Ethics

Ethics is reasoning about what we owe other people and what constitutes good character. Because our actions affect other people, ethical decisions ask what our values require and use attention to examine what we are doing and why.

These notes are based on How to Be Perfect, which treats ethics as a practice of caring, trying, failing, learning, and trying again.

  • No single moral framework resolves every situation, each reveals concerns the others miss, and their answers can conflict.
  • Avoid both apathy and impossible moral perfection. Moral sainthood can erase relationships, joy, rest, interests, and your own chance to flourish.
  • Keep a shared moral baseline. Other people’s interests cannot be ignored for convenience. Beyond it, expectations rise with capacity, freedom, luck, and resources. If you can afford to do a little extra, do a little extra.
  • Use moral opportunity cost to resist complacency without requiring every unit of time or money to maximize welfare.
  • Moral exhaustion and honest mistakes are inevitable. Self-forgiveness sustains effort, but it should not disguise apathy, repeated selfishness, or preventable harm.
  • Own each mistake on its own merits. Criticize the specific conduct rather than turning wrongdoing into an identity. Keep the account concrete, but an apology is not a way to manage your image or demand forgiveness.

Moral Lenses

  • Virtue: What kind of person should I be? Practice kindness, courage, generosity, loyalty, and mildness in the right amount; both deficiency and excess can become vices.
  • Consequences: Who gains or suffers? Consider the severity, duration, likelihood, timing, and reach of the happiness and harm created, while remembering that outcomes are uncertain and difficult to compare.
  • Universal Rules: What is the real rule behind the action, and would it still work if everyone followed it? Treat every person as an end, never merely as a means.
  • Fairness: Could every reasonable person affected accept the rule? Design fair rules as if you did not know your own wealth, health, identity, or position.
  • Community: “A person is a person through other people.” Individual choices should account for community health and the equal importance of other people’s interests.

Practical Test

For a difficult choice, ask:

  1. Who is affected, including people who are distant, less visible, or unable to object?
  2. What direct and downstream harms may follow, and how likely, severe, and lasting are they?
  3. Could the rule behind the choice be universal and accepted as fair by those affected?
  4. Does it treat people as ends rather than tools for convenience, status, or gain?
  5. What character does the choice express, and does it fit the person you are trying to become?

For collective choices, inspect Incentives, externalities, and feedback within Systems, then ask whether governance rules would be fair from any position. Refusing to choose is still a choice; use the lenses to clarify responsibility, not to escape it.