Appreciative of the broadness here, but I take trust in the readership here to recommend interestingly.

I'm looking for an introductory book on non-democratic political systems. I'd be particularly interested in a book that argues some of the core issues in democracy, and proposes alternative solutions.

I often find myself critical of democratic systems ("we shouldn't be voting, I don't trust these people"), but have little arguing power to the alternatives when needed. Often hear neoreactionary / anarchism thrown around, but I'd actually like to ready beyond a wikipedia article.

Thoughts?

"Wrong" means not only different things but different kinds of things to different people.

• To a consequentialist it means "has bad consequences" or maybe "is reasonably expected to have bad consequences".
• To a deontologist it means "breaks moral rules".
  • Note that those moral rules may be moral rules because a policy of not breaking them has good consequences, and (because most of us are not good at making difficult decisions in real time) it may actually have better consequences than a policy of always trying to work out the consequences case by case.
• To a virtue ethicist it means "is the kind of thing a good person wouldn't do".
  • Note that a policy if making oneself a good person (perhaps defined in some kinda-consequentialist terms) and then acting in the ways that come naturally may again have better consequences than trying to work things out case by case (same reason as above), and perhaps also better consequences than following any manageable set of rules (because well-trained human judgement may do better at capturing what you care about than any set of rules simple enough to follow).

I am guessing (from what you say, and from the fact that most people here are more or less consequentialists) that you are a consequentialist; from that perspective, indeed, blowing up the building (or whatever exactly the drone would have done) seems like a clear win.

But perhaps your friend is a deontologist: s/he has a rule "you're not allowed to kill civilians" and wants it followed in all cases. That will give suboptimal results sometimes, and maybe this case is an example. But it may still be a better policy than "think it out from first principles in every case". For instance, suppose -- as seems pretty plausible, though I don't know -- that drone operators quite often face the possibility of collateral damage, and that in most cases they could avoid killing civilians (without much compromise to military objectives) by taking some extra trouble: waiting a bit, observing for longer, etc. Then if "you're not allowed to kill civilians" they will take that extra trouble, but in the absence of such a clear-cut rule they may be strongly motivated to find excuses for why, in each individual case, it's better just to go ahead and accept the civilian deaths. (And there's a feedback loop here; do that often enough and you're likely to find yourself caring less about civilian deaths, perhaps even finding rationalizations for why they're a good thing.)

Or perhaps your friend is a virtue ethicist: good people find it really hard to kill innocent bystanders, so a really good person wouldn't carry out the strike and kill the girl (even if they agreed that in principle it would be for the best; they just psychologically couldn't do it); therefore a drone operator who just goes ahead and does it is thereby shown not to be a good person, and that's why they shouldn't do it. The consequences of being a Good Person in this particular case may be bad -- but a world of Good People would probably have a lot fewer situations in which that kind of decision had to be made in the first place.

Me, I'm pretty much a consequentialist, but I'm consequentialist about policies as well as about individual actions, and I'd at least want to consider a fairly strict no-killing-civilians policy of the sort that would forbid this action. (But I think what I would actually prefer is a policy that almost forbids such things and allows exceptions in really clear-cut cases. I haven't seen "Eye in the Sky" and therefore have no idea whether this was one.)

One other remark: this sort of drama always makes me uncomfortable, because it enables the people making it to manipulate viewers' moral intuitions. Case 1: they show lots of cases where this kind of dilemma arises, and in every case it becomes clear that the drone operator should have taken the "tough" line and accepted civilian casualties For The Greater Good. Case 2: they show lots of cases where this kind of dilemma arises, and in every case it becomes clear that the drone operator should have taken the "nice" line because they could have accomplished their objectives without killing civilians. -- Politicians are highly susceptible to public opinion. Do we really want the makers of movies and TV dramas determining (indirectly) national policy on this kind of thing?

(I am not suggesting that they should be forbidden to do it, or anything like that. That would probably be much worse. It just makes me uncomfortable that this happens.)

I watched "Eye in the Sky" this past week, and ended up having a large argument with a friend after.

Story follows the UK Army following most-wanted terrorists in Kenya using a drone in the sky. They follow them into a house where they start preparing suicide vests. Plan turns into a remote drone strike, but the pilot keeps delaying as there is a young girl outside the house.

Essentially, a story line similar to the trolley problem - do you (potentially) save 1 innocent girl's life, or potentially watch terrorists attack a crowded place (film estimated 80 deaths).

I found it really hard to sympathise with the "wait and save girl" argument - the moral conflict here is fairly small, and could have been made worse in the film. Friend disagreed saying what they did was wrong.

Am I missing something?

Not particularly math-y, but people around me loved "how the mind works" from Steven Pinker.

yes, they will be published when we close the survey at the end of this month. If you want it sooner than that you can PM me.

Any way to get a list of the questions asked here without me going through the survey again and adding bad data?

Was interested in some of the blogs / book related questions for sources.

[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.