| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015509)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015509" |
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| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Morality Games |
| 297 |
| 1990), avoidance of guilt (Cain, Dana, & Newman, 2014; Dana, Cain, & Dawes, |
| 2006; Della Vigna, List, & Malmendier, 2012), anticipation of reputational benefits |
| or reciprocity (as Plato's Glaucon suggests, when he proffers that even a pious man |
| would do evil if given a ring that makes him invisible; Trivers, 1971). At the extreme, |
| this amounts to asking if saintly individuals such as Gandhi or Mother Teresa were |
| motivated thus, or if they were "authentic" altruists who did good without anticipat- |
| ing any reward and would be altruistic even in the absence of such rewards. |
| Certainly, religions advocate doing good for the "right" reasons. In the Gospel of |
| Matthew, Chapter 6, Jesus advocates, "Be careful not to practice your righteousness |
| in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your |
| Father in heaven," after which he adds, "But when you give to the needy, do not let |
| your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in |
| secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." |
| The Envelope Game suggests authentic altruism is indeed possible: By focusing |
| entirely on the benefits to others and ignoring the benefits to themselves, authentic |
| altruists are trusted more, and the benefits from this trust outweigh the risk of, for |
| example, dying a martyr's death. Moreover, this model helps explain why we think |
| so highly of authentic altruists, as compared to others who do good, but with an |
| ulterior motive (consider, as an example, the mockery Sean Penn has faced for |
| showing up at disaster sites such as Haiti and Katrina with a photographer in tow). |
| Principles. Why do we like people who are "principled" and not those who are |
| "strategic"? For example, we trust candidates for political office whose policies are |
| the result of their convictions and are consistent over time and distrust those whose |
| policies are carefully constructed in consultation with their pollsters and who "flip- |
| flop" in response to public opinion (as caricatured by the infamous 2004 Republican |
| presidential campaign television ad showing John Kerry windsurfing and tacking |
| from one direction to another). CWOL offers the following potential explanation. |
| Someone who is strategic considers the costs and benefits to themselves of every |
| decision and will defect when faced with a large temptation, whereas someone who |
| is guided by principles is less sensitive to the costs and benefits are to themselves |
| and thus less likely to defect. Imagine our flip-flopping politician was once against |
| gay marriage but supports it now that it is popular. This indicates the politician is |
| unlikely to fight for the cause if it later becomes unpopular with constituents or risks |
| losing a big donor. Moreover, this model may help explain why ideologues that are |
| wholly devoted to a cause (e.g., Hitler, Martin Luther King, and Gandhi) are able to |
| attract so many followers. |
| Don't Use People. Recall Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative: |
| "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or |
| in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as |
| an end." In thinking this through, let's again consider dwarf tossing. Many see it as |
| a violation of dwarfs' basic dignity to use them as a means for amusement, even |
| though they willingly engage in the activity for economic gain. Our aversion to |
| using people may explain many important aspects of our moral intuitions, such as |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015509 |
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