Looking for Excuses

Are ethics becoming more situational?  I occasionally hear someone making a comment about getting something for free because the company is not paying attention or because they have found a way around paying: free cable or extra channels, a new cell phone after intentionally destroying the old one before the insurance runs out, free videos and music, etc.  They justify this by saying that the company is big and probably unethical and takes advantage of customers.  This becomes their personal administration of punishment.

Recently, in response to HBO CEO Richard Pepler’s comment that he doesn’t mind people sharing their logins to watch shows online, Emmys host Andy Samberg decided to share his login on national TV – humorous perhaps, but not exactly in the spirit of honesty.  Many jumped at the opportunity to get something for nothing.  According to Variety, “the account quickly hit login limits and has now been deactivated.”  Accordingly, a Consumer Reports survey found that, “46% of American adults said they shared log-ins for streaming media services with people who were not part of the same household—which is generally against the rules.”  It used to be called stealing, but what the heck.  They are big companies with plenty of money.

The government gets the same treatment.  Polls show that approximately 87 percent believe it is unacceptable to cheat on income taxes, which leaves almost 1 in 7 who think it’s OK.  That’s what they say, but “economists estimate the size of the underground [cash] economy at somewhere between 8 percent and 14 percent of total GDP, which could amount to as much as $2 trillion worth of economic activity.”  This is probably not the same 13% of people.  In addition, I told in May 2013 how 99% of taxpayers neglect to report sales tax on Internet purchases and 30% said they would change their shopping habits if a tax were charged at the time of purchase.  No twinges of conscience nag at ordinary citizens when it comes to shorting Uncle Sam or their state department of revenue.

Meanwhile, politicians and their supporters think an acceptable defense is not that they are innocent, but that others before them did the same or worse.  (In many cases voters just shrug off these excuses as if we don’t expect better.)

When the housing crisis struck several years ago, a prominent economist actually encouraged people to default on their loans.  He argued that a smart economic move of walking away from a house worth less than the amount still owed superseded any ethical constraint.  The government was bailing out big companies, so it wasn’t fair for the little guy to be stuck in an upside-down mortgage situation.  One study found that about 17% agreed with this conclusion, but among those who knew someone who had “strategically defaulted,” 82% were likely to agree.

As the left and the right continue to demonize big business on one hand and the government on the other, are we making it easier to justify cheating?  If it is difficult to do business now – getting loans or qualifying for service – what will it be like in the future if companies cannot trust their customers to live up to commitments or expect the public in general to play by the rules?  This behavior too will have consequences.

Tough Decisions

In 1967 a British philosopher developed a problem, a kind of thought experiment, called the “Trolley Dilemma.”  Since then it has caused much discussion and spawned several variations.  In it you control a switch that will reroute a trolley from the main track onto a spur track.  The trolley is coming, and ahead on the track are five workmen unaware of its approach.  They will surely be killed.  If you pull the switch the trolley will be diverted and you will save the five lives, but the trolley will hit and kill one other workman on the spur track.  What would you do?

In purely utilitarian terms the right answer is to pull the switch.  The choice between five dying and one dying is a pure mathematical decision.  If you were not there, however, the five would be killed with no one to blame, which is the same as doing nothing.  It is reasonable to assume that pulling the switch is the equivalent of killing the single workman.  One variation, which makes it more interesting, replaces the switch with an innocent bystander and asks if it would be ethical to throw him in front of the trolley to save the five.  This usually gives participants more pause than the more mechanical action of just pulling a switch.  Clearly there is no good answer.  It is a test of values.

Now I digress from the original problem.  Let’s replace the one workman on the spur track with a small tree or rose bush.  Despite the fact that shrubs are living things, it makes the decision much easier.  Even if it was a very rare or a endangered species of rose bush, the problem becomes a no-brainer – you save the people.

As a next step I replace the rose bush with a box of spiders or garter snakes.  These are living animals that benefit us by eating insects, but few would feel squeamish or hesitate to kill the spiders to save the five workmen.  The decision is still simple.

Moving on, I continue the escalation by changing the unaware target from spiders to an ugly, smelly or otherwise unpopular mammal like a rat, mole or skunk.  At this point, or perhaps even at the last stage, some far-out animal rights advocates would object.  They argue that the rat or skunk has exactly the same right to life as a human and the problem has regressed to the original moral choice.  Most of us, though, would not agonize over the choice between killing a rat or skunk vs. allowing five workmen to die – even if it required actually throwing the box of rats rather than just pulling a switch.

At what point then does each of us cross the line?  At what point does the majority cross the line and declare that there is no difference from the original problem?  At what point does the majority allow themselves to be bullied, badgered or worn down, succumbing with indifference to passive acceptance of someone else’s value system?

Do some say it is identical to the original situation if we must balance five human lives against that of a cute bunny, a baby seal or a brown-eyed doe?  How about a puppy or kitten?  Pets can become like part of the family.  We become very attached to them, but by replacing the one workman, a human stranger, in the original problem with our family pet could it ever put the choice into the same ethical category?  (Remember, I wrote previously about a family that tried to refuse entry into a tornado shelter to another family because it would mean putting their dog outside and in danger.)

This is the kind of question I wonder about when I read about people demonstrating to save the life of a dog belonging to an Ebola patient.  The NY Times science reporter tells us that dogs can contract Ebola and can even be carriers without showing symptoms.  Are the demonstrators disregarding this information, or are they making the ethical choice of not pulling the switch because the value the life of a pet equals that of one or more human beings?  I suspect it is neither; they just have good intentions and are going with their instincts.  But is everyone afraid to even question such a decision so as to not appear as cold-hearted and cruel?  Don’t we want those who are protecting our health to try to make the difficult, logical decisions, whatever those are, rather than follow the easy politically popular path?

Not Another Excuse!

NBC published this story about research at Harvard claiming that people are more dishonest in the afternoon than in the morning.  They propose that self-control is a finite resource; we use it up throughout the day.  We get worn out from trying to be good making us more likely to give in to temptation later.  With obesity and retirement insecurity among the major crises, what America doesn’t need is another excuse for behaving poorly in the dimension of discipline.

Before getting too excited about this too-good-to-be true permission to blame the time of day for failings, it’s best to ask a few questions about the research.

Two Harvard professors tested 62 undergraduates who signed up for either a morning or an afternoon ethics class.  They showed the students 100 squares that had been cut in half and marked with dots.  Asked to vote which half appeared to have more dots, they were also told that voting for the right half paid more than voting for the left -- their perception only, without regard for accuracy.  This condition set them up to be able to cheat and get away with it.  Participants in the afternoon indicated more frequently that dots appeared on the right side than those in the morning sessions.  Another test gave them a choice between reading more challenging material or a lighter magazine article.  A greater number from the afternoon class tended to take the easier assignment.

Their recommendation is that people should schedule more challenging work for the morning, especially if it has a moral component.  Get it done before your energy for honesty and resisting temptation dwindles.

How, though, can they apply this to everyone?  Surely Harvard students are not representative of the entire population.  This is called convenience sampling and is usually frowned upon when doing serious science.  In any case, would groups of 31 would be an adequate sample size?  More information is needed.

Furthermore when comparing one group to another, every effort should be made to control for differences that might influence the outcome.  Do those who signed up for the afternoon classes have the same characteristics as the morning students?  Is it possible that the morning students were a little more motivated, opting to attend class rather than sleep in?  What background and habits did they bring with them to class?  Were they equally balanced on other differences such as sex, age, and economic background?

This story leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  Critical thinkers look for answers to those questions before accepting conclusions and recommendations at face value.