Adolescence and Morality

Note: All the ideas presented in this post are not ideas I strongly believe in or endorse, because I am currently not knowledgeable enough to say anything with confidence, nor have I consulted anyone who is an expert on these topics, so please do not adopt any of these ideas as your own, because they are almost certainly incorrect. Read them just as a starting point for further enquiry, perhaps as an introduction that could make you more curious or interested in it, and always keep in mind the principles of Rationality, Scientific Skepticism, Critical Thinking and Open-Mindedness. Or just read it for fun, because I'm just playing with ideas here, everyone is most welcome to correct me wherever they think I'm wrong, and I'd be more than happy to change my mind in light of convincing logical reasons or empirical evidence.

https://psyche.co/ideas/adolescence-is-a-use-it-or-lose-it-time-for-moral-development

meaning that for certain neural pathways, including those involved in moral decision making, adolescence is a one-shot chance of development.

Could we somehow speed up neuron growth and connections- neuroplasticity and neurogenesis- at a later stage? And as I explained in another post, there are no convincing logical reasons to be ethical for those who are inclined in such a way, so what’s the best way to teach them? Are there concepts or reasons that could be taught to youth, especially those who are at risk, such as those who are identified to have psychopathic traits from very early on, but not diagnosed due to the uncertainty related to age and stigma of the label that they would have to carry around with them for life- like this article describes?

Decision making is mentioned, and morality is mentioned, but I like that Dr. Bretl mentions moral decision making, language that indicates that morality is also a logical and rational process, that depends on your own values, but of course I might be mistaken, in which case I’d be happy to change my mind if anyone has any convincing logical reasons or evidence to the contrary. But presuming I am right, in order to make good decisions in the domain of morality, you need to know your true values first.

So how do you discover those values; is it intuitive, by exploration and experimentation? Is it always going to be this uncertain, or would it be possible to come up with some sort of scientific framework to detect, by yourself and by other more objective tools, what your true values are? These teens who have been mentioned in the post who seem to have a distorted sense of morality, at least according to someone whose sense of ethics is aligned with the prevalent moral code of society, they seem to have ideas about what is the ‘right’ and ‘ethical’ thing to do, and also act upon it, without questioning their beliefs, which reminds me of a person I wrote about recently.

It also might sound unconventional and offensive to some, but I don’t like to fudge my words more than necessary when the stakes are high and it’s about topics I believe to be of utmost important, but I think that we should have empathy and understanding for such people. Yes, even those who have committed such violent crimes. There are two posts in which I have written about this.

Because I believe that they are acting according to what they think is the rational thing to do, but most of the time it’s the interaction between their genes and early environment that predisposes some in such a way, and we as a society should be more proactive in prevention and rehabilitation, but of course, once again, I’m open to changing my mind if anyone thinks they know better and are kind enough to make me aware of the reasons they think so.

Before moving on, I’m just wondering if there could be apps similar to what I’m building now for a certain mental disorder, that could use biomarkers to detect it early, or perhaps even earlier through neurofeedback training and training in the concepts I mentioned earlier in this post, that could somehow train their brain in skills transferable to other situations that require moral decision making, perhaps even bringing in tools from neurotechnology and behavioural science if required.

At the same time, children learn there are rules that should be followed despite there being no real harm or injustice caused when those rules are broken. This rule-based domain is highly dependent on social and cultural contexts. For example, wearing clothes in public is expected at the market in Chicago but not on the beach in France.

This reminds me of the social norms and expectations I talked about in one of my posts. Now I am curious to understand why it is the case that everybody is expected to conform to the way things are done by the majority, even when no one is being harmed in the process. Because, as I explain in the post, some people find it hard to fit in, and trying to pretend and fake it takes a serious toll on their mental and emotional health, which is part of the reason I am able to empathize with deviants, because in most cases we’d realize that they are probably just following their true inclinations as determined by their genes; so essentially random chance and determinism, not exactly factors under anyone’s control.

So what happens if your preferences and desires happen to be against the society? Why is it considered ‘normal’ to conform even when it’s irrational for you to do that based on your values and proclivities, inherent disposition you can not just alter at your will even if you wish, which might be the reason for the tragic incident with Alan Turing that this reminds me of, or other misfits as represented in popular culture and media, and in psychiatry and psychology where certain neurodivergent individual individuals are labelled as if they have some sort of disorder, when in fact they just happen to be different, prefer themselves the way they are without any distress or dysfunction, and in a few cases even have what people would recognize as real-life superpowers if they were to try to understand them?

Finally, kids learn to recognise a personal domain that consists of preferences that are neither moral nor rule-based, such as whether it’s OK to have pineapple on pizza.

Could we learn to be completely free of such moral compunctions? I am almost certain that I’m overlooking some important function that such preferences- that conform to the preferences of the majority even though they don’t do any harm so in my opinion ought to be more accommodating of individuals with diverse preferences, not being partial or biased towards something that people with different preferences might feel compelled to conform to for the fear of being ostracized, even if in subtle ways- what are these reasons?

And do the benefit conferred by this reasons, if any, outweigh the potential downsides and discomfort experienced by the person while trying to shape their true preferences and desires according to the society? To rephrase the question, what is this mysterious need to succumb to social evidence and peer and societal pressure even in circumstances that have no serious consequences involving life-and-death situations? And why do certain people- sociopaths- happen to have no such needs and just play it like a game of chess with goals to be achieved through cold logic and manipulation, and what could individuals who are unable to express themselves due to social anxiety or other issues suppress their preferences learn from them?

In short, these evolutionarily guided cultural and identity-based moral beliefs replace the simple categories of childhood and they can override certain innate, affective and empathic aversions to harm – thus allowing for an otherwise harmless behaviour (eg, consensual sex between same-sex adults) to be viewed as a serious moral violation. In turn, this can lead to grossly disproportionate and discordant moral tradeoffs, such as seeing mass murder as a justifiable protest against certain sexual practices.

Would not have repeated it again but can’t proceed further without admitting how amusing it is that as I suspected and something that’s also a repeating theme in my posts- how we’re shaped and constrained by these external factors that override or bring out our natural empathy- and this paragraph is just more evidence in favour of my opinion that we must be more empathetic towards them rather than ostracizing them without good reasons so that those who might feel compelled to commit such acts in the future could be helped, or better are encouraged by the society by cultivating such a mindset that they themselves feel the need to seek help and realize how and why what they are doing is probably an irrational thing to do and in any case won’t even get them whatever they hope to achieve anyway, such as wiping out a race or sexual orientation, because that simply isn’t possible, and finding the cause of their desires and curing them, fixing it for them, treating them, as that is the more realistic thing to achieve- because in this case they do need to be treated, despite my belief in non-conformity when it is the rational thing to do according to your values, this one is causing harm to other lives- and also better for them if they happen to have any instinct related to self-preservation.

My analysis suggested three factors influenced the teens’ judgments, which were consistent with adult moral categories: physical harm to animals, personal autonomy, and loyalty. However, I also found signs of two novel factors influencing the teenagers’ judgments and these reflected a mixture of various moral foundation theory categories. The first novel factor pertained to judgments of rule-based violations with no clear victim. The second factor pertained to violations involving innocent victims in easy-to-empathise-with situations, such as a thumbtack on a chair or a referee intentionally making bad calls to help his favoured team win. These are consistent with the simpler moral and rule-based domains of childhood. In other words, the teens showed a mixed influence of childhood and adulthood moral factors.

I found that political and gender identity also influenced the moral categorisation and judgment processes of teenagers. Self-identifying conservative teen males showed less concern for physical and emotional harm violations compared with their female counterparts, but liberal teen males showed no difference from females. In other words, there were interaction effects between conservative political identity and gender, but no interaction effects between liberal political identity and gender. I interpret this as political identity moderating the effect of internalised gender stereotypes on moral judgments. That is to say, conservative boys are sensitive to the notion that they should be less concerned about physical harm and more concerned about disrespect for authority, whereas liberal boys do not take these norms into account.

I might have mentioned this earlier but it’s worth repeating: could we, in addition to finding such correlations, map certain well-defined ‘values’ with certain ‘beliefs’ and associated probabilities of a person believing in them, depending on other factors that influence their beliefs, preferences and desires? If we could do that and incorporate this into some sort of theory including psychological, behavioural, cognitive, genetic and other similar tools, perhaps we could detect individuals who are at the most risk to commit actions of violence in the future, or inclined in a way that makes them more likely to do so, or identify other indicators of social psychology related disorders, and take steps to make it less likely through subtle interventions?

Teens are especially sensitive to peer influence, specifically a fear of ostracism from their peer group. This makes sense evolutionarily, as there is no greater threat to one’s reproductive success than social ostracism. There is no limit to how far some people will twist the logic of harm and justice to accommodate the beliefs that they feel are necessary to maintain their in-group membership. This helps to explain the extreme acts of violence perpetrated by Gendron and similar teenagers, who are driven by a warped sense of morality and desire to belong to a perceived in-group.

Interesting. I recognize this need to fit in, cause a lot of trouble to me in the past, and I’m glad to have overcome it and celebrate it’s death with a great sense of joy, but that’s just me. It’s amusing that what Dr. Bretl said makes sense from the evolutionary lens, and it’s interesting to see there are such logical scientific reasons behind this, of course there are, but more interestingly, how it is innate and needed to be discovered rather than something explicitly understood by the teens. I don’t think it would be common to find a teenager who could explain why they feel the desire to fit in with their in-group and why they even need to have friends, and what factors influence their preferences and desires.

But yet when we understand this in this way, we could decide to act more rationally- for instance, if someone happens to be an antinatalist or thinks they prefer to be single or any number of reasons that give rise to a number of such needs- but even after logically realizing this, they can not make their social needs and desires just go away like that, and in this way I think we are constrained by our biology, and it might even act as an infohazards in some instances by making an emotionally immature teen lose their belief in their sense of autonomy or ability to influence their own actions and decisions, and if they dig deeper maybe even their sense of ‘self’ and fall prey to the dark side of Nihilism.

Definitely not me, ha ha. I mean, if I were, I wouldn’t have been calling such teens stupid if I were one of them, and give you some good reasons to believe in it, but ‘m not, so I won’t. (I’m also at the older side of teens and writing about this is giving me PTSD and Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder for the future, if that’s a thing. Maybe it’s called anxiety. Anyway) I also don’t feel the pressure to say things that others would approve of, at least consciously my system-2 brain does, so that’s out of the question too.

When groups espouse hateful and bigoted beliefs as prerequisites for membership, expect members to maintain such beliefs as moral obligations, and expect people with diminished capacity for anticipating consequences – including certain vulnerable teens – to act on them.

Reminds me of that phenomenon where every member of a group mistakenly believes that every other member has beliefs that they actually don’t, so it ends up with this ridiculous situation where everyone follows these beliefs they think that others believe in yet no one does but still everyone conforms to it, and I’d call it hilarious if it didn’t sometimes result in serious consequences involving physical and emotional suffering for the people who fall victim to it.

I don’t remember the term right now, so I’ll try to explain it more clearly- you believe that every other member of your peer group thinks that drinking is cool, so you drink, and others think just like you that everyone believe that drinking is cool, so they pretend that they also think it’s cool and succumb to peer pressure to fit in, when in fact there is probably not a single person who genuinely believes that drinking is cool, so you just fell for a sort of mass delusion or group deception, you get the point.

In the same way, it could be possible that the teens mentioned in the paragraph believe incorrectly that a certain political group has these radical and bigoted beliefs, when in reality no member has such beliefs, but it’s just a common stereotype and widespread and commonly-held misconception that they are, so they try to pretend like they actually are, and so even if no one believed it initially, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy where it actually happens but not for the reasons everyone thought, like a negative feedback loop or vicious cycle, and I’m not sure what came first- the chick or the egg- metaphorically speaking.

Finally, I believe it’s important to educate teens about the logical connections between our evolutionary past, social groups and moral beliefs. This will contribute toward a more secular consensus around what is right and wrong, thus removing some key moral contradictions in the social and cultural environment, and provide a truer north for youth to calibrate their moral compasses. This will likely help temper aberrant moral convictions during adolescence, such as racism and homophobia, and help teens navigate the increasingly complex social issues they are likely to encounter as adults.

I could not agree more with this, and I’d like to know if such a curriculum or training exists, or if we could discover such logical connections and create such a curriculum that could inculcate such values in teens, but that would be just enforcing the norms accepted by the present society at the present time and making everyone conform even if they don’t agree. So a better solution could be to let them discover their own true values through some sort of framework and experimentation based on scientific method, as well as a logical method to observe and scrutinize their own intuitive feelings and preferences to discover their values and subsequently beliefs and desires, and what they want from life.

I also have some ideas for this- curriculum and some tools to help them with this process- I might try implementing in the future.

Once they discover their values, they could live according to them, and explicitly and logically knowing the connections between their values and beliefs, they could also be aware of irrational beliefs that cause harm to others, and be better able to make sense of their own feelings and experiences, and guide their decisions going forward, helping them make more rational decisions. And among several other things, finding it easier to connect with like-minded people who share the same values, as similarity is one of the strongest predictors of friendship and liking, and what values are something that relate the most deeply to our sense of ‘self’ that are most likely to be permanent and unchanging over a lifetime, but I can’t say for sure.