December 21, 2007
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Why doesn’t everybody?
Right and Wrong.
What keeps you from walking into the house of a neighbor and stealing
their stuff when they aren’t home? Or even when they are home? You can
use a knife or a gun or just your own physical strength to overpower
them. How come someone isn’t in your house right now doing that to you?
Why doesn’t it happen all the time. We could all be trying to take what
we want from each other without hesitation or remorse. It could happen.
It could be that way tomorrow. Anarchy. Chaos.But it probably won’t. Why not? Guess what. It isn’t your lock that
keeps people out or your dead bolt or your state of the art alarm
system. That much I’m sure of. Likewise, it isn’t the existence of the police that ensures that we all
stay to ourselves more or less and don’t bother each other and that the
criminals are one the fringe easily identified, more or less, and
easily stopped.Still, it doesn’t take a super criminal master mind to be able to get
away with a small crime, even something like a burglary. That’s why it
does still happen and there are plenty of unsolved crimes every year.
So why isn’t everybody doing it? The risk of being caught is not that
great. The more people do it the less the risk too. And the
competitive advantage you might get from being able to break the rules
can be enormous. What keeps us all on the right path anyway?Let’s look at a smaller easier situation.
Why don’t you run red lights?
I don’t mean all the time. Obviously if running a red light could lead
to your death or injury or the death or injury of others you would have
to have a pretty damn good reason to run the red light. Also, if a cop
is sitting right there you have a financial incentive not to run a red
light. You don’t want the ticket. But what about in all those
situations where you knew there were no cops around and you could see
pretty clearly that there was no real risk of getting into an accident.
You could have run that red light and nobody would have given a damn.
And maybe once or twice you *have* done that, but on the vast majority
of times if you are like the vast majority of people, you don’t.
Likewise with not stopping at STOP signs and making illegal turns and
u-turns and even speeding.Moreover in most places the cost of the ticket for making a minor
traffic violation is not large and not scary and impacts your life very
little. It can be argued quite well I think that it is in your
competitive interests to speed and run red lights and pass stop signs
in every opportunity where it is safe to do so even if the cops might
be around. That is to say, the advantage you would gain in time over
the long haul would more than make up for the costs in tickets. Unless
of course you live in one of the places where they are now massively
increasing the fines for minor traffic violations like, I hear,
Virginia.Yet interestingly, look at J-walking. In my observation in areas where
there is not a lot of traffic, most people do J-walk. In crowded areas
it’s different. There is too much risk to J-walk. People consider the
cross walks as a service protecting them from errant drivers in those
situations. But in an uncrowded road in the country, who walks to the
corner to cross the street? Why? Actually, even in cities I do see a
lot of people J-walking in those rare
situations where it is safe to do so and much more frequently people
cross when the crosswalk doesn’t say to walk but it is nonetheless safe
enough to cross. What is it about J-walking that makes it so different
from driving?Let’s look at some more examples.
What about things that aren’t illegal but which we still refrain from doing?
Like for example, why don’t you spy on your family and friends? It’d be
easy, so easy to do so and you could learn a lot from doing it right?
Maybe you can find out what people really think about you. Maybe you
can learn something about someone that helps you relate to them. Maybe
you can find out in advance if people are going to betray your trusts
so you could protect yourself from it. Again, even something so little
as paying too much attention to what someone is saying when they are on
the phone with someone else could give you a kind of competitive
advantage in the social arena of life.With the internet it opens whole new avenues to spy, and no I’m not
talking about reading someone’s myspace or doing a google search for
someone’s name. Those things have a bad reputation but I hardly think
there is anything morally wrong with it, even if you are obsessive
about it. But other things are more private online but it still
wouldn’t be particularly hard for someone who wanted to to listen in
and figure out more about you by examining your online behavior. Most
people don’t encrypt their emails. Almost nobody encrypts their IMs.
How hard do you work to eliminate your download activity, your browsing
history, your cookies? How many people know how to harden their
computer against intrusion? There’s a lot more to it than downloading
zone alarm, btw. Most people keep their passwords and stuff stored
right on their computer, often in their web browser, for easy access so
that if someone ever got a hold of their computer they’d have access to
them all.If someone, even a friend really wanted to find out more about what you
did on your computer, unless you are super paranoid, they totally can.
It isn’t even that hard. And the closer you are to that person, both in
terms of how much you know about that person and in terms of how
spatially close you are to that person, the easier it gets. So why
aren’t you doing it? Right now. I’m willing to bet that there’s
somebody out there that you feel it would be of benefit to you to know
more about. And you can probably find that out in such a way that the
person will never find out unless you slip up and say something out of
place that reveals your excessive knowledge.And yet, very few people do anything like that. People won’t even read
somebody else’s mail when it is accidentally delivered to them and
nobody could possibly know about it. People don’t spy on each other.
They feel it is wrong to do so, even if the knowledge would cause no
harm. The only time they do is when they feel they have to, in those
few situations where desperate need sets in or when they feel it is
their responsibility to do so. Everybody else respects one another’s
privacy for the most part. Why is that?Similarly, why don’t you lie?
I mean come on, nobody can tell me that they’ve never been in a
situation where they wouldn’t have gained significant advantage from
lying and nobody would have known the difference. Surely there are
hundreds of situations you’ve been in where a little white lie can
smooth over the awkwardness of social interactions. Yet even in those
situations I observe that people will go through great contusions to
avoid outright *lying* to somebody. They’d much rather tell an
unrelated half truth than be deliberately untruthful to someone even if
social awkwardness results. More likely they’ll word their statement in
just such away that it sounds like they are saying something when they
aren’t really saying anything at all or something that is always true.
The “that’s nice” or “that’s interesting” kind of a vacuous comment.
All in the name of avoiding deception. Only in those situations where
people have no choice but to lie or else really have a social dilemma
on their hands do I see people directly lying. Even then only very few
people seem really comfortable about it. Why is that?And for matters of self betterment, the avoidance of lying from a
strictly rationalist perspective is even more baffling. If someone is
going to cause you financial or physical harm, why would you hesitate
about lying your way out of that situation? Moreover, why don’t you lie
about anything and everything that can give you a financial advantage
in your daily lives and causes no harm? Why don’t you cheat on your
taxes for example? Why don’t you lie when filling out your resume? Why
don’t you lie during your interview? Why don’t you lie on credit card
applications and loan applications? There are a thousand thousand
situations where you could lie and the harm that would be caused should
you get caught would be minimal compared to the advantages you would
obtain from being a perpetual liar. So why isn’t everybody doing this
all the time?I wish I knew the answers to these questions, but I don’t. I could
rattle off the multitudes of theories about this that have been bandied
about throughout history but what’s the point? Nobody really knows. All
we can do is examine our own choices and try to see why we consider our
personal morality so important to us.Recently I blogged about a trick involving manipulating CVS coupons to
get goods for free. I did this and yet I felt a little bad about it. I talked to
a bunch of people about it and most people were supportive of the act.
They didn’t see anything wrong with using these coupons. If their
system allows it then so what? No harm is caused, they argued. And you
shouldn’t feel sorry for CVS. They rip off more people every day than
you could ever do. In fact they deserve to lose money. Moreover, they
argued, that I was just really using the coupons that they provided in a
way that they allowed. If they didn’t want you to use the coupons in
that way, they shouldn’t allow it. It’s as easy as that. Not using the
coupons in this way it could be argued actually is worse for CVS
because it keeps the problems that result in these exploitations
existing under the surface, invisible, and not corrected. Somebody will
figure it out and abuse it. It’s better that as many people as possible
do in fact since that will inspire CVS to change.On the other hand, others gave the opposite perspective. They didn’t
think what I was doing would cause a lot of harm but if enough people
did and it reached critical mass they thought it would. That is to say,
people could lose their jobs or get less money in bonuses as a
consequence of stores under performing. But this argument is fairly
weak and nobody really pursued it that strongly. Most of the people who
were against the trick like this, didn’t have much of an explanation
for their choice not to do it. They just felt that it was wrong to do
so. It didn’t feel right. So they didn’t do it.Well a majority of people didn’t do it because they are just too lazy.
Or they thought it was more work than the advantage you get out of it.
That is sheerly on practical grounds they refused. Meaning had it been
easier or they got better gear, they would have been all on board.Strangely I didn’t feel *that* uncomfortable doing this. And I did do
it. And it isn’t the only kind of consumer trick I’ve used to minimize
my spending on goods. And I’d do most of them again too. Most aren’t in
any way morally ambiguous at all too. You are just combining offers and
plans in a way that the people who provided them didn’t think about
when they were putting them out there. It’s all fair game. Some are a
little morally ambiguous though, like when you ignore something that
says “one per customer” on the grounds that you know they’ll never know
you are the same customer when you come back there tomorrow. They
*could* do something to make that impossible, but most likely they
won’t. And knowing this, I take advantage. Is this wrong? In a way I
sort of feel as if it is a competitive game to try and maximize how far
your money can go.But the question remains, why isn’t everybody doing this? Why doesn’t everybody think the same way?
And yet I reached a level where I couldn’t do something too and I just
felt that sense that it was something that was beyond me. My xbox360
broke and I was pretty pissed off about it. So I called the customer
support and you know I could have lied about when I bought the console,
and they didn’t ask for a receipt or anything, but I didn’t. I told the
truth. In part that was because I thought the console had a 3 year
warranty. I didn’t realize the 3 year warranty only applied to one
specific problem. Had I known that I might have lied and said it was
having that problem. Sadly, I did neither.And then another opportunity arose to get my money back on my console
in a manner that would, I was assured by many people, only hurt the
company that produces the console. I can’t discuss the details but it’s
pretty obvious when you think about it. And I was mad enough to go out
and even start the process of doing this. I was all ready to do it.And then I couldn’t do it. Why couldn’t I? It just felt too wrong.
So I just ended up buying a new console. At full retail price. ugh. So
Microsoft makes more money off of me. Their shoddy hardware goes
unpunished because my own ethical bar is too high to stoop low enough
to do them harm. So their next console can be just as buggy if they
want and they can rely on the exact same garbage to ensure their profit
margins.Obviously this puts me at a considerable competitive disadvantage in
society. There are people out there who wouldn’t have hesitated. Lots
of people. They would have just gotten their money back and said screw
it to anybody it inconveniences. And doesn’t that benefit them more in
the long run? They end up with more money, more comfort. Life is easier
for them.So why didn’t I do the same thing? Why don’t I cheat Microsoft? Why doesn’t everybody? Every chance they get?
All these examples are really the same. Our morality doesn’t seem to be
bound or even particularly influenced by rational thought about
competition and advantage. Incentive theory doesn’t get us anywhere
when trying to understand our moral and ethical choices. If it did,
we’d be living in an entirely different world. But the world we do live
in, people are constantly holding back, refraining, restraining
themselves. Holding themselves to a higher standard. Trying to be
better people for no apparent visible reason except that they feel they
should.
