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We blog about current events, new books (and sometimes movies), and other happenings that have an ethical slant.

We also share on social media and encourage you to follow us @ethicsunwrapped. Links to our channels are in the footer of this (and every) page.

The Road from Internet Hype to Online Deception

The Road from Internet Hype to Online Deception

This blog entry is prompted by our having read Gabrielle Bluestone’s book: Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We’re Following (2021). We’re a little late to the party, but better late than never because the book contains much of interest. Bluestone is an attorney, a journalist, and importantly […]

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Moral Lessons from the Taliban

Moral Lessons from the Taliban

This blog post is inspired by Ian Fritz’s new memoir: WHAT THE TALIBAN TOLD ME, a book with many lessons for those hoping to be good people. Starting around 2011, Fritz served as a U.S. Air Force cryptologic linguist who rode in large aircraft in the skies of Afghanistan listening in on the people below, […]

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Artificial Intelligence, Democracy, and Danger

Artificial Intelligence, Democracy, and Danger

The potential impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on our world–for good and for ill–continues to expand rapidly. On balance, the progress that science and industry have wrought over the centuries—think of the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, vaccines, penicillin, computers, and innumerable other advances–have made the world a better place. Some argue that the […]

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Sex, Lies, and Bankruptcy Court

Sex, Lies, and Bankruptcy Court

A judge’s most important job is to be impartial. Otherwise, the justice they dispense cannot be blind, as it must be. However, judges are also human beings, meaning that the influences and biases that make it difficult for humans to be impartial–most importantly the self-serving bias—affect judges just as they affect everyone else. The self-serving […]

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Moral Equilibrium: Variance in Virtue

Moral Equilibrium: Variance in Virtue

This blog post is prompted by a brand new article with the intimidating title “Variance in Virtue: An Integrative Review of Intraindividual (Un)Ethical Behavior Research” by professors Perkins, Podsakoff and Welsh (“PPW”). The article addresses the eternal question that often concerns us here at Ethics Unwrapped: why do good people do bad things? Indeed, it […]

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Supremely (Over)Confident

Supremely (Over)Confident

An interesting new book, Aaron Tang’s Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence is Destroying the Court and How We Can Fix It, prompts this blog post. Tang is a law school professor and former Supreme Court clerk who has developed an explanation for the historically low opinion that the American people have of the Supreme Court these […]

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Crypto Ethics: FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried

Crypto Ethics: FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried

As regular readers of this blog know, our most common form of post arises from our reading of a book or major media exposé about a business scandal. We then mine those sources for any information that might tell us how behavioral ethics concepts might enlighten us as to how and why the scandal occurred […]

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Behavioral Ethics for Kristin Harila and Other Mountain Climbers

Behavioral Ethics for Kristin Harila and Other Mountain Climbers

On July 27, 2023, Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, with the help of her guide Tenjin Sherpa (“Lama”), became the fastest climber to scale all 14 of the world’s 8,000+ meter-high mountains—in just 92 days. This amazing feat was marred by allegations that as they summited K2, Harila and Lama…and about 50 other climbers…hiked past Muhammad […]

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