If you're willing to die for a cause, consider killing for it instead
But really don't do either
Very Important Disclaimer: Both dying and killing are bad! I’m not suggesting anyone do either of those things! This is presented as an exercise in consequentialist reasoning, and should not be taken as advice at all.
There’s absolutely something noble-feeling about laying your own life on the line for some cause. More noble than killing someone working against you, and certainly more than killing someone innocent for your cause’s benefit.
I think that if one is so committed to a cause’s truth to be willing to kill themselves for it, they should favor either of the latter choices more—categorically.
Let’s consider the case of Nathan Hale, American revolutionary.
Hale was a spy for the Continental Army in New York City. Not a great one, apparently: his cover as a Dutch schoolteacher was somewhat betrayed by his traveling under his own name with his own diploma—and he was caught by a British officer who simply pretended to be a Patriot in order to coax out an admission of his allegiance.
Hale was hung on September 22, 1776, at 21 years old. His last words were, famously, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”1
I’ll now extrapolate wildly from that statement. In increasing charitability:
Hale is saying that the only preferable outcome to his death would be dying, coming back to life, and then dying again.
Hale is saying that the only preferable outcome to his death would be not dying, doing a bunch more shitty spying, getting caught again, and then dying.
Hale is saying that the only preferable outcome to his death would be doing a bunch more shitty spying, and maybe dying again—just getting a clean reset.
I think that ‘nobility’ peaks around #1 or #2, whereas #3 has obviously the highest positive consequences.
In scenario #1, we can sum up the consequences like so:
Hale dies
Nothing else happens
Hale dies
In scenario #2:
Hale spies for the Continental Army—reporting troop movements and battle plans, resulting in hundreds more redcoat deaths and a quicker revolutionary victory
Hale dies
In scenario #3:
Hale spies for the Continental Army—reporting troop movements and battle plans, resulting in hundreds more redcoat deaths and a quicker revolutionary victory
Hale might die
Since ‘hundreds more redcoat deaths and a quicker revolutionary victory’ is definitely a positive consequence in Hale’s book, we should probably assume he’d prefer the third scenario, the one where he doesn’t die.
But go back to that quote. He said, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” As in, he would like to give another life to his country! As in, the giving of the life is itself what matters! Not what comes before his death!
Perhaps Hale actually prefers the second scenario where he gets to die for his cause. The word “only” even implies that he might even prefer the first, where nothing else happens, just as much—or more, since he dies twice!
This is, of course, shockingly incoherent. And I think it provides a strong intuition for the idea that dying for [x] is usually not noble, and just dumb.
But you knew that already! Because you’re an enlightened intellectual, above the rabble and their foolish martyrs. So let’s find a more challenging case:2
A remote-control trolley is barreling toward five people tied to the tracks. You’re up on the roof of the book depository with a rifle, and can shoot the guy with the control.3 Once you do, brakes will engage automatically, and you can help the five people to safety.
Alternatively, you can throw yourself in front of the trolley, dislodge it from the tracks, and save the five people that way—but you’ll be killed on impact.
What do you do?
Hopefully, this wasn’t actually challenging, and you did shoot the guy. To do otherwise would be to emulate Nathan Hale, hero of the American Revolution. You’re better than that! So you shot the guy:
Oops, I lied! The brakes don’t ‘engage automatically.’ This is real life! Trolleys don’t have magical brakes! They have a ton of momentum, even if you stop running the engine! Luckily, there’s a really fat guy on his smoke break on the roof with you. He’s so disoriented by your gunshot that you have a chance to knock him off balance—and if you do, he’ll fall right onto the tracks in front of the trolley, and bring it to a halt. Then you can climb down and rescue the five people!
Again, you have the option to sacrifice yourself to deflect the trolley instead.
No tricks this time! What do you do?
This is where it starts to get sticky, right? Obviously it feels like a gross thing to do. You’re not the kind of person to go around shoving fat people to their deaths!
But it still makes more sense than killing yourself, doesn’t it? You know for a fact that you are a person who would try to stop that trolley. If there was no one else on the roof with you, of course you’d sacrifice your own life to knock it off the rails!4
But this fat guy’s been up there with you, just staring at the events in silence. You had run back down to grab your rifle so you could stop the bad guy who was controlling the trolley; he’s just been bystanding aimlessly—“innocently,” a weaker writer might put it.
Doesn’t it make more sense for you to survive? After all, you’re definitely gonna go down and untie the people on the tracks—who’s to say the fat guy’d do the same if you sacrificed yourself? Maybe he’d just stand by aimlessly (innocently) until the next trolley came along.
The fundamental lesson to take here is that you know for a fact that your own motivations match your preferences best. This is clearly, tautologically true.
And if we accept this clear, tautological truth, the rest follows. Your willingness to kill yourself for a cause is evidence that your future dedication to that cause will be stronger than any neutral observer’s. So if killing that observer serves you just as well as killing yourself—preserve the benefits of your future over theirs!
Of course, this is a dumb idiotic stupid philosophy that no one should follow. Why?
Real life is much more complicated!!
I’ll run down a list of the objections and caveats to the kill-when-you’d-like-to-die rule that are most obvious to me.
If you’re a cool person, right now you’ll stop reading and write down a few objections you can think of. Anything on your list that matches mine gets the number of points of its ranking on my list. (I.e., if you get #1 on my list that’s one point. #4 is four, etc.) Anything on yours that isn’t on mine, should be commented/emailed to me for 6 points apiece.
How will shoving a bunch of fat men off roofs look to your employer and/or local law enforcement? There’s a bunch of legal & PR roadblocks in the real world to killing people that makes it supremely not worth it in many cases. This is the best criticism of the Trump shooter: it makes anti-Trump people look bad, which is bad for the anti-Trump movement.
Are you really sure you’d die for that cause? Staring down the barrel of the gun, with the choice to duck and give up your cause, would you really pick a faceful of lead? Would Nathan Hale really have chosen to hang if he was allowed instead to go into exile on St. Helena?
If you are actually committed and willing to kill yourself for a cause, you should probably have a hell of a lot more humility in your beliefs. Particularly if there are enough people on the exact opposite side willing to lay down their lives, it might be worth a bit of updating toward uncertainty based on their degree of confidence.
You might feel really bad for killing an innocent person. So much so that you question and even abandon the values that led you to do it! Fundamentally, you do a bad job of predicting future you’s behavior much of the time. See my last post for a self-indulgent discussion of this-ish.
You may not be capable of killing an innocent person. Or even an enemy person! Killing people is often difficult thanks to various evolutionary psychological pressures against it, and also the general hardiness of the human body. A failed attempt at killing will get you all the bad PR and none of the positive consequences.
Yes I know this quote is maybe not real, please shut up. The point is that this is the myth that’s persisted. This is as ‘noble’ as it gets.
And for the sake of this argument, please accept basic anti-death morality. I.e., (pretend to) strongly hold the belief that five people dying, on average, in general, all else equal, would be very very bad.
Let’s say he’s also the one who tied them to the tracks.
Remember the initial statement I made: anytime you would be willing to kill yourself for a cause, you should prefer killing someone else. That needs to stay as a given here in thought-experiment-land.
Great read!