Worse than Enron: The Great Post Office Scandal (Part I) Few people on this side of the pond (and not nearly as many on the other side as you would think) know much about a decades-long scandal that puts Enron to shame. More people will likely come to know of the scandal because of the new ITV television series “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office” […] View
Can Ethics be Taught? Despite centuries of the best efforts of religious leaders, philosophers, and ethics professors, the world remains woefully short of any ideal ethical state. Those of us who teach ethics would like to know if our efforts are having a positive impact. Some (e.g., Bok, Kaufmann, and Park) believe that ethics can be taught. Others (e.g., […] View
Social Structures and Moral Actions As we humans navigate life, we are influenced by a wide range of social structures that shape and channel our thoughts and actions, including moral ones. We just finished reading two semi-recent books on such structures that we’d like to quickly explore. Professor C. Thi Nguyen’s Games: Agency as Art (2020) delves into games (including […] View
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 […] View
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 […] View
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, […] View
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 […] View
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 […] View
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 […] View
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 […] View