[JadeNB]

> If you insist on following an honor code while competing against people who are ready to take an unfair advantage of you, you lose.

"Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

[earleybird]

So, tit-for-tat?

[JadeNB]

> So, tit-for-tat?

That's a reasonable reading, but I think that there is a difference between competition and punishment. In the heat of the competition, I think I am comfortable with the idea that it is permissible to meet the fierceness of your competitor with equal ferocity. If afterwards someone is found to have exceeded their remit and punishment needs to be dealt, then I think that should be governed by a separate ethical principle.

[euroderf]

War crimes have entered the chat.

[JadeNB]

> War crimes have entered the chat.

Good point, but I believe war crimes mainly come when you substitute ‘a people’ for ‘a person’ in:

> "Unfair" is in there. If you are competing against a person who will pull out all the stops against you, then there is nothing unfair about pulling out all the stops against them.

But I did specifically mean a person, just one. (I also was envisioning, like, struggling for top spot in a class, not struggling to take San Juan Hill. But I'm not immediately sure I can sign on to an ethical principle that says that you are not entitled to respond to one specific competitor with as much fierceness as they bring to the competition, even when that competition becomes deadly.)

[euroderf]

All good points. So how about the shifting alliances and goals of Squid Game ?

[JadeNB]

> So how about the shifting alliances and goals of Squid Game ?

I couldn't comment, since I haven't seen it, but I think the mandate of fairness makes sense even in the presence of shifting goals, and probably governs the extent to which it's reasonable to switch alliances.