Introductory Fellasophy 08

On Luck in Wartime

The world in which we find ourselves well into the fifth year of the full-scale invasion is very different than the one that existed at the outset. Attitudes, allegiances, and capabilities have shifted as world-historical events have unfolded.

Throughout the war, I’ve noticed recurring statements about how lucky people are: We’re lucky that they’re so fking stupid. We’re lucky to live in countries where we’re not being bombed. We’re lucky that russia isn’t really even trying yet! (any day now…) You get the idea.

But what is luck? What role does it play in our understanding of who we are and what we do? How can we improve our thinking about the world through philosophical thinking about luck? That is the task today.

Part One: What is Luck?

Let’s just get this on the table. What do we mean by ‘luck’? What we don’t mean is some unseen force that influences events or outcomes. This isn’t Fallout: New Vegas, where you can take points in luck gives you an easier time at the blackjack tables, finding more caps in crates, or having your weapon jam less frequently.

Luck simply refers to having events break in your favour (good luck) or to your detriment (bad luck) more than you would expect given the probabilities involved. If you call ‘heads’ ten times, and get ‘heads’ ten times, that’s just luck: you didn’t do anything to influence the outcome. It just happened. Over time, you’d expect that ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ would even out, but whether probabilities work in your favour is a matter of luck.

Think about it: if you could influence these events, then we wouldn’t be talking about luck anymore, but something else. Prudence, perhaps, because we’d be discussing ways in which you could—and probably should—influence events in your favour.

So, that’s important to keep in mind. This isn’t a force that’s nudging events one way or another, and it isn’t a stable state of affairs or personality trait. It simply refers to whether probabilities have broken in your favour.

With that in mind, there’s two kinds of luck that you’ll often see discussed in philosophical discourse that bear mentioning in the context of war.

Part Two: Epistemic Luck

2.1 The theory

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. How do we get our beliefs? What is the nature and limit of knowledge? What is the difference, if any, between opinion, belief, knowledge, and faith?

This might seem like an odd place to discuss luck, but one of the major problems of contemporary epistemology is how to eliminate luck from our systems of justification. To say that a belief is justified is to say, in essence, that you’re entitled to hold it.

Suppose that you decide whether to believe any proposition based on the result of a coin flip and not whether it is true (T) or false (F). You encounter five propositions, and flip a coin. If it’s heads (H) you believe it, tails (L) you don’t. You get these results:

Proposition         Flip Result           Truth Value
1                    H                      T
2                    H                      T
3                    L                      F
4                    H                      T
5                    L                      F

In this scenario, your coin flip strategy yielded a perfect 5/5 for believing (H) propositions that were true (T) and disbelieving (L) propositions that were false (F). So, what’s the big deal?

I think you probably understand the problem intuitively: There is nothing guaranteeing that the next flip of the coin will make you go 6/6. You have outsourced your process of justification to the coin, and there is no relation between what the coin turns up and whether that proposition was true.

Flipping a coin to determine whether you believe something could have equally yielded results like this:

Proposition         Flip Result           Truth Value
1                    H                      F
2                    H                      T
3                    L                      F
4                    L                      T
5                    H                      F

In this case, you’re 2/5. There could be other scenarios where you end up 1/5. The point is, there’s no relationship between whether something is actually true—determined through empirical investigation and/or logical deduction—and whether or not you believe it.

As such, whether you end up being correct in your beliefs is a matter of luck.

Contrast this with a rigorous application of the scientific method. Or the modern peer review process. Both are meant to eliminate the possibility that luck plays a role in guiding expert knowledge.

Here’s the kicker:

The average Xitter user does not have an epistemological theory of justification that is more conducive to a cohesive set of true beliefs than what can be accounted for with luck.

In other words, when people are on Xitter, they are typically not approaching their beliefs with rigour and systematicity. They are motivated by emotions, tribalism, and psychological comfort.

But does that mean that they’ll always be wrong? No!

Although corporations and propagandists have become rather good at short-circuiting our reasoning processes, we’re actually really good prediction machines (within our evolved limitations). People follow their emotions, the grunts of their tribes, and what brings them psychological comfort because these beliefs often work in their day-to-day lives.

Flipping a coin could work. It can work for a long time. But we don’t expect it to work in the long term. In the same vein, the motivated reasoning that we see on Xitter can work for a very long time, but it won’t work indefinitely, and we won’t expect it to work better than rigorous logic in the long term.

2.2 The analysis

I bring this up because I’ve seen many people taken in by poor reasoning when that poor reasoning happens to lead to truth.

There’s been a surge of memes about how there’s no conspiracy theories anymore, because they’ve all come true. Or maybe we’re all conspiracy theorists now, because that reasoning has turned out to lead to an accurate view of the world.

Grifters and propagandists are like someone who always calls heads for every coin flip. Flip once, tails—they’re wrong. Flip twice, tails—wrong again. Flip thrice, heads—lucky. Fourth time, heads—huh. Fifth time, heads—wow. Sixth time, heads—maybe they’re on to something? Seventh time, tails—I guess it was nothing. Eighth time, heads—again!?

[Yes, I know I used emdashes. No, I didn’t use AI, you twerps. 😛]

The point is, calling heads isn’t a system geared towards truth. In fact, it will arrive at the truth approximately half the time. But that’s not anything special!

The difference is that the way that algorithms work, you’re only seeing the guesses when they’re right. This gives the illusion that they know what they’re talking about, but they’re really just one-trick ponies.

Sometimes, a propagandist will say their piece, and they may end up being right. They may be right when the initial analysis of honest reporters were false. But honest reporters will self-correct over time. (This is why I’ve always advocated for letting situations play out before taking a stance, even when I’ve caught flak for doing so.) A grifter will just move on to something else.

There is nothing wrong with saying that a propaganda channel—even a russian one—made a correct assessment or was right when everyone else was wrong. It just also needs to be accompanied by the acknowledgement that this is largely the product of epistemic luck. Their justification systems aren’t set up to lead to truth. Far from it!

One last point, and I acknowledge that this might be a bit in the weeds. Epistemic luck will also dictate whether or not you are even capable of developing good epistemic practices in the first place, or to have access to information necessary to make strong beliefs even if you had good epistemic pratices.

Suppose you live in a state like North Korea, where most citizens have no access to the outside world. No information to contradict the constant stream of propaganda from the government. How on Earth would we expect such a person to come to true beliefs? Indeed, we can say that such people might have perfect belief-forming processes, but because they’re surrounded by garbage information, they will always end up with false beliefs. Garbage in, garbage out.

So, how do we use these concepts?

2.3 The application

A strong, legitimate justification system requires a process where the chance that you arrive at true beliefs is greater than that of a coin flip. Determining how you should approach a source is simply a matter of looking at their other beliefs, and seeing how they usually come by having them.

In other words, it’s going to take some work. You need to need to dig deep and as yourself some questions about a particular source: Does this source correct itself when it’s wrong? Does it acknowledge when it is uncertain, and the degree to which the uncertainty exists? Does it update its views when new evidence arrives, and acknowledge how its view has developed? These are the markers of a justificatory system that is concerned with truth rather than graft.

Apply this to the war. There are accounts that have been wrong. Repeatedly. Loudly, even. And yet, these accounts either fail to acknowledge their error or explain it away as a function of someone else’s problem. Even worse, some will twist their words to show how, ackshually, they were right all along. Then there are others who have been wrong, said so, explained why, and then incorporated those lessons into future analyses. These types are rarer than the first, especially with the perverse disincentive against honesty one finds on Xitter.

This is also why the “broken clock” defence doesn’t hold up. Yes, even a propagandist will be right sometimes. But being right sometimes, for the wrong reasons, through a process that has no reliable relationship with truth, is not the same as having good epistemic practices. It just means they called heads, and it came up heads. A source that was wrong about the success of the 2023 counter-offensive but explained its reasoning, acknowledged the error, and adjusted its thinking, is more trustworthy than one who happened to call it correctly because it always predicts Ukrainian failure and occasionally that’s true.

Part Three: Moral Luck

3.1 The theory

Ethics is the study of what we ought to do. What makes actions right or wrong? What makes people praiseworthy or blameworthy? Which elements of our experience are relevant to ethical appraisal?

Just as luck can corrupt our epistemic practices, it can also corrupt our moral judgements. Moral luck refers to the way that factors outside of our control influence how we’re judged, how we judge ourselves, and which judgements we may or may not be called to make.

Here’s the classic setup. Suppose you have two drivers who are equally reckless. They’re both speeding through a residential neighbourhood, both drunk, both distracted. Both have made the terrible decision of getting behind the wheel. However, one driver manages to make it home without incident. The other hits a child who ran out from between two parked cars, killing him. For clarity, the only salient difference between these two cases is that one driver killed a kid, and this had nothing to do with the choice—it was the product of the kid running out into the street.

Which driver will we judge more harshly?

The one who killed the kid, of course. That driver face a lifetime of guilt, and legal and social consequences. The one who made it home will probably roll the dice again next week. But again, the only salient difference is that one was lucky, and one wasn’t.

This is the concept of resultant luck, where outcomes influence moral judgement, even when the choices involved were identical.

But there are other kinds of luck, too! Circumstantial luck is about the situations in which we find ourselves. Most of us will never be tested the way that people in genuinely morally extreme positions are tested. We simply don’t know what we’d do if we found ourselves in a genuinely extreme situation, because we’ve never been put into the position where we’ve had to make such choices.

Another kind of luck is constitutive luck, which is luck about who you are. I could yammer on all day about this—it’s right in my wheelhouse—but your temperament, your capacity for empathy, your reasoning abilities, and so on, are by and large outside of your control, and a product of luck. They are shaped by your genetics; your genetics are a matter of luck. They are shaped by your culture; the culture into which you were born was a matter of luck. They are shaped by your upbringing; who your parents are was a matter of luck.

This is captured nicely in the song “The Impression That I Get” by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones: “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I’d like to think that if I was I would pass. Look at the tested and think ‘There but for the grace, go I.’ Might be a coward; I’m afraid of what I might find out.”

Would I run into a burning building to save someone? I’d like to think so, but… Would I take up arms to defend Canada when/if the States attacks? I’d like to think so, but… Would I step in to defend someone I saw being bullied? I’d like to think so, but…

Taken together, there is a lot about moral reasoning that is a product of luck. How things turn out, which decisions you’ve have to make, and the tools available how to make them are all a product of luck. That throws a curveball for all moral assessment.

3.2 The analysis

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable for those of us in Nafo, watching from the safety of countries that aren’t being actively shelled (yet). “The unbombed,” as we’re sometimes called derisively.

We didn’t choose to be born in Canada, Europe, or the States. We didn’t earn our exemption from conscription into an existential war of survival. We didn’t decide that we’d be the people with Fella avatars, bonking vatniks, shitposting, and raising funds, instead of defending our homes with rifles. That’s all a matter of circumstantial luck.

There’s a certain kind of guilt that settles in after a few years of engaging with this war—a guilt that, if you’re honest, that you haven’t fully earned, because you haven’t fully been tested, either. It’s easy to be brave on Xitter. It costs nothing. We don’t know what’d do if it were to cost something. Most of us are lucky that we don’t have to find out.

Constitutive luck compounds this. The people who show up—who volunteer, who organize, who document atrocities at personal risk, who keep posting despite being brutally punished by the algo—they may simply be built differently. Some combination of who they are, what shaped them, and what they happened to encounter in their lives prior to the war made them into the kind of person who volunteers, organizes, takes risks, etc. Others, through no great personal failing, are not that kind of person.

And that brings us to the russian soldier.

We know that there are some good russian soldiers. They fight on Ukraine’s side. They put their lives on the line. Then there’s…the rest of them. We all know what they do.

The easy moral move is to treat these as simple cases of individual choices and leave it there. Some people are heroes, some people are monsters (or orcs). But the concept of constitutive luck makes us ask an uncomfortable question: to what extent were those russians shaped into what they became by forces entirely outside their control; that is, through bad moral luck? russians have been faced with decades of state propaganda, deliberate cultural isolation (even from their own government), and an education system designed to produce exactly this kind of person.

Let me be clear at this point: this is not an argument absolving any of them of anything. Adults are moral agents, and “I was propaganda-ed” is not a legitimate defence at a war crime tribunal. Yet it does make things more complicated. The person who grew up in Kyiv and the person who grew up in a small russian backwater in God-knows-where who has marinated in state television and krokodil for most of his life did not start in the same moral place. That’s a matter of constitutive luck, and it should matter when we consider collective responsibility or what post-war russia might look like.

To be extra clear, the choice to cross into Ukraine and try to kill Ukrainians is still a choice, and they deserve to meet the consequences of that choice with all due haste. But it is necessary to consider that the people who made this choice were under severe moral constraints when we’re evaluating the context in which they made the decision.

3.3 The analysis

So, what do we do with all of this?

At this point, people often think that the concept of moral luck is some sort of Trojan horse for moral relativism and/or lazy false equivalences. That is not the case.

Moral luck doesn’t mean that nobody is responsible for anything, or that we should feel sorry for russian soldiers meeting a wild hornet for the first time. It simply means that our moral judgements should be tempered with an awareness of what we’re actually measuring, and the extent to which we can actually measure it.

When we condemn someone, are we condemning them, or the situation they were dropped into? When we praise someone, are we praising courage, or the fortunate absence of a test that would have revealed cowardice?

For those of us watching this war from a distance, safe in Nato countries (for now), seriously consider the implications of circumstantial luck. You didn’t earn your safety. It doesn’t afford you any special status. Even if you served in your country’s military, it just means that circumstances made it such that you could join the military, and constitutively, you were lucky enough to be the kind of person who would. Neither did Ukrainians earn their lack of safety. They did nothing to deserve this, neither circumstantially or constitutively. That asymmetry demands something of you; at a minimum, honesty about it.

For how we think about russians: the distinction between those who refused or defected and those who complied matters enormously, and not just for basic reasons of fairness. Understanding why so many complied—and, crucially, what made them into people who would—is essential to preventing the next iteration of this catastrophe.

And, as for Nafo, we need to recognize that the people doing the hardest work often got there partly by luck. The right background, the right temperament, and the right circumstances came together to radicalize people towards engagement rather than towards apathy. If you’ve tried talking to people offline about the war, you understand what I mean—how can people not be invested? But yet, they aren’t. We need to recognize that those of us who work do so in part because of luck, and we need to figure out how to weaponize that to make more people lucky.

Closing

If you enjoyed this, or you found this helpful, or even just want to express gratitude, then I would humbly request that you make a donation of any amount to the pro-Ukrainian charity or fundraiser of choice. Bonking vatniks is a form of currency.

Slava Ukraini!

Snarkus Aurelius, PhD