# A Socratic dialogue with my student

This is a dialogue between me and Noam, my student. It is reproduced, in edited form, with his permission. When commenting, please consider that he is a teenager. Many of these ideas are [new](https://xkcd.com/1053/) to him.

How do you get a student? You steal them. His previous teacher was a Marxist. I demolished his previous teacher in debate so thoroughly that he abandoned her teachings and now listens to me instead.

I think this dialogue demonstrates good pedogogical techniques.

*   I let Noam be the judge of what is reasonable, what makes sense, and what constitutes "proof". I competed in my first debate tournament before Noam was born. This handicap reduces the disparity a little.
*   I ask a series of questions, instead of just saying "$x$ is true". This makes [password-guessing](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-the-teacher-s-password) impossible. He's playing chess, not *Jeopardy!*
*   I avoid telling Noam what I believe, unless he asks explicitly. This is more fun for Noam, because nobody likes getting unsolicited preaching. It's more persuasive too, because the conclusions feel like they're his conclusions.
*   I back off immediately when Noam changes the subject.

**Noam:** I know you are against forgiveness of student loan debts. Can you tell me why? I am doing this for a speech and debate tournament.

**Lsusr:** Didn't you [used to believe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_wNNjfCG1E&t=4s) the pro relief arguments? Surely it is not difficult to repeat the arguments that once persuaded you.

**Noam:** I don't know if I have enough research to debate someone like you right now.

**Lsusr:** You're not trying to convince me. You're trying to convince [*them*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuaHRN7UhRo). Play to their biases, their irrationalities, their tribalism and their ignorance.

**Noam:** I also have to appease the judges.

**Lsusr:** That's what I said.

* * *

**Noam:** I'm struggling to find one good argument for student loan forgiveness.

**Lsusr:** But didn't you used to endorse it? Surely you can repeat the bad arguments that once convinced you.

**Noam:** Those were moral arguments without any economic understanding.

**Lsusr:** That's fine. Your audience is probably economically illiterate.

**Noam:** Somehow I think we won once as the side in affirmative for forgiving all student loan debts.

**Lsusr:** Well done.

**Noam:** Thank you.

* * *

**Lsusr:** Have you ever heard of "effective altruism". You might like some of the stuff they put out. It tends to be both morally coherent and economically literate (unlike the major Democratic, Republican, socialist, etc. political platforms).

**Noam:** No, but I will look into it.

**Lsusr:** You might not agree with it. But I predict its intellectual robustness would be refreshing to you.

* * *

**Noam:** Wouldn't that imply it would be moral for me to kill myself and then donate all my organs to people who need them? Unless I could save more lives without killing myself, I guess. Maybe a better argument would be to kill myself, have someone sell all my body parts, and then use the money to buy malaria nets to give to people living in Africa.

**Lsusr:** You can save more lives without killing yourself. Also, I can't think of a single EA who has committed suicide for the cause.

**Noam:** Probably because there is something that we find intuitively wrong about killing ourselves.

**Lsusr:** Don't get distracted by the kidney thing. Here's the basic idea:

*   It takes $10,000,000 for the US government to save an Amerian life.
*   It takes $5,000 to save a life in Africa via public health measures.

That's why I donated $20 to public health measures in Africa last month. It does as much good as $40,000 spent by the US federal government.

**Noam:** Yeah, that's true. Save a life from what in America?

**Lsusr:** The basic idea is you should crunch the numbers.

**Noam:** I think this works for money, but I don't know if it can be fully applied to everything.

**Lsusr:** Why not? Concrete example.

**Noam:** Well, it depends on if you think humans should have protected rights.

**Lsusr:** That's not a concrete example. What is a real world decision your claim might apply to? Be specific.

**Noam:** A doctor has 5 patients in need of organ transplant or else they will die. There is one perfectly healthy person who is under anesthesia due to a minor surgery. If we crunch the numbers, the doctor should kill that one guy to save five lives. If you think humans have rights, this would be immoral. If you think humans do not then it wouldn't be.

**Lsusr:** Correct. That is obviously immoral. But human rights is not the only reason a doctor shouldn't murder his patients. Can you think of a utilitarian one?

**Noam:** The doctor would lose their license and then they would be out of a job.

**Lsusr:** What if there were no license requirements? Such as in a war zone.

**Noam:** The patient may be able to save lives in the future.

**Lsusr:** So could the 5 organ recipients. Another reason.

**Noam:** I'm not sure.

**Lsusr:** Nobody is going to go to a doctor they believe will murder them.

**Noam:** If it is a war zone then there may not be another option.

**Lsusr:** Fair. Are you familiar with the term "deontological ethics"?

**Noam:** Yes. It's whatever has the best intention. Is that correct? I might have forgotten.

**Lsusr:** Nope. It's not best intentions.

**Noam:** Okay. What is it then?

**Lsusr:** Deontological ethics is following good rules like "don't kill your patients". EAs believe in crunching the numbers, but they do not generally violate deontological restrictions. When I donated $20, I donated my own money. I didn't steal it.

**Noam:** Okay. Let me think if there are any flaws that I see.

**Lsusr:** Take your time.

**Noam:** If you follow what I see to be good rules and you're helping the most amount of people, then I couldn't possibly object to it.

**Lsusr:** That's EA. Not just people though. They have far more than their fair share of vegans.

**Noam:** Okay. Slightly unrelated question: What is your thoughts on vegans?

**Lsusr:** I haven't eaten meat in months.

**Noam:** Is it an environmental thing for you or is it a moral objection to killing animals? Or health?

**Lsusr:** The effect on my health is probably negative. The environmental impact matters little to me. I don't care about killing animals. If you can find an ethically-sourced hamburger, then I'd happily eat it. The problem is that our animal products, by default, come from factory farms, which are Hell on Earth. \[Correction: I ate some gravy at my family's Thanksgiving dinner.\]

**Noam:** That is interesting to me and I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning.

**Lsusr:** I try not to impose my beliefs and values onto other people. Which is why I didn't mention this until you asked.

**Noam:** Wouldn't killing animals also be immoral if you say that tormenting them is wrong?

**Lsusr:** There is little suffering in an animal's clean death, especially compared to a long, good life. I'm trying to reduce suffering while adhering to deontological restrictions.

**Noam:** Would you say that moral consideration should scale in importance with how advanced a thing is? Sorry if I am phrasing things poorly. It is late at night and I am waiting for my power to come back on so I can do the rest of my homework.

**Lsusr:** I know what you mean. Answer = Yes. If I had to choose between saving two cows vs one person, the human is the obvious choice.

**Noam:** Okay. I would agree with you.

* * *

**Lsusr:** How'd the debates go?

**Noam:** You were very correct in your assumption that the judges would be economically illiterate.

**Lsusr:** HAHAHAHAHA

* * *

**Lsusr:** Did you enjoy it? I feel like you'd enjoy debate tournaments a lot. Good job making it to competing with the varsity kids.

**Noam:** Yes. It was quite fun.

**Lsusr:** I liked high school debate too. I did it 3-4 years.

**Noam:** It's fun trying to defend a wrong position because of how hard it is.

**Lsusr:** What if your beliefs are wrong (so you think it's the right position)? Is it hard then?

**Noam:** I know it is not on this one because―as you said―it is like debating if the sky is blue. But for some of the other ones like "the USA should deploy more troops in <place>", it is a bit harder to see what is right.

**Lsusr:** Go outside. Look straight up. Tell me precisely what color you see.

**Noam:** It's black at the moment.

**Lsusr:** Usually, debate competition resolutions are (deliberately) so vaguely defined that they can be right or wrong, depending on how they are interpreted.

**Noam:** From what I can see, this one is wrong no matter how you interpret it. I think the word "all" makes it almost impossible to defend.

> The United States federal government should forgive all federal student loan debt.

**Lsusr:** Suppose everyone in a democracy (wrongly) supports student loan forgiveness. Should the democratically-elected government respect the will of the people?

**Noam:** Yes, because if they do not then it would set a dangerous precedent for disobeying the people.

**Lsusr:** Then all you have to show is that a supermajority of the United States' voters support loan forgiveness.

**Noam:** I would fear the implications of that more than the 3.4% inflation rate.

**Lsusr:** Don't worry about it. A supermajority of US voters support far stupider policies. What inflation rate should the US have?

**Noam:** My intuition says 0%, but there is some little economic thing that I am unaware of that says a country should have $x$ amount of inflation.

**Lsusr:** This is an hour-long YouTube video I made attempting to convey how complex the question is. \[I'm the guy in the mask on the right.\]

Why should it be zero?

**Noam:** My gaps in economic knowledge are showing, I think, but isn't it good when a currency is worth as much as it can be? Also, my power is back on now. So I'm going to do homework and then go to sleep.

**Lsusr:** If you want the currency to be worth as much as possible then we should have a negative inflation rate. Good night! Get lots of sleep.

**Noam:** Oh, you're right. I blame that on "2 am".

**Lsusr:** Nah. Your questions aren't stupid. This is just hard.

**Noam:** I think I should remember numbers can go down.

**Lsusr:** 🤑