Thinking like a ship

It took me a long time to realize that arguments we argue about — aren’t always about facts. They are about values.

Reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind made this clear, that: be it liberals or conservatives, or activists or traditionalists — they’re all wired with different moral priorities—care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity.

They feel different things are sacred. What seems obviously right to one clan feels intuitively wrong to another.

My partner and I had taken the Haidt’s moral foundations questionnaire together recently, and it was fun to see the contrast of responses in some of the questions: we both cared about fairness and compassion—but whenever I leaned toward equity, she leaned more towards loyalty and cultural continuity. That was interesting:

Neither of us was wrong, but we realised we had different inner compasses. And without naming those differences, we mistook friction for betrayal.

So when I later read Holden Karnofsky’s ship metaphor—and the analogy of Rowers, Steerers, Anchors, Equity, Mutineers—it clicked like a lock.

In Holden Karnofsky’s world view,

The Rower values progress. Those who are rowers, want to row to a far away promised land, full of opportunities.

I use "rowing" to refer to the idea that we can make the world better by focusing on advancing science, technology, growth, etc. - all of which ultimately result in empowerment, helping people do whatever they want to do, more/faster. The idea is that, in some sense, we don't need a specific plan for improving lives: more capabilities, wealth, and empowerment ("moving forward") will naturally result in that.

Rowing is a contentious topic, and it’s contentious in a way that I think cuts across other widely-recognized ideological lines.

To some people, rowing seems like the single most promising way to make the world a better place. People and institutions who give off this vibe include:

• Tech entrepreneurs and VCs such as Marc Andreessen (It's Time to Build) and Patrick Collison (progress studies).
• Libertarian-ish academics such as Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok (see their books for a sense of this).
• The many institutions and funders dedicated to general speeding up of science, such as the Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and CZI Biohub.2
• The global development world, e.g. nonprofits such as Center for Global Development and institutions such as the World Bank, which seeks to help "developing" countries "develop." This generally includes a large (though not exclusive) focus on economic growth.

The Anchor, stability. The Steerer, foresight. The Equity clan, justice. The Mutineer, systemic overhaul. They’re not selfish or evil—they’re guided by different lights. Everyone on the ship is doing what feels morally necessary to them. And everyone thinks they are the chosen ones destined to steer the ship. And that’s exactly the problem.

Some insist we’re not moving the ship fast enough. They row with fierce intensity, believing speed is salvation.

Others clutch the wheel and bark about direction: where are we even going? What storms lie ahead? Some cling to the railings, saying we’ve gone too far already. They want to drop anchor, keep the hull intact, preserve the rituals that gave the ship its soul. And then there are those below deck shouting that the entire structure is rotten. The keel is cracked. The map is a lie. The ship was never meant for all of us.

Sometimes, we would also observe various erosions occuring due to mismatched moral vocabularies. One person might cry, “We must go faster!” and another hears, “You’re ignoring those overboard.” A third hears, “You’re disrespecting the captain,” and a fourth yells, “Why are we even on a ship?”

In the same way, Jonathan Haidt puts values into different buckets such as (care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity), Karnofsky puts people into various such buckets.

So while Haidt helps us understand the ship, Karnofsky provides a grounding conceptual framework that helps me map what’s really going on. It’s a fight between value systems, and not between the “right” and the “wrong”, as we define it conventionally.

And nobody is right or wrong, they are just right in their own way, and their ways are very different.