Summary:

• System 1 follows non-moral heuristics, System 2 deliberates on and follows morality.

• Far mode uses System 2, Near mode uses System 1 unless something unusual happens and System 2 takes over.

• People who believe in moral realism want System 2 to be in charge all the time.

• This is unpleasant, because

• • It takes effort to switch System 2 on.
• • System 2 tries to compensate for System 1's non-moral behavior, but can never fully succeed. The belief that it always succeeds is called "free will" in this article.
• • Moral principles are not optimized for convenience.

• Nothing unpleasant is true, therefore moral realism is false.

Read the following in near mode, and introspect your emotions:

I don't have perfect control of which mode I'm working in. You're the writer, it's your job to write the sentence in a way that makes your reader feel "This heineous rapist bastard is getting away with barely a slap on the wrist, and laughing at how he conned us into thinking that was fair" rather than "A member of the reference class of imprisoned criminals is being treated as humanely as is compatible with minimizing danger to society".

Sexual predator Jerry Sandusky will serve his time in a minimal security prison, where he’s allowed groups of visitors five days a week.

Some readers will experience a sense of outrage. Then remind yourself: There’s no free will.

What? No! I'm okay with Sandusky receiving visitors because prisons are for time-out, not for revenge. (If asked to justify that, I'll switch to Far mode and talk about deterrence.)

I do not believe that Sandusky, or any human short of heavy mind alteration, was inevitably led to rape the way water is led downhill ("no free will" in the traditional sense). A kid begging you not to hurt him is a typical thing that should trigger the "horror and remorse" script, or System 1 confusion and switch to Far mode, and that's only in the case you never noticed "Huh, Near-mode-me wants to rape kids, I better never give it occasion to then".

Neither do I believe that Sandusky suffered a failure of willpower ("no free will" in the "finite willpower" sense this article uses). That's certainly a thing that happens to humans. But Sandusky didn't turn himself in or run away, he kept raping his victims. His choice was as real as choices get, and he chose to rape.

In moralism, an exaggerated subjective sense of duty and excessive sense of guilt co-exist with unresponsiveness to morality’s practical demands.

That's partially true, but behavior is not perfectly unresponsive. Most people have wanted to do something, thought "It would be wrong", and refrained. System 1 can be trained to mirror System 2; people can read abstract arguments about the death penalty, be convinced, and start feeling revulsion at the death penalty. (I suppose it works the other way too; if you're attracted to kids, you pretty much have to switch your philosophical position from "People who are attracted to kids are horrible monsters" to "People who are attracted to kids need lots of support to help fight their urges".)

Well, that was System 2 speaking. System 1 says:

Your philosophical sophistry would have us coddle rapists! What any douchebag feels like doing is law, and morality is for chumps. And you call yourself good?