If you say so. It’s the same thing, even if it’s more comfortable to believe it’s not.
It helps to frame it this way, because once you accept that you’d do that, you’re more likely to accept you would do something unethical for a billion dollars if it had no consequences to you. And from there, it’s a binary search to determine exactly what your price is.
Would you be able to say you wouldn’t lie to your wife if it meant you’d walk away with a billion dollars? Certainly this is contrived, but all examples in this territory are contrived.
Yes, but that's not what we're discussing, because then I can counter with:
"Would you sell your mother or your children at any price?"
And I hope - admittedly, that's speculation - I know what the answer to that would be.
So this is now an absurd discussion, whereas it started off from a rational point of view: there exist such people whose ethics can not be corrupted. The fact that you believe this is not the case says nothing about people in general.
You are asking what I would personally do. But it’s better to think of limit cases that everyone would do — such as lie to their wife for a billion dollars. Since it’s guaranteed you fall into the bucket of “everybody”, that means you can locate your ethical price tag.
It’s helpful for people to do this mental exercise. At least, I find it comforting knowing my own price tags in advance.
I had to scroll up and re-read to make sure we were on the same page.
Since you’re misquoting yourself, it sounds like you don’t want to have this debate, or you may not have realized what you said. But “The whole assumption that ethics have a price tag attached is faulty” is not at all the same thing as “ethical people exist.” It’s not a pedantic distinction; one is debating whether people will take compensation for acting unethically, even if they feel they’re the most ethical person on the planet — I think the answer is “yes” — whereas “ethical people exist” is a point no one could disagree with.
It’s a bit unexpected for you to omit your “price tag” words and then continue with my argument.
But we’re past the point that readers are having a nice time reading this. If you’d like to continue, I’m happy to do so, but we need to restrict ourselves to a high caliber of debate, if only for HN’s sake.
That’s a very interesting question. Thanks for that.
The way I view it is that it’s important to seek out yours ahead of time -— to game out different scenarios, and to consider whether you would do X or Y if forced to choose. That way, when you’re in a situation where you feel like compromising, you’ll remember your limits.
In other words, I was less tempted to act unethically in the moment than I would have been if I’d been surprised by the opportunity.
This is especially important in scientific circles. It’s often trivial to falsify data, and the rewards for doing so are generally high. It’s also not always an active, conscious decision; it’s easy to make small mistakes that have favorable outcomes for yourself.
The exercise has helped me steer far away from any of those. I’ve watched peers fall into a trap that I’d label “scientific hype,” i.e. claim that you’re doing something impressive when in reality you’re nowhere close. This is a very easy mistake to make, and if I hadn’t mentally found my boundaries ahead of time then I’d have been vulnerable to making the same error. Or I may have stayed silent when my peers were doing something naughty.
It helps to frame it this way, because once you accept that you’d do that, you’re more likely to accept you would do something unethical for a billion dollars if it had no consequences to you. And from there, it’s a binary search to determine exactly what your price is.
Would you be able to say you wouldn’t lie to your wife if it meant you’d walk away with a billion dollars? Certainly this is contrived, but all examples in this territory are contrived.