Marshall names two opposed default modes. **Moral Mode**: believing that if you are a good person, everything will work out — that being good "wins the war" or "leads to business success." **Causal Mode**: winning the war wins the war; successfully building the business leads to business success. His test case is the American Revolution. The British, he argues, held two beliefs: (1) that they were acting more morally than the "savage," "ungentlemanly" revolutionaries who fought from cover and refused open battle, and (2) that acting that way would *lead to winning the war*. "Thinking (1) is fine, maybe even terrific. Thinking (2) is disastrous." Morality can set your aims and keep you from becoming wicked; it cannot tell you what will actually cause victory. So the rule is one of *scope*. Moral mode has "very much a place" on a philosophical level — it lets us devote ourselves to the highest service we can offer — but "absolutely no place when doing causal analyses." When you study, plan, and evaluate, you must divorce your moralistic and idealistic tendencies and ask only what causes what. Conflating the two — assuming the deserving outcome is the caused outcome — is the characteristic error. --- *Source: [[Book Inventory/Progression|Progression]] (Sebastian Marshall, 2016) — Uncommon Virtues #4 — Causal / Empirical*