A question of ethics/morality

[yovargas]

Is it "discrimination" that older folk are harder to insure? Or is it just, you know, an obvious fact of reality.

The KenEv family was just being weaselly. They're being rewarded for trying to scam the context. Not cool.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, yov, it's also a fact of reality that older folks are more likely to drop dead or have major health problems, or up and retire, so should people over, say, 55 be openly discriminated against in hiring?

And, women in their 20s are notoriously more likely than 50-year-old men to get pregnant, incurring health care costs and maybe raising premiums for everyone, even if they don't just up and leave; should they be excluded from the better colleges and from employment for that reason?

The fact is we've all got risk factors. Now in this case, a private contest, I don't think anyone's rights got trampled, but there are circumstances where in cold logic it's good business sense to exclude groups of people from hiring or promotion for perfectly obvious reasons, and yet society benefits if we don't run our whole economy on that basis.

[samaranth]

It’s not an acceptable form of protest to simply lie. There are other mechanisms which could have been used I mean, following that tack, it was a similar invasion of privacy for vison’s sister’s in-laws to have been asked for their names…and they’re not complaining about that…are they?

And no, I don’t think they’re discriminated against. Age parameters are often set for liability reasons: look at the age limits for access to alcohol, or to join various organisations, or to undertake risky sports. Does needing to be ‘this high’ to go on a roller coaster equal height discrimination? The organisers of the competition are well within their rights to determine the conditions under which it’s run. If you don't like the conditions, don't enter.

As Prim says, entering a competition and winning a prize is not a basic human right, unlike shelter, sustenance, and education and employment.

But still, I’m with Mahima too – they won! I never win anything. I don’t know people who win things. The whole concept kind of boggles my mind.

[solicitr]

Lying on a contest form probably isn't illegal, in the sense of being a crime. But it was almost certainly a violation of the contest Terms & Conditions; it's odds on that buried in the fine print nobody reads there's something to the effect of "materially false statements render this application void" or some such.

I'm with vison here. This is no different than those Chinese gymnasts with the fiddled birth certificates: cheating.

[Inanna]

Your youngest sister won all those things? Omigod. There must be data with the firms on the number of people who enter - to figure out what the odds are. But seriously, probabilistically speaking, your sister is one lucky gal.

[vison]

Your youngest sister won all those things? Omigod. There must be data with the firms on the number of people who enter - to figure out what the odds are. But seriously, probabilistically speaking, your sister is one lucky gal.

She has won a lot of stuff, very true. But she enters a lot of contests. According to her, many contests don't get a lot of entries because people think it's pointless to enter, so your chances are pretty good of winning something. It's not like buying lottery tickets where millions of people 'enter'.

As I said, it's her idea of a good time.

[MithLuin]

Winning things is fun

Dishonesty is...well, dishonest. I think the ethics are pretty clear there. People sometimes play with 'intent to deceive' versus an actual lie - you can make a statement that is factually true but intentionally very misleading.

In the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, a Nazi questions a French dairy farmer about some Jewish neighbors. When asked where they are, he says he heard a rumor that they had gone to Spain. He may very well have heard such a rumor, but he also knew that they were under his floorboards at the moment.

There are times when lying (or deception) really does turn out to be the lesser of evils. This contest, of course, was not one of them.

For a real-life (and less clear cut) example, schools are determined based on address. Parents often use an 'alternative' address to get their kids into a more desirable school. It is dishonest, because if they really wanted to use their uncle's house, maybe they should...move in. But at the same time...the desire to get a kid out of a failing school is pretty high, and as long as there's a valid address when you register, it's easy to get away with...so it happens all the time.

At my school, students are required to live within city limits to attend. So, they all have addresses in the city when they apply. Doesn't mean they all actually live here, though.

Is that dishonest? Yes. Can you make an excuse for it? Sure. Wanting the best for your kid (or just worrying about their safety! ) is a very valid concern, but the honest solution to the dilemma...is to move. That's just harder.


My sister once entered a statewide student photography contest. While she was a student in the state in question, we happened to live in the neighboring state. So, the pictures she took in our backyard were not taken in the state that was holding the contest. She was (AFAIK) eligible for the contest, but there is some question as to whether or not her photographs were. The short essays she wrote to go with them spoke a lot about the Mason Dixon line without mentioning which side of it the photos were taken on. She did win, but I don't think there was money attached - it was more that the photos would be displayed somewhere for a time. I don't think she lied about anything, but she was deliberately coy about the subject of her photos, and if they'd found out the photos weren't actually taken in the state, she might have been disqualified. I don't know. She didn't think a distance of a mile or so mattered, but they might have.

[vison]

Well, to my Mum there is no grey area - it's a lie or it's the truth. It made life difficult at times for us kids! Say you went to a movie with Fred. "I went to a movie with Fred," you would say.

But you didn't add, "After the movie we went to the Ding Ga Ga for Chinese food."

So Mum found out you had gone to the Ding Ga Ga for Chinese food and bingo!! That made the entire story a lie - because you had omitted part of it. Not that you did anything wrong - but that you left part of it out made it a lie and therefore you could be leaving something else out and who knows what that might be!!!

Mum always found out EVERYTHING. She had the best information system on the planet, she could have run the CIA, I swear.

It wasn't quite fair and it sometimes made us devious - kids will lie and we were no exception, especially me, I admit.

It can make my Mum unreasonable, too. I don't know what she would do if she was ever put in the position of the French farmer. She hates lies but she is also determined to always do the "right thing" and I suppose she would come down on the right side of that question - but she wouldn't do it automatically or easily.

[Impenitent]

A side issue, but I saw this today and felt compelled to share.

Do animals have morals? Yes, according to this researcher. Watch the video - convincing but also quite humorous.

http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_ ... orals.html