependable birth control. Let's face it, we have a president of the US who didn't even consider “oral to be sex”. Figure we are dealing with here is only vaginal intercourse. One affirming detail is that 5% of women under 30 had unintended pregnancies up until 1950. Today that number is close to 70%. Today, however. 95% of American women have casual sex. A trend that started shortly after birth control and abortions became readily available. HOWEVER, that has declining numbers in failure rates. That is hard to quantify into a single number. Using numbers of women who use each type, and some research 3.5% failure rate is a very liberal response.
Now 95 out of every 100 women have causal sex (and more often) with a 3.5 out of every 100 experiencing a failure in the method of birth control.
(b) = .03(a) or (b) = .035 * 95 = 3.3.
A 30% jump in unintended pregnancies even though abortion.. abortion is a choice. As an individual, having abortion as a choice might reduce your personal chances of having to have a baby. And even though birth control reduces the the chances of that negative consequence to the individual down to most likely. The community is experiencing a much greater occurrence of consequences (b) because the monkeys are no longer afraid of the consequences. That always happens to somebody else. This jump is directly tied to the ability to get an abortion, the ability to get contraception, the ability to get other monkeys to pay for the one monkeys act of pleasure through “safety nets”. This has lead to a changing social delusion about the impacts of sex on the community and all kinds of other social psycholgical problems.
“But Abortion Rates have dropped” they say.
When it comes to “unintended consequences” as (b) there is 3 major choices groups now. They have been embraced by a philosophically liberal government and normalized.
C1 could be abortion. C2 is keeping the child and going on public programs, education systems that have become day cares, multi generational households being a more normal condition. C2 is adoption that has become easier and more socially acceptable in recent decades.
Considering that %C1+%C2+%C3 = 100%. So if in the 60's 80% of the unintentional pregnancies were ended by abortion, Maybe 15% were kept because they could somehow, and 5% were adopted. However, today, because they have grown comfortable with the social factors of C2 and C3, 20% “choose” C1 while 60% choose C2 and 20% choose C3.
However, abortion along with other individual consequence reducing methods to the action of having casual sex, has increased the number of citizens who depend on other citizens to pay for their poor choices. That 60% that choose to keep their children, that is the source of much poverty, crime, mental dysfunctions (such as depression and BP disorder), and other 3rd and 4th generation choice consequence pairs. We are not even talking about what effect it has on the perceptions of men. “If she gets pregnant she can just have an abortion.” In the area of $500 billion dollars (and growing) is spent on welfare. This doesn't include public education and other subsidies that every member is “entitled” to. This doesn't include intangible costs of how much better kids would do with smaller class sizes. I can (and one day will) dig really deep into this. But you can not deny the trends that abortion has lead us to a world where “moral hazard” has become a “moral consequence”. I will end this topic with this. IF there were not moral and ethical problems with allowing one human being to stop the life progress of another human being, I would say "forced abortions for the unintended" is the way to go. If 100% of unintended pregnancies ended in abortions, then population growth, climate change, crime rates, and budget expenditures for other people's pleasure would plummet. But the danger in devaluation of human life, risks defeating the purpose of trying to sustain the human race. If the human race is worth saving, then humans are worth saving from themselves.
The problems, the solutions and he conclusions:
The problems that face a society today are not simple. That is not because they once were not simple. Morally speaking, we are getting dumber. Maybe a better way to put it is "more careless" and have less foresight. We once know what the risks vs the rewards were. The cost of being self destructive was irreversible and very quickly punished. Didn't ration food, you starve. Didn't listen to your parents when they said, "Don't go into the woods alone at night. A bear will eat you." The bear ate you. However, we have engineered not solutions to Natures “oppressive” methods. We have engineered remedies that either put off the consequences, or spread them out so lots of people have to pay for one person's indiscretions. It is not coincidental that a geriatric spoiled child of a man represents us as president. In the past he wouldn't have made it to adulthood. A bear would have eaten him. We are a nation that has become used to doing whatever we want, being as naively self destructive and world wide destructive. Burning of fossil fuels, our use of plastic, our threat to the world with our nuclear weapons. We want them, we got to have them. We are children who are unenlightened and raging against the government the like bad parents. A trait we learned in group education when our parents went off to do something we knew nothing of for 8 hours a day while we were forced to get educated. Really we learned to revotl against our teachers, form tribe like clicks, and have a disdain for out parents. We see a problem and we attack the symptom and make hero out of enablers. Nobody stops and says, “Wait, it wasn't always this way. What was the cause of the change?” In fact there is money in convincing people that behaviors that have only existed for 50 years were common since the dawn of humanity. There is a reason to “conserve” some old ideals. Not because some invisible deity is promising us eternity of pleasure or pain. But because while our understanding of the world has increased, we are still the monkeys we have always been. Nature didn't change simply because we can see the actions and consequences and remember them. We are not allowed to use the tools of evolution for toys for our amusement. 100 years before we either over populate or destroy the world with some weapon of mass destruction is what Hawking predicted. We have to start paying attention to those increases in destructive behavior that result from the reduction of individual risk. Because if we don't we are going to suffer a parasites fate. They pleasure themselves until they consume their host and die. That is the danger of "moral hazards". The individual cries "my body, my choice, my freedom" but the human race reality is "not if you want us to continue on indefinitely."
Just remember, this "moral math" can be done for any action that the group might find collectively pleasurable. Percentage of total population engaged in any (a) action will always be inversely proportional to the certainty of pain or death. If there are more than one negative consequences for that action, but you reduce the chances of just one of those consequences, you then increase the percentage of the population that will enrage in the activity. This will always lead to more people experiencing the destructive consequences and wondering "why" they are so unlucky. Moral math also explains "dog whistling" and the rise of racism with a social media connected world. In the old days, when "Uncle Chester" made his racist comments in person and among family members who know they were wrong, he was dissuaded from talking due to the other monkeys chattering at him negatively. But NOW.. A racist misogynist, self centered, so ignorant he is a freak of nature can find so much praise by doing a national search. Hell he might even become president.
What makes it worse for some people, nature has some biases. If a wealthy teen gets knocked up the consequences in emotional distress on her life and the child's life is far less than the teen from the projects already living in a household that require public assistance. The effect on the community will be disproportional as well. BUT, we live in a society that has decided to put unnatural blinders on and consider them both equally. What isn't natural will one day collapse.
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