The Ethicist - Tourist Retractions

I recently spent several days at a relatively expensive hotel. The place was deplorable and unsanitary, with an unresponsive front desk. I gave it a poor write-up on TripAdvisor.com, the travel website, titling my review “An Overpriced Dung Heap.” The following day, the owner contacted me through the site with an offer to refund almost half the cost of my stay if I would retract my review. I accepted the handsome offer and deleted my post. Who was the most unethical: me (for accepting the bribe), the owner (for offering it) or the site (which enables this chicanery and therefore has untrustworthy reviews)? HOWARD OLARSCH, FLORIDA

In this case, I’d classify the hotel owner as the least ethical actor. But you’re a close second.

TripAdvisor has clear guidelines regarding what business owners can and cannot do about bad reviews, most notably the following: “Owners may not ask reviewers to remove a review” using the TripAdvisor messaging system. Of course, this is not legally binding — and even if it were, there are many other ways an owner could contact a reviewer. Moreover, TripAdvisor has almost no editorial control over the veracity of the reviews it hosts, all of which are written by unvetted writers beholden to nobody. The site can’t necessarily be trusted, and anyone using it has a responsibility to realize that. So I would say TripAdvisor’s ethical breach is the least troubling.

Your decision to remove a review upon the acceptance of a bribe was lame (which you clearly understand). If you were a professional newspaper critic, such behavior would be grounds for termination. You, however, are just an annoyed guy who wrote a free review.

I can’t accurately gauge the depth of your ethical malfunction because I don’t know what your original goal was. If your motive for writing the review was to altruistically warn other travelers, it would seem your integrity has a pretty low price tag — but maybe your true motive was to mock the hotel. Maybe you simply wanted to vent your displeasure in public or to entertain the kind of weirdo who enjoys reading over-the-top TripAdvisor takedowns. Maybe you wrote it hoping you would get a refund. Regardless, you’re an unreliable narrator with no critical credibility.

But the hotel owner is unequivocally unethical. For one thing, he’s ignoring the rules established by TripAdvisor. Granted, he may never have agreed to those policies in the first place, but he’s choosing to involve himself with the site and interfering with a process in which the goal (at least in theory) is consumer transparency. He also did not offer reimbursement as a way to satisfy a customer, but only in exchange for the removal of an honest assessment of his hotel. If this is his normal business practice, it’s almost as if he’s involved with reverse marketing: He overcharges for a bad experience and only offers a rebate to those who inform strangers that this is how he operates.

In this column by The Ethicist a man shares his troubles regarding a hotel review. This man stayed an expensive hotel which was not hospitable at all and lacked many services, and thus he wrote a horrible review for it TripAdvisor. His dilemma arises from the fact that the hotel owner contacted him through TripAdvisor and offered to refund him for almost half the cost of the stay if he took the review down. This behavior is against TripAdvisor guidelines. The man accepted the bribe and then asked the Ethicist who was most unethical: himself, the hotel owner or the website. The first thing the Ethicist does is call the hotel owner the most unethical, the man the second and the website the third. First we must note that ethics are rules of conduct based on a social system, while morals are principals of right and wrong conduct for the individual. The first mistake the Ethicist makes is to disregard the fact that the man knew he was doing something wrong. If the man was doing something wrong, he wasn’t only being unethical he was also being immoral. He understood the implications of his actions and what he might be doing to future travellers who book the same hotel.  The Ethicist is using the questioner’s language as a way of knowing and interpreting the situation. By naming his review of the hotel “An Overpriced Dung Heap”, the man was sparking attention towards the hotel, attention that could’ve probably turned sour. He then questioned if he was being unethical. The Ethicist was using language already given to him to construct his opinion. If the man hadn’t used such negative words in his description of the hotel, would the Ethicist still find him the second “most unethical” or the first? If the complainer hadn’t used such language, the Ethicist might have found his reaction, and subsequent acceptance of the bribe, the most unethical and immoral. The Ethicist’s ultimatum will influence the man’s opinion of himself and he’ll chastise his actions even more than he is now. In Human Sciences, something like Language can have a monumental effect on the thought processes of a person. By calling someone unethical, their behavior might change forever. Now, the man may never again write an honest review for fear of falling into another unethical situation.

However, while we can judge who’s been the most unethical in this situation, we have several knowledge gaps. For example, why did the man use TripAdvisor as the website to post his review? Why did he accept the bribe even though he knew it was wrong? Was the hotel owner in need of money, and thus overcharged for terrible service? Does the hotel owner really want more people to get money back and not badly promote the hotel than actually run a better hotel? Why does TripAdvisor allow posts to be deleted but ask that hotel owners not use the website for bribes? Without all of this information, we have gaps in the story that might have changed the labels of unethical behavior and who was the worst at ethical behavior. We don’t know the hotel owner’s side of the story and thus we are pressured to believe that he had a nefarious reason to do so (we also form this opinion because of Language).  

         Both because of gaps in knowledge and the omission of immorality, I don't particularly agree with the Ethicist. Yes, I do believe the hotel owner was unethical, but I think the man was both unethical and immoral, and the website was neither. The hotel owner was unethical because he did what is socially considered wrong but not what went against his own principles. The man went against society’s policies and his own, therefore he’s the worst party of the situation as he’s doing wrong by himself and by others. However, the website was not at fault as it has guidelines for its users but cannot legally place them in a binding contract. It’s not the website’s fault the hotel is bad, the review was written, and the bribe was offered. By using the language the man wrote with, the Ethicist limited his judgment, thus wrongly interpreting the situation.

I am a single woman in my mid-20s. I recently learned from my dear friend that she has developed a longtime pattern of cheating on her husband of five years. I understand cheating happens for various reasons — but if I remain friends with her, am I condoning her ongoing behavior? If I am “anti-compulsive-cheating,” do I therefore have to be anti-her? I value many aspects of our friendship but don’t see her (or my) views on philandering ever changing. EVE, HOUSTONIt’s totally fine to have friends whose values oppose your own. Having relationships with people does not condone everything they do. You can be intimately involved with a person and still view the quality of his or her thoughts and actions with objective distance.Now, that changes if you become tangibly involved with unethical acts: if you provide cover for deception, if you help people lie or if you tell them their infidelity is justified (even though you believe it isn’t) — then you’re complicit. But that’s not what’s happening here. What’s happening is that someone you care about is doing something problematic and has selected you as her confidante (despite the obvious risk in doing so). This reflects positively on you as an individual. And as long you stay within your own value system — as long as you do nothing or say nothing that contradicts whatever you consider the better way to live — the friendship is valid.You claim your friend’s views on philandering will not change. You’re probably right. They probably won’t. Maybe she doesn’t even think what she’s doing is particularly wrong. But in all likelihood, she knows it’s wrong (but does it anyway). Abruptly ending your friendship won’t have any impact on her cheating; she will just assume that you’re self-righteous or that she’d be better off keeping her secrets to herself in the future. If you stay in her life, however, you might be able to show her a different way to live and think. Tell her that learning of her infidelities made you question the merit of your friendship. Make it clear that you see her behavior as wrong but that you would not socially discard her over this difference. If she ever asks your advice, tell her to stop cheating on her husband (or to at least be honest with her husband about how she chooses to live).Don’t end a friendship because someone acts in a way you never would. Part of being a good person is being open to people who are not so good, and part of being a friend is making flawed acquaintances feel as if they can tell you about their flaws (without fear of abandonment or persecution). In fact, if you’re the type of person who wants to associate exclusively with those who perfectly mirror your own ethical worldview, you’re reducing significantly the scope of your potential life experience.

In this post from The Ethicist, a woman shares that she discovered the fact that her friend has been cheating on her husband. This woman is completely against cheating and now she doubts whether or not she should be against her friend. At a first glance, my initial thought was that you can always have a friendship and have disagreements or different opinions about something. Even if you are against something your friend does, I think that, at the end of the day, you just mutually support each other. One doesn't necessarily have to understand or like what the other person is doing, but just respecting the fact that it's their choice and not your own. On the other hand, when a friendship is close enough, you should be able to voice your opinions just to offer your friend another point of view. 
One of the first ways of knowing that I thought of when reading this post was language. The way this woman wrote the post and asked the question makes a huge difference: she uses the word cheating. "Cheating" holds a very strong, negative connotation and makes most people immediately think of something bad and overall wrong. However, the "cheater" in this situation, probably describes it with words that have another connotation in order to make it seem less severe. At the end of the day, sugarcoating the story doesn't change the action, but it will probably make the "cheater" feel less guilty if she uses nicer words and it will probably make the writer feel even more upset if she uses strong, negative words. The next way of knowing I thought of is reason. Anyone can support a statement with arguments that could be reasonable or unreasonable. The way this woman describes the situation, by saying "cheating happens for various reasons" already shows how arguments can influence you to think differently about a situation. The "cheater" probably defended herself with excuses and reasonable statements, on the other hand, the friend might've thought of so many counterarguments given that she is against the practice of adultery. In other words, the way you set up a conversation, with the use of language and reasoning, can change the meaning of the situation completely. The way that the friend told the story was probably a lot different than the way the other friend received the story given that they have such different views on the topic. 
Another important aspect to analyze is emotion. The woman who is cheating is probably emotionally attached and thus defending herself in a biased way. On the other hand, her friend is learning about this with a negative perspective on the act of cheating and thinking about her own ethics as well as the defined morals. The morals defined by society are that cheating is wrong and this could differ in someone's personal ethical views. To the woman who wrote this question, cheating is wrong and she is analyzing the situation with that perspective in mind. However, just because the friend is cheating doesn't mean she finds it acceptable–she might be so emotionally involved making her biased and causing her to forget her own principles. Even if two people in a friendship have different ethics, however, shouldn't they respect each other's principles? I think all of this includes the social sciences because you can go further by analyzing the way they were raised. Maybe one of them was exposed to cheating and that has shaped their perception (maybe it is something they are accustomed to or repelled by). Maybe religious doctrines and morals put up by their society influence the way they perceive this situation. I think that there is so much more to this problem, given that we, as readers, don't know either of the woman involved.
With all of this said, my personal belief is that a friendship means mutual support and respect for each other. Thus, even if there is a clash of ethics or disagreement, one puts judgements aside to help a friend. With that said, I also believe that the woman who wrote this question is allowed to give her opinion and show her friend why she thinks it might be wrong at the same time that she supports her. Just because you are against something doesn't necessarily mean you would dislike everyone who is for it. After reading what Chuck Klosterman answered, I mostly agree with him. As long as you know how to separate and keep your own ethics, you can still be friends with someone who has a different opinion. And if someone tries to involve you in something you don't believe in, know how to keep your distance from that and be strong to say no. My personal opinion is that there is emotional attachment in the friendship that you probably can't get rid of, no matter the difference in opinion you may have. 

Too Much Baby - The Ethicist

Many of my friends on Facebook are having babies. Nearly every time I log on, I see (in my news feed) many pictures of these babies, almost to the point of oversharing. Now, I love babies and feel it’s acceptable to post a photo from a holiday gathering or a first picture of a newborn. But when this happens every day from a specific acquaintance, is it a violation of the baby’s privacy? The baby did not sign up for a Facebook account, does not understand the concept of Facebook and obviously was not asked permission to have its pictures on the site. R. D., MANALAPAN, N.J.

On the surface, this question is a little amusing (I like to imagine a humiliated baby sitting at a desktop computer, furiously untagging itself from last week’s piñata party). But it still raises some extremely complicated issues about the concept of personhood, and the problems grow even murkier as a child matures toward adolescence. This being the case, I’m going to stick to the specifics of the question as closely as possible.

A baby obviously has human rights; you can’t kill a baby or sell a baby or deprive a baby of things it needs to survive. A baby is alive, and a baby has a brain. But a baby doesn’t have a mind. It can’t comprehend the existence of itself or the existence of the world or what Facebook represents. Babies don’t get to make decisions about the integrity of their lives because they don’t have the ability to do so: how they dress, when they go to bed and whether they appear on Facebook is not an infringement on their agency, because they don’t have agency. They don’t know what agency is.

Now, here’s where it gets complicated. I’m not saying, “If a human has no idea what’s happening, you can do whatever you want with its image.” Babies are not the only people who can exist in that situation. If your 95-year-old grandpa is in a coma, it would be unethical (and deeply weird) to post daily pictures of his emaciated body on Facebook, even though he would have no awareness of what was happening or what it meant. So what’s the difference? The difference is that — in the best case — that 95-year-old man could theoretically insist that this is not what he wants. He is no longer a fully conscious being, but forces beyond his control robbed him of that consciousness. Ethically, his personhood must still be understood through the potential of his best-possible self. There’s no best case in which a newborn can comprehend the abstraction of privacy. The world’s smartest baby still doesn’t know anything.

But here’s where it gets really complicated: You don’t necessarily need to intellectually understand an act in order for it to be inhumane. If a child is born into oppression, receives no education and trudges through 75 years of hard labor, he or she may die without ever considering the possibility that oppression is anything beyond the normal condition of being alive. Yet this does not mean that the oppressed person was not wronged; it merely means that person was never placed in an opportunity to contemplate a different experience. The potential to recognize this injustice was always there, even if it was never realized.

In the same way, it could be argued that an infant will eventually decide that being broadcast on Facebook in a diaper was a violation of privacy and that the original posting of the photo took advantage of the subject’s inability to think and communicate. But this brings us back to the difference between having a brain and having a mind. The violation of personal privacy doesn’t start until an individual has the ability to understand what the violation means. Until that moment happens, other people — in this case, the individual’s parents — get to make those decisions (and are ethically positioned to do so).

There is a very clear ethical dilemma being dealt with in this article of The Ethicist. Web exposure is a very serious issue, but this is a very specific situation: Should parents be able to freely post and share photographs of infants who are still not able to speak up and give opinions on their own? Looking at it objectively, the ends of the spectrum are either parents wanting to show how incredible and adorable their children are for all their friends, or on the other hand, parents are concerned not only about the willingness that in the future, the infant may disapprove of such exposure, but also a concern of privacy. The Ethicist does not respond with a very clear answer, but rather responds both sides. First, he explores the idea of brain vs. mind. By his definition, a brain is the functioning organ that controls a human being, while a mind actually comprehends life, existence, and so forth. This shows the strong perception the ethicist has on this subject matter, where he differentiates both terms when for some people, they may be the same thing. He then says that since the baby is too young to have a mind, he cannot make decisions, such as whether or not they want their image public on the Internet, in sites such as Facebook. It is then to the discretion of parents to decide for them. He makes the connection that as parents choose babies’ clothes, food, education and everything else, it would be logical for them to also decide whether or not they want to post the photo. On the other hand, the Ethicist describes that oppression is often not visible, but that doesn’t make it any less inhumane. In ToK terms, this has a direct correlation with perception. If something is not perceived, is it still applicable? If a tree falls in the woods with no one to hear it, does it still make a sound? This is a very deeply rooted question with arguments on both sides, but in terms of the baby, it is easier to decide upon. Thirdly, The Ethicist explains that posting such photos can be a violation of an infant’s personal privacy, and the parent is thus taking advantage of the lack of “mind” and decision-making of the baby. The Ethicist concludes that the final verdict is up to the parents, and that they should thing of the ethical impact on their choices. In my opinion, I don’t believe it is completely unethical to post photos of your infant on the internet, especially on a relatively “private” website such as Facebook. Of course, things can always go wrong: one example is of parents who posted a video of their children getting surprised that they are going to Disneyland. One of the kids, Lilly, gets very excited, cries, and thanks the parents. On the other hand, the other daughter, Chloe, does not seem to be at all amused and is rather nonchalant about the present. Chloe’s indifferent face became viral, with hundreds of memes making fun of her and photoshopping her face onto different things. The child, although being at an age where she does have a  “mind” of her own, may be very disappointed with her parents’ decisions in the future, because they violated her privacy. It may take a negative toll on her where she did not want such images spread all throughout the internet, making it unethical for her parents to spread her image with such negative connotations, regardless of their original intentions. On the other hand, there is a degree of innocence to this discussion that shouldn’t be ignored. Is it really that wrong to post a picture of your children getting ready for their first day of school? Will such an innocent photo end up ruining their digital footprint? Although there are two sides of the argument, I don’t see the nature of such decisions of being so negative, and as the Ethicist describes, the parent should be able to make the decision of whether or not it is appropriate to post such an image on Facebook and furthermore on the internet.

Is a Rumor Enough to Go On?

A few years ago, the daughter of a family friend had twins. Shortly afterward, one twin died. Recently I heard that the twins’ father, who is now estranged from the mother, accidentally smothered the baby with his body as he slept, almost certainly while intoxicated. I asked if the father had been charged, perhaps with negligence or something similar. I was told that the mother of the children lied to investigators to prevent the father from being charged. Of course, the accusation could be gossip; though I don’t think it is. What is the best thing to do in this situation? NAME WITHHELD

You have three options. All of them are bad. The first is to take the rumor at face value and report what you know to the authorities, even though it would be almost impossible to prove and is potentially untrue. The second is to do nothing and live with a dark secret. The third is to try to uncover the reality of the situation before making any further moves, which would most likely entail confronting the mother about a subject she may not want to discuss or recall.

Because no option is positive, we must examine the relative downsides. If you go to the police, your conscience will be clear. But the domino effect would make an already tragic story much, much worse. First of all, your third-party information might be wrong — never ignore the possibility that gossip is false or incomplete, particularly when accusing someone of negligent infanticide. But even if the information is right, you would be placing the mother in jeopardy for having lied to the police, damaging a family that is already broken and further penalizing a man for something that’s almost certainly the worst moment of his life. Everyone in the family would have to publicly re-experience something horrific, and the child would still be dead. This is a purely punitive act. It would serve no one who’s alive.

If you do nothing, an innocent human will have died without retribution. That’s awful. But even if the account is true, the death was accidental and devoid of motive, and the perpetrator is already living with those actions for the rest of his days. And here again, there’s always the possibility that this gossip is flat-out wrong. Sometimes babies die inexplicably; that is the definition of SIDS. So doing nothing neutralizes the risk of creating a new problem that isn’t there. This is not a perfect option, but it hurts the fewest number of living people.

The third option is the most conventionally ethical: it provides the mother a chance to explain how such a rumor may have started, and it gives you an opportunity to do something that could help (if the rumor is true, the mother needs counseling and an opportunity to contact a lawyer). Of course, it could reignite the trauma without generating anything except another denial. You must also realize that having this kind of honest conversation directly involves you in the problem, which (depending on what you learn) might force your hand. Some states require citizens to report child abuse. Before doing anything, consider this question: Is this something you’re prepared to know the truth about?

This post deals with the ethics behind taking actions based on a rumor. In this article, the family friend of a couple is concerned that one of couple’s babies passed away because the father accidentally suffocated it while sleeping drunk. While this is very concerning, it is in fact still a very dense rumor. The anonymous writer tells the Ethicist a lot of clauses that could be false. By the tone he uses, it seems as though he is very concerned with the real story and does not care that this may all just be a rumor, for he has a set opinion on whether or not he believes the story to be true.

When answering the writer, the Ethicist solely sticks to the fact that this situation regards the death of an infant. He provides the person with three possible ways to try to solve this problem: tell the authorities what they think they know, do nothing, or try to find the truth before taking action. Through every option he gives, the Ethicist appeals greatly to the emotion of the concerned friend and of the family that lost a child. In the first option, he mentions that the friend’s conscious will be clear if they tell the authorities, but that they could potentially further ruin a family based on a rumor, for the mother would have to be charged for lying to the authorities and the father would basically relive his nightmare. His language shows that is appealing to the writer’s morals and ethics, for they must take into consideration not only that justice must be served, but that this all involves a close family who already lived though this terrible experience.

In the second option, he appeals directly to the writer’s emotion, stating that the child will have died “without retribution” if no action is taken. In this situation, the Ethicist is strongly taking into consideration that this innocent child died without a fight, again, appealing to emotion. He is appealing to the emotions of the person almost by suggesting that they alone will be able to give the little human a purpose. In the last option, the Ethicist asks if the person is even ready to know the truth, for if this course is taken they could find out the truth. He ends with a big appeal to emotion that I think is very funny considering the fact that not once did he really take into consideration that theoretically the situation of this baby does not really concern the writer.

Ultimately I think the options the Ethicist posed are good considering that the writer demonstrated concern for the situation, but I believe many things are faulty in his analysis of the situation. First of all, this may all just be a giant rumor simply fueled by the fact that a child died and the parenting couple separated soon after. I think it is the natural tendency of a human to put the blame on someone, and in this case, the writer is directly correlating the killing of a child with a separation. I think both jumped to too many conclusions, basing all of their arguments on the fact that the child is gone forever. I believe the Ethicist is wrong to say that the baby will have died without retribution if no action is taken because he does not take into consideration all that could have caused the death, and automatically gave the writer reason. What should be more questioned is exactly why the couple is now separated, but at the same time should be remembered that no matter how the child died, the couple could have split because that is an awful situation to deal with under any circumstances. Because this may all be a rumor and the baby and the parents are not even from that person’s family, maybe the Ethicist should have advised the person not meddle and should leave the situation alone. If they insist, they must first find out the reasons behind all actions taken by the family, before actually taking action themselves.

The Ethicist

I am a young, female law student who represents indigent clients in criminal matters. I have learned (both from professionals at my school and from studies on subliminal biases) that female attorneys are more likely to be taken seriously if they have straight hair and wear makeup, skirts and heels. This is not a norm I want to perpetuate. However, I know that I have an ethical responsibility to represent my clients to the best of my ability. But do I have to conform to gender norms I find oppressive if there is a chance it will help my client? NAME WITHHELD

I would agree that you have an ethical responsibility to represent your clients to the fullest extent of your potential. But there are limits to what you are obligated to do, and this situation falls right on the cusp of that territory.

The fact that a lawyer’s attire should not matter to an intelligent jury is not relevant — you concede that it does, rightly or wrongly. But I don’t think this necessarily means you must dress in any specific way. “Serious attire” can mean different things to different people. Obviously, it would not serve your clients’ interests if you purposefully dressed in a manner that upended traditional definitions of professionalism — if you showed up in the courtroom wearing a “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirt and hemp pants, you’d force the jury to view you unconventionally (which is what you’re trying to avoid). But there are many shades between not caring at all and wholly conforming to an inflexible dress code. You do not, for example, need to wear makeup, particularly if doing so makes you uncomfortable with yourself (which might hurt your client far more than appearing as your regular self). You’re ethically responsible to present yourself professionally, but the details that define that professionalism are myriad.

That said, I do think you need to prioritize your goals here. What is more important to you: the representation of your client or your discomfort with antiquated gender norms? Almost all occupations require the mild subjugation of certain personal freedoms. If you believe that dressing in a specific manner would serve your client most effectively, your reasons for not doing so must matter more than the consequences of possibly losing a case for reasons unrelated to actual evidence.

While reading the question and the response I had a few questions pop up in my head. First, is the woman African American? Second, what does she find oppressive? I would want to know her ethnicity because if she is told to straighten her hair because of her race, it is no longer a gender norm, but is also an expectation for women of her race as well, which adds another type of prejudice. My second question refers specifically to what makes her uncomfortable, wearing heels and straightening her hair or doing that to follow antiquated gender norms. Another question that popped up in my head when reading the question was whether the lawyer she was going against was a man or a woman. If it were a woman who straightens her hair and conforms to the norm, the differences between the two would be more obvious and thus could harm her a lot. However, if it were a man the norms would change (for each gender) so the difference would not be as visible. That doesn’t mean, on the other hand, that she wouldn’t be subjected to gender norms.

Regarding the ethicist’s response, I feel like it somewhat reflects the idea that the “end justifies the means.” Conforming to gender norms would be okay if she ends up helping her client. The problem I have with that logical is that, when applied to other things it wouldn’t be ethical, so why would this situation be? Let’s use omission, for example. If the lawyer knew that her client committed murder but still defended him and he ended up not going to jail, would that still justify her omission? I think most people would agree that is morally wrong. Yes, ethically everyone has the right to be defended but omission of certain facts could become a lie, which would be morally and ethically wrong.

The ethicist let’s the lawyer make a decision on whether her discomfort is bigger than her will to help her client. But the problem with this logic is that (at least ideally) she shouldn’t have to make a choice. On the other hand, if I were her client, my hope would be that my lawyer would be going above and beyond to ensure my innocence and if that meant straightening her hair then I would want her to do so.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the Ethicist’s response. I don’t think it was well constructed but my answer would be the same: she should choose what to do and what is more important to her. I disagree with his logic that the end justifies the means, however. My logic when looking at this question is that she should choose which battles are worth fighting; is it worth fighting against gender norms while fighting (supposedly) an injustice? In my opinion she has a life time to fight gender norms and I don’t think that conforming to them to defend someone else is something to be ashamed of since she is (supposedly) giving up her opinion to fight for the “greater good.”