Your commanding officer orders you to torture someone.
You won't get in trouble if you did it.
morals Society's code for individual survival. ethics An individual's code for society's survival.
Would you do it?
Suppose your family is suspected of something by the government.
You happen to be an informant.
Would you betray them?
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In an experiment done with volunteers, people were asked to ask questions to another person. If the asker got an incorrect answer, the answerer gets an electric shock.
The test is repeated, with higher and higher voltages.
At 150 volts, 70% of people were still willing to administer shocks to the other person.
This is quite a shocking result. 70%? That's 7 out of 10 people.
And I guess if you people were threatened to do so, then 100% of you will willingly administer shocks.
Even if the people you were shocking were people you care about.
Of course, people are free to control their actions. But why so prone to obedience?
Suppose we did the experiment at school with ordinary students, and a teacher was conducting the experiment. What would the results be?
Also, I believe that in East Germany, many people were willing to spy on their families and friends.
Personally, I am extremely disappointed at such results. It goes to show that people just will not stand up for anything at all when up against authority. They won't even stand up for reason and values, or more generally, principles.
Why do a standard of right or wrong exist? They exist to enhance the interactions, relationships and deals in a society or group of people.
They exist so that the maximum number of people would be happy in the long term.
They are meant to reduce the amount of arguments, or fights.
The code is agreed on by the people and they uphold it.
The thing about values is that they can evoke emotions or the interests of people. So, you can say that my disappointment at the results is an emotion response. And indeed it is. But there are also reasons for it, and these are backed by practical consequences of actions.
There are many standards and different societies hold different ones to be true.
I know that there are some values that, if we abide to, makes everyone better off. Hence, the people in a society have an interest in following these values. Their interests are often fairness and prosperity.
