When To Intervene
Were Dynasties camera crews right to rescue wild engines? Should we give iPhones to uncontracted peoples? What could possibly go wrong?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing when is it okay to intervene. Chris go for it,
Speaker B:when is it okay to intervene? Well that's obviously the question we're answering but sort of this particular question has been brought about by well a number of stories in the newspaper but the one that that raised the question in my mind was to do with the recent BBC documentary wildlife documentary called Dynasties which is about effectively following families of animals in adverse conditions and this week's episode featured a colony of emperor penguins and the emperor penguins along with their young sort of there was a storm and they were blown into a gully and they couldn't, this was being filmed obviously by the BBC wildlife crew and they couldn't get out of the gully because of the steep sides and it would have meant their certain death.
Speaker A:I think it was an added element as well which is had these mother, yeah these were mother penguins had they just been on their own they'd have been probably able to claw their way out but it was even more difficult because they had a chick sort of that's right yes which they didn't obviously
Speaker B:want to leave down there and so the decision was taken by the production crew to assist the exfiltration of the penguins from the from the gully and so they dug a ramp and then sort of basically built some some steps up for them out of this gully but they didn't they didn't kind of crane them out but they did assist and so you know it's sort of created a bit of a discussion I mean generally everybody universally said well yes of course save the baby penguins but in my mind it created this this question of was it was it right to intervene and if in that circumstance why not on all of the other occasions there've been harrowing wildlife incidents like like the baby elephant dying of starvation a few years ago and in fact the week before there was a chimpanzee that had got a right kicking from another bunch of chimpanzees and was lying there you know in in all sorts of trouble and they didn't provide medical assistance so what when is it when is it right to intervene and what what might be the consequences of those interventions you know how do we know what the consequences of those interventions are going to
Speaker C:be there's and there's just another story only this week on a similar topic um it less less important than penguins because it involves a christian missionary but uh uh the chap john chow who decided to go to north sentinel where there's one of the very few uh uncontacted tribes the north sentinelese uh people in the andaman islands and um and attempting to convert them to christianity and in doing so uh got murdered by them martyrdom that's what he was after surely maybe yeah so uh anyway these i mean they're an interesting bunch these uh north sentinelese they were in the news after the um after the tsunami because there was a lot of concern about whether or not they uh they had survived but it turned out they had uh i think i believe they don't have technology to make fire so i think they have a certain number of fires which they carry around and keep burning all the time um so uh yeah the the question is you know what what are we so we're we've made a decision collectively as the world to leave them in there as a kind of zoo almost to say well that we're not going to intervene with them at all they obviously don't like being contacted they they attack anyone who comes near them um so the question is is that right i mean you know if they're if we see them in trouble or uh you know requiring medical assistance or any of those things should we intervene it's like the penguins again so anyway there you go two things in the news only this week which both pose the same
Speaker B:question okay um so although there was not obviously comparing uncontacted people to um birds but you know um we sort of are well it's exactly what we're doing yeah um so
Speaker A:yeah just return to these uh penguins um were the voices of this you said there was a consensus that okay no it's good to save some penguins um what were the dissenting voices saying well
Speaker B:mainly it was it was me because um uh because you know it was universally sort of praised but in the past uh you know there has been um criticism for not intervention so generally the people watching these things are animal lovers and the abstract uh uh implications of intervening or the long-term implications of intervening aren't really um aren't really forefront in their mind so it was mainly uh my sort of thoughts and i imagine you know um a a small minority uh of people but um my concern is that um you know things like so one of the penguins had shown an ability to get out when the others hadn't uh and they'd made it to the to the surface and you know my sort of issue is well obviously longer term by intervening in something like that those that set of penguins would have been would have been wiped out uh and you know have we got have we started playing god at this point are we intervening we're basically making the penguin tribe as a
Speaker C:whole more stupid more stupid more likely to fall into gullies exactly they're going to get dependent on humans to build steps for them wherever they want to go yeah i mean well they're going to become a bunch of spoiled you know decades millennial penguins lounging around expecting other people
Speaker B:to make you know do everything for them yeah and now obviously right that uh put in those extreme terms uh you know that that might seem a bit ridiculous but the point is uh if if that becomes a a rule if there becomes pressure to intervene more regularly then that of course does become the case and we uh either we either weaken their um their genetic strength by helping weak animals or we adapt their behavior in some way that they are no longer scared of humans they run you know they waddle towards humans whenever they see them which probably isn't the best thing for them to do so it's that it's that unintended consequences uh um you know well well-meaning there's no there's no difference really in my mind to somebody who's been heavily criticized the the u.s missionary for getting in contact to improve the lives of these people by by exposing them to christian theology uh and the well-meaning um production crew who've got in there and scooped some penguins out
Speaker C: the world happiness report um: Speaker B:the indigenous people one is is an is an interesting one because if you if you look at the west's interaction so if you look at north america in particular uh and uh native americans or first first nations people in in canada i mean their population wasn't decimated it was far more than than decimated and if you look at their stake within the society now um you know i think so you know in some cases i think it was the the massachusetts bay indians you know it was 90 percent of of the population died from from smallpox and obviously their land was taken from them and any political stake in in the nation if you look at aboriginals in uh in australia again a situation of um disenfranchisement so so yes there's this issue of uh they gain immunity and they gain benefits of of uh western society but if you asked um certainly if you ask you know some of those peoples at at the moment what would they prefer their whether it's true or not you know whether they have um concluded correctly or not their preference would be to not be in the set of circumstances yeah i don't think i mean i'm
Speaker C:certainly not saying it's a given yeah it's not a given that that you know people will be better off in the future and i think the case of the um australian uh aborigines um you know proves that i mean they were they they seem to have all kinds of social problems um you know that clearly seem to be a result of of uh you know that they're being kind of integrated into western society or failing failing to integrate because their culture doesn't fit very well you know and um yeah what
Speaker A:we're talking about here actually makes me think of something else and let's see if you might want to go in this direction or not it's completely off off topic or is it i don't right let's let's bring us back to intervention fine just let me know so also when i was watching uh the program as is pretty much always the case in which program sorry the uh the the penguin program oh okay you were watching that yeah um yeah just by coincidence i was watching it yesterday actually um but at the end they talk about climate change yeah okay as is and is always the case in in in that sort of program it's either climate change or uh destruction of habitat usually and plastic because the most dangerous animal on earth as we all know is the hamster yeah and so as i was watching it i mean i think one of the problems with climate change is the um is is we we don't necessarily see the we're not necessarily going to see the devastating impact in our lives or maybe maybe not it may be our children's lives and and so do do we care about our children's lives absolutely and after we're all dead and buried uh or burnt um you know we we still want our children to have a good life and and is the same for our grandchildren yes it probably is if we get to meet our grandchildren okay but the problem is let's say you know 100 how much do we care about
Speaker C:yeah great this is this is one of the key dimensions that we need to worry about so this is remember we did a sorry yeah did we do this or not no we didn't what we but we did do we we have done one on on Derek Parfitt i was going to mention in this context because he's a lot of these are the kinds of things remind me his thing his well he uh thought a lot about um sort of utility and the extent to which we should try to improve um you know our utility and whether we should value people who don't exist and you know whether what what's the target so i mean if the target is um you know should is it better to have a person who's sort of net positive happiness yeah or for that person not to exist okay fine which is a which is a key question to this yeah
Speaker A:so and as i was watching this i mean i doubt i will probably care about my great-grandchildren very much um scumbag yeah and so and so it makes it different so i think that's one of the issues that one of the problems people have with long-term problems like climate change like oh future generations we sort of get sad about it for five minutes and you know buy different packaging at tesco's or whatever but that's kind of it i mean maybe i'm wrong on that but so anyway if you're let's say you're a um uh go back to your example of africans being taken for slavery if you said to that person hey look you're gonna have a really bad life in chains and horribly mutilation horrible mutilations etc etc but your great great great great grandchildren they're gonna be super happy you know isn't that wonderful i think they'd probably say no just keep you just just take just leave i'll stay here thanks yeah if you said it what but your next generation your child will be have a great life they would go well maybe you know yeah
Speaker B:so so i i think one of the key issues there is about um is is the intervention the right intervention right because if you're talking about improving the quality of people now in the developing world right and giving them access to the the um amenities that we have here in western europe uh and you know the educational system and all those kinds of things then they are then you know without being um uh sort of um patriarchal about it you know in in on their terms introducing benefits that they're happy to receive great forcibly abducting people chaining them up taking them across the atlantic and working them to death in order to at some point give them a slightly less privileged position than the rest of that society that's not that's you know that's not the what you're saying is slavery is bad yeah yeah there could have been there could have been a better way of achieving those of those benefits yeah yeah i mean nobody's
Speaker C:suggesting that we took people we took slaves to uh the new world in order to make their children
Speaker B:happier that's it you know what there were people at the time who were arguing that you know slavery was tied up with missionary work and improve you know improving yeah i mean there's no doubt this
Speaker C:is this is something that john stuart mill looked at in on liberty is this question of what do you do about well i think you have to be paternalistic here we certainly have to be paternalistic when it comes to people like the the andaman islanders because um they're not in a position to make the choice we are you know they don't know anything about modern technology so they're not in a position to sit down and say well do we want antibiotics you know do we want to go and work in an office and end up with big houses and you know have less chance of dying they just cannot make that decision and the point is that by the time we give them that information it's too late too late to decide not to contact them so we have to be paternalistic about this and uh and and that and i think this is one of the big um questions is is you know whether or not uh you are allowed to make decisions on other people's behalf like this and this is one of the issues with intervention you know um so if you i think um lincoln uh said something along these lines as well about you know the analogy of a sheep in a pen of you know that we the sheep the sheep is probably happier because we put it in a pen but it doesn't necessarily know it doesn't necessarily know that it's safer you know to be in a pen but we we're looking after the sheep on its behalf now the question is you know should we should we do that with humans uh with other humans or should we respect their you know should we respect their autonomy or should we be paternalistic and i i don't think i think you have to trade them off i mean i think we we're paternalistic a lot um you know in in terms of the the the policies we we have uh in in the you coming things like even things like um you know forcing people to put seat belts on is is a form of paternalism because we um you know because we think people are stupid and won't make the right what is clearly the right
Speaker B:decision and i think i think the issue is that um this is uh the problem is we don't know the consequences of our of our action these are pretty complex systems so at the time with the level of knowledge that uh europeans had they they probably many of them thought they were doing the right thing by contact you know look at james cook uh and you know um turning up in in australia and the hawaiian islands and so on uh engaging with these people was seen as being of benefit to them yeah they didn't realize at the time they didn't have the knowledge about the introduction of disease and uh you know those they you know couldn't see accurately into the future um and the question is you know it's it's it's like at the heart of the hippocratic oath is this notion of you know first do no harm and we don't know whether we're going to be doing harm or not so we have a tendency to leave things alone so so you know um i i think this this people see it often as right as a kind of version of the of the trolley car problem you know either either i intervene and save um you know uh lots of lives or i leave it alone and you know uh other other lives are lost uh but actually it's like a trolley car problem where you can't it it's it's clearly not a set of rails where the outcome is is clearly determined and where some of the key factors such
Speaker C:as autonomy and cultural stability are things that we don't really know how to value you know so we don't we don't really know how i mean so one interesting thing i found from reading the uh world happiness report is that um immigrants generally so migrants uh tend to adapt to the happiness of the place they go right so you might think well um you know something to do with being british growing up british uh being immersed in british culture um is uh it sort of inspires us to answer a certain way on surveys about happiness and perhaps you know people living in um living in somalia well they're just as happy doing things their way but that somehow because of a con job we've convinced them that they'd be happier in the west well the fact is they are happier in the west you know so migrants tend to tend to be as happy as the place they're going to so i mean the thing is that that kind of suggests to me that people that cultural disruption is not that bigger deal because you know people are able to go to a totally different culture and uh enjoy you know the benefits of that culture yeah um so so i i wonder we it's possible that we over we over play the importance of not changing the culture of other countries i mean you look at the last 200 years culture change in in in the west has been enormous you know the shift from from you know agriculture to urban life um the technological changes that we've all experienced we're able to adapt pretty pretty easily and i wonder if um you know putting aside the the you know the potential for disease transmission and so on whether whether actually we do put too much value on preserving the way of life of people who actually when given the choice might well say no i want to come and live in a house and not have to you know build shelters yeah i think find food the the two
Speaker B:sort of things so obviously um uh emigrating you turn up you you've come from your culture and you represent your culture but you're then you're then one person among a culture i think that the difference is when a civilization turns up and comes into contact with another whole civilization out of no nowhere and so you've got this established culture and then one that just smashes it you know you look at the speed at which the aztec and inca empires collapsed you know following cortez's um uh arrival uh and that's just staggering you know that shows the cataclysmic effect that can happen um and i i think the fact that you know a lot of what people talk about with these uncontacted peoples and you know with people in in general is this this notion of the right to self-determination you know we we don't necessarily know you know we we might have a better idea of what technologies do and so on but we don't necessarily know very well what the implications of introducing all of that to somebody is uh so you know we don't have all all the knowledge and so generally it's sort of agreed that well why don't we see what they want to do and if they don't want any contact then they they may they may well be just as they they know what their set of values are we we don't so you know are they better as far as we know we've got no reason to know
Speaker C:whether or not they're not ruled over by some fanatical you know isolationist yeah who insists that they yeah and that they're all yeah and that they're all desperate for you know for for sort
Speaker A:of medicine and cheeseburgers i mean um sorry go on well i was going to say if only there was as always star trek has the answer oh okay we need to live amongst them for a while um without secretly surreptitiously without spreading out diseases somehow and prepare them for that moment of first contact of uplift the t.e lawrence uh doctrine yeah yeah which went
Speaker B:so well for the for the arab peoples i think this touches on there's a couple so another couple of
Speaker C:moral dimensions one of which actually related to the trolley problem which comes from um jonathan glover who has written extensively about these kinds of questions in causing death and saving lives and uh it's the the acts and omissions idea right so which sort of says okay that there's a meaningful distinction between choosing to act and choosing not to act um it's such that you might think there's a sort of anchor point at not acting staying still holding your breath versus actively doing something and i think he's more or less conclusively shows that that's a meaningless distinction because you can arbitrarily change the setup um so that you know uh you're not acting um is is the default or the acting is the default setting or whatever so with the trolley problem abstractly you just start the start the problem with the with the lever in a different position and now clearly you're still faced with the same choice right and it's the same with these um you know with with penguins or whatever you you could you could say well um you know what what if um what if through our action uh we could push them into a gully and they would and they would die we could choose to push them into a gully um or not right uh obviously we wouldn't preference for not acting can't doesn't really stand up i mean essentially in all of these cases we face a choice and and and it's you know there's there isn't really a natural not acting versus acting but that's that's fairly straightforward i think the other one which chris has touched on is this is this distinction between whether we should be thinking on an act by act basis or a rule by rule basis so um uh you know the sort of um it might be the case as chris was saying you know that we had a in this particular instance you can demonstrably show that the penguins are better but it might still be better to have a rule which says you don't intervene because um you know if we if we thought well actually we ought we ought to intervene with these penguins then you know i mean the fact that we were there is neither here nor there if we care about these penguins we should employ people to go around rescuing them all the
Speaker A:time see this is the thing is um maybe tying those two points together in this instance we had an observer who had power exactly how many hundreds thousands of times has this exact same um situation transpired and yet there's no observer there's no like if we really gave a shit about penguins
Speaker C:we would employ people to do that yeah we're clearly just a big bunch of hypocrites like people who give a pound to a homeless person because he's there but that wouldn't go out of their way to find a homeless person to give a pound to you know it's not a it's not a i mean fine that's what how humans behave but it's not uh a good it's not a sensible foundation to make genuine moral decisions about like all of these you you know we need to attack this in a structured way
Speaker A:i mean interestingly we just need we need to we're very close to needing to be wrap up so if
Speaker B:you can take us to a conclusion well i was just going to say that the um that the series producer uh of the the uh dynasty um series mike gunton said uh you know in response to this he said in 99.9 percent of cases uh it isn't right to to intervene that was his his sort of phrasing and i think well that's that's interesting because you know i i am what what happens if it becomes 99.5 or 98 you know how do you stop these kinds of interventions from sliding what's the basis
Speaker C:on which you you make that judgment i mean yeah problem with these you know intervening in nature documentaries is for some reason even though we're humans we're kind of pretty good at being predators we always side with the prey you know we always sort of think i know that poor gazelle we want we want the gazelle to escape but of course that's denying a meal to a leopard you know i might have got my regions of africa muddled up there but anyway yeah and i and i you know it's it's not this is not um dissimilar i mean by by by saving those penguins you're denying some bacteria a good meal you know just because penguins are cute and bacteria aren't we're still making a decision that some forms of life can survive a bit longer and um you know the poor
Speaker A:old bacteria are going to starve okay i think it's it's it's um it's good that for once you bacteria getting a call out from us there it's nice to sort of yeah save the bacteria yeah save the bacteria okay all right um we're gonna we're gonna finish there um thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with nick hare and chris rag about up insights and until next time goodbye
