Ethics and What We Owe Each Other
This is a long read designed to address some of the ethical challenges that have come into play with data visualization and the novel coronavirus (COVID19) that is currently worldwide. There’s tips at the end, which will make far more sense if you read through a quick ethics lesson.
What do we owe others?
Do we owe others dignity, respect, the rights to their own lives? At what point to my rights stop and others begin if they don’t align?
Viewers of The Good Place may associate these words most frequently with Chidi Anagonye, a moral philosopher who cites T. M. Scanlon, a real human and philosopher. You can even buy the book!
The premise centers on a question (what do we owe each other?), but also offers a moral assessment tool:
The idea is that actions are wrong if a principle that permitted that action couldn’t be justified to the affected people in the right way.
T. M. Scanlon
Beyond social contract (discussed later), Scanlon also recognizes moral relativity and power dynamics.
Let’s break this down: Actions are wrong IF…
A principle that permitted that action: here we’re jumping into morals, motivation, and varied realities. One of the key parts here is motivation. This is why Tahani, despite being generous, didn’t end up in the good place. Sure, she did great things, but not for the right reasons.
couldn’t be justified: in the moral sense, explained and accepted. Scanlon talks a lot about reasonable rejections, and not in the way that we lay moralists write off someone. Reasonableness is decided by the offended, not the offender. We probably see this best in Chidi himself, who struggles to make a decision that IS reasonable.
to the affected people in the right way: this part is so key and addresses power dynamics and relativity. This forces us to not just be moral by our personal definition (which ends up being quite bendy) but also widens to considers others as well. This is where Eleanor and often so many of us fail often.
Science has affirmed over and over that we survive best in the group. Emotionally, we fare better in it. But, what is our responsibility to others and the group itself? To best understand, let’s start with what we know best: ourselves.
Understanding our Rights
Our rights exist within in a spectrum. On one side, we have virtually no rights. On the opposite, rights are limitless. Both represent extremes between authoritarian and anarchy. Throughout the long arc of history, we’ve seen various approaches to denizen and citizen rights, as well as shifts in thought.
In Leviathan or The Matter, Form and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, Thomas Hobbes describes this discussion and creates one of the most detailed explanations of social contract theory: that we intentionally surrender some rights for security and other benefits provided by government. Different entities vary in how much freedom they allow.
Hobbes sought to answer the following with Leviathan:
- What is our “natural state” and how do we exist outside of regulation?
- What is the ideal government for this nature?
- What rights get limited and what ones do not?
Having survived multiple wars, Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War and wasn’t overly optimistic about our natural state. He favored a monarchy as the best form of government and even detailed what rights he thought the government had. Others, like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau took this idea and ran with it, the latter even titling his work “social contract,” thus formalizing the name for this belief.
We’re still having these conversations just as vociferously 400 years later. They affect not only our politics, but our fundamental beliefs and conduct. In isolation, our attitude towards rights may look like this:
Here, we see 2 perspectives. A feels most free with limitless rights, highlighted with yellow. B has a sweet spot 3/4 towards limitless rights. Yet, rights don’t play out in isolation. They coexist and bump against each other. For example, I can’t yell “FIRE” in a movie theater. I’m also held responsible if I fail to notify people in a timely fashion of a fire, and doubly so if I attempt to cover up an ongoing fire. This is often why so many of us end up as a B not an A. It also adds to our discourse on rights to viz.
Some of our hesitation links to threats to life. Like Hobbes, we seek a level of security and peace. But this discussion also dives right into the heart of what a just and fair society looks like.
We have struggled for centuries to answer these questions. We’ve debated the answers across epochs, forgotten some of them, and buried others. At worst, we’ve twisted morals for our own benefit at the expense of others; and at best propelled possibilities of lifting so many across time and space; both with stories that indicate the chosen path is our true nature.
So often these concepts tether to other ones: duty, covenant, contract, and debt. What must we do in this life to accomplish living a good one? We sometimes attach ideas like duty or covenant to consequences and rewards, ones we recognize almost immediately or ones that are promised long after our demise. Other times, we are bound contractually to serve out a debt, or we frame our lives in these terms.
Rights in Society
“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
James Baldwin
As we explore rights in an ecosystem, we see where certain interpretations of rights can affect others, giving some nearly unlimited rights and others far fewer. This creates freedom for some and not for others.
For the oppressed, there’s the appearance of rights as others experience it, but with significant restrictions for the oppressed individual (gaslighting zone). To add to the gaslighting, the oppressed may be able to exercise a right intermittently with no clarity on the reasoning beyond luck. But, we see with the dark border, how often rights get stripped progressively.
The gaslighting zone creates tension and ambiguity. Those who aren’t restricted don’t see it, deny it, and at worst perpetuate it. Those who are oppressed struggle against arbitrary walls set forth by power dynamics. These dynamics are often systemized and codified in law, practice, and also data.
An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Let’s dig into this last sentence – the minority that had no part in enacting or devising laws (or practices or data…). It’s leads us to a key question in modern philosophy and explains many of the discussions happening around visualizing pandemic data publicly.
What do we owe each other?
We understand from Hobbes there are limits to our rights. Even if it’s fun for me, I cannot yell fire in a movie theater. That right is limited to protect the rights of others from danger.
From Baldwin, we recognize realities are not the same and that certain principles will never be agreeable. He outlines clearly what his principles are: that he is a human worthy of justice and equal treatment. King provides a framework for how to overcome the systems that create barriers – that the minority must have a voice.
Let’s look at Scanlon in a context immediately facing us: pandemics and information sharing. Ethics are not rules, but philosophy in action.
As I write this post, the US is in the midst of the novel coronavirus (COVID19 or SarsCoV2) pandemic. Schools and so many other places are closing or have already closed. The public is divided, in part due to so much uncertainty. We’ve had pandemics before. AIDS is not a distant memory and SARS and MERS left their effects in so many places.
The challenge with this current virus right now is time to act and all the unknown variables. Look around and we can all name people we don’t want to get this. Keep those folks top of mind. My focus today is data and some of our decisions – also, discussed here – through a very specific ethical lens: contractualism as defined by Scanlon and flavored with Sartre.
When we look at limits on rights, some laws restrict what a role can do. We saw this with the movie theater. Roles can be a part of a person’s essence, but are not the whole of it. We may be analysts, but we’re also other things, such as family members, artists, and even curious individuals. This all makes our essence. Our existence is our physical and mental being. When our existence is regulated, we typically feel oppressed, particularly when it’s not uniform.
Our creations take essence and turn it into form. They are the exact opposite of us, but this contributes to our attachment and optimism to the things we create. We see a bit of ourselves reflected in our creations.
Here’s where we can take Scanlon and mix it with Sartre: our creations shouldn’t infringe on another’s existence, and should support essence, not detract. This goes back to James Baldwin’s quote about disagreement “rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
When we look at many visualizations around COVID19, they often fail to take into account the humanity of others, best highlighted here:
and here:
When we use Scanlon’s benchmark, we can see many of creations are NOT justifiable to the affected people in the right way. The right way requires compassion, clarity, and pausing. It remembers we don’t all share the same history or opportunities. It keeps in mind the divided nature of the public and asks about intentions. It helps support health measures that protect all, instead of some. It forces us to ask if our creations get more rights than people and also to what extent.
What Scanlon asks us to do is move ourselves to the back as we examine our decision-making to ensure we’re not usurping the rights of others. As we move others forward, we share greater freedoms with everyone and reduce our harms to others. We learn new vantage points and the world at wider angles.
We can check our morals not just with what makes us analysts happy, but the people least protected comfortable with our message. It’s hard, but it’s what we owe each other.
If you do nothing else with this post, please try to flatten the curve.
FAQs
Does this post mean I shouldn’t visualize COVID19 data?
No! You can visualize the data. What it does mean is you should be responsible when doing so and follow best practices like:
- Avoiding harm: what are you telling people?
- Providing clear tangible steps or help support clarity around solidarity efforts.
- Defining metrics
- Providing warnings about your data visible ideally before the data itself
- Ensuring recency if visualizing this while the crisis is active: remember, people are desperate for information and information matters
- Following best practices detailed here, particularly if publishing in public.
- Ideally adding value versus noise. Again, remember our personal bendy ethics.
Well, I want to show X with the data. Is that wrong?
If you have doubts, likely, yes.
If you don’t have doubts and people scream en masse not to do it, then per Scanlon, definitely wrong.
So then I can’t visualize the data?
You may have to change your approach. More than just presenting numbers, our job is to educate, inform, and support a world we can live in.
I made this viz and now I have to change it?!
We change visualizations all the time based on stakeholder request. We also clarify metrics and avoid specific calculations that aren’t relevant or misleading as part of our jobs. It’s not undue, even if it’s not fun.
I feel guilty. Now what?
To me, this is the beauty of Scanlon’s model. Make the change. Ideally, apologize if appropriate and keep this lesson going forward.
How do I check my work?
Ask. Find people different than you with very different experiences. If what you’re missing a specific perspective, you may have to name it. You might name it wrong and that person may take the time to educate you on terminology, in addition to perspective. This is gift.
When people ask you not to do things, this too is a gift, because they trust you enough to tell you. That said, various groups do not owe you this knowledge, as many already face an undue burden explaining their experiences and lived realities.
I had 9 people check this post prior to publishing across a number of facets. I alone am not an expert on everything, but I can enrich my knowledge with the perspectives of others.
Why all these rules?
Practice, not rules.
Also, we struggle to see the harm our creations cause. It’s why I’ve spent so much time on this blog covering ethics.
Who died and made you the expert?
Chidi.
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