On Moral Luck

I have the sense the society I live in doesn’t take moral luck as seriously as perhaps would be sensible.

I’ve seen the term “moral luck” used in two distinct but related senses.

The first is the sense where someone does something, a particular action, and it comes down to luck how harmful that behavior turns out, with all the following consequences. Two people drive drunk, identical circumstances, one makes it home with no problems, the other hits someone and kills them. It would be strange to say that one is guiltier than the other, whatever that might mean. Clearly there’s more social animosity thrown on one than the other (have you ever driven on bad sleep? Or after being prescribed a new med that made you drowsy?).

The second sense is where how decent someone ends up being (whatever that means), or how good someone ends up being (whatever that means), isn’t up to them, at least to some degree. The idea is that who ends up a good or bad person, or virtuous or vicious, or whatever, is outside of the control of that person, or at least that that control is circumscribed or limited in some fashion.

Part of the issue of this discussion is that the language describing choice and free will is hopelessly complicated, potentially wrongheaded. Nearly everyone agrees that some choices are harder than others, I imagine most will grant that the same choice - to the degree that makes sense - might be more or less difficult for different people. Is this difficulty asymptotic? Can a choice get more and more difficult to make while never becoming impossible? Or does that difficulty cross a threshold where it might be reasonable to say that it wasn’t really a choice at all?

Consider alternate timelines, either as somehow real or as hypothetical could-have-beens. For any person, you could imagine a powerful being watching over them from the moment of their birth. This being could influence their lives in any number of ways. Pick them up and place them with any number of potential parents. Pick out the color of their nursery. Their name. The menu of the cafeteria of their college of choice. A traffic light turns green or red a quarter second earlier or later.

Do you think this being couldn’t engineer any number of situations for this person? Given sufficient intelligence and power, I imagine this powerful overlord could take a baby and make them a sinner or saint, murderer or hero, poor or rich, smart or stupid, bad or good, etc.

It’s worth remembering at this point that childhood lead exposure is strongly correlated with criminality.

Indeed, think about what it would mean to say otherwise. You think for any particular person, this was the only way they were going to end up? That no matter what possible presets were altered, they would end up in the same place every possible way? That the monsters are monsters in every possible version of the world? That the heroes are heroic in every possible universe?

And so, to those who end up good or bad, even if their choices played a part in who and what they are, can we say that they are good or bad in every timeline? If yes, then we’re engaging in some strangely confident essentialism I would say.

Consider: imagine as perfect a society as could be (whatever that means). Imagine a society absolutely maximized for producing good individuals. Are there more good people in that society than in our own? If yes, then its perhaps worth thinking about whomst among us would-be-good-if-not-for-X. If no, then it seems we think the fundamental Being of humans is the same across all possibilities, which would plausibly take the wind out of any effort for improving the rate at which society produces good people. If we think the effort to improve society’s ability to produce morally good humans is worthwhile we must accept that the lack of success of such efforts would result in fewer good humans.

For any of us, if we are good, would we be good absent the efforts of others?

I recommend graciousness. Not passive acceptance of harmful behavior, but rather an enlightened perspective that separates a person from their behavior.