Vermont’s Biggest Fraud: Motivated Blindness, Deliberate Ignorance, or Just Plain Fraud? Bill Stenger played a role in what has been called “Vermont’s Biggest Fraud.” An interesting question is: Why did Stenger do what he did? By most accounts, Bill Stenger is a good guy. In the early parts of this century, he worked as the general manager of the Jay Peak ski resort, a threadbare ski […] Ver
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, […] Ver
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 […] Ver
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 […] Ver
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 […] Ver
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 […] Ver
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 […] Ver
“He looks like a criminal to me”: Implicit Bias in the Criminal Justice System On August 3, 2023, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Leon Liggins’ drug conviction because the federal district judge who presided over his trial had stated in open court that Liggins “looks like a criminal to me.” The judge later assured the defendant: “Just because I got mad does not mean I’m biased. I’m […] Ver
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 […] Ver
Academic Dishonesty in Ethics Studies Ethics Unwrapped focuses significantly on behavioral ethics, the science of moral decision-making. The science of behavioral ethics is only as solid as the work of the scientists who research in the field, and last month behavioral ethics was dealt a blow when one of the field’s stars, Francesca Gino of the Harvard Business School, was […] Ver