The Good Quit, Jeffrey A. Lockwood. University of Wyoming Press. (ISBN: 9781646428069) 2026.
Summary: A philosophical inquiry into the what, when, why, and how of quitting including the different kinds of quits.
“I quit!” Most of us have said those words, or something like them during our lives. Sometimes that was a good decision and sometimes one we regretted. That may or may not have to do with how or why we quit. Sometimes, we quit freely, while at other times, it may have been compelled or was something we did with reluctance. Furthermore, character enters in. To quit sometimes seems a sign of weakness, especially if one quits too easily or often.
Given this, Jeffrey A. Lockwood, who quit the field of entomology to become a professor of natural sciences and humanities, take us us on philosophical and practical study of quitting. His study breaks into three parts. Firstly, he considers the various kinds of ways we stop doing something or how quitting manifests. We end relationships, undergo conversion, renounce certain habits, and make decisions around the end of our lives. We end employment out of principle, frustration, or to pursue more favorable work. From games and athletic contests to wars, we terminate our involvement, usually when the cost of continuing is greater than that of conceding defeat. Out of all this, Lockwood formulates a taxonomy of quitting.
Secondly, Lockwood discusses the when and why of quitting. He looks at how we decide to “hold ’em or fold ’em” in a number of different activities. He explores the difference between well-reasoned and impulsive endings. Lockwood also considers the matter of free will. We do not always quit by our own choice alone but because of various levels of coercion–think Tom Brady or Joe Biden. Then there are the various levels of quitting from cold turkey to cutting back. Is doing less a kind of quitting? Finally, in the last chapter of this section, Lockwood formulates a definition of quitting incorporating the factors he has discussed:
“Quitting is the task of integrating rational and emotional considerations in voluntarily terminating one’s commitment to a typically ongoing state or process of considerable meaning to the individual for a time or degree sufficient to produce a marked subjective change” (p. 157).
Thirdly, Lockwood gets into the practicalities of how we quit well. Here, Lockwood pursues the path of phronesis or common sense. We balance the virtues of courage, wisdom, justice, and moderation to quit in a manner consister with the character to which we aspire. This means we work through the why, having sound justification. We are clear about the what. And we discern when, neither too soon or late, the line between grit and quit.
I read this book mindful of my most recent “quit,” my decision to retire after working 48 years in an organization with no mandatory retirement age. I had watched others stay too long. The questions of the book were real, and although I didn’t have access to the book at the time, the process squares with my own experience. most of all, it was a decision in timing and execution consistent with the kind of person as spouse, colleague, and college minister to which I aspired.
Lockwood combines analysis and theory with storytelling and practical help. The book elaborates what the title proposes. It also helpfully delineates the tension between quit and grit and the important issues of character and not just career savvy involved. Likewise, the fact that it discusses other kinds of endings makes this a valuable guide at any age or stage of life. In many instances, quitting is the right thing to do. This book helps us discern those times and the steps to take to flourish through what may be a hard process.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.
Summary: A methodology for New Testament ethics centered on community, the cross, and the new creation.
When I was in seminary in the 1980’s, I took a course on ethics that used a text titled Can Ethics Be Christian? by James M. Gustafson. While making the useful point that one did not need to be Christian to be ethical, it also cast doubt on whether there was such a thing as a Christian ethic and how one might arrive at that. We had no books from Richard B. Hays back then. Later, around the time of the publication of The Moral Vision of the New Testament in 1996, I acquired a copy. And perhaps because of its daunting size, it remained on a stack of unread books.
Recently, Eerdmans sent me a copy of New Testament Ethics for review, re-visiting Hays book thirty years later. I thought before I read that book, I ought read this one. I will be reviewing the new book in the near future.
What Hays does in this book is establish a methodology of moving from the texts of the New Testament to applications to contemporary issues. He follows a four step process. He begins with describing the moral witness of the New Testament texts. Then, he synthesizes that material into three focal images he argues are foundational to New Testament ethics. From here, he engages the hermeneutical or interpretive task, drawing upon text as the “norming norm” but also weighing church tradition, reason, and experience. Finally, he addresses the pragmatic task of using this framework to address five “test cases” which vary in terms of the amount of textual material available. I’ll elaborate each step in greater detail:
Part One: The Descriptive Task
Hays begins with Paul. He notes the theological grounding of Paul in the eschatology of new creation, the centrality of the cross as the basis of Christian faithfulness, and the life of the redeemed community as Christ’s body. Hays separately deals with the deutero-Pauline letters, focus on the cosmic ecclesiology of Ephesians and the idea of the household of God in 1 Timothy. Then Hays turns to the synoptic gospels, noting a distinctive ethical focus for each: Mark on taking up the cross, Matthew on training for the kingdom, and Luke on liberation through the Spirit’s power. John’s gospel and epistles focus on love for each other. Finally Revelation focuses on resisting the Beast in light of the victory of the lamb and the new creation.
It should be noted that Hays does not address the contribution of Hebrews and the non-Johannine general epistles. He also offers his own assessment of “historical Jesus research” notably asserting that the burden of proof lies with those claiming inauthenticity. He argues against dismissing John’s gospel, particularly in light of its claim to be eyewitness testimony. And he argues for the resurrection as a historical event–not a popular position in 1996.
Part Two: The Synthetic Task
Hays begins by establishing three procedural guidelines. First, any synthesis must confront the full range of canonical witnesses. Then, allow tensions to stand. Finally, give attention to literary genre. With these in mind, Hays argues for three focal images arising from his descriptive work.
The first of these is community. “The church is a countercultural community of discipleship, and this community is the primary addressee of God’s imperatives.” When asking questions of God’s will, we ought ask, not “what should I do” but “what shoud we do?”
The second is the cross. “Jesus death on the cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world.” Walking in the way of the cross is not just for some individuals but for the whole community.
And lastly, the third is new creation. “The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world.
Hays addresses why he does not include love as a focal image. He argues that the full range of canonical material does not incorporate it. Love can also mean a variety of things. Finally, for Hays, love is subsumed in the theme of the cross.
Part Three: The Hermeneutical Task
Hays lays the groundwork for his proposals by asking how ethicists use scripture. In ethical discussion, ethicists will appeal to rules, principles, paradigms, and symbolic worlds, each of which is in scripture. He also notes the role tradition, reason, and experience play in interpretation. He then surveys five models of New Testament ethicists and how they apply (or fail to apply) these criteria: Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza.
Hays then offers ten guidelines that build on his work to this point:
Serious exegesis is a basic requirement. Texts used in ethical arguments should be understood as fully as possible in their historical and literary context.
New Testament texts must be read with careful attention to their Old Testament subtexts.
We must seek to listen to the full range of canonical witnesses.
Substantive tensions within the canon should be openly acknowledged.
Our synthetic reading of the New Testament canon must be kept in balance by the sustained use of three focal images: community, cross, and new creation.
New Testament texts must be granted authority (or not) in the mode in which they speak (i.e., rule, principle, paradigm, symbolic world).
All four modes are valid and necessary.
We should not override the witness of the New Testament in one mode by appealing to another mode.
The New Testament is fundamentally the story of God’s redemptive action; thus, the paradigmatic mode has theological primacy, and narrative texts are fundamental resources for normative ethics.
Extra-biblical sources (i.e. tradition, reason and experience) stand in a hermeneutical relation to the New Testament; they are not independent, counterbalancing sources of authority.
It is impossible to distinguish “timeless truth” from “culturally conditioned elements” in the New Testament.
The use of the New Testament in normative ethics requires an integrative act of the imagination; thus, whenever we appeal to the authority of the New Testament, we are necessarily engaged in metaphor-making.
Right reading of the New Testament occurs only where the Word is embodied.
Part Four: The Pragmatic Task
In this last part of the book, Hays offers five “test cases” of reaching ethical conclusions on the basis of the methodology he has outlined. He states:
“As I take a stand on these five issues, some of which are bitterly controversial, it is impoirtant to emphasize that I do not presume to speak ex cathedra. Rather, I offer a series of discernments to the church in prayerful humility.”
The five issues he addresses are violence, divorce, homosexuality, anti-Judaism, and abortion. He notes at the outset the different ways the New Testament speaks to each. In the case of violence, the witness is both pervasive and univocal against it. On divorce, the passages share a common perspective, but differing casuistic developments that lead to diverse applications. The texts on homosexuality are univocal but few and not central to the gospel story. However, with anti-Judaism, the textual evidence is in tension, and the interpreter has to prioritize what will be the controlling texts. Finally, the New Testament does not directly address abortion.
While peoples discuss Hays on homosexuality the most (particularly in light of his changing views in a book he co-authored with his son Chris shortly before his death), the most challenging material in many ways is that on violence. He argues for pacifism as the only biblically defensible ethic, arguing Jesus epitomizes it in his own paradigmatic death.
On homosexuality, while arguing against same-sex intimacy for believers, he states that “insofar as the church fails to teach clearly about heterosexuality outside of marriage, its disapproval of homosexual coupling will appear arbitrary and biased.” He argues for inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church. I found the position both forthright and gracious and want to see how he has changed his view in The Widening of God’s Mercy. While not having read the book yet, I sense from other reviews that Hays has not changed his reading of the passages. Rather, he has changed in how he reads them in the light of the whole of scripture and in light of experience.
One striking observation is how Hays approaches abortion through the lens of community. He observes how often the church puts the burden of decision and responsibility on young women. Rather, what would happen if the community shared the burden and responsibility of raising a child?
Conclusion and Appraisal
In his conclusion Hays briefly but inadequately discusses the sharing of possessions in the church. I wish this had been one of the test cases, as it is especially an important issue among wealthy Western churches. I also wonder about his conclusions about love as a focal image. A stronger case could be made for this on a canonical basis.
Overall, I appreciated his careful elaboration of a methodology for arriving at ethical judgments on the basis of the New Testament. His three focal images offer a substantive foundation. The test cases model thorough application coupled with humility. While this work is the subject of much critique, that fact argues for its significance. Hays offers a thoroughgoing methodology that takes scripture seriously as the “norming norm.” At the same time, he also recognizes the tensions in that material and avoids reductive judgments. No wonder this book continues to be the subject of scholarly discussion thirty years later.
Summary: A thematic exploration of Revelation’s dangerous call and encouragement to resist idolatrous imperial Rome.
We usually consider Revelation as the perplexing book with which we are both fascinated and yet unable to understand. In this work, Greg Carey, a scholar of the New Testament and of eschatological literature, makes a different assertion. He argues that Revelation was, and is, a dangerous book. In its setting, it was a call to the seven churches to resist the idolatrous power of imperial Rome. As he will elaborate, this had to do not merely with worship, but had social, economic, and political implications. He also finds it can be a dangerous book in its use of authoritarian and misogynistic language, as well as in the violence it portrays. While Revelation’s readers are never called to violence, its violent imagery may be used to legitimate violence.
Carey’s approach is not to offer a commentary on the book, nor propose a “system.” Rather, he thematically addresses a number of questions related to Revelation and its call for this dangerous resistance. The first chapter begins with what kind of book this is, apocalyptic, prophetic, or a letter. He contends that it is all three, basically a letter that unveils (apocalypse) the warfare between the Lamb and the beastly power of empire, calling believers to unequivocal loyalty to the Lamb.
That call to loyalty is one of authority, and in Chapter 2, Carey explores how a message that “carries absolute authority and brooks no dissent” cannot help but be seen as authoritarian. On one hand, he notes how John balances authoritarian and egalitarian statement, speaking as a brother. On the other hand, Carey also calls us to recognize those times where moral clarity and humble but unequivocal calling things for what they are is necessary.
Then Chapter 3 takes a step back and explores the Christology and Trinitarian relationships in Revelation. Remember that this preceded the conciliar statements on these matters. Regarding the Trinity, Carey explores references to the three persons yet notes a certain “blurring” in John’s references. However, with regard to Christ, he notes the focus on the Lion Lamb in the text and argues that the bloodied Lamb reflects not his enemies blood but conquest through his own death. Then Carey asks whether Revelation has an eschatology. He contends that it does not in any systematic sense. However, that does not exclude the portrayal of God’s victorious intervention in history nor the realities or resurrection, judgement, and the New Jerusalem.
Chapter 5 returns to the challenging call to the churches to total allegiance. Carey studies John’s use of pathos, of an appeal to emotion to move believers to resolved resistance. He uses direct address, anticipation and surprise, crisis rhetoric, aversion, and emulation in his appeal. In the midst of authoritarianism in our culture and the church, he weighs the ethics of the use of such rhetoric. Then in Chapter 6, he wrestles with the implications of that call given the extremes of wealth and poverty in the Roman empire. Faithfulness could be costly, certainly for the poor, and perhaps even more for the affluent enmeshed in economic relationships. Who had more to lose when absenting oneself from honoring idols of the emperor?
Chapter 7 explores gender and sexuality. One aspect of this chapter was to explore portrayals of women: Jezebel, the Woman clothed with the Sun, the prostitute, and the Bride. He wrestles with readings that find these idealized extremes misogynistic when real women are viewed in light of these. He also dips his toe into “queer” readings, noting some figures be interpreted beyond gender binaries. I found this aspect the least supported by the text.
Chapter 8 goes more deeply into the theme of violence. Again, without sanctioning violence on the part of readers, Carey acknowledges the violent language that many may shy away from and others use to justify violence. He observes the setting of the book amid a violent empire. And he would have us be aware of our longings for vindication against evil. Who of us is free of violence? Finally, Chapter 9 explores what resistance looks like. Beyond eschewing idolatry and violence, resistance on an everyday basis may likely have been faithful endurance and overcoming through faithful testimony, even in death.
Throughout, Carey is cognizant of both the horizon of the text and of contemporary readers, particularly in the United States and the West. He recognizes the misinterpretation of Revelation that endorses authoritarianism, violence, misogyny, and even idolatrous nationalism. He doesn’t dodge or gloss over the elements in John’s text that contribute to such misinterpretation.
At the same time, he draws out the unequivocal call of Revelation to total allegiance to Jesus and that believers overcome through faithful testimony and endurance, even martyrdom. They never overcome through violence. Nor do they overcome through political alliances with imperial power. In all this, Carey helps us wrestle deeply with the text and its implications for our own time.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
More Than Things, Paul Louis Metzger. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.
Summary: Draws upon the theological and ethical framework of personalism to uphold the dignity of persons, with applications to a variety of medical issues related to human life and extending from immigration and drone warfare to space exploration.
I was always taught that we should love people and use things but never love things and use people. Sadly, in a world shaped on materialist terms, the value of people increasingly is grounded upon their usefulness, their utility, rather than inherent in their persons. In fact, what qualifies as a person is increasingly up for grabs. The author of this work believes that how we answer these questions is shaping, and will shape the kind of culture, the kind of world in which we live.
Paul Louis Metzger, as he introduces this book, informs us that for him, this is not merely theoretical but existential. His adult son suffered a catastrophic brain injury in 2021 and lives utterly dependent on caregivers in a minimally conscious state. He has noted the difference in his son’s response when he is treated as a person rather than a patient, when he is called by name. He is convinced that his son’s personhood was not diminished in any way by his injuries or current capabilities. Metzger’s views are grounded not merely in parental sentiment but in the philosophical and theological framework of personalism, that advocates for the dignity of human personhood against all reductionistic efforts to treat humans as mere “biological and sexual drives, market forces, consumer appetites, or cogs in a machine (p. 5)”
There are a variety of theological and philosophical framings of personalism, not all of which work from a theist framework. Metzger does, founding his personalism in a triune God, both personal and relational. Yet the work engages widely with a number of thinkers from Christian, other religious, and philosophical stances, offering a “thick” account of personalism in which convictions of the value of human beings may be shared by those who do not necessarily agree with Metzger’s Christian premises. He frames a personalist ethic in terms of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, describing an ethic of:
Triune faith and entangled ethics: by “entangled” he recognizes that personalist ethics are pursued through a variety of lenses, trinitarian and otherwise focusing on the good ideal (deontological ethics), the good result (consequentialist ethics), and the good person (virtue ethics). He advocates and models gracious interaction with representatives of each of these.
Triune hope and eschatological ethics: this engages the question of the “end” or “telos” for which we exist, considering Jesus, Buddha, and Aristotle and interacting with Charles Darwin and Christian Smith.
Triune love and embodied ethics: The triune God who is love and exists in eternal loving relations between Father, Son, and Spirit, created the world in love. How, then, ought we as embodied creatures in the image of God, but fallen, live out that love. Here, Metzger’s discussion interacts with Tillich, Luther, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, and Patricia Churchland, who researches the effects of oxytocin in human bonding.
As is evident, in each of these, Metzger engages both the vertical dimensions of a personalist vision rooted in the triune God and the horizontal dimension of other ethical systems.
The second and third part of the book then applies this framework to a number of ethical questions where a personalist ethic that treats persons as more than things confronts a culture that robs one of personhood. Part Two addresses questions from the beginning to the end of life. Metzger begins with the idea of a pro-life ethic for all based on more than abilities, speaking not only to abortion but to disabilities of various forms. He considers the quest for genetic perfection, arguing not for a genetically engineered but relationally engendered community embracing the genetic givenness and giftedness of each person. He addresses the meaning of our sexuality, considering that we are made for more than sexual pleasure, and wrestling with the challenges to monogamy. The next chapter builds on this in discussing patriarchy and a personalist ethic that is more than a battle of the sexes, drawing on both religious and scientific sources addressing these questions. Finally, in this section, he addresses issues at the end of life, including physician assisted suicide, now legal in several states as well as other countries. He looks honestly at what different religious and philosophical traditions say about suicide and the meaning of suffering. He raises the challenge of the good life as one of learning how to die. He upholds the ethic of the hospice movement of neither hastening death nor prolonging life but offering compassionate care until one dies.
The third part then turns to broader societal and global issues. He opens with race, and the depersonalizing character of racism that makes certain peoples less than human, based on superficial bodily differences and holds up the ideal of the “beloved community.” His discussion of immigration challenges the commoditization of immigrants based on their economic value. He considers drone warfare, weighing whether their use can satisfy just war criteria, particularly with regard to killing non-combatants, and the ease of resorting to drones as alternatives to peaceful means of resolving conflicts. He does not rule out their use, but questions the justifications often pressed home in their use. Metzger then turns to our care of the creation, arguing for a personalist ethic that goes beyond domination to dominion that stewards, that is rooted in mutuality with all the people who share our planet as well as other creatures. The final chapter in this section considers space exploration and the assumptions of a godlike humanity asserting its rights over other planets and carry our international divisions into space.
Metzger concludes with the importance of recovering “missing people” in the various spheres of life we touch. He mentions the wide range of dialogue partners engaged throughout. While writing from a Christian perspective, the wide range of people with whom Metzger interacts with makes this both a longer work but also one that provides a broad basis for collaborating on the value of persons in different spheres, even though we might disagree in other matters or come from different assumptions. One area that I would like to have seen addressed is agism, and particularly in the marginalizing and exploitation of older members of society. As one who has entered this cohort, I’ve become increasingly aware of ways the elderly are marginalized and all the ways we are treated as objects of scams. I also think it might have been interesting to consider the disregard of personhood in religious organizations.
But these are minor considerations in a work that offers a basis for Christians to join with many others to uphold the value of persons and provides substantive discussions of what that looks like in a variety of important public discussions. Personalism bears on healthcare, social relations, our uses of technology in peace and war, our care for our world and other worlds. Wherever we engage with other persons, a personalist framework, whether religiously grounded or not, challenges us to act in ways upholding the dignity of others even as we respect that dignity in ourselves. There are no “cogs,” no lesser people, but only those of great dignity.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Summary: The saving work of Christ in its vertical, horizontal, and cosmic dimensions is the reason for why the Galatians are able and commanded to walk in the Spirit, living lives of Spirit-empowered obedience, participating both now and into the age to come in eternal life.
Often, discussions of Paul’s letter to the Galatians focus on justification through faith in the work of the crucified and risen Lord and not on the basis of works of the law. Jarvis L. Williams addresses what he believes to be a neglected aspect of this letter. He believes that Christ’s saving work has vertical, horizontal, and cosmic dimensions that are realized in the life of the believer in the gift of the indwelling Spirit, in whom we may and must walk in ethical lives of empowered obedience. The believer must do so, not turning back to flesh-empowered adherence to the law. To do so is to cease to participate in the gift of eternal life, both now and in the age to come. To walk in the Spirit is to participate in eternal life now in anticipating of the age to come.
The author begins with a literature survey of other scholars who have addressed these questions in Galatians from Hermann Gunkel through David de Silva. He follows with a chapter on the death and resurrection of Jesus showing that the apocalyptic inbreaking of God’s rule is connected with the outpouring of the scripture, demarcating the old age of the flesh and the new age of the Spirit, freedom from bondage under the law and the elemental spirits and freedom in the Spirit to love God and each other (the vertical, horizontal, and cosmic dimensions of salvation). He argues then that those justified in Christ can, will, and must walk in the Spirit in order to inherit the kingdom. Those who do so enjoy empowered personal agency and ethical transformation. Paul’s anxiety, then, over the Galatians in turning away from the gospel for works of the law is that they will cease walking in the Spirit and participating in the reality of eternal life and will not inherit the kingdom. Williams then concludes with observations about the dangers of separating soteriology and ethical transformation and eternal life. He also makes observations about Christian social engagement around issues of race and ethnicity, and the implications of being one new people for how we pursue that engagement.
I thought the thesis of this work an important one, and indeed, often overlooked in Galatians. My problem with the book was the over-repetition of that thesis as well as the organization of the material. The author confines the literature survey to one chapter, without extensive interaction with the scholars in subsequent ones. The chapters following are thematically oriented and move back and forth throughout Galatians and other scriptures. I found myself wondering if a more effective approach would have been a consecutive theological exposition of the text of Galatians, showing how Paul develops the ideas that form the basis of his thesis, incorporating relevant scholarship in his commentary. I think that would have offered a more integrated, persuasive, and understandable rendering of the author’s thesis. Perhaps the author might consider this in a follow-up work for a more general audience.
That said, the author’s argument, that Galatians connects the saving work of Christ to God’s empowering presence in the Galatians’ lives as part of the new thing God is doing, is an important one. His contention that we must not disconnect theology, and particularly soteriology, and ethics is a trenchant one that we do well to heed. Likewise the warning, that to claim to be among the justified but to not walk in the Spirit in freedom from bondage to the cosmic powers and love for God and others, and the implications for participating in the kingdom, is one we ignore at our peril. It’s literally a matter of (eternal) life or death.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
You are probably aware that the material that shows up in your newsfeed on Facebook or Twitter is only a fraction of what your friends and connections are posting, and some of it is sponsored content tailored for you. Have you every wondered why you are seeing what you are seeing? Algorithms (and a lot of data collected about you).
A similar kind of thing happens when you search on Google. I am surprised how often it works well and I find exactly what I’m looking for. But sometimes it goes sideways. Why for example, when Dylann Roof searched Google, following up a search on Trayvon Martin with a search on “black on white crime” did the top search choices come up as white supremacist organizations? Algorithms.
Why, when I search for a book on Amazon, do I receive a number of recommendations of books in the form of “because you looked at this, you might like this”? I have similar things occur at Barnes & Noble or at Thriftbooks. Why? Algorithms.
One definition of an algorithm I found is: “a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.” Actually, algorithms are not some arcane mathematical art. They may be as simple as the process we use to solve a long division problem or the process we use in doing our laundry.
What is happening with all these algorithms is that somebody, an individual or group, has established a set of rules to determine what you see. What much of the world became aware of when Frances Haugen appeared on 60 Minutes this past Sunday night is that the ethic behind these rules that form the algorithms is very important. Haugen alleged, producing massive documentation, that Facebook has consistently chosen profit over safety on its various platforms. For one thing, it selected content that fostered anger on its newsfeeds despite the fact that it often spread misinformation and fostered division simply because this kept people on the platform longer, which was where the money is. Another prime example is the impact that it was aware of Instagram having on teenage girls. Not only do glamorous images feed body-shame, but they discovered that the shame and depression keeps girls on the platform in an emotionally destructive spiral. They knew this and did nothing to change their algorithms of what these girls saw.
Computer-based algorithms are widely used for everything from fantasy baseball to mortgage application processing to screening resumes to your FICO score. People are not directly making decisions about what we see online or about our finances or career aspirations. Machines are making the decisions, using the rules programmers establish in the code.
There are at least a few key ethical considerations that rise to the top, highlighted in Cathy O’Neill’s, Weapons of Math Destruction:
How opaque or transparent are the rules used in the algorithm? Most of the time, the algorithms are highly opaque and we know that we’ve been affected but we don’t know why. Because of this, questions of fairness often arise–how do factors of race, gender, age, etc. get factored in?
What is the scale of impact of the algorithm? FICO scores affect credit, auto insurance costs, getting hired or promoted, and being able to rent an apartment or buy a house. How will this algorithm be used in the marketplace and what protects individuals from wrongful harm?
What is the damage this could cause? Where possible, this should be considered proactively. For example, on social media, under what conditions is more engagement harmful to persons or the broader social context?
This is not easily done, particularly because algorithms serve beneficial purposes as well as cause harm. At very least, identifying the real instances of unfairness and harm and eliminating these, or better, anticipating them, seems a place to start. What is most egregious about the content of Frances Haugen’s testimony was that internal studies were showing known harms from platform algorithms that were not addressed because of profit considerations. We should never use complicated ethical questions to forestall dealing with the clear-cut ones. Let’s begin here.
