I’m a big fan of thought experiments. I like science but I’m too lazy to do real experiments. Why do something when you can think about doing it?
I’ve been observing the political manoeuvring around Brexit and 2nd referendums. I think people are saying things they don’t really believe in order to get an outcome they believe to be right and people are saying things which sound good, to hide the evil swirling beneath the surface.
I asked myself: Which is the greater wrong: doing a good thing for a bad reason or a bad thing for a good reason?
I thought:
‘A good thing’ is highly subjective, depending on your personal values and consequent belief in what is fair. A comparison of ‘bad thing’s is probably even more fluid. I see it in terms of balance between good and harm to self and others. It’s complex.
‘Good’ and ‘bad’ reasons also depend on your personal targets and motivations along with another subjective moral evaluation of those.
An individual may see a good thing as a positive value and a bad thing as a negative value and believe that as long as the sum is positive, so is the whole package. People call this “pragmatism”. They also tell me it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. These people get things done and, generally, only hurt other people.
‘A reason’ sounds like dressing up something you feel you want in logic. Is that always reasonable?
We need to balance what we want and our chances of success against the risks and uncertainty of what we might lose or fail to achieve. To measure success objectively, we need to have specified some targets before we start.
Brexit didn’t have either a plan or targets. It appears to be driven by things that people don’t want. How will we know if it has succeeded or failed? We are told the strategy and tactics must be kept secret or the plan will fail and targets will be missed. If this was a project I was working on, I’d be reading the jobs pages every lunch time. I’ve stopped worrying about the thought experiment.
On The Outside 