There used to be a radio show called Brooke and Jubal in the Morning. One segment on the show was the ‘Second Date Update’: if someone ghosts you after a first date, you get the radio show to call them and see why they aren’t calling you back. Unbeknownst to them, you are on the line, listening to the conversation, which the radio host reveals at some point and hilarity ensues.

The segment is both fun to listen to and epistemologically valuable. One thing I’ve learned is that people will argue anything. Some people are clearly in the wrong but fail to recognize it, even when independent third parties try their hardest to explain. For example, one guy kept taking ‘micronaps’ during his first date with a girl at a restaurant and seemed unable to understand why she found that weird. Both she and the radio hosts assured him that it wasn’t normal, but he just wouldn’t budge.

One episode stood out to me for moral reasons. A woman named Sheena called in, saying she met this great guy named Ross online and drove two hours to meet him – but he never showed up. So she gets the radio station to call him and find out why. After the radio host does a little detective work, we learn that ‘Ross’ is actually her ex boyfriend Derek who catfished her on a dating app and sent her on a wild goose chase, all to get back at her for cheating on him. She’s incredulous:

Sheena: You’re such a child. Thank you for reminding me why I left. Thank you for reminding me why I’m not with you.
Radio host 1: Sheena, is this really your ex boyfriend?
Sheena [inhales]: Yep. You wonder why, right? You wonder why…
Radio host 2: Well, did you really cheat on him like he’s accusing you of?
Derek: Yes.
Sheena: It’s not black and white. [Insistently] It is not black and white!
Radio hosts [laugh knowingly in unison]: Yes you did! There it is.

Philosopher Ayn Rand eloquently criticized the cult of moral grayness in an essay by that same name. You can read it for free here – it will be the best thing you read today. I’ve read it many times and still don’t tire of reading it again. Here’s one relevant passage, in which Rand explains that any utterance such as Sheena’s basically amounts to a claim that people are unwilling to be wholly good. Rand might as well have written the following in response to Sheena:

The first thing one would say to any advocate of such a proposition, is: “Speak for yourself, brother!” And that, in effect, is what he is actually doing; consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or inadvertently, when a man declares: “There are no blacks and whites,” he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: “I am unwilling to be wholly good­ — and please don’t regard me as wholly evil!”

Once Sheena claims that things aren’t black and white, the radio hosts immediately recognize her guilt. (If you think she merely means that their breakup was a complex issue that deserves further consideration from both sides, then that is worth addressing, which Rand does more generally. I do think it’s worth asking people to elaborate – they may give good reasoning or evidence that the issue is more complex (though Sheena never does). Or maybe they just offer more evasions. Either way, their response should inform our judgment.)

It’s one thing to read a philosophical text and understand the theory, but it’s another to see its application in real life, so clearly, so plainly. What a delight. Sheena confessed her guilt by invoking moral grayness in her denial, and everyone could see it. As Rand writes in another essay:

To judge means: to evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard. It is not an easy task; it is not a task that can be performed automatically by one’s feelings, “instincts” or hunches. It is a task that requires the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought. It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person.

The concrete in this situation is Sheena’s sleeping with another man. The abstract principle or standard at work is honesty. The radio hosts display an implicit understanding of this underlying philosophical principle and apply it to arrive at a judgment of her character: she cheated on Derek; she is morally guilty. And I suspect the reason they are able to arrive at this judgment so quickly and effortlessly is that 1) they have all the relevant information and 2) they have practice.

I understand better now. Statements like ‘there are no blacks and whites’, and variations thereof, are what guilty people say. They’re telling on themselves, and we can judge accordingly. How exciting!