Observance of the Commandments, Lesson 8

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I wanted to do today is look from a slightly different angle at what I spoke about the last few times, and this even has one halakhic implication or another. Maybe it’s worth starting with a story from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the story of the turkey prince. The story is well known. A disaster struck the royal household: the king’s son, who until then had been sane and well-mannered, sank into depression and began hallucinating, rolling around under the table and eating off the floor, dragging crumbs and bones he found there, saying that he was a turkey. He decides he’s a turkey. And that wasn’t enough—he also insists on no longer wearing his clothes, claiming that a turkey doesn’t wear clothes. A turkey doesn’t need clothes, so he takes them off, eats crumbs off the floor under the table, and that’s it. This caused the king great distress. I’m reading with a few skips. The king summoned doctors and sages, of course, as in stories, but to no avail. The king’s son stuck to his own line: I am a turkey, and there is nothing strange about my behavior, because all turkeys behave this way. A turkey—perfectly fine. By the way, this actually reminds me—I think I mentioned some time ago the responsum of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. He has a responsum, it appears there in the book. He has a responsum—we learned it together—about who is and who is not sane, who counts as mentally incompetent. So he says there, he presents some claim that if a person is consistent with his assumptions, then he’s not mentally incompetent. It doesn’t matter if he thinks he’s Napoleon or whatever you want, but as long as he acts consistently with his assumptions, then he’s not mentally incompetent. So here too, for example, this turkey fellow is completely—it reminds

[Speaker B] the Rabbi

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] me that Soloveitchik wouldn’t agree, right, a Brisker, yes. So here too, this prince decided he’s a turkey, and a turkey is fine—that’s consistent. That’s what a turkey does. Meaning, he’s without clothes, eating crumbs off the floor under the table, and everything is fine. One day, after all the doctors and sages had long since despaired of curing him, a sage arrived from a distant city and claimed that he would take it upon himself to cure him completely. He was willing to undertake healing him. What did the sage do? He too took off his clothes—yes, that’s a Hasidic repair—he too took off his clothes and sat under the table with the king’s son, and he too began dragging crumbs and bones, with an innocent expression as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The king’s son stared at him in astonishment, and then asked him, who are you and what are you doing here? The sage replied, what are you doing here? I am a turkey, answered the son innocently. I too am a turkey, the sage replied. Fine, so the two of them went on clucking there under the table. A few days passed, even weeks, and the two grew accustomed to one another as they ate together from the same food without wearing any clothes, and a strong bond formed between them. The sage understood that the time had come to begin some real action. He signaled to those around him to throw two shirts under the table, and turning to the king’s son he said: do you really think that a turkey cannot wear a shirt and still remain a turkey? Let’s put on shirts and keep being turkeys. It’s allowed. A turkey can wear a shirt too. And so the two of them put on shirts. A suitable amount of time passed, the sage signaled, and they threw them trousers to wear, and again, turning to the king’s son, he said: do you think that with trousers you can’t be a turkey? And so, slowly, the king’s son put on one garment after another without any resistance. Again a significant amount of time passed, and the sage signaled to those present to throw them human food from the table, and again he said to the king’s son: do you think that if one eats good food one stops being a turkey? Stops being part of the Jewish people. One can eat it and still remain a turkey. And he ate. After some time, the sage asked the king’s son to sit with him on a chair at the table, and from there it was not many days before he had returned him to the full course of normal life, without the king’s son even sensing that he had become a turkey performing the actions of human beings through and through. That was more or less the story. So the question, of course, is what exactly is the message here? Now, when Breslov Hasidim bring this story, there’s some note there by the copyist. And he says: one may say that this is about a person who wants to draw close to the service of God. And in this way they can little by little draw themselves close to the service of God until they enter it completely. Meaning, he may despair, like—what, how can this be? I can’t do it, I’m not on that level, I’m just a lump of matter, and so on. So slowly, fine, you can’t—then act as if. And after you begin acting as if, little by little you’ll draw close to the service of God. That’s sort of the parable’s meaning. Fine, we may come back to this later, but on the face of it this seems problematic. It seems problematic, first of all because it doesn’t look like he was cured. After all, this king’s son wasn’t really cured, right? He remained sick, or someone who thinks he’s a turkey—except that he performs the actions of a human being. So what, is that a way to cure him?

[Speaker C] Are the hearts drawn after the actions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I don’t know, we’ll see in a moment—I want to get to that too. But on the face of it, it seems that nothing happened. In the end, all you did was bring him to normal behavior, but you didn’t really cure him. The illness wasn’t the behavior. The behavior was the symptom. The illness was that he perceived himself as a turkey. So how can such a thing even count as healing? In psychology there’s what’s called behaviorism, which this is a parable for—behaviorism is a view, there are different nuances, but it’s a view that stands in opposition to psychoanalysis and says that we basically focus on what a person does and not on his subconscious or the psychological systems hidden within him. The extreme among them say that there aren’t any such things at all, that this is all hallucination—Freud’s hallucinations. Meaning, he too apparently needed treatment. And the less extreme ones say maybe there is something called a subconscious, but treatment should be done through “the hearts are drawn after the actions”; treatment should be done through behaviors. Don’t analyze his head. So this is basically a kind of behaviorist treatment. But really, this is hard even for behaviorism itself. Meaning, can behaviorism make do with returning a person to normal behavior? Does that count as healthy? Say, in the extreme formulation. Or not? You might tell me: maybe the hearts are drawn after the actions—but healing is only when the person, the cause of these abnormal behaviors, disappears, not just the behaviors themselves. So there are maybe a few angles here that will sharpen this point, because in truth we encounter this kind of attitude on several planes. A behaviorist attitude—not necessarily to psychology, I mean now in other contexts. Maybe one example, one example brought by John Searle, an American philosopher. When he deals with the difference between a person and a machine—he gave a series of lectures and it came out as a book that was translated into Hebrew too—he brings what is called the Chinese room thought experiment. Fairly well known, I think. It’s somewhat similar to the Turing test. You put a person in a room with two windows, an input and an output window. The person is Israeli, let’s say for the sake of discussion; he doesn’t know a word of Chinese. Fine? And through one window they put in questions written in Chinese. And he has to answer—if not, he gets an electric shock. So fine, he has boxes full of Chinese letters, and he begins sending answers out through the other window. He has no idea what the question means or what the answer means, but he has to—he tries, maybe he’ll manage to answer. When the answer is wrong, he gets another electric shock. And this way, slowly, he begins to understand what kinds of answers one can give to these questions, and slowly, let’s say he has infinite learning time for the sake of discussion, okay? So every time he gets negative feedback when it doesn’t work, and little by little he learns to produce what they expect him to produce. He has no idea what it means, neither the question nor the answer, but somehow he manages to communicate with the person outside through the output window and converse with him in Chinese. And let’s say that after an infinite amount of time, a very very long time, and he’s already gotten all the feedback and has somehow been programmed to produce the relevant answers to the questions he receives.

[Speaker C] Is this also with different questions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, say different combinations—you can learn that. Presumably every question is some combination or another of previous questions. This is just a hypothetical experiment, of course. It’s really like the Turing test, because after he eventually reaches the point of conversing normally in Chinese, now John Searle asks whether he knows Chinese or not. Does he know Chinese? Now, someone who identifies…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a human with a machine should basically answer yes. The man knows Chinese, because that’s also what a machine does. A machine doesn’t have a process of understanding accompanying the conversation it’s conducting with someone. Even a machine that would pass the Turing test—and this is basically a critique of the Turing test—even a machine that would pass the Turing test, it doesn’t matter: it performs technical operations, and you can think as though it’s conversing with you, but conversing is not exchanging words. There has to be some cognitive process standing behind the technical operations. And therefore, even if we say that the person knows Chinese and is carrying on a wonderfully intelligent conversation with you, he is still a machine. Meaning, he still doesn’t understand Chinese at all. There is something in the difference between a person and a machine that no technical operation can cover over. The difference is not technical. Sometimes maybe it has technical expressions—often, not sometimes. But let’s say we managed to cover all the technical differences and make a machine that behaves exactly like a human being—have we created a human being?

[Speaker C] The difference between knowing and understanding. He knows Chinese but he doesn’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even “knows,” I’m not sure I would call such a state that, because there is no cognition there at all, no soul—he performs actions. What does “knows” mean? It’s like there once was—like

[Speaker C] the computer knows how to calculate four plus four.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Knows in that sense, yes.

[Speaker C] So

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like—there was once some article in Haaretz whose science writer was terribly impressed that birds know how to solve differential equations. Meaning, incredible what mathematical ability birds have. I’m really amazed at the mathematical ability of water, how it knows how to solve the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. This is nonsense, a total misunderstanding. What are you so impressed by? Birds do not know how to solve differential equations, and water doesn’t either. What they know how to do is what they are programmed to do, and we build mathematical models that simulate how these things behave. The clever ones here are us—not them. Or the Holy One, blessed be He, who created them. But what does that have to do with them? They don’t know anything. This is a very fundamental misunderstanding, yes.

[Speaker C] In the old days what you’re saying was still nice, but what about artificial intelligence that knows how to teach itself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same thing. It doesn’t know anything either. It’s completely technical, that doesn’t change anything.

[Speaker C] And once there’s no cognition, then

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A piece of iron is always a piece of iron, no matter what. But here there is cognition. So what test is there for cognition?

[Speaker C] That’s exactly the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why everyone falls down on this, because they ask what the test is. There is no test. That’s exactly what I’m trying to claim. There is no test, because tests can never define this, since tests always relate to phenomenology—to how the thing looks, how it functions. But sometimes what you’re trying to capture does not find expression in behavior.

[Speaker C] So how do you determine that that advanced artificial intelligence device might have a soul?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand what it is. That’s it. I don’t know. I have no tests. I can’t put this to an empirically falsifiable test. Meaning, to say I can put to a falsifiability test the claim that this thing is not a human being—that if such and such happens, then it won’t do such and such. If there were such a test, then once again the Turing test would be good. I claim that the Turing test is inherently wrong. Meaning, even a golem that passes the Turing test remains a golem. Except that whoever programmed it was a clever person. A sophisticated golem. Yes, exactly. Meaning, there is something that the scientific mode of thought has trouble grasping. It sounds like a very simple thing, all in all. But the scientific mode of thought that subjects everything to a falsifiability test—that is, I want to see what practical difference it makes, what I would see differently; define these concepts for me in terms of… as the Talmud says, yes, what practical difference does it make, when you raise two sides. So my answer is: a practical difference for betrothing a woman. Meaning, what practical difference does it make that a person—practical difference for betrothing a woman. No practical difference captures this point; that’s exactly the issue. I once brought this Ran, I think, no? The Ran in tractate Sanhedrin, where the Talmud there discusses: “the owners’ death is like the ox’s death.” When they execute an ox, you need a court of twenty-three just as when you execute a person. So the Talmud asks what they did in the case of the ox that went up Mount Sinai. “Neither flock nor herd shall graze facing that mountain”—so they were liable to death; anyone who touched the mountain was liable to death. So the Talmud discusses how many judges sat on the court that judged the Sinai ox. And the Ran there asks: yes, do we learn a temporary ruling from later generations or do we not learn a temporary ruling from later generations? Meaning, was the ox’s execution at that time, which was true for that time, conducted according to the regular halakhic patterns of the Shulchan Arukh, or was it some independent law? So the Ran there asks: what practical difference does it make? By definition this is a question that applied only then and not for later generations, and that time was already thousands of years ago. So what does it matter? What practical difference does it make? So he says there: one reason is to study and receive reward, and the second is that it makes a practical difference for a Nazirite. So if someone vows Nazirite status on condition that the Sinai ox required twenty-three judges, then the question is whether he is a Nazirite or not. So the yeshiva joke about “a practical difference for betrothing a woman” comes from this Ran. Obviously he’s speaking cynically. Meaning, what he’s really saying is: not every question is about practical difference. Sometimes there are important questions, interesting questions, relevant questions, that have no practical difference. Fine, in this case of whether something is a person or a machine, there is some practical difference—how I relate to it. There are moral practical differences. But there is no scientific implication or empirical implication by which I can put this thing to a test in order to decide whether it is a person or not a person. Slaughter. What? Slaughter. I’m saying, there are practical differences. Yes. It’s permitted to eat it if it’s iron.

[Speaker C] It’s permitted to kill it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not even called killing, or it’s permitted to kill—it’s not killing.

[Speaker C] I mean, if a machine that would pass the test

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s permitted to do an act which, if done to a human being, would kill him.

[Speaker C] Yes. That’s what we called monkey action. It’s monkey action.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, it’s a monkey, not monkey action. Meaning, its action is monkey action because it’s a monkey. Even less than a monkey. “Monkey action” is usually

[Speaker C] You know, it’s

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like the difference between a gentile and a full gentile. Do you know the difference? A gentile is a gentile. A full gentile is only a Jew. You never say of a gentile that he is a full gentile. So if you say he’s a full gentile, that’s only about a Jew. “Monkey action” is always said about human actions. When a person does something in a certain way, that’s called monkey action. When a monkey does something, that’s not called monkey action, because obviously he’s a monkey—what else would it be? In any case, this behaviorism, for example here you see, there are people who in complete seriousness—people considered educated of various kinds, Ray Kurzweil and all his gang—are convinced that this really is what’s called a human being: a collection of functions. Meaning, once there is an electronic device that does the same thing and passes the Turing test or John Searle’s Chinese room, then it is a human being. It knows Chinese, it has the rights of a human being, all of it, the obligations of a human being. Meaning, they understand that it is fully a human being. This is not—it sounds very far-fetched, but in today’s discourse on artificial intelligence it’s a very common idea. Yes. I

[Speaker D] already saw some question a long time ago about whether someone who doesn’t know how to read can write phylacteries or Torah scrolls.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that have to do with this?

[Speaker D] Because there’s no awareness? Since there’s only intention, so it’s not a question of intention, but the question is whether, for example, writing—we define it in other terms, in terms maybe specifically connected to some action that has to be something we define as a human action.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you mean someone who isn’t a human being, or a person who doesn’t know how to read?

[Speaker D] He doesn’t know how to read but he writes. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He draws. He draws letters and we read it as writing. Meaning, he does something like a computer. A computer too basically just throws electrons around; we give it an interpretation of numbers, letters, whatever we read there. Yes, okay. Although there I think it’s a discussion of someone who is involved neither in writing nor in reading. Meaning, I’m not sure this is that philosophical question. Fine, I don’t know, one would have to see it. As for reading, fine, maybe. In any case, that’s one example. There are other examples, for instance moral conceptions. Again, people who are determinists, materialists—when you talk with them about the question of what morality means: why should a person be moral if all we are talking about is a collection of molecules? Are there moral commands for stones or mice? Meaning, if the human being is basically that, then what is the meaning of morality? And the only answer such people can give is that morality is a collection of behaviors. Meaning, in the end what I want is to live, so I need to make sure the other person doesn’t kill me, or steal from me, or—that morality is something utilitarian. Yes, morality is something grounded in consequences. Yes, that’s the point. Utility is one expression of that, but the point is that morality is really a behavioral matter. And in that sense I think I mentioned this too once: I once heard Amnon Yitzhak on some cassette—he…

[Speaker C] The Rabbi.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Rabbi. The Rabbi… as far as I know, he has no connection to that concept. But he’s an amusing man, and he said there once—said there once. He said, sorry, that the town rabbi got up at four in the morning, slaughtered a sheep, put it on the road, wrapped it in a prayer shawl, and began shouting, “A righteous man, a righteous man has died! A righteous man has died!” Wailing. And everyone starts coming out the windows toward dawn, runs from bed, looks, sees the rabbi there with this righteous figure wrapped in a prayer shawl, crying intensely. Everyone comes down, of course. And then a huge funeral procession leaves the town for the cemetery, carrying the righteous man to the grave. And when he lifts the prayer shawl off him, everyone sees that this righteous man has four legs. So of course they want to kill the rabbi and switch him with the righteous man there inside the grave. So the rabbi says to them: what do you want from me, I don’t understand. When I gave you moral rebuke, you always said to me, what do you want from us? We don’t murder, we don’t steal from anyone, we don’t hurt anyone, we don’t hit anyone—we’re righteous. So he says to them: in that sense this sheep was an even greater righteous man. Meaning, he also didn’t steal, didn’t murder, didn’t hit anyone, so he’s righteous. What does he want to say? It’s a beautiful story. Because what it really says is that a righteous person—a righteous person is not just a question of what you do. The question is why you do it. Meaning, the sheep did those things because that’s its nature. That’s not righteousness. The Holy One, blessed be He, was righteous in creating it in such a way that this is how it behaves. A righteous person is someone who could do something else and chooses to behave this way. Now where will you see this in practice? There’s no practical difference. Meaning, say that the sheep also did all the positive commandments and all the prohibitions—fine, then there’d be no practical difference. Behaviorally he’d be as righteous as I am, more than I am. But he’s not righteous. Why isn’t he righteous? Because the why of what he does—not what he does, but why he does it—is different. He does it because that’s his nature. Now again, if I go back to materialism or determinism, then a human being too is basically a kind of sheep. And then in that sense the sheep cannot be righteous or wicked, and neither can a person. And therefore materialists or determinists are forced to translate moral concepts into behavioral and consequential language. Meaning, once you do the acts we call moral acts, then you are a moral person. That is unlike Kant’s morality, where he argues that what defines an action as moral is the moral intention. It’s not the character of the action but the intention. If you do it from a certain reason. This of course can lead to very problematic situations, but I think it’s true. Meaning, if someone does very bad acts but his intention is good, because he doesn’t understand or because he has a different view or for a thousand reasons, then if his intention is good, fine, then the act is good, however much I suffer from it. Meaning, this also has implications that are less obvious, but I think it’s true. Meaning, you cannot define as righteous a machine that is programmed to behave in a way pleasant to its surroundings. Okay? So again, all these are just different expressions of the same thing: you cannot replace the essence with its behavioral practical differences, with its phenomenology, with the way it appears and the way it functions externally. There are sometimes things that depend on the question of where it comes from and not what you do, and that cannot be tested by practical differences.

[Speaker C] It’s clear that actions alone don’t define righteousness, but is intention enough? Suppose someone has only good intentions and only terrible actions—is he good?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. I think so. In that sense, in my opinion, he is completely righteous. Very righteous. He’s completely righteous—you just have to be careful around him. Yes, very righteous. He’s completely righteous; you need to be careful around him. Meaning, he’s a harmful righteous person, but when you come to evaluate him—you know, this is often the case, all kinds of people who do terrible acts in my eyes, from suicide bombers to who knows what, all kinds of mass murderers. Assuming I’ve never gotten inside their guts, but assuming that with them it really comes from the right place, that they think this is the good thing to do, I can’t judge them on the personal level. I’ll kill them because I don’t want them to cause harm, or I’ll put them in jail, whatever—but to judge them on the personal level, if his intentions are truly good, then what can I do?

[Speaker C] So he’s a good person who’s just mistaken. What does it mean that his intentions are good?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That he thinks it’s good, yes, that he thinks it’s good,

[Speaker C] that he thinks this is what leads to the good thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there’s no choice in this matter? There is choice in this matter, and that’s what he chose. What do you mean? There are a lot of shades of Islam, for the sake of argument, or whatever—the person is drawn to such a harmful set of moral values, there he has choice. So I’m saying again, if he knows it’s harmful and still does it, fine. No—he adheres to a set of moral values because he really thinks it’s right, or is drawn to it. Nice, you know, a dentist’s diagnosis. I don’t know—that’s exactly a diagnostic question. I don’t know how to make that diagnosis, which is why I said, I qualify what I’m saying: assuming I got inside his guts and understood that this is really what he thinks in the most innocent and straightforward way, that this is truly what he thinks is right.

[Speaker B] But what about the Inquisition? Let’s say the priests did it because they thought they had to guard against the Antichrist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, exactly, right. Not sure. So what are you trying to get at? No, I want to say here—but here too there’s another plane. People think we’ll reach a point when we’ve made a machine that reaches that point—it may not be today, it may

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] be in another five hundred years,

[Speaker B] or are you saying

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that they’ll never be able, in theory, ever to get there? No, it may be that people will manage to create a human being. Maybe. It may be. Look, what does it mean to create a human being? Even today in a certain sense we create a human being. Here, two parents create a human being—but that’s not using the natural mechanism; you let the Holy One, blessed be He, create him. But I don’t know what counts as creating a human being. But if you take molecules, connect them in some way, and succeed in producing a human being from that—although even that you could view as using the mechanism the Holy One, blessed be He, created—

[Speaker B] You made a machine here that can replace the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then maybe yes. About that I’m not making a claim. But then it really would be a human being. I have no problem with the fact that it isn’t the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s another question—whether it’s possible or not. The question is what it is, not how it was formed. Iron is not that. Meaning, not because it’s made of iron, but because it has no awareness, nothing. I know exactly how it converses with me. It converses with me because of the software I put into it. So what about cloning?

[Speaker E] Is that a human being?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think so, certainly. What, does anyone argue about that? A clone is obviously a human being.

[Speaker E] Does it have a soul?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It’s a human being in every respect. So what if we made him, created him in a laboratory? So what? Must a human being specifically be the result of sexual relations? That’s only a technological question. But I’m asking: what is this thing before me, not how it was formed. If it’s like you and me, then it’s a human being. Where it came from—that’s another discussion. So this, I return and focus on, so basically I go back to this sick prince, then somehow if I really don’t accept all these formal conceptions, then there is no healing here at all. Meaning, this man truly remains sick. It doesn’t matter that functionally he operates like a healthy person; at root he remains sick. There’s another example of this. You know, in game theory they ask how—let’s say you want to divide a cake equally between two children, so how do you do it in a completely precise, equal way? So you let one of them divide it and the other choose first. Right? The first one who divides the cake knows that the second will choose the larger piece, so what is the correct strategy from his standpoint? To produce two pieces that are exactly equal, because if one is even a bit larger, the second will choose that one. Right? So the best strategy for you is to divide, to make a precise split into two pieces. Once I heard an interesting fellow, Sami Vaknin. A childhood friend of a friend of mine, some kind of genius. He memorized the English dictionary within a few days, like Kishon, and a big hooligan, but he’s a genius. And apparently in the end he failed in economic matters there, anyway. In any case there was an interview with him on the radio and he proposed solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same way. Meaning, sit at the table, put all the points on a sheet of paper, one side divides them fifty-fifty and the other side chooses first. Why can’t that work there, of course? Because you can’t divide a complex thing. Meaning, a cake you can divide, but a complex thing—there is no such thing as dividing it fifty-fifty.

[Speaker C] Also, the relative value of each component is different for each of them; there are lots of arbitrary points there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That doesn’t matter, that doesn’t matter. You divide it according to your own fifty-fifty—that’s exactly the point. Because from your standpoint you want not to get less than half. Who cares if he thinks the half he got is worth three quarters? I have no problem with him thinking he profited; my concern is me—I want to get the maximum.

[Speaker F] You’re assuming that both of them—no, okay,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s assuming one reaches the conclusion that it’s impossible to go further. There are several problems with that proposal. Yes, we won’t get into all the problems with that proposal, I’m just saying there are. But as for dividing cake, it sounds like a good technique. Leave politics aside.

[Speaker F] Certainly, but it’s still mistaken too, because there’s either buy me out or I’ll buy you out, yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Buy me out or I’ll buy you out—yes, maybe. But why, in dividing cake, is this not the right thing? Because the question is what you want to achieve. After all, if what you want is really for each child to have exactly half the cake, no problem: go to a carpenter who’ll measure the cake for you and cut it in half. What do you need your children’s help for? You want to educate. Here you’re not only failing to achieve the goal—you’re achieving the opposite. Because this technique of splitting fifty-fifty is built on the fact that both children are complete egoists. Right? Because I know that if there is even something a bit bigger, the other will take it from me, and I’m of course egoistic because I’m not willing for him to do that, and therefore I’ll divide it this way. Game theory is built on people who act only for profit, from considerations that are only considerations of profit. If you apply game theory techniques to educating children, you fail—if you understand education not in the behaviorist sense. Meaning, if you understand education in the behaviorist sense, then program the children always to divide cake this way. No problem—you’ll achieve the goal. But you haven’t educated them, because you haven’t made them good children. You’ve made them children who split equally. That’s all. And even in that sense it’s actually harmful—one second—it’s actually harmful because not only are you not educating them, the situation just keeps getting worse. Meaning, because you are encouraging them to be egoists. You are basically telling them the opposite: the best solutions come when you behave in the most egoistic way possible. Yes, that’s Adam Smith. Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Meaning, the more each person takes care of himself, the better society will look. Don’t try to run things from above, to be some kind of socialist; let this thing behave according to methods of maximum utility, in the end it will look best that way.

[Speaker B] I don’t think that’s really fair. The cake example is one thing. The whole idea of game theory, for business or something where it’s very complex and you need to divide it, or some resource you want to divide—it’s not about education. The question is how you—can’t you go to a third person to divide it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, you can. A judge. But it doesn’t matter. I have no issue. I wasn’t attacking game theory. I was attacking the use of game theory when you’re educating children. Because there you have to understand that it doesn’t achieve the goal. Why? Because it achieves behavioral goals. It gets results. But there are many times—and that’s why I say it’s the same thing as here—there are times when what I aspire to achieve is not the result, not the behavior, but where that behavior comes from. And there not only does it not help, it harms. You know, also in our political world—today it’s a bit more moderated, but there are still such wings in our politics that think everything will be solved if we make a constitutional change. Meaning, if there is a constitution, or if they change the system of government, or something like that, it will solve all the problems. Now, they tried this once, yes? With the direct election of the prime minister, and it apparently didn’t really work. And what this really says is that many times, when we think that by technical means we will solve an essential problem—if the problem isn’t simple—then not only have we failed to solve the educational problem, we also won’t solve the essential problem. Because the problem is not simple. Meaning, you can’t educate people to divide up the points between us and the Palestinians. Right? So it doesn’t do the educational work—quite the opposite—but many times it also doesn’t do the technical work. And the only thing that can really move us to a better place is not to think that this or that legislative change will solve the problem. There’s no avoiding it. Meaning, you have to cause people to behave or think differently. And the whole idea of democratic bureaucracy is that you cause people who are completely self-interested to behave the way you want them to behave. You say to him: look, if you behave nicely and we’re pleased with you, you’ll be elected prime minister. So now what? Now your complete egoism, which leads you to want to be prime minister, is what will make you behave nicely. You understand? It’s exactly that kind of game theory technique. Meaning, I take people with maximum ego, people who are motivated only by self-interest—I don’t know if everyone is like that, but that’s the basic assumption—and I use self-interest itself as leverage to make them behave nicely. And such a thing always comes with a price. Always. Meaning, it will never solve the problem, because first of all it solves the problem of dividing cake. There it really does solve the problem. It doesn’t educate, but the cake will be divided equally. But in complicated problems it will always find a loophole where he won’t be seen. And therefore, when the elections are not standing before his eyes, what does he care? Then he’ll do what he wants.

[Speaker B] Why is this different from Jewish law? Someone who desecrates the Sabbath—we execute him so that they will hear and fear and not do it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’m not claiming that people shouldn’t be punished, or that there shouldn’t be rules.

[Speaker B] But the goal is so that they will hear and fear, so that everyone won’t desecrate the Sabbath because I’ll get the death penalty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is educational commandment and there is punishment. There’s a stick and there’s a carrot. Obviously. Both have to be used. I’m not claiming that we should abolish law in a democratic state or abolish the democratic system.

[Speaker B] But the goal is so that they will hear and fear, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But for whom? For whom? For that person for whom education apparently wasn’t enough, so we use auxiliary means that are technical. I’m saying both of these forces have to be used together. But someone who thinks that changing the rules will solve problems never solves problems. Unless the rules created them.

[Speaker C] What? Unless the rules created them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, sometimes there is—right—sometimes there is a problem that the rule created. And again, I’m saying the rules can also contribute to solving problems. I’m not saying this is one or zero. I’m only saying that this feeling, as though a technical fix will solve all the problems, will bring us to the right behavior—even if it does bring us to the right behavior—you have to understand that there are other behaviors it didn’t deal with, and there we only lose. Because it created a person who is self-interested and egoistic, and in the other places where there is no rule forbidding it—so in such bureaucratic places a view develops that whatever the law forbids is forbidden, and all the rest—people do whatever they want. There are no ethical rules. In more established democracies, yes—in Britain, in the United States—these are much more traditional places than here. They believe much less in the power of written law. There are some foundational principles, yes, the constitution, the founding fathers, and so on, but a lot of it is tradition—what one does and doesn’t do, and a sense of what is right and wrong to do. I remember the whole Obama story with the healthcare law—it really impressed me, that this was truly his banner. This is what he fought on and what he was elected on. He had a majority in Congress, in the Senate, I don’t know where, he had a majority of something like fifty-one percent, let’s say—I don’t remember the exact numbers—and he didn’t pass the law. Because the norm said that for very foundational laws you need sixty percent. And he waited until he had sixty percent, and only then did he bring the law to a vote. And there was something there that in our country—they would immediately pull a trick, recruit someone, give him a Volvo, get it through with fifty-one percent, and pass the law. Why? Because we are a very non-traditional system. A system without tradition—meaning, there are the rules. If you work with the rules, everything is fine, and let everything else burn. But such a system can never really work. The rules cannot really fix the situation. These are the problems of behaviorism that we see here. Okay, so let’s keep going.

[Speaker C] So basically, what does this behavior stem from? What?