Sacrifice, and why it's difficult to make ethical choices

In this episode, David discusses how every decision humans make consists of a cost-benefit analysis. He also looks at what constitutes a sacrifice and what only appears like one. Finally, he suggests a few reasons why making ethical choices is difficult for most people.

Contents:
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Examples
- Sacrifice
- Sacrifice: long-term
- It's only a sacrifice if it's difficult
-Joy/suffering scale
- Why it's difficult for people to make tough ethical choices
- If blood donation was painful
- Is David a moral monster?

Links:
Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

Cost-benefit analysis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis

My email address:
david.tonner2010@gmail.com

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083209401005
https://www.facebook.com/dtonner

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/reasoned_intuitions/
https://www.instagram.com/tonner_david/

Transcript

Sacrifice, and why it's difficult to make ethical choices

Welcome to the Reasoned Intuitions podcast. My name is David Tonner, and I discuss personal ideas on moral issues in modern society and try to come up with improved ways of thinking and behaving, in the hopes of becoming a better person and causing the least amount of harm. As a disclaimer, I'd like to state that I am not an expert in either philosophy, psychology, or anything else, for that matter.

My opinions and positions are provisional and open to change with new information or an improved understanding of the issues I discuss. My intent is not to provide definitive rules or to tell anyone how they should live their life. I merely want to share my ideas and insights, in the hopes that they can be inspirational or in some way helpful.

I employ pragmatic ethics and try to reason from as broad and objective a perspective as possible. Some of my basic assumptions are that unchosen suffering is bad, and we should strive to minimize it. Joy is the most pleasurable sensation, and thus we should strive to maximize it. Empathy is universal, with some exceptions, and it should be the starting point of any good ethical system. 

Intro

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Reasoned Intuitions. Today, I want to talk about sacrifice. Not the fun kind, where an innocent victim is tied up and left to die in some horrible fashion in order to appease a deity or monster. That type of sacrifice, unfortunately, doesn't happen very much anymore, so there isn't a lot to talk about. I also won't be talking about the 1989 Elton John song, though I do recommend it to anyone exploring the Rocket Man's back catalog.

The sacrifices I will discuss are more of the everyday variety, like donating a lung to little Billy, giving up a high-paying job in order to volunteer at a refugee camp in Kenya, or laying down your life for a comrade in the trenches. Actually, jokes aside, that's also not the type of sacrifice I'm going to talk about.

The question of what motivates someone to sacrifice their own life for the sake of a loved one, a country, or a cherished cause is much deeper and far more complex than anything I'm able to cover in a few minutes, and quite honestly, apart from the fact that I haven't explored it extensively, it's not really an area of psychology that I'm very interested in at the moment.

Instead, I'm going to try and unpack the concept of sacrifice itself, and specifically, to distinguish between genuine sacrifice and what only superficially and conveniently resembles sacrifice. But first, I want to explore an idea I've touched on before: how our decision-making process around most things comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. Lastly, I'll try to answer the question of why it's difficult for people to make tough ethical choices.

Cost-benefit analysis

Let's first talk about what I mean by cost-benefit. I discussed this a little bit in a previous episode, the one where I explored the difference between the moral imperative of getting a Covid-19 vaccine and the seasonal flu shot. Every time a person is faced with a choice, they perform an evaluation of the pros and cons of each option, both on a conscious and unconscious level.

Consciously, this may simply be a question like, which of these options is better for me? Oftentimes, especially when the decision is made quickly, without sufficient time to properly evaluate each alternative, or when the stakes don't call for that kind of active thought process, we may automatically fall back on heuristics based on previous experience, superficial attractiveness, and a variety of non-conscious processes that are often called “gut feeling” or “sixth sense”.

If later asked how a choice was reached, the person would, in a post-hoc fashion, state that they weighed the pros and cons of each alternative, or they might just say that they don't know. The bottom line is that, one way or another, when faced with a choice, a person will select the option that seems better to them, for all the relevant reasons—unless they are self-destructive, or part of the Jackass crew.

So, how do we establish what is better or worse? This is where the cost-benefit analysis comes in. Of course, even though it sounds fancy, the mental cost-benefit evaluation I'm talking about doesn't involve pen and paper, studies, or statistics. Most of the time, it is an unconscious process that happens quite rapidly and is based on a surface-level observation of what we know and understand about the relevant circumstances and what we anticipate to be the consequences of each choice. Most of the time, we think about short-term consequences, because again, we perform a rapid calculation, and most of us don't think long-term anyway.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

As a quick aside, according to renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman, human reflection consists of two modes of thought: System 1, which is fast, instinctive, and emotional, and System 2, which is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

Kahneman introduced this concept in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Unfortunately, the concept has fallen prey to the so-called replication crisis, so at this point in time, whether or not these two systems exist is still up for debate. 

Example 1

So, here are a few examples of the kind of cost-benefit analysis we perform on a regular basis, without necessarily realizing that we are doing so:

Imagine I go to a restaurant, and there are only two options on the menu. One of them is a dish that I'm familiar with and enjoy, while the other one is something I've never eaten before. Now, on the one hand, I'm somebody who is open to new experiences, and I like to try new things, including new dishes, so that I can diversify my palate and be one of the cool kids who goes to ethnic restaurants. On the other hand, I also like eating food that I find delicious and that brings me comfort, because it is familiar.

Here are my options: I can try something new and possibly discover a dish I will enjoy again, but on the other hand, I may not like it and end up with a neutral, or bad gustatory experience. The benefit is discovering a new dish, and the cost is potentially not enjoying my meal. Or, I can stick to what I know and love, while missing out on the tantalizing novelty of stinky tofu marinated in Vegemite and garnished with cilantro. The benefit is eating something I know to be delicious, and the cost is not expanding my culinary lexicon—which is known as an opportunity cost, in economic terms.

At this moment, there's a rapid cost-benefit evaluation taking place in my head as I stare at the menu, because obviously, the whole restaurant is waiting for me to place my order, so I only have a few precious minutes to decide. Additionally, the scope of my understanding of the options is relatively limited, so depending on my personality type, my previous experiences with dietary experimentation and specific ingredients included in the exotic dish, as well as the degree to which I love this particular meal that I'm familiar with—all of that will influence my final choice.

There might be other factors that come into play as well, such as the price difference between the two entrees, or perhaps I just want to impress the person I'm with by trying something weird. All this to say that my decision will come down to what each option is going to cost me and what it will bring me in return.

This type of evaluation takes place every single day, in a variety of scenarios. Obviously, with simpler choices like chocolate versus vanilla ice cream, it's more a question of what I feel like having in my mouth at that moment, but as soon as a relative amount of complexity is introduced, an evaluative process has to take place.

Example 2

Okay, my second example has to do with jaywalking. I'm a pedestrian, I come to an intersection, and I'm in a relative hurry to get to the other side. I have options: If I choose to wait for the light to change in my favour, I lose a little bit of time. Not a lot, but it can seem significant in the moment; or perhaps I'm just impatient.

On the other hand, I can run across the intersection, even though it isn't my right of way, and get to the other side faster. The downside, or risk of that second choice is that I could get hit by a car, which is a very high price—I might be severely injured or killed. Additionally, I could be seen by an officer of the law and charged for jaywalking, and again, the price there could be relatively steep, though of course, not on par with the loss of my life.

So, the potential cost of jaywalking seems high and the benefit low—but not always. Sometimes, the reward is higher. For example, if it isn't a busy intersection, there are no cars to be seen, and I have no reason to think that I will be spotted by the police, then I will likely make the choice to cross, because by doing so, I will save a few minutes at no apparent risk to myself… unless I operate under significant societal constraints against law-breaking—perhaps I live in a rigidly law-abiding society, like Japan, in which case, crossing the street, even if it is deserted, is a choice I am much less likely to make, because I'm conditioned to follow the rules.

Naturally, there is a flip side to this as well: I may wish to give people around me the impression that I am a rebel and don't care to follow rules, and based on the context, I may reap rewards from projecting that kind of image. Depending on my peer group, I may be pressured to act a certain way—to intentionally break rules or demonstrate my fearlessness. Either way, and regardless of my particular situation, I will perform a rapid cost-benefit evaluation and either cross or wait.

Example 3

Here's one more example: One evening, I decide to go to the movies by myself. Not because I have no friends—I have friends… they're all busy, or something. There's a new Michael Bay movie playing, and of course, who doesn't love Michael Bay? So, that's my first choice. The only problem is that the movie starts in one hour.

There is one other film playing, though—it's a documentary about vaccines and microchips, and as everyone has been telling me, I need to wake up and find out how the government plans to go about achieving the Great Reset! I love learning new things and watching unbiased documentaries, but this evening, I really just want to sit back, turn my brain off, and watch things explode.

Here are my options: I can pick the documentary, which means I'll go in straight away, without having to wait, I'll learn something useful, but I won't necessarily have a great time doing it. On the other hand, I can sit around being bored for an hour, but then, I'll have a total blast and get my dopamine fix—with extra butter!

As with the previous examples, my selection will depend on a cost-benefit evaluation, in which I'll rapidly consider all the above criteria, and combined with such things as my emotional state and other factors that I may not be consciously aware of, this will guide my decision. As a side note, if someone later asks me why I picked one way or the other, I'll find a rationalization that makes logical sense to me in the moment, whether or not it actually played into my decision. 

Sacrifice

Okay, now that we've talked about cost-benefit and we know that we all engage in this type of evaluation whenever we make a choice, let's look at what I mean by the word sacrifice.

My definition of a sacrifice is the choice that we would normally not make in a cost-benefit evaluation, but which we perform regardless, due to extenuating circumstances.

For example, in the case of my meal choice, if I go with the dish I'm familiar with and enjoy, that would be my selection after performing the cost-benefit analysis. But let's narrow down the scenario a little: The restaurant only has two menu options, and as it turns out, there is only one portion of my preferred meal left this evening. The person I'm dining with has a dietary intolerance that prevents them from picking the other menu option, the exotic dish. This means that they can either not eat at all, we can go to a different restaurant, or they can eat the food regardless and suffer. There is one other option, however: I can give up my preferred choice and let my companion have it, since it is safe and delicious for them to eat. In this case, I will have the exotic dish instead, even though I'm worried I may not enjoy it.

Thus, I have made a sacrifice; I have given up my preferred choice and opted for a less desirable one. Essentially, the constraints of the situation have pushed me to do something I would normally not have done. This type of sacrifice is a one-off, however—I don't have to give up my preferred meal each time I go to a restaurant with a friend; it's not a behaviour I have to sustain. 

Sacrifice: long-term

Staying on the topic of food, let's look at a sacrifice that has to be kept up, sometimes indefinitely. When someone gives up meat and becomes vegetarian, there's a sacrifice being made. The choice is between continuing to eat something that they enjoy but know to be a source of suffering to countless living organisms, and therefore being plagued by a bad conscience, or giving up this delicacy and instead feeling good about their moral behaviour.

The more important distinction I want to point to here is between a real sacrifice and what only looks like one on the surface. As an illustration, I'll talk about my switch to a plant-based lifestyle, and in particular, I'll share my thoughts on why I have been able to maintain a vegetarian diet for as long as I have, while many others try but ultimately return to eating meat.

Before I do so, I wish to assure you that it is in no way my intention to sound sanctimonious or to make myself appear to be a better person than anybody else. On the contrary, as I hope my personal situation demonstrates, I never had to make a difficult ethical choice when it comes to meat consumption, so it seems dubious that I would be a more moral person in this context than somebody for whom the decision to give up something they love is a difficult one.

It's only a sacrifice if it's difficult

Okay, let me throw in a casual pun and boil this down to a tagline before I expand on it: if something feels like a sacrifice, then it is one, but if it feels easy, then it's not really a sacrifice. What do I mean by that?

While I grew up eating meat on a regular basis, perhaps once a day, and I certainly enjoyed meat, I can't say I've ever been a classic meat lover. For example, I never ate steak as a child, so I never developed an appreciation for it. Meat-heavy meals or barbecues were a rare event for me, and to some degree, the meat part of my meals was interchangeable with other food groups, such as vegetables. This means that when the time came for me to cut out animal flesh from my diet, I did so gladly and basically never looked back; it felt easy. Sure, once in a while, I might get a minor craving for this or that, such as a delicious rotisserie chicken or a hotdog, and I may even satisfy that urge. But the truth is that I have never felt like I was missing out on something I loved by removing meat from my menu options.

This cannot be set of everybody, however. There are many people who love meat to such a degree that giving it up would be akin to me removing sugar from my diet, or never tasting dark chocolate ever again, or… well, you get the idea. For some people, meat is very important, so while they may be able to give it up temporarily, their desire to eat it every time they are reminded that it's an option becomes more powerful than the reason they gave it up to begin with. Essentially renouncing meat feels like a sacrifice to them, whereas for me, it doesn't.

For me, the choice is easy—it's more important that I have a clear conscience and not feel like I'm contributing to animal suffering than having the privilege of eating meat. I've made a cost-benefit evaluation, and the animals won. To be clear, the animals haven't actually won, since their suffering continues regardless of my dietary choices, but hey, at least I feel better about myself morally!

Joy/suffering scale

To put things in perspective, we can think of the cost-benefit evaluation as a scale with both a positive and a negative range, with the positive being a measure of joy and the negative correlating with suffering. Let's say the pleasure I derive from eating a pork chop ranks at a five, and the suffering that would obtain to the animal as a result of my delicious snack is a negative ten. Clearly, the suffering is greater than the joy, according to the scale, so my moral cost-benefit evaluation here would suggest that I should give up the pork chop and eat a kale salad instead.

Obviously, there is a degree of subjectivity to this analysis, but in fact, according to a number of psychological studies, humans seem to place far greater value on the alleviation of their own suffering than an increase of pleasure, so there is no reason to think the same standard shouldn't be applied in reference to non-human animals.

An important point to make about the preceding example is that, while the benefit of consuming meat accrues to me directly, the cost doesn't, while on the other hand, the price of renouncing chicken wings is mine alone, while the benefit is almost purely conceptual, since there's no way for me to witness a chicken's life being spared when one less order for its flesh is placed, and this makes it even more difficult to make the correct moral choice at the expense of one's own pleasure. Unless one doesn't care very much about eating meat, as in my case, the sacrifice part of the scenario is far more salient.

In fact, if I can linger on this point a little longer, I think it's important to stress that since it is normal for each one of us to place greater worth on benefits or losses that pertain to ourselves than those which befall another, be they animal or human, this alone can play an outsize role in how our cost-benefit analysis balances out and how we evaluate choices.

Why it's difficult for people to make tough ethical choices

The last point I want to talk about today is why it's difficult for people to make tough ethical choices. There is a difference between ethical choices, or sacrifices that are momentary, or happen once and then they're done, and those that must be sustained for a long period of time, or perhaps indefinitely. Oftentimes, when people undertake to make a lifestyle choice that involves giving up something they are used to or enjoy, in the moment they make the decision, it seems achievable.

What I think is one of the key determinants of the success of this type of lifestyle transformation is whether or not it feels like a sacrifice. At the outset, one may derive satisfaction from the knowledge that they are doing the right thing, either for themselves, such as with a weight loss program, or for an ethical cause they believe in, like the alleviation of animal suffering. The problem is that as soon as this begins to feel like a sacrifice or a chore, not only does the initial determination begin to wane, but we may begin to second-guess the validity or correctness of the choice we made in the first place, and gradually, as our resolve weakens, we tend to find or create reasons why cheating is okay, until ultimately, the intention behind our sacrifice is gone altogether, and it seems like a far better idea to simply go back to our old habits.

At the same time, if a person doesn't receive some kind of reward for the choice they've made, so essentially, if their sacrifice isn't validated, either internally or externally, then that removes another crucial motivating factor for their lifestyle change.

Additionally, if the thing someone is asked to give up is either closely tied with their identity, or simply something they value very highly, they may unconsciously skew its importance one way or the other. This is another instance where cognitive dissonance kicks in. For example, if someone is raised on a farm, and they grew up eating meat and are dependent upon it as their livelihood but also as a key factor of membership within a social class, their perspective on the harms it causes will be biased. In a self-serving manner, they will diminish the harms and suffering caused by animal agriculture and boost the value it generates.

On the flip side of this, there are animal rights activists whose sole focus is the elimination of animal suffering and therefore animal agriculture as an industry. These folks will also skew their implicit and explicit representation of the pros and cons of that industry in order to better fit their worldview, ideology, and the tenets of their identity group. Neither side will necessarily conceptualize and represent the reality of the situation objectively. Rather, they will see it through a variety of lenses, or conceptual frameworks, that pertain to their respective place in the world.

In my case, giving up meat hasn't felt like a sacrifice, partly because the pleasure I derive from eating meat isn't very strong, but on the other hand, the reward I gain from my conscience, or the knowledge that I made, the “right choice” is far more motivating and helps me sustain the lifestyle I've chosen. But other people may feel a great loss every time they look at a dish that they're no longer able to eat, and the reward from making the ethical choice may not be nearly as great, and so for them, the experience of not eating meat may feel like such a sacrifice that they are unable to sustain it.

If blood donation was painful

Here, I'll come back to an example I mentioned in the vaccine episode, about blood donation. If giving up blood was a painful experience for me, I might be able to make the sacrifice once and go through an excruciating twenty minutes of pain, but if I knew that every time I donated blood, I would have to experience that same twenty minutes of agony, it's not likely that I would be willing to go through with; the sacrifice would be too great.

As it is, my act of donating blood every two months doesn't feel like a sacrifice. It's a slightly unpleasant, but otherwise good social outing. My conscience tells me I'm doing the right thing, I get to hang out with other “good” people, chat with young, attractive nurses, learn the difference between lobotomy and phlebotomy, and best of all, I get free cookies and juice boxes, all for the price of a prick in the arm and a pint of blood! If the donation involved twenty minutes of constant pain though, I doubt all the benefits I just listed would be sufficient to motivate me to put myself through that.

Ultimately, I think this is why people struggle to make real sacrifices. When something feels easy and doesn't cause you to suffer or leave you feeling empty, you give it up gladly. When it does cause suffering, however, it's much more difficult to relinquish.

Am I a monster?

As a final thought, I'm going to give you an insight into a darker side of my personality here, and I hope that rather than see me as a monster, you will be able to relate.

If I ever found myself in the unlikely scenario where an evil madman forced upon me a difficult ethical choice, I'm not sure if I would make the right one. For example, one of the things I cherish most in life is music. I hate to think what my decision would be if I had to opt between never hearing another song again or saving another person's life.

Similarly, if the choices were between cutting off one of my limbs or letting an innocent person die, I can't say with complete certainty that I would do the morally right thing. Perhaps that's just me though, and for some of you, the decision might be a no-brainer. Maybe I'm a moral monster after all.

Thank you again for listening, and as always, I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.