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Satan's slipstream or the good in evil

Haji 2003

Entry posted by Haji 2003 in Ethics

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[Originally posted in 2021, updated with a summary and small corrections. Further additions in 2024, with references to Oppenheimer and supporting quotations.]

Summary

Good people can focus on doing good. Bad people who are motivated by the nafs can be told of the harms in engaging in it, but it's likely that they will persist. Sometimes however evil leads to some positive outcomes - good people can benefit from these, while still maintaining the wrongfulness of the initial action. 

The slipstream

Where you have two runners or cars, for example, the runner/car who is second benefits from the slipstream of the person in front. The slipstream refers to their meeting less air resistance due to the air being pushed to the side by the person/car in front.

I still remember a Goldman Sachs report from around 2000 which predicted that the technology for streaming videos would initially be funded by the purveyors of porn - which is where the money was.

Once online video streaming became mainstream, it was used by others, e.g., to educate others, pass on useful instructions to others, and even disseminate religious knowledge. Islamic scholars don't deny the use of such streaming technology because of its antecedents.

It is said that Robert Oppenheimer lived with the guilt of his atomic bomb being used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Quote

Although he was an eloquent and careful speaker, he never apologized for the bombings of Japan, nor did he express personal shame about his role in it. Nevertheless, all of his actions and policies post-1945 reflect those of a deeply guilty man, very aware of the consequences of his actions.”

https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/did-oppenheimer-ever-apologize-for-the-atomic-bomb

 

But there was also a spin-off benefit for the rest of us:

Quote

The need to protect the Manhattan Project workers soon gave rise to a new discipline, called health physics, which sought to understand radiation effects and monitor and protect nuclear worker health and safety. The Project was soon inundated with data from radiation-detection instruments, blood and urine samples, and physical exams. The "clinical study of the personnel," Robert Stone wrote in 1943, "is one vast experiment. Never before has so large a collection of individuals been exposed to so much radiation."

https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/achre/final/intro_3.html

 

When evil leads to good

We can see similar examples where evil people inspired and motivated by greed or domination go on to do things that can then be used by good people for better ends. Some medical advances in the 20th century (which we all use today) can be attributed to the evil of the Nazis

Quote

Despite the horrible circumstances under which the Nazi experiments were conducted, some results are scientifically reliable enough to contribute to saving lives today. For example, [Dr. Sigmund] Rascher discovered a “rapid active rewarming” technique to resuscitate frozen victims and showed it to be the best method of revival. He also published comprehensive tables of rates of body cooling in water down to temperatures well below those that could now be studied in ethical research. These tables are very useful when designing cold-water survival suits worn on fishing boats in Arctic waters.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/is-it-acceptable-to-use-data-from-nazi-medical-experiments-1.4388509

 

and the NASA space programme was a prime beneficiary of Nazi developments in rocketry.

Quote

Dr. Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) was a member of an SS equestrian unit in 1933–34, joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and became a junior SS officer in 1940. He surrendered to the Americans in the Austrian Alps, along with other key team leaders. For 15 years after World War II, Von Braun worked with the U.S. Army in the development of guided missiles. ... von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel Americans to the Moon. 

https://www.nasa.gov/people/wernher-von-braun/

 

An historical precedent

I think an early example of bad people doing things with positive consequences is Khalid ibn al-Walid's initial foray into Persia followed by Umar ibn Khattab's conquest of the country.

and the evil-doers acted out of free will

Indeed, if there are people who, despite information to the contrary, are willing to undertake tasks that contravene moral/ethical scruples - then who are we to complain? No one held a gun to their heads to force them to take those actions. They acted out of free will. If their actions have unintended benefits for others who can put those achievements to good use - that's a gain courtesy of Satan.

It's not just good and evil...

At the moment there are various technologies that are problematic for Muslims e.g. using pigs for human transplantation. But these are only a point along the development journey to having similar technology being used without pigs. So the current work of non-Muslims has the potential for future Muslim benefit.

A personal insight

In the financial markets there are various financial instruments that to my understanding are haram. Spreadbets involve paying interest to a financial intermediary in order to buy far larger quantities of shares (or other commodity) than one could afford with ones own capital. The 'bet' is that the investment will rise and enable the investor to walk away with a much larger return than would have been possible without the leverage provided by the spread betting company. This type of investing can cause harm to the individuals practising it, because losses can be greater than the amounts invested and it can lead to greater volatility in the markets themselves. Knowing that some shares are popular with small investors using spread bets means that other investors may consider it wise to sell when shares are peaking (because leveraged investors are buying) and to buy when they collapse because leveraged investors have had their trades closed. What is wrong behaviour by market participants can therefore create an opportunity for those who are prepared to play the long game.

Yet it could be argued that a capitalist system that encourages such a speculative mentality has enabled the funnelling of trillions of dollars across the world towards the development of e.g. internet technology that may otherwise not have happened or it would have happened at a much slower pace.

For Muslims then, there needs to be a recognition that what is happening around them may well be beneficial in the long-run, but in the short-run there may be practices that are wrong and in which they should not partake.

Individuals and societies

This works at both the level of the individual and that of societies. The latter may well achieve great accomplishments, while still being 'bad', and there are historical examples of societies being much more advanced than others of their time in technological and scientific terms, but still undertaking evil cultural practices. Any scientific knowledge that they passed on would still have been valuable.

Today there can be a tendency of those who have made technological gains to ascribe these to their cultural norms and values - which Muslims may consider to be wrong from an ethical perspective. The ideology of their cultures may or may not have facilitated the advancement - but it does not validate the the ethics of their ideology. For example communism brought a large section of Eastern Europe and Western Asia out of the feudal age and arguably enabled the world to beat Nazism - but does that endorse Communists' correctness of mass collectivisation and the stamping out of religion? No it does not.

a. Communism

Communism is an interesting ideology that shows how it is possible to achieve success for a limited period of time, but to ultimately lose out in the war of longevity. Individuals who subscribed to Marxism were wrong. The whole society was bad. But while condemning both, we can walk away with the benefits they left us with.

b. European slavery system

There was a whole ideology underpinning this purely evil practice. Argued by some to be based on a reading of the Bible that held black people to be sub-human and treated as property*, the system enabled the development of cash crops in the Americas and provided the foundation of modern consumer societies. Ultimately it came to be seen for the evil that it was.

What Egyptians, Communism, Nazism and the European slavery system of the 19th century and other ideologies have in common is that they are now defunct. They enabled progress to be made in some areas, but in the long term they offered no solutions to address human needs.

The lessons for Muslims (starting with Pharoah's wife) has simply been to hang around in order to pick up the pieces and ensure that our ideology persists and outlasts the next round of evil-doers.

In an ideal world ...

People would be inspired to innovate, create and advance based purely on the motivations provided by God. But this ideal does not always happen. 

*Muslims have been accused of having slavery systems as well. But those were completely different in terms of both practice and moral implications.

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         1 comment
      [Originally posted in 2021, updated with a summary and small corrections. Further additions in 2024, with references to Oppenheimer and supporting quotations.]
      Summary
      Good people can focus on doing good. Bad people who are motivated by the nafs can be told of the harms in engaging in it, but it's likely that they will persist. Sometimes however evil leads to some positive outcomes - good people can benefit from these, while still maintaining the wrongfulness of the initial action. 
      The slipstream
      Where you have two runners or cars, for example, the runner/car who is second benefits from the slipstream of the person in front. The slipstream refers to their meeting less air resistance due to the air being pushed to the side by the person/car in front.
      I still remember a Goldman Sachs report from around 2000 which predicted that the technology for streaming videos would initially be funded by the purveyors of porn - which is where the money was.
      Once online video streaming became mainstream, it was used by others, e.g., to educate others, pass on useful instructions to others, and even disseminate religious knowledge. Islamic scholars don't deny the use of such streaming technology because of its antecedents.
      It is said that Robert Oppenheimer lived with the guilt of his atomic bomb being used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
      https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/did-oppenheimer-ever-apologize-for-the-atomic-bomb
       
      But there was also a spin-off benefit for the rest of us:
      https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/achre/final/intro_3.html
       
      When evil leads to good
      We can see similar examples where evil people inspired and motivated by greed or domination go on to do things that can then be used by good people for better ends. Some medical advances in the 20th century (which we all use today) can be attributed to the evil of the Nazis
      https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/is-it-acceptable-to-use-data-from-nazi-medical-experiments-1.4388509
       
      and the NASA space programme was a prime beneficiary of Nazi developments in rocketry.
      https://www.nasa.gov/people/wernher-von-braun/
       
      An historical precedent
      I think an early example of bad people doing things with positive consequences is Khalid ibn al-Walid's initial foray into Persia followed by Umar ibn Khattab's conquest of the country.
      and the evil-doers acted out of free will
      Indeed, if there are people who, despite information to the contrary, are willing to undertake tasks that contravene moral/ethical scruples - then who are we to complain? No one held a gun to their heads to force them to take those actions. They acted out of free will. If their actions have unintended benefits for others who can put those achievements to good use - that's a gain courtesy of Satan.
      It's not just good and evil...
      At the moment there are various technologies that are problematic for Muslims e.g. using pigs for human transplantation. But these are only a point along the development journey to having similar technology being used without pigs. So the current work of non-Muslims has the potential for future Muslim benefit.
      A personal insight
      In the financial markets there are various financial instruments that to my understanding are haram. Spreadbets involve paying interest to a financial intermediary in order to buy far larger quantities of shares (or other commodity) than one could afford with ones own capital. The 'bet' is that the investment will rise and enable the investor to walk away with a much larger return than would have been possible without the leverage provided by the spread betting company. This type of investing can cause harm to the individuals practising it, because losses can be greater than the amounts invested and it can lead to greater volatility in the markets themselves. Knowing that some shares are popular with small investors using spread bets means that other investors may consider it wise to sell when shares are peaking (because leveraged investors are buying) and to buy when they collapse because leveraged investors have had their trades closed. What is wrong behaviour by market participants can therefore create an opportunity for those who are prepared to play the long game.
      Yet it could be argued that a capitalist system that encourages such a speculative mentality has enabled the funnelling of trillions of dollars across the world towards the development of e.g. internet technology that may otherwise not have happened or it would have happened at a much slower pace.
      For Muslims then, there needs to be a recognition that what is happening around them may well be beneficial in the long-run, but in the short-run there may be practices that are wrong and in which they should not partake.
      Individuals and societies
      This works at both the level of the individual and that of societies. The latter may well achieve great accomplishments, while still being 'bad', and there are historical examples of societies being much more advanced than others of their time in technological and scientific terms, but still undertaking evil cultural practices. Any scientific knowledge that they passed on would still have been valuable.
      Today there can be a tendency of those who have made technological gains to ascribe these to their cultural norms and values - which Muslims may consider to be wrong from an ethical perspective. The ideology of their cultures may or may not have facilitated the advancement - but it does not validate the the ethics of their ideology. For example communism brought a large section of Eastern Europe and Western Asia out of the feudal age and arguably enabled the world to beat Nazism - but does that endorse Communists' correctness of mass collectivisation and the stamping out of religion? No it does not.
      a. Communism
      Communism is an interesting ideology that shows how it is possible to achieve success for a limited period of time, but to ultimately lose out in the war of longevity. Individuals who subscribed to Marxism were wrong. The whole society was bad. But while condemning both, we can walk away with the benefits they left us with.
      b. European slavery system
      There was a whole ideology underpinning this purely evil practice. Argued by some to be based on a reading of the Bible that held black people to be sub-human and treated as property*, the system enabled the development of cash crops in the Americas and provided the foundation of modern consumer societies. Ultimately it came to be seen for the evil that it was.
      What Egyptians, Communism, Nazism and the European slavery system of the 19th century and other ideologies have in common is that they are now defunct. They enabled progress to be made in some areas, but in the long term they offered no solutions to address human needs.
      The lessons for Muslims (starting with Pharoah's wife) has simply been to hang around in order to pick up the pieces and ensure that our ideology persists and outlasts the next round of evil-doers.
      In an ideal world ...
      People would be inspired to innovate, create and advance based purely on the motivations provided by God. But this ideal does not always happen. 
      *Muslims have been accused of having slavery systems as well. But those were completely different in terms of both practice and moral implications.
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         2 comments
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      Investments in British Property and Economy
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      The assertion that the leaders of these Gulf states were either appointed by Britain or have their tenure supported by Britain touches on the historical reality that many current Gulf monarchies have roots in British colonial or protectorate arrangements. For example, the Al-Saud family in Saudi Arabia and the Al-Thani family in Qatar consolidated power during periods when Britain had significant influence over the Arabian Peninsula. While these leaders are now independent, the historical ties and ongoing strategic partnerships suggest that Britain continues to exert some level of influence, particularly through defense agreements and diplomatic support.
      Continuity of Influence
      The idea that the British Empire "downsized" rather than disappeared reflects the continuity of influence, albeit in a different form. The mechanisms of control and influence have shifted from direct colonial administration to economic dependency, strategic partnerships, and soft power. The British Empire in its classical form may be gone, but the relationships, institutions, and dependencies it created continue to shape international relations and economics in ways that can be seen as a legacy of that empire.
      Counterarguments
      However, it is also important to consider the counterarguments to this proposition. The Gulf states are now sovereign nations with their own complex political dynamics, and their relationship with Britain is one of mutual interest rather than imperial domination. The influence of other global powers, such as the United States and China, also plays a significant role in these regions, which complicates the notion that Britain maintains a unique or dominant position of influence.
      In conclusion, while the British Empire as a formal entity no longer exists, the networks of influence, economic ties, and political relationships established during the imperial period have persisted in ways that benefit the UK. These relationships, particularly with the Arab Gulf states, suggest that Britain's influence did not vanish but instead evolved, leading to a form of continuity that some might argue represents a "downsized" empire.
    • Haji 2003
      Androids and inheritance
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         4 comments
      In this thread there was a half jokey but also serious issue that I raised:
      At some point Muslims will ask whether conjugal relations with androids are allowed and we can predict the answer will be no.
       
      Since I first started that thread a lot has happened and I think it's worth introducing some new variables to the discussion.
      There was a time when men who dressed as women (and vice versa) did so either for humour or if it was in some way related to their sexuality the attempt would seem a bit ridiculous. Nowadays though fantasy can be more readily realised with the aid of technology.
      In a similar vein men who play with dolls (this is serious, stay with me) are faintly creepy and weird. But technology moves on and at some point the dolls will pass for humans. While orthodox Muslims may well be aghast at the idea of relations between us and the androids, clearly this will be considered to be progress amongst some people. They may not currently regard it as such but their ideological progeny will.
      But then another issue will emerge. If someone gains emotional and other forms of support from their android, what if they want to pass on their wealth to the android?
       
      https://www.ft.com/content/b9b78aae-1f32-11e9-a46f-08f9738d6b2b
       
      So while we have had dystopian science fiction prognosticating about robots AI becoming 'self-aware' and stealing the planet from us what if such a loss can happen without such a confrontational dystopia?
      What if large numbers of humans give up on human-to-human relations and instead take up with androids who will never argue back, will always say yes and be physically whatever people want them to be.
      And as a reward for this their human companions leave their possessions to robots?
      It could be that it is selfishness and narcissism that disinherits us and nothing more sinister.

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