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okay sorry i am apparently unable to let this go - it is seriously disturbing to me the way many of you seem to refuse to see the ethical component of this situation (the lying + the stealing) and i am losing trust in you accordingly. do any of you care about ethics at all?
the assumption here is that it is highly unlikely that the scarf matters much to its previous owner. if you've ever worked at a place with a lost and found, this is obvious. as for the lying, you have a point. I wouldn't wanna date a girl who does this type of thing weekly ... or even monthly. But implied here is that it is an exceptional circumstance for a very rare very minor lie, all this 'ethics' talk is overreaction
@QiaochuYuan unethical charm gf is sort of the flip side of asshole bf. if you're special and they only use it *for* your benefit, it's actually really hot. the trick is, they might *also* use it against you. how to tell how to tell
@QiaochuYuan I see the ethical component and agree in principle. It *is* theft, which is wrong. It *is* lying, which is wrong. My quibble is people talking like Theft and Lying are platonic forms or something, where context and proportionality don't matter because Is Wrong.
yeah man, i think there’s a key difference here: there were like 20 scarfs in the drawer and the nicest one wasn’t that nice. i’m sorry this post caused you to trust the people around you less and if i had more than 1 bar of cell service i would love to get on a call and talk about it directly. i’ll be back on the grid sunday
@_brentbaum @QiaochuYuan i recently lost a pink scarf given to me by my mother. i don’t care how nice someone thinks it is, it’s invaluable to me. i’ve yet to located it and now i wonder if it’s because someone stole it. you should be ashamed
@_brentbaum @QiaochuYuan I think stealing a super nice scarf would make it LESS bad because then you’d be stealing from someone who can afford to replace it. But the lying still erodes trust and means people who really did lose stuff have to jump through hoops.
@QiaochuYuan this is how i imagined it https://t.co/3ZuMKB40GQ
I imagine this went down like this: girlfriend: aww, I love this man and I want him to feel warm. I know hotels throw out lost and found periodically, I'll ask nicely for something to keep him warm. A jacket feels like too much, maybe a scarf. [Girlfriend arrives at front desk] girlfriend: "Hiya! I lost a scarf here last week, could U help me?" winks if I tell him I just want a scarf, he can't give it to me, he works here, hopefully he picks up on what I mean. staff: I've never seen this woman before—I would know if I had. However she just winked at me so I bet she knows I have to throw most of this out, I'll see what happens if I play along. "Yes, one moment, let's see what we've got." [Staff brings out an assortment of scarves] girlfriend: I'll watch carefully how he reacts as I reach for a scarf. Ok, let's get something modest. [reaches towards a modest scarf] staff: [visibly wincing] No, not that one, a guest left it yesterday and they might come back. girlfriend: Oh, ok, looks like someone lost that recently, I'll adjust course to the left. staff: [visibly relieved, happy even] yes, please, that one got left three weeks ago girlfriend: [grabs the scarf indicated] "Oh, thank U so much!"
@qorprate this would be less bad i guess but in any case it's context that isn't in the original story https://t.co/rw8efki4pu
@QiaochuYuan why do you take this to heart? yeah sure it's is a little bad and unfair but also not very harmful, a cold man was made warm and i feel there might be a blindness on your end related to what you posted here
@archivedself the specific incident is whatever, at this point we're talking about norms. if there's a blindness on my end i would appreciate an explanation of it https://t.co/rw8efki4pu
@QiaochuYuan The best defense is along the lines of "adverse possession." The odds of the scarf being used in its current state are so low that it is perhaps preferable for someone to just steal it. But I'm with you. Instrumental lying is a very scary habit that should be strongly avoided.
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/YXmHJT7rXl
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/1p7eHc0g3T
I think the real scissor here is between European and North American cultural norms. A while ago I left my jacket in my friends room in a European hotel. I had no connection to the room otherwise and my friend was busy. I walked to the front desk, asked for a room key, was given it and got my jacket. No questions asked anywhere. In NA all the norms pertaining to rules are a lot more absolute. I was once nearly thrown out of a games convention because I wasn't wearing my badge around my neck and only presenting it to the guards at the entrance because "the rules". To the European brain this is inconveivable because there's some sense in which it's common sense that the badge is for getting past security so even if the rules say "you have to wear it" on paper everybody would be fine with accomplishing the functional understanding. Same here, to most north Americans there is a big deontological category "lying" or "stealing" in this squarely fits the definition. To me very obviously, taking an item somebody else doesn't want isn't stealing, the category of stealing is about making sure people's property isn't taken away. This reads closer to dumpster diving than taking an item from the supermarket to me very obviously. BUT in there is an explicit step to switch to second order reasoning that uses something like intent instead of categorical enforcement of norms - which requires incidentally a different kind of high social trust about the intent of the people involved. In this particular kind of social trust Europe is a higher trust society than North America. I'm guessing most of this pretty straightforwardly falls out from historical contigency, where the US had to operate at a very different scales, so more explicit/simpler norms are needed (or reddotairplane.gif). Also I think an important reason why reasnoning about e.g. Scandinavian countries doesn't just translate the US 1 to 1. Also often this is hardcoded into the system in a way. Where e.g. another place where I've encountered this before: I wear contacts and ran out while in the US. I tried to buy some. They told me I needed a US prescription or I could go fuck myself because those are the rules. I was thoroughly confused why nobody would sell me this harmless object I clearly know I need, why the employees can't just sell me that, when a friend pointed out that they'd potentially be fired for this under threat of the legal system. Both sides look like barbarians to the other because they're violating their own versions of high trust, but it's not actually a low trust phenomenon but slightly different flavours of high trust clashing.
@QiaochuYuan https://t.co/4FMYG1V6zW
8/ Cultural Evolution: The Operating System Rules Turns out, the missing theory was the next gate over. Researchers like Boyd, Richerson, and later Joe Henrich started modeling how socially learned stuff – skills, norms, beliefs – spread through populations. Think of it like Civilization’s OS dictating the rules of the game.
@QiaochuYuan God gave us agency as a treat. We wouldn’t be able to lie if it were not divinely ordained 😇 I’m being slightly cheeky here, but almost every spiritual discipline has a trickster/rascal archetype that it reveres. The only problem with either of those actions is if harm is done.
@QiaochuYuan no you're right, it's unethical. like come on people. it's not the worst thing anyone has ever done, by any means, the original owner probably was never going to find that scarf - but being only a little bad doesn't make something good, that's just silly
It’s the late stage of the ethical system that bases itself solely on harm and doesn’t include personal morality. If you can minimize harm (“the person probably will never come back for it”), or rationalize the target (“big corporations can handle the loss”, “he’s rich anyways”), then there’s no “harm” and thus no issue. It’s morally bankrupt, props for pointing it out
@QiaochuYuan I dont really see it as stealing once lost. Feels okay to share things round if someone you care for is cold The ethical principle to me is “non-harming” which norms against lying / stealing seem to be in service of There are cases where it would be ethical even, to lie & steal
@QiaochuYuan A loose collective of internet weirdos had your trust? Anyway, people who act and judge solely on the basis of abstractions surely do not have my trust - the perception of what has vitality is at least as important as what functional rules for society are!
she made the world a little more efficient. someone lost something from who knows how long. she needed it now, the value of the scarf was much higher for her now than the original owner who doesn’t even care enough to not lose it. the scarf would have been thrown in the garbage very likely
@QiaochuYuan no, you're right on. sounds lame to say it but yeah this is just (petty) lying and stealing. but it's not a surprise that folks find lying and stealing cool because of the independence it demonstrates. that's why there's so many movies glamorizing thieves, like Oceans 11, etc..
I was kinda torn. I liked the story so much. I'm a libertarian and a big proponent of property rights. I posted reply to it saying that if I lost my scarf this way, I wouldn't even be mad. Let me back that up a bit. I had a belt that I really, really liked. I left it in a hotel. I never tried to get them to send it to me, because I got it in a thrift store in the first place, and I figured I could just find another one. I still haven't, and I feel a vague sense of loss over that. But, suppose that I was able, by some miracle, or just coincidence, to learn that a guy was on his way to an interview and he forgot to get a belt to go with his suit and he was panicking and his girlfriend pulled this trick and got him my belt. I would be so happy to know that my belt went to a good use, rather than being thrown away. Hopefully it wouldn't be thrown away, but rather donated, but that's a burden I would be putting on the hotel by my negligence, making them take time to take stuff to a donation place. I know it's still lying and stealing. And if we all did this--which I think is what you're getting at--you would never be able to go back to a hotel to retrieve a scarf that your mother gave you right before you died because everyone would be exercising this hack all the time and stuff you lost at a hotel would be gone into the scavenger community immediately (but then of course hotels would probably respond with stricter checks...). Look--@_brentbaum , if you DM me, I will Venmo you the shipping cost for you to send the scarf back to the hotel, telling them you retrieved it from the lost and found, but it wasn't yours, after all, and could they please return it to the lost and found in case the actual owner comes back for it. Post a picture of the package as you put it in the mail and let our friend here rest more easily.
The majority of the things in a lost&found are going to remain there forever, until it's cleaned out and they're thrown away. This is especially true for unimportant things like a single article of mundane clothing or a phone charger. Empathy is important here. Personally I can't imagine myself going to much trouble to recover a scarf that I'd left at a hotel (unless it was an especially bespoke design), and I would hope that it went to someone who needed a scarf at the time instead of being thrown out or donated to Goodwill. If you wouldn't hope the same, I question your ethics and I hope someone steals your scarf.
@QiaochuYuan *taps the sign* https://t.co/gXX3xx6iJY
@QiaochuYuan I have decided I have thoughts. With respect, I disagree with you and hope this makes sense? https://t.co/1SJaNkRsnt
@QiaochuYuan Classic virtue ethics versus consequentialism debate. Once I started to realize that consequentialists would justify all sorts of "harmless" things like lying and stealing, I lost a lot of faith in the ethics of the rat and rat-adjacent folks
@QiaochuYuan 1) if you said: “I left my scarf here last week do you mind if I go through the lost and found to see if it’s there?” That’s not lying. 2) taking what’s lost is not stealing. It’s making use of what is no longer being used. + If you see objects having spirit this is not “bad”
@QiaochuYuan FWIW I would never take a scarf in such a manner. I’m curious tho — if she’d run back and got him a scarf she’d seen abandoned in a park, would that be different? Trying to poke at whether seeing it as being abandoned property would make a difference.
My life is deeply corrigible to ethical evidence. imo, lying and taking the scarf does harm oneself and society. There's a small but serious cost to it. But imo, it's fair sometimes or even praiseworthy sometimes for people to pay this cost.prototypical deontologists aren't practical enough, prototypical utilitarians don't respect the actual social fabric enough. I like the ethics framing of "open-minded virtue ethics that embraces felt-signals and karma" or "Become a sensitive, generative agent who protects others and experiments to learn Things."It is virtuous to provide for pained loved ones and do agency-increasing-exploration, it's not virtuous to probabilistically deprive someone of their $30-$150 property merely because they accidentally abandoned it, and it's not virtuous to get the commons property (once deemed fully abandoned) over someone else, only because one is willing to lie.I think that karma will handle any lessons or net-transgressions, am comfortable not personally policing the behavior, and think the discourse on this will help people ethically evolve.