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Month: August 2026

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Should Blue-Collar Workers Care About AI Taking White-Collar Jobs?

Amid the ongoing kerfuffle about the effect of AI on jobs, labor unions remain surprisingly split in their opinions, especially regarding data centers. Even as public sentiment turns against data centers, major unions such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, push against anti-data-center legislation like moratoriums. Some Democratic politicians find themselves pinned between wanting union support and broader public opposition toward data center construction. On the one hand, data centers underpin AI and the potential risks that AI poses to labor, especially white-collar workers and professionals. On the other, data centers are large infrastructure projects that require labor, especially blue-collar labor, to build and maintain, with about one third of the labor involved in the construction of data centers being union labor. Electricians, for example, as a recent NYT article observed, have benefited enormously from the data center boom.

Data centers demonstrate the threat AI poses to employment is not evenly distributed across industries. Should an electrician, flush with cash from their new job at a data center, care if some writers, graphic artists, or software developers are losing their jobs? How we answer this question tells us a lot about the broader goals and ethical perspective of unions and the labor movement.

We should not expect a simple answer. Unions are organizations constituted by workers and their decision making is typically democratic. (Although union democracy, like democracy generally, may be messy.) Workers can disagree about where they should be devoting their focus. Additionally, opinions on data centers and AI by workers and unions are often a lot more complicated than “for” or “against.” Someone could support data center construction, but only with certain regulations in place. And while opposition to data centers often tracks opposition to AI, one can be opposed to data centers, or at least their implementation, and support AI more generally.

One vision is that a union should prioritize the immediate working conditions of their members: wages, benefits, working hours, and such like. This is sometimes called pure-and-simple unionism or business unionism. From this perspective, the relevant fact about AI is not whether it is good or bad for workers on average, but how it affects union members. Carpenters, electricians, and welders would have reason to support AI, or at least data center construction, flight attendants should not care, writers should be opposed. There is nuance in the precise viewpoints of unions and their membership, but this is loosely how it has played out in the US.

Of course, like all people, union members often have concerns beyond their immediate working conditions. Some visions of labor power, such as social movement unionism, emphasize how unions can be (and have been) major players in social movements, from human rights to climate change activism. When it comes to AI, an electrician may be concerned about everything from water use to the effect on inequality, even if data center construction provides jobs in their field. This is not to say that these broader issues cannot impact working conditions. A union might oppose Big Tech-controlled AI, because concentration of corporate power is generally bad for worker bargaining power, even if there is no immediate change to anyone’s paycheck. However, this is a more indirect benefit than simply having more union jobs in the short-term and perhaps harder to evaluate.

Should an electrician care about the lost job of a software developer specifically as a fellow worker? This is a solidarity or shared struggle approach to labor activism and unionism. The idea is that an electrician and software developer share a political and economic struggle even though superficially their jobs look different. This perspective is historically associated with radical and class-struggle forms of unionism, where workers and unions seek an overall change in the economic organization of society. From a leftist perspective, workers are united by being part of the same (exploited) economic class. Whatever the particulars of their work, both the software developer and the electrician are wage laborers who have to make a living through selling their labor, as opposed to capitalists who earn money by leveraging what they own to either collect rent or appropriate a share of their laborer’s earnings. Emphasizing class struggle gives workers and union members reason to show solidarity across vastly different trades. The idea is rather than the software developer losing their job to Claude Code being someone else’s fight, there is just one big fight.

However, it is easier to ask for solidarity than to give it. White collar workers have not always been staunch allies when blue collar professions faced their own technological upheavals during the 20th century. It would be hard to blame an electrician for indulging in a little schadenfreude, even if they believe in a shared class interest.

These different perspectives on labor activism and union goals speak to the challenge of scale or granularity in ethical analysis. It is not always clear what the appropriate unit of analysis should be. People may share one interest as electricians, but a different interest as wage laborers. Neither of these claims is necessarily wrong, rather it depends on the “zoom” we are using to look at a situation.

Asking questions such as whether AI or data centers are “good” or “bad” for workers may be too coarse -grained. Which workers are they good or bad for, and at what level of analysis? How does this depend on who controls AI and what regulations are in place? Even if we can come up with an overarching answer, there may be substantial complexity with many different winners and losers underneath the hood. Analysis gets yet more complicated as we consider the importance of time. AI enthusiasts still allow there may be a rocky transition period associated with AI. And critics contend that while constructing data centers requires a lot of jobs, they generate few permanent positions. The fight over AI is about more than just its immediate employment impacts, it is also over how we should evaluate potentially transformative technologies. Whose interests count, at what scale, and over what period of time? What short-term pain are we willing to tolerate? And perhaps most importantly, who gets to decide?

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Does Physician-Assisted Suicide Go Far Enough?

Earlier this month, New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Law came into force. This historic piece of legislation allows terminally ill New Yorkers to legally request – and receive assistance – in ending their own lives. The law makes New York the fourteenth US jurisdiction to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS). It’s a surprisingly low number, given that an overwhelming majority (72%) of Americans are in favor of this policy. Indeed, the way in which most jurisdictions approach PAS demonstrates a stark inconsistency in our attitudes. The American Medical Association takes a firm position on physicians taking an active role in helping a patient to die, stating that the practice is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” and “would ultimately cause more harm than good.” Yet, at the same time, doctors have the prerogative to – at a patient’s request – withhold life-sustaining treatment and allow their patient to die.

This inconsistency can be made more apparent with an example. Suppose that Beatrice has received a terminal cancer diagnosis. She has only six months to live – a period of time which will be filled with nothing but extreme and unrelenting suffering. Beatrice asks for her doctor’s assistance in ending her life, so as to minimize the amount of suffering she has to endure from her cancer. In most US jurisdictions, it would be impermissible for the doctor to fulfil her wish. Suppose, then, that Beatrice happens to contract a chest infection while in hospital. This infection will, without treatment, see her die within the week. Beatrice asks that her doctor not treat the infection, so as to minimize the amount of suffering she has to endure from her cancer. In this case, it is perfectly permissible for her doctor to fulfil her wish.

And therein lies the problem. Either Beatrice has a life worth living, or she doesn’t. If her life is worth living, then everything should be done to ensure her survival – including the treatment of her infection. If, on the other hand, she doesn’t have a life worth living (if, as is the case here, the remaining six months of her life will be filled with far more bad than good) then it seems that we should seek to alleviate that suffering in the least harmful way possible. Why is it seen as permissible to allow her to succumb to an infection (a process that will involve no small amount of suffering) but impermissible to administer a drug that will see her die a quick and painless death?

Philippa Foot has claimed that the important difference lies in who ends up being “the agent of harm.” Put simply, if we stand back and allow Beatrice’s infection to run its course, then it is the pneumonia that kills her. If, however, we take an active role in ending her life, then what kills her is us.

It’s a thorny problem – but not one I want to focus on here. Rather, the question I want to consider is this: If, like New York, we decide that terminal patients should be permitted to end their lives, does PAS go far enough?

Because here’s the thing: while fourteen US jurisdictions might’ve legalized PAS, none have gone so far as to permit euthanasia. What’s the difference? While PAS allows a doctor to provide the means of a patient’s death, the administration of those means is the sole responsibility of the patient. In cases of euthanasia, however, the means of death are both provided for – and administered by – the doctor.

New York’s law, for example, explicitly requires that a patient must self-administer their life-ending medication. Why does this matter? Well, suppose that due to the progressive nature of Beatrice’s disease, she is now physically unable to administer her life-ending drugs. Perhaps her hands shake. Perhaps she has serious difficulty swallowing. The problem is this: Under New York’s legislative framework, it is perfectly permissible for Beatrice’s doctor to provide her with the means of dying. Further, if Beatrice were in perfect physical health, she would be capable of administering those means, and bringing an end to her suffering. But because of her physical ailment, she cannot do as much. She is forced to suffer. Whether or not Beatrice is actually able to end her life is therefore determined not by the severity of her suffering, but rather by the (largely irrelevant) fact of whether or not she is physically capable of administering a drug. And this seems wrong.

There are other concerns too. Self-administration – especially by someone who is undergoing enormous suffering – is more likely to go wrong than administration by a trained professional. Concerns about the misappropriation and misuse of death-inducing drugs can also be mitigated by allowing doctors to take a more active role in assisted dying.

All of this is to say that legislation like New York’s might simply not go far enough. If we accept – as fourteen US jurisdictions have – the argument that there are those who should be allowed to receive assistance in dying, then we need to ensure that the process provided does not unjustly preclude otherwise worthy individuals on irrelevant grounds.

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What the KOSPI Crash Can Teach Us About Regulation

Recently, the South Korean benchmark stock market index, the KOSPI, has experienced incredible turbulence. After nearly 30 years of stagnation, the index catapulted to epic heights off the backs of AI memory manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix. Due to this meteoric rise, a familiar sense of FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out,” emerged amongst retail traders. Those who foresaw this outcome were already reaping their rewards, but those on the outside looking in were desperate for a piece of the action. In response to this growing desire, South Korea decided to allow retail traders to access leveraged single-stock ETFs (“Exchange Traded Funds”) to encourage more investment and growth. Unlike traditional ETFs, which are made up of a relatively balanced piece of dozens or hundreds of stocks, single-stock ETFs consist of a single stock, in this case Samsung or SK Hynix, which are levered to provide three to five times the daily return of a single traditional stock of these companies.

While these opportunities provide tremendous upside for investors, the downside is just as great, as any loss in stock price is multiplied three to five times for investors of these leveraged ETFs. Large-scale investors often make use of leverage, but retail investors should be cautious, as the ability to almost instantly lose your entire portfolio is heavily increased. It should come as no surprise, then, that on June 13, 2026, over 1.2 million retail traders in South Korea, roughly 1 in 30 adults, received a margin call, meaning that their portfolio holdings had dropped too low and they either needed to put more money in or risk their bank forcefully selling on their behalf. For instance, Seoul resident Song Mi-kyung profited nearly $200,000 when the KOPSI rallied off of the back of Samsung and SK Hynix, but lost nearly all of her investment following the crash. In the aftermath, South Korean officials apologized for allowing single-stock leveraged ETFs to be traded by retail investors. The government has also started implementing policies to protect investors in the future. But should they? Is this a case where governments should step in to regulate their citizens’ behavior?

One of the classic ways to think about the ability to interfere with someone’s right to do x is via Mill’s Harm Principle from his work On Liberty. In this book, Mill claims that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Moreover, one cannot be compelled or forced to do something merely because it would be “better for him.” Mill’s principle, then, really breaks down into two further principles. First, power can be exercised over another if it is to prevent harm. Second, power cannot be exercised over another if it is merely for their own good.

When discussing something like investing, it is easy to believe that we should let people make their own decisions and live with the consequences, come what may. However, a government making a “paternalistic” regulation, or, a law that is in the best interest of the people despite restricting freedom to some extent, is not only sometimes justified but already something we live with. Notably, since 2018, about 30 US states have legalized gambling, but the New York Federal Reserve indicates that gambling, specifically sports betting, “can have dramatic implications for household financial stability.” Many would claim that restricting gambling, despite the loss of freedom, is justified insofar as (1) gambling is bad and (2) many cannot stop themselves from gambling and need an external force to get them to stop. We also see different examples of paternalistic laws in instances such as it being illegal to swim at a given beach with a history of dangerous waters without a lifeguard present or laws governing what kind of financial tools a retail trader is allowed to use.

These kinds of regulations have already been put in place in South Korea. Despite a continued desire from retail traders to trade these leveraged single-stock ETFs, certain measures have been put into place to protect investors from similar financial meltdowns. Namely, South Korean investors must now complete a week-long course before they can trade single-stock funds, which includes at least one hour of simulated trading every day for five days. Furthermore, the minimum cash deposit for trading accounts has been raised to Won30mn ($21,000), which may prevent those who cannot afford to lose a lot of money from trading these volatile funds.

Assuming we believe paternalistic regulation is warranted in some instances, is it justified in this instance? In his 1972 article “Paternalism,” Gerald Dworkin offers two principles to make sure that paternalistic legislation is kept to a minimum. First, there must be a “clear and heavy burden of proof” placed on the state to show the harmful effects to be avoided or benefits to be achieved. Second, if there is a way to accomplish the end without restricting liberty, society must adopt this in place of paternalistic legislation. To use our gambling case, we can point towards the potential consequences of unrestricted gambling, such as the fact that states in the US who have legalized gambling have seen a 60% rise in diagnoses of gambling disorder compared to states where it is still illegal and those diagnosed with gambling disorder are 15 times more likely to commit suicide. In such a case, then, it seems reasonable and justified to restrict individuals from gambling to some extent.

In the case of the KOSPI restrictions, there are clear harms that the government’s policy seeks to avoid. Some traders incurred heavy losses, like Lee Seung-ho who turned roughly $15,000 into $225,000 before losing all of it during the crash, and are already setting their sights on trading these volatile funds again once they rebuild capital. So, when we look at reasons to favor the South Korean restrictions, I think the first principle is easily cleared. That is to say, the financial damages done to the retail traders are clearly evident and easily pass even the highest burden of proof.

The second principle – avoiding paternalistic legislation where possible – is a bit more tricky. Some will argue that retail traders can learn from their mistakes without the government restricting trading. But rather than completely banning retail investors from trading single-stock leveraged ETFs, South Korea merely put roadblocks in place to make sure that traders are educated on the risks. The government asks traders to prove competence by working through training modules and engaging in paper trading. These policies are meant to ensure that traders know what they are doing, understand the potential consequences, and can be held accountable for their actions. Increasing the mandatory minimum cash holding, however, is perhaps more than just a roadblock. Raising that level three times the current amount represents a sizable hurdle that time alone will not clear. Nevertheless, insofar as traders will continue to hastily invest in these funds without these regulations, and there is no way to curb bad investment practices without some restriction of liberty, it seems reasonable and justified for the South Korea government to restrict the trading of single-stock leveraged ETFs in the interests of their citizens.

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Why the New Surveillance Doesn’t Feel Like Surveillance at All

This month, Americans have been taking their anger at license plate cameras into their own hands. Concern about technologies like Flock Cameras has grown alongside reports of their misuse. Take, for example, the Central Florida police officer who was accused of using Flock cameras to track his estranged wife’s vehicle hundreds of times. Organizations such as the ACLU have called Flock a major civil liberties threat. And amid mounting backlash, Americans have turned to spray painting, cutting down, and shooting down the cameras in droves.

It might seem that people across the country are becoming newly conscious of surveillance. But while we recoil from license plate cameras, there are millions of us willingly handing over our data to AI companies. We confess things to chatbots we wouldn’t even admit to our closest friends — like our deepest fears, secrets, doubts, and symptoms. We do so, at least in part, because these conversations are free, convenient, and come without the embarrassing social stigma of making these facts public record. But while our online confessions might feel private and inconsequential, they form a record of human behavior that’s both unusually candid and unusually valuable to the corporations that collect it.

I’ll call this record of human behavior our digital dirty laundry. We don’t need to look to Silicon Valley or tech talks for how to understand why it’s important. Instead (perhaps surprisingly), we can get insight on it from feminist thinking about race, class, and gender. Thinkers like sociologist Patricia Hill Collins and philosopher Alison Wylie have shown how marginalized people are often forced to navigate a society that doesn’t regard them as equals. But that position can sometimes give them access to information that remains hidden from social insiders. A maid, for instance, may notice lipstick on her employer’s collar because he doesn’t see her as a peer worth hiding his peccadillos from.

In some ways, chatbots occupy a similar position to the maid. The maid has access to her employer’s dirty laundry because of her social position. Chatbots gain access to our digital dirty laundry in a similar way: by us letting them into the parts of our lives we ordinarily keep hidden. For years now, researchers have found that people are more willing to reveal sensitive information to computers than to other humans, especially when they have to talk about stigmatized activities like drugs, crime, unsafe sex, and suicidal thinking. They disclose these things because interacting with a machine produces a sense of anonymity, invulnerability, and reduced social judgment.

The rise and rapid adoption of conversational AI has given this old phenomenon a new form. People now turn to ChatGPT as an informal therapist; sexual conversations like erotic roleplay and image generation make up a noticeable share of chatbot use, and overall, people may even prefer bots to humans when discussing embarrassing health questions. It seems that the more conversational these systems become, the easier it is to forget that a disclosure to a chatbot is still disclosure to a corporate product.

Like the maid who is present in the household but never treated like a peer, chatbots are welcomed into intimate parts of our lives without triggering our instinct to manage how we’re seen by others. We’re handing over scads of unusually candid information because we think of chatbots as socially invisible. A maid’s access to information, however, is limited to the household she works for, and so our dirty laundry usually stays local; and it’s aired in the form of rumors or gossip. Our digital dirty laundry is different: it’s collected and stored at massive scale by AI companies across the globe. Whether or not this dynamic is an intentional part of their design, it has effectively turned our treatment of non-peers into a source of corporate value.

So, while Flock cameras watch where we go, our digital dirty laundry forms an extensive record of what we think, fear, want, regret, and hide. There are countless examples: a new mother asks ChatGPT if it’s normal that she doesn’t feel like she’s bonding with her baby. A college student asks Gemini whether their drinking is really a problem, too embarrassed to tell their doctor (or anyone else they know). An executive confesses to Claude that he hates his job. These are the kinds of intensely personal disclosures that people may make precisely because the social consequences of asking a chatbot feel low.

Put millions of those low-stakes confessions together, and AI companies gain something traditional surveillance rarely provides: a record of what people say when they think the social stakes are near-zero. A one-way window into our most private thoughts and behaviors — the things we don’t (and won’t) tell anyone else.

Our ordinary picture of surveillance is built around the idea of being watched. But what if surveillance also meant creating the kinds of conditions that lead us to give our data over willingly? Cameras trigger resistance because they’re obvious — we can watch them watching us — and the ways that they might be misused are obvious, too, as in the case of the officer allegedly stalking his estranged wife. Chatbot data collection is easier to overlook because it takes the form of a conversation with something that feels unthreatening. But that feeling can be misleading. The irony is that the systems we feel safest confessing to have the capacity to produce some of the most revealing records about us.

So, it’s good that Americans are beginning to resist cameras. We now recognize what surveillance looks like when it’s mounted on a pole outside. But if our outrage (and our policies) about privacy and surveillance are only directed at the technologies that literally watch us, then we’re missing a crucial part of our privacy problem. Perhaps the threat doesn’t always come from the technology taking our picture on the street; sometimes the call is coming from inside the house — from something we invited in because it seemed so friendly, inconsequential, and easy to talk to.

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In Defense of Useless Books

AI companies are running out of data. For chatbots to function well, they need to be trained on a tremendous amount of original data, and readily available (or easily stolen) data is close to being exhausted. One source of potential untapped content is old and out-of-print books that haven’t yet been digitized. And there has been speculation that AI companies have started to mine this resource: many outlets have reported that book sales at used bookstores and online resellers have seen a huge uptick, with some companies touting their ability to feed the AI beast fresh meat in the form of old books.

While there are still many good reasons to be concerned with the ways that AI companies deal with intellectual property, the problem with this new round of data acquisition concerns the fact that AI companies seem to not just be buying a ton of old books, but destroying them, as well. This destruction is for two reasons: first, scanning a book is easier if you tear off its spine; and second, destroying the book after scanning it is considered a transformative act under US copyright, and thus allows AI companies to skirt pesky intellectual property laws.

Reactions to news of large-scale book destruction have been almost entirely negative. Indeed, many booksellers have reported facing a dilemma: sell books that would otherwise go unsold to AI companies knowing that they will destroy them, or don’t sell them at all.

But what’s wrong with destroying old books, anyway? The thought of book destruction, of course, evokes images of mass book burnings, or the loss of great repositories of human knowledge like the Library of Alexandria. And it does seem that it would be a genuine loss if an AI company bought and destroyed a great artistic or scientific work, or even just a pretty good one.

But what about the books that aren’t winning any literary prizes or meaningfully advancing human knowledge? For example, a bookseller recently noted that he had been receiving a lot of orders for books that he really would have had almost no chance of selling: “stuff like The Insider’s Guide to Metro Denver from 1995 or How to Use Corel WordPerfect 1991.” (For those not alive in the 90s, Corel WordPerfect was like Microsoft Word, but worse.) Arguably, neither of these books has any cultural significance, and while some Coloradoan might feel nostalgic while flipping through the guide to 1995 Metro Denver, it’s hard to see it getting any real use beyond that.

These are examples of useless books. That is not to say that there is no possible world in which they could be useful: we could construct some far-fetched scenario where, in a post-apocalyptic world, we need to relearn word processing from scratch, or where we are invaded by aliens who demand we tell them the hottest Denver restaurants of 1995 or be destroyed. But for all practical purposes, no one today is going to get much use out of these books. AI companies can, on the other hand, make use of useless books: all data is good data for a large language model so long as it is novel. So maybe there is one use for useless books after all, and if they need to be destroyed in the process, then it’s really no big loss.

Should we rethink our reactions to the destruction of old books, taking comfort in the knowledge that they can slightly increase the valuation of whatever company chooses to destroy them? I think the answer is: “no.” Useless books are worth saving not because they’re useful, but because destroying them is vicious.

A couple of clarifications. First, the kind of destruction we’re talking about is really more of an annihilation: the trend in sales of used books involves books that are uncommon or rare, such that there is a real possibility that a destroyed book will be the last of its kind. This kind of destruction seems much more egregious than, say, a library or bookstore discarding copies of pulp fiction because very few people want to read them (although we still might balk at the thought of those books being de-spined).

Second, when we talk about an act being “vicious,” we typically do so in a moral sense. But we can also speak of acting in an epistemically vicious way. Just as a moral vice is a kind of trait that leads people to do morally bad things or obstruct the actions of the morally good and just, epistemic vices are those that intentionally obstruct the acquisition or sharing of knowledge. For example, being extremely close-minded is a vice because it prevents you from acquiring new knowledge and ensuring that the beliefs you have are, in fact, true. More overt, physical acts can also be the expression of epistemic vices, such as banning books for overly prudish or dogmatic reasons, sowing distrust in experts on the basis of ideological differences, and, of course, destroying books.

The destruction of an uncommon or rare book is vicious, then, because such destruction prevents the knowledge contained in that book from being accessed by anyone else. When it comes to useless books, the usefulness is moot: How to Use Corel WordPerfect 1991 still contains information that can be known, and so by purposefully destroying one of the few remaining copies, AI companies are preventing others from acquiring that knowledge.

Might we think, though, that in using the content of old books, AI companies preserve the information they contain by using them to train their LLMs? After all, after feeding all those delicious tokens contained in an old book into the insatiable maw of an LLM, a user may then be able to better get information about outdated word processing programs or, at the very least, have better conversations with their chatbots.

However, even if an LLM does end up preserving esoteric knowledge through the destruction of old books, this is incidental to their main goal, which is to acquire more information about the statistical relationships between parts of words. It would be like saying that in using a copy of The Bell Jar to wallpaper my living room, I am preserving a great work of literature because you could, technically, still read it if you came over to visit: I wanted the book for the paper it was printed on, not for the work itself.

There is also reason to think that AI companies are acting in other epistemically vicious ways that go beyond the physical destruction of books. As Alex Reisner at The Atlantic argues, using books to train LLMs “masks the hard work and collaboration that goes into knowledge creation, undermines incentives for authors to write books, prevents experts from finding one another, and gives AI companies tremendous power over what information people can access.” These are consequences that occur regardless of the usefulness of the books involved: the destruction of The Insider’s Guide to Metro Denver from 1995 is vicious not necessarily because of the potential loss of knowledge about Denver from over 30 years ago, but because it is an intentional act that undermines knowledge creation and sharing.

So, what should we do with all those old, useless books, gathering dust in used bookstores? Bookstore owners might still have other, practical reasons to sell their books to AI companies, even at the cost of feeding an epistemic vice. This is, perhaps, why bookstore owners are so conflicted: when practical and epistemic values conflict, it’s not always easy to determine how to determine the right course of action. But those acting most viciously are clearly the AI companies: destroying uncommon books for the sake of training LLMs has practical benefits to the company at the cost of knowledge for everyone else. While few will likely lament the unavailability of useless books, destroying them still comes at a cost.

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FIFA, Gianni Infantino, and the Character of Leaders

Gianni Infantino, the president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), is facing an approval crisis. His position is currently safe, following an expression of “full support” from the organization’s leadership after an emergency meeting. However, member organizations have recently begun to express serious discontent with his tenure, posing a significant issue for him.

The blowback escalated following two incidents this summer. In late June, FIFA unveiled the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), an organization that would enable investors to purchase stakes in the World Cup and other FIFA organized tournaments. This came after the suspension of a red card against the United States’ Florian Balogun which would have seen the striker banned from participating in a World Cup elimination match against Belgium. This, in turn, occurred after a phone call between Infantino and  inaugural FIFA Peace Prize recipient President Donald Trump, which Trump claims influenced the final decision. Infantino’s tenure has also been marred by other controversies, such as Infantino’s personal involvement in FIFA’s extraordinary efforts to award Saudi Arabia with the 2034 World Cup, and the introduction of mandatory hydration breaks in all matches at the 2026 tournament, a practice previously reserved for matches in extraordinary heat.

After the FFE announcement, continental confederations made their discontent clear. The 41 member nations of CONCACAF, the body governing Caribbean, North and Central American soccer, rejected the FFE proposal. UEFA, the European confederation, has threatened to boycott all FIFA organized tournaments even after FIFA withdrew the FFE proposal. UEFA, CONCACAF, and the Asian Football Confederation have also released a joint statement describing the inadequacies of an apology for the FFE proposal and characterizing FIFA leadership as violating their duties by breaking trust through deception.

Why exactly is there an outcry against Infantino for these actions? FIFA’s revenue has grown significantly, more than doubling since Infantino’s tenure began in 2016. FIFA operates as a not-for-profit, and thus their internal budgets see them spending these profits on organizing future tournaments, awarding prize money to international teams, and investmenting in growing the game. So, presumably, these increased profits work their way back to the member organizations.

But one might worry that these increased profits come at a cost. For instance, FIFA had a financial incentive in overturning Balogun’s aforementioned red card; more than 50 million viewers in the U.S. tuned in for the match and presumably a significant win on home soil would have created even further interest in the sport in a wealthy nation that often ignores the game. It may be that FIFA leadership were more interested in maximizing the U.S.’s chances of winning than consistently following the rules of the tournament. This concern with profits over competitive fairness is deeply troubling for a group that organizes international tournaments.

Further, even if the concern about competitive fairness is overblown, FIFA’s profit-seeking behavior may be seen as excessive. In a July statement, UEFA officials wrote that “The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product… No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale.” Obviously, the World Cup is already an incredibly profitable event; FIFA took in about $15 million in revenue from this summer’s tournament (by comparison, the host cities likely saw significantly less revenue). But the concern expressed here seems to be that, when the goal of the tournament becomes maximizing profits, as becomes the case when investors are involved, the game transforms into something else.

This is an issue of commodification (discussed in other contexts here, here and here), the process of turning a valuable thing into a commodity, something whose value is measured in monetary terms. The notion here appears to be that, although sports are massively profitable, they are not merely products. There’s a certain value to sports, whether competing in observing them, beyond the revenue generated. Particularly for large-scale international events, like the World Cup or the Olympics, there’s something to be said for how they capture the attention and imagination of the global community. When investors are invited to purchase shares in such an event and in turn seek to maximize their returns, as with other instances of commodification, something about the event’s value is lost. Thus, by seeking to invite investors to purchase stakes in the World Cup, leadership at FIFA may have diminished this kind of incalculable value of the event by turning it into a mere tool to generate profit.

Although these concerns about FIFA leadership are compelling, I think they are best understood as sharing a similar root concern. To see this, it is fitting to turn to Confucianism. As discussed by other authors at the Post, Confucianism is a wisdom tradition with its roots in classical China. Although often lumped in with religious traditions in the West, Confucianism is a secular tradition (in the Analects, Confucius instructs rulers to first worry about serving people, and that keeping a distance from spirits is wise) primarily concerned with human virtue.

Of particular importance to Confucians is the moral character of a society’s leaders. Adherents of this tradition believed that wise, compassionate rulers would create a harmonious society and model their virtues for the populous. The Confucian sage Mengzi went so far as to refer to leaders as the mother and father of the people. Conversely, though, Confucians believe that when society is ruled by the vicious, this will trickle down to the rest of us, creating a disharmonious and self-interested society. The fish rots from the head down, as the expression goes.

It seems to me that Confucianism is well-equipped to explain the concerns with FIFA leadership in a fashion that captures both objections. In short, the organization as led by Infantino seems to lack the right sort of moral character. The decisions which seek to maximize profit demonstrate a lack of reverence, treating the value of the game as a function of its monetary output. Further, in demonstrating a willingness to award the World Cup to host nations with spotty records on democracy and human rights – Russia in 2018, Qatar in 2022, Saudi Arabia in 2036 – they are willing to transgress against other values as well. In their emphasis on growing the profitability of their tournament, FIFA leadership demonstrates the kind of character that Confucianism cautions us against.

But why apply Confucianism to this case? Historically, Confucians were concerned about societal rulers; kings, emperors, and others who led nations. The head of a sporting organization hardly seems like the kind of figure with this sort of power to reshape societies in the way that a ruler might.

Focusing on virtue through the lens of Confucianism is particularly appropriate here, I contend, because this framework is well-equipped to capture how even the leaders of organizations without political power can reshape societies by serving as models. Whether they are the heads of state, international organizations, or just local groups, the character we are willing to accept in leaders sends a signal: this is what we find laudable, these are the standards we expect everyone to follow, these are our values.

For this reason, it is appropriate to scrutinize the character of any leader and consider the broader impacts of the message we send. Certainly, competency is an important quality of leadership – it would be a fool’s errand to judge our leaders based simply on their character. But to wholly forsake character for competence may create even worse problems than those for which we currently seek leaders to resolve.

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What Public Bathrooms Can Teach Us About Justice

One of the criticisms that is often thrown at philosophy, and by extension philosophers, is that it spends too long on abstract issues that, at the end of the day, have little impact on the “real world.’” For example, in a Nerdist podcast, Neil deGrasse Tyson suggested philosophy is a useless pursuit that distracts from the questions with which we should concern ourselves today. He thinks, unsurprisingly, that science is where the intellectual action is. Similar perspectives on the “queen of the sciences” as Kant called it (although to be fair, he was talking just about metaphysics) have been expressed by Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, and, perhaps surprisingly, Thomas Hobbes. Indeed, it is not uncommon for those who study philosophy to regularly be faced with the question “why?”

And, if I’m being honest here, I get it. As someone who has made a career doing philosophy, I sometimes look at the work to which philosophy lays its claim and think what the point of that is. If I’m being really honest, I struggle to grasp the point of metaphysics at times. While I enjoyed thinking about the problem of universals when I studied metaphysics at undergrad, it never struck me as something that would be helpful in life or had too much value beyond mere mental mastication.

It should come as no surprise then that my first philosophical love, and the one with which I am still enamored, is ethics. Normative and metaethical questions – how we should behave and why, how we know what right is, how it differs from wrong – are to me the best of philosophical traditions. It is also this area that I think has the easiest job of bringing those skeptical of philosophy’s value on board. It can be hard to demonstrate the value of the substantivalism (space exists independent of the objects within it) versus relationalism (space only exists as a relation between objects) debate to the average Joe on the street. But, if you ask them whether abortion should be criminalized, whether torture is permissible, whether they should help others at a cost to themselves, or simply whether they think they lead a good life, then, my intuition and experience tell me, it is far more interesting for them. They can more easily see the value of such study and contemplation.

It is this aspect of philosophy, to be action-guiding not just on the grandest scales but also the personal and practical ones, that I find most engaging. It is also in those aspects that I spend most of my time thinking and writing about; hence why I’m a bioethicist and why I like, or at least am unable to stop, thinking about philosophy as I go about my life. And, as a true standard bearer for grounded and applicable philosophy, I think it works its way down to the humblest and, for lack of a better word, messiest areas of life.

It is with all this in mind, the idea that philosophy should go where the people are and be embedded in the very real aspects of how we live our lives, that I want to talk about something which, although I have no evidence, I am willing to hazard a guess, doesn’t get talked much about in academic or public philosophy: public bathrooms.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: we talk about bathrooms all the time, specifically when discussing who and who does not get to use which bathrooms. And you’re right, that aspect of the discussion is well trodden, although not done well, in the public arena. But I want to turn our gaze not to the bathroom’s use but to its existence and its maintenance.

The reason for this is rather simple. I travel a lot. Thus, I tend to use public bathrooms. About a week ago, I was in Bristol Temple Meads station and needed to use the facilities. While in there, as with any busy train station, many people were coming and going. There was also a member of the station facilities team working hard and cleaning the bathroom. And as I was washing my hands, it struck me that this individual was getting a raw deal. They had the not-so-enviable job of cleaning up the messes of other people, and I’m assuming, if you’ve ever been in a public bathroom and know what state they can sometimes become, they were not getting paid enough to do so.

What’s more, there is an echo of the tragedy of the commons about the situation. Public toilets are a public good. However, their use deteriorates them. Thus, without continual maintenance, cleaning, and resupplying, that public good will eventually become depleted. This ruins that good for all.

This then started me thinking about a more just system. After all, the work of cleaning the bathroom needs to be done. If not, then the only option would be to leave the public toilet to fester or shut it, neither of which is viable in a busy train station. So, if we assume that it is not fair for those who have not made the mess in the bathroom to be expected to clear it up, even when they are financially compensated to do so, how might this be done better? It was then, as is so often, that John Harris’s work came to mind, and specifically, his 1975 essay The Survival Lottery.

In that work, Harris proposes that if organ transplantation becomes a perfect science where organs will save lives if transplanted, then we should collectively, as a society, implement a lottery which randomly selects healthy people from the populace and kills them so that we may then harvest their organs. This would then enable us to save the lives of two or more people, as well as improve the lives of many others. In other words, it is a simple numbers game: we sacrifice one person at random to save the lives of more than one person; thus reducing the net loss of life. Harris argues that, while the possibility of being selected would itself be a harm, this would be outweighed not just by the benefit gained from easy access to organs, but by the likelihood of actually being selected being so small as to be next to non-existent. Sure, we would live with the stress of possibly dying at some point; but that’s a stress that we already have in our daily lives.

Now, I suspect Harris was not serious in his suggestion. My intuition is that he suggested this as a means of highlighting an uncomfortably vague line between killing someone and letting them die. However, the premise itself – that a lottery can be a useful, perhaps even just, method of reassigning responsibility, and that a broader communal resource pool provides great benefit – strikes me as having something to it. For Harris, that communal resource was organs and the good they provide when available to those that need them for transplant. For me, I’ve been wondering, continue to wonder, and will likely continue to do so going forward, whether public toilets are comparable. Should there be a lottery for their upkeep?

The process would be rather simple. Each use of a public bathroom enters you in a lottery; if you’re selected at that moment, it is your turn to clean the bathroom. The chance of being selected would increase in relation to the condition of the toilet at the point of use. The dirtier the toilet, the greater the likelihood that someone would be selected. Ultimately, however, the chance of being selected, given how many people use public toilets each day, would be small. Much like with Harris’ organ suggestion, the risk to the individual remains low.

Of course, there are obvious objections. First, there is the practical problem. Many would rather miss their train than be informed that they’ve been selected to spend however long it would take to scrub a station lavatory sufficiently. Even if one were to accept the fairness of the arrangement in principle, and they need not, many would refuse. Any public authority attempting to implement such a lottery would almost instantly discover that civil disobedience becomes common.

There is also a deeper philosophical concern. Although lotteries distribute burdens impartially, they do not necessarily distribute them justly. Imagine two people. One uses public toilets several times a day because they work as a delivery driver and are constantly on the move. Another works from home and only occasionally ventures into public spaces. It seems strange that both might face an identical burden of being selected simply because they happened to enter a toilet at a particular moment. Fairness is not always the same thing as randomness.

Yet before we dismiss the idea entirely, it is worth considering why it feels so outrageous. The answer, I suspect, is that the proposal makes visible something that normally remains hidden. Public toilets do not remain clean by magic. Platforms do not remain swept, bins do not empty themselves, and hospital wards do not somehow reset overnight into a sanitary condition. Societies depend upon enormous amounts of maintenance work. Much of that work is physically demanding, poorly rewarded, socially invisible, or, most likely, all three and many more.

Political philosophers have increasingly directed attention towards what is sometimes called the ethics of maintenance. While we find acts of creation, innovation, and leadership captivating, far less attention is paid to the labor required simply to keep things functioning. We celebrate the architect who designs the building rather than the cleaner who keeps it usable. We applaud the politician who establishes a public service rather than the people who make sure it continues to operate day after day.

Across several works, such as Who Cares?, John Tronto argues that care is not simply a private virtue but a central political activity. Societies function because people engage in the often-unnoticed work of caring for others and maintaining shared institutions. And while Tronto is primarily interested in caregiving relationships, the insight generalizes quite neatly to public infrastructure. Clean toilets, as well as safe streets, public parks, libraries, and transport systems all rely on forms of maintenance labor that are easy to overlook precisely because they are successful. When things work, we normally don’t notice the work being done.

Like Harris’ survival lottery, the toilet lottery functions not as a serious proposal, although I would be interested to see if it might. Rather, its function is to force us to notice an otherwise unnoticed reality. It asks us to imagine that the burden of maintenance might directly fall on us rather than on a largely invisible workforce. The horror you may experience at this prospect, I think, reveals less about the absurdity of the proposal and more about our assumptions regarding who ought to perform such labor.

Ordinarily, we solve this problem by assigning maintenance responsibilities to particular people and compensating them for their work. This may be preferable to a lottery. Most of us possess neither the skills nor the inclination required to maintain public facilities effectively. A randomly selected member of the public is unlikely to outperform a trained facilities worker. Nevertheless, the idea has, hopefully, got you thinking. It has exposed just how dependent we are on forms of labor that disappear from view the moment they are done well.

This, I think, brings us back to the beginning.

One of the common criticisms of philosophy is that it concerns itself with questions too abstract to matter in ordinary life. Fair enough. Yet philosophy, when it’s at its best, does not remove us from everyday experience but grounds us in it.

A public bathroom at a railway station is about as everyday as one can imagine. It is certainly not where most people expect to stumble upon a philosophical problem. Yet standing in Bristol Temple Meads, watching somebody quietly clean up after hundreds of strangers, that’s what happened. I found myself thinking about justice, responsibility, labor, public goods, and the often-invisible work on which social life depends; none of which are abstract in the slightest.

So, next time you use a public bathroom, perhaps it is worth pausing for a moment to acknowledge that the facility exists at all, that its continued usefulness depends upon somebody else’s contributions, and that many forms of work sustain the benefits we enjoy every day and rarely notice because they are done well. If nothing else, the toilet lottery may serve as a reminder that philosophical questions are not confined to seminar rooms, journal articles, or thought experiments involving runaway trolleys. Sometimes they are lurking in the most mundane corners of everyday life.

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Let’s Get Critical: Part II

In Part I, I offered a reasonable definition of critical thinking. If we accept this as a good starting place, we can proceed to the next question I asked: why should we want to develop the ability to think this way in the first place?

We can take a page out of Aristotle’s book (specifically this one), and assume the value will be intrinsic, instrumental, or both. If the value of critical thinking is intrinsic, then something about this skill is good all on its own, even if it gets us nothing beyond the ability to exercise it. If the value of this skill is instrumental, it is good because of something else that it allows us to do or get. If both, then it is a combination of these two.

I think there is a case to be made for the combination answer: that this skill is good because it helps lead us to other desirable ends, and also because, even if it did not, there is something worthy in being able to exercise this human skill (perhaps it is aesthetically valuable). However, I will primarily focus on explaining what I take to be some of the most compelling, instrumentally valuable elements of knowing how to analyze, conceptualize, and problematize using the power of one’s own mind.

Doing the Right Thing

As I have been investigating this skill, I have continually named it as critical thought, though we could also call it by another name: rationality. I will not pick apart the differences between these two here, as I am assuming there is enough overlap between them to make the point.

Immanuel Kant asked a similar question in his famous work, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. He wanted to know what, if anything, rationality was for. He points out that it could be for ensuring our survival, though it is clear that plants and many animals survive just fine without it, so this is unlikely to be exclusively for this purpose. He also suggests that it could be used in service of providing us with a happy life, but this he also dismisses. He argues that many of us might actually be happier if we were slightly less rational; he may be onto something here, though I will try to offer some reasons why critical thinking may be useful for this as well. In the end, Kant decides the ultimate function of rationality is to discern right from wrong; i.e., rationality is for morality.

If Kant is right about this and the similarities between critical thinking and rational thinking hold, we have our first answer. Developing the skill is, for Kant at least, necessary for knowing right from wrong (indeed, Kant thought rationality and moral action were identical). Whether it actually makes us act rightly is another question, but if you have even the slightest inclination to do the right thing, then you should want to practice careful, critical thinking.

Living a Good Life

Many of us want things out of life. We want to live a good life, a happy life, a fulfilled life. We want to pursue a large variety of ends: we want careers, we want to secure a pleasant retirement, we want to have romantic partners, build families, have friends, pursue pleasant and interesting activities, help others, fight for what is right, and ultimately live out some version of the good life.

Unfortunately, none of this is given to us. We must exert effort in our lives to create this reality for ourselves. A good life doesn’t just happen; one must cultivate it. This is a long-standing realization within the philosophical community, and we have been trying to figure out just how to do so since we started writing our thoughts down. One thing that many of us hope is that the careful cultivation of our cognitive capacities may be helpful toward achieving a good life.

To see clearly where the skill of careful thought may be of use in living a good life, we can imagine the opposite case: someone who does not exercise this capacity. The quintessentially thoughtless person lets the world decide for them, perhaps their parents, their friends, or their society. So, they engage in recreation that others have decided is fun, they get a degree that others decided was right for them, they get a job in a field that others decided would be lucrative or fulfilling for them, they vote for politicians that others have praised, they support causes that others have set up as worth fighting for, and in general, they do not stop to ask what they think about all of these choices. This person may find themselves very quickly in the middle of a midlife crisis and they may ask themselves, “well, how did I get here?”

This is not to undermine the importance of social and communal life; there is great value in liking what others like and making choices that are prosocial. Rather, it is to point out that the risk of thoughtlessness is the risk of losing one’s sense of agency and the ability to engage meaningfully in the cultivation of one’s own life.

Being an Informed Citizen

Without getting into the why of it all, we can take as a given that all of us are born into and must navigate political society. Here is where the skill of analytical and critical thinking can be seen as worth developing for oneself.

As I have argued elsewhere, most political ideologies must confront the question of violence. While it is true that a great deal of our sociopolitical life is mundane — filling out forms, standing in line, paying taxes — it rests on a delicate and risky foundation because political power entails the power to control others with coercion. Even the most moderately informed person knows that the history of the world is filled with serious stakes, and it requires a massive collective effort to create conditions of peace and justice.

Enter the skill we have been analyzing. In order to know what kind of society you are in — is it a just or unjust society, and what should be done about it either way? — you need to be able to think for yourself. So, we can return now to our imaginary opponent from part I, the AI extremist, who asks us to let go of the hard work of critical analysis. Why should we hold on to this ancient human art form when the bots are now able to produce analytical and critical analysis for us? Why can we not just ask the bots, for instance, “Is my society just?”

In order to understand why we would never want to let go of this skill, we need to acknowledge that justice exists on a spectrum. No society is perfectly just and even if one could imagine maximizing justice in one’s social order, human fallibility all but ensures that justice will fluctuate. Justice is ultimately an ongoing, never ending project.

Acknowledging the imperfect nature of human societies implies something else, namely that the systems we create and deploy will also fluctuate on the spectrum of justice. AI systems are particularly susceptible to these fluctuations for a few reasons: (1) they are being integrated into information systems used by billions of people, (2) they are being integrated into various levels of society’s basic structure and government, and (3) we so far do not have a way to perfectly prevent AI from lying, making mistakes, being manipulated, or going rogue.

With these points in mind, we can ask whether it is prudent to give up our rational powers and defer to the answers and reasons offered by an AI system. If you ask the AI “Is our society just?” and it says yes, you can also ask it why it thinks so. It may offer a seemingly sophisticated set of justifications that might satisfy you and these justifications may even be good ones. But, given the fragility of justice, without a way for you to personally assess the answers and reasons given by an AI system you are vulnerable to a serious political threat. Alan Moore articulates this problem well in Watchmen with the graffitied protest slogan “Who watches the Watchmen?”

On the matter of being an informed citizen, it is only in the most utopic society where one might even consider abandoning the power of their mind. But in most of the realities we can imagine, this skill is of the utmost importance if one values things like truth, freedom, and justice.

While this list of reasons is also incomplete, we now have a partial answer to our second question and we can more confidently say why we must hold fast against any forces that threaten to take this most human of skills away from us, lest we fall into an inhuman slumber.

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Let’s Get Critical: Part I

Long before a gaggle of chatbots began to creep in on academia’s professional turf, humanities professors have been extolling the virtues of learning the humanities because it teaches, among other things, the skill of critical thinking.

Now that AI is being advertised to students as a study aid, private tutor, or (unabashedly) a way to cheat on everything, we are all frantically trying to figure out what it is we can offer students. The answer? Critical thinking. It’s always been a part of our sales pitch, but now with renewed vigor.

We can split the claim that AI is unhelpful for critical thinking into two parts. First, while AI can provide all kinds of output, it cannot think critically for us. If you want to turn in an assignment, or create a presentation for your new boss, AI can do that for you; if you want to create critical thoughts in your own mind, it cannot. Second, AI will always be biased, either because its training data is biased, or because its output must always be aligned with the business aims of the companies that create it.

Of course, we can challenge both of these claims. First, while AI cannot think critically for us, there are plenty of clever ways to engage with it to practice critical thinking. For instance, you can write an argument, feed the argument to AI, and then ask it to critique your argument. You can then edit your writing and repeat the process. For the truly curious, AI chatbots can be intellectual sparring companions. Second, while AI output must in some way be aligned with the values of the company that creates the system, maybe it can still produce some kind of critical output. Just ask Claude to critically analyze its last response and it will produce something that, at least on the surface, looks critical.

All this attention on critical thinking and AI’s potential impact on it has got me thinking. What precisely is critical thinking? And what’s it good for anyway? In this two-part series, I will offer an answer to both of these questions. Let’s start with the first question.

Critical thinking is a skill.

This claim is central to the rest of my analysis. By labeling critical thinking a skill, I do not mean to say it is only a skill; for instance, it may also be a natural ability, something that some people can engage in more naturally than others. All I mean here by claiming that it is a skill is that it can be improved with practice. Furthermore, it seems to be like other skills in that you can lose proficiency if you stop practicing. This is one of the great fears that the AI boom has ushered in; if the bots are thinking for us, our minds might atrophy and we might lose crucial skills like the ability to hold those in positions of power accountable.

Critical thinking is a kind of optimistic thinking.

I do not want to make the claim that all critical thinking is inherently optimistic. Some people who practice critical thinking are genuinely pessimistic. However, when I think about my own use of critical thinking, I spend most of my critical energy thinking about what is wrong with systems that are genuinely important for humanity, e.g., systems of government and informational technologies. I do this not because I enjoy noticing the horrors of our collective social life, but because I think it is possible to imagine a better way forward.

Being critical is, when done well, a hopeful practice. It takes some effort to remember this because being critical is often depressing; it requires spending a lot of time analyzing something and noticing all of the problems it has. This is both emotionally and intellectually draining and can leave you wondering: what is the point of doing anything? But if you keep an optimistic wind in your sails, the skill of critical thinking can be a positive force.

Critical thinking is a macro-skill.

Critical thinking is the culmination of several other skills working together. While likely incomplete, here is a short list of the sub-skills involved:

Sustained attention. In order to be critical about something — an idea, an argument, an action, a person, a company, a state, a religion — you need to be able to focus on it. You need to be able to witness it long enough to understand what, if anything, is criticizable about it. Without sustained attention, you cannot be critical.

Suspension of judgment. Neil Postman articulates this point nicely in Amusing Ourselves to Death when he talks about the skills required for reading. In order to read well, you need to be able to wait on drawing a final conclusion until you finish the written work. This is true of being critical as well (a point that Postman is perfectly well aware of). When I am being critical of something, I need to take in enough of whatever it is I am being critical of before issuing my judgment.

Clear articulation. Good critical thought needs to be clearly articulated, at the very least to yourself, but insofar as you want your criticism to reach an audience, then to others as well. Whether written or spoken or by some other means, one needs to think about the delivery of their criticism so that it is understood and appreciated by its audience.

Justification. Good criticism ought to be justified criticism. There should be a connection between the criticism, e.g., the choice to enter the war was unconstitutional, and the justification, e.g., the Constitution states that congressional approval is required for war. Understanding whether a criticism is justified requires a lot of thought and effort. You need to think about what kinds of reasons count as good reasons, not just for you but for your audience as well.

Imagination. One of the cornerstones of good criticism is imagination. You need to turn the object of potential criticism around, over and over again, to find the cracks. It often requires wandering down strange corridors of the mind to discover a critical point about something.

These sub-skills each require practice, which makes the art of critical thinking a challenging skill to master. As you practice, you may find some components easier to develop than others.

Critical thinking poses a question.

Finally, behind the act of thinking critically we will always find a question. For instance, when the state passes a law, the critical mind awakens. Who does this law benefit? Who does it harm? Who wrote this law and for what purpose? What lobbyists were involved? What are the intended consequences of this law? Are those intended consequences just? What are the unintended consequences of this law? Are those likely? Are they desirable? Was the process through which the law was written and passed fair? What standard of fairness are we using? Is that measure a good one? Will this law be easy to repeal if we learn the consequences are deleterious to social harmony? Did we need this law at all? Could we solve the problem without getting the government involved? And so the list of questions goes on.

Critical thinking involves answering critical questions. While the content of these questions is as diverse as the topics about which we can be critical, the basic questions that sit beneath them are simply: What is wrong with this thing? What could be improved?

It is easy for the critical mind to become weary and get lost in a sea of possible questions. It is also worth noting that while we can probably be critical of everything if we want, not everything needs to be criticized. If you find yourself outside, enjoying a sea breeze, it may not be the time or place for the critical mind. Asking the question what is wrong or what could be improved misses the point of enjoying a sea breeze. Sometimes the right thing to do is just to be.

This brings us to the fact that this is a skill that needs to be practiced and cultivated with care. Having good mentors helps, but in the end one often needs to work out for themselves how to get their own mind in the critical spirit at the right time and place and in the right way. This takes lots of practice and a lot of trial and error.

While this is an incomplete account of what the skill of critical thinking is, I think it is a reasonable starting place. But this only answers the first question. What about the second? What is the value of this skill anyway? What do we say to the skeptic, who thinks the critical spirit is a waste of time? Now that the AI revolution is upon us, they say, just relax and ask your personalized AI assistant what to think. Why should you want to know how to do this for yourself? I will offer an answer to this in Part II.