But moral people do go to parties whilst they might have an infection.
Speak for yourself. Sure, in a vacuous sense, anyone might have an infection at any time, but what we’re talking about here is “whilst they have good reason to think they might have an infection”. For me, even before COVID, I’ve had a general policy of not seeing people when I’m sick, and stayed home from some parties I otherwise would have enjoyed. At least for me, a sore throat would be rather unusual if I weren’t sick, so that would normally be enough evidence for me (unless it was so slight I wasn’t sure it was a real symptom; or if I’d overused my voice or had some other non-sickness plausible cause). If I had a magical test that was free and always told me correctly whether I had an infectious disease, that would be wonderful and I’d use it a lot.
A sensible policy would take into account your estimated probability that you’re infectious, and the number of people you’d likely infect. Also the expected enjoyment you’d get from the party, and the expected negativity an infection would inflict on other people. (Note that there are circumstances, such as Omicron COVID, where one might reasonably say “If they don’t catch it from me, there’s still a >80% chance they’ll catch it elsewhere”, which may downgrade the “expected negativity” estimate.) Maybe a scaling factor for how you care less about other people than about yourself—I think it’s reasonable to have that, and for “people you’d encounter at a party” I think it should normally be between 0 and 1. I’m not exactly a utilitarian, but I would say that, among friends and people you cooperate with, it generally makes the most sense for policies to be based on utilitarian calculations.
You say that a bunch of people do in fact behave in the manner you’ve described. I can only chalk this up to “a bunch of people are disappointing”. Or—along the lines of what TAG says, in this particular case, I suspect that these people have encountered official rules that say “if you test positive, then you must stay home”—and while I’m not sure how common it is for party hosts to explicitly state such rules, these people have internalized the rule and are trying to obey it; but I would say that either (a) they don’t fundamentally care about not infecting other people, only about not disobeying those rules (and getting caught?), or (b) they haven’t thought things through. Either seems plausible to me.
Or, I dunno. Could they have been confident they don’t have COVID but worried about a false positive? Doesn’t sound like it, though.
You say that a bunch of people do in fact behave in the manner you’ve described. I can only chalk this up to “a bunch of people are disappointing”.
For perspective, at least 3 of these people are first degree relatives of me or my wife, at least 2 of those very much pride themselves on being very moral and law abiding. This isn’t a cherry picked sample. This is extremely common (when the stakes are high enough), and cannot be dismissed so easily.
I’m not saying that what you describe is rare, just that it disappoints me.
I don’t particularly intend to criticize your and your wife’s relatives, but I’m afraid that just because a person prides themselves on being very moral and law-abiding doesn’t mean that I’ll consider them moral by my standards, or that I won’t find them disappointing. I think there are lots of, say, political issues where I can find several tens of percent of the population, sometimes more than 50%, advocating a policy I consider disastrous as well as immoral. I think most people are not very developed in their moral reasoning (by my standards).
For a relatively non-political example, Jonathan Haidt went around asking people about a hypothetical case of incest—between two consenting adults, in a country where it’s legal, taking double precautions against pregnancy—and apparently most people say “this is definitely wrong” while being unable to articulate why (or only coming up with reasons that the scenario rules out).
Google’s dictionary definitions for “moral” say “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character” and “holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct”. I think that any serious thinker concerned with “principles” here (as opposed to arbitrary isolated rules) would realize that there’s something wrong when “moral” people start avoiding information so that they won’t feel compelled to act on it. It follows that these people are not serious thinkers concerned with “principles”; this is a conclusion I unhappily accept.
If I were writing your post, I would put scare quotes around the word “moral” (to avoid claiming that Alice’s idea of morality is universally held), thus:
What Alice cares about is being a “moral” person. And “moral” people don’t go to parties whilst knowing they’re infectious. But “moral” people do go to parties whilst they might have an infection.
I see you’ve retitled the post to use “Moral” as a proper noun, which is another approach.
Though I would say this: “When the stakes are high enough” sounds like more than just a friend’s party. For example: attending your child’s wedding; giving a talk at a conference that you think would be important for your career. These are probably big enough events that I’d suspect there’s a person declaring COVID rules—imposing them on everyone else—who might not respond well to “Yeah, I tested positive, but it’s really important for me to be there and I’ll try to be careful, so please let me in”.
The question I would ask: Do these people agree that, if they had COVID, then they should stay home from these events? Because if they don’t, then it seems like a simple case of “I disagree with this policy so I’m not going to help implement it if no one makes me” or “Given that I’m going to attend anyway, if I did test positive, someone might find out and punish me, and I’d rather not risk that”. If they do, and if it’s not about false positives or the cost of testing or whatever (which your premise “she usually takes a COVID test when she has a sore throat” seems to cover), then this becomes more of a case of hypocrisy.
The etymology of “hypocrisy” is interesting. “Hypo” means “low” (e.g. “hypothermia”), and the “crisy” seems related to “criticism”; thus I take it to mean “insufficiently critical (of one’s actions or beliefs)”. And that is the meaning I intend above.
Yet I see claims on the internet that “hypocrite” (or its Greek origin word) meant “stage actor”:
It literally translates as “an interpreter from underneath” which reflects that ancient Greek actors wore masks and the actor spoke from underneath that mask. Eventually the Greek word evolved to refer to any person who was wearing a figurative mask and pretending to be someone or something they were not.
Speak for yourself. Sure, in a vacuous sense, anyone might have an infection at any time, but what we’re talking about here is “whilst they have good reason to think they might have an infection”. For me, even before COVID, I’ve had a general policy of not seeing people when I’m sick, and stayed home from some parties I otherwise would have enjoyed. At least for me, a sore throat would be rather unusual if I weren’t sick, so that would normally be enough evidence for me (unless it was so slight I wasn’t sure it was a real symptom; or if I’d overused my voice or had some other non-sickness plausible cause). If I had a magical test that was free and always told me correctly whether I had an infectious disease, that would be wonderful and I’d use it a lot.
A sensible policy would take into account your estimated probability that you’re infectious, and the number of people you’d likely infect. Also the expected enjoyment you’d get from the party, and the expected negativity an infection would inflict on other people. (Note that there are circumstances, such as Omicron COVID, where one might reasonably say “If they don’t catch it from me, there’s still a >80% chance they’ll catch it elsewhere”, which may downgrade the “expected negativity” estimate.) Maybe a scaling factor for how you care less about other people than about yourself—I think it’s reasonable to have that, and for “people you’d encounter at a party” I think it should normally be between 0 and 1. I’m not exactly a utilitarian, but I would say that, among friends and people you cooperate with, it generally makes the most sense for policies to be based on utilitarian calculations.
You say that a bunch of people do in fact behave in the manner you’ve described. I can only chalk this up to “a bunch of people are disappointing”. Or—along the lines of what TAG says, in this particular case, I suspect that these people have encountered official rules that say “if you test positive, then you must stay home”—and while I’m not sure how common it is for party hosts to explicitly state such rules, these people have internalized the rule and are trying to obey it; but I would say that either (a) they don’t fundamentally care about not infecting other people, only about not disobeying those rules (and getting caught?), or (b) they haven’t thought things through. Either seems plausible to me.
Or, I dunno. Could they have been confident they don’t have COVID but worried about a false positive? Doesn’t sound like it, though.
For perspective, at least 3 of these people are first degree relatives of me or my wife, at least 2 of those very much pride themselves on being very moral and law abiding. This isn’t a cherry picked sample. This is extremely common (when the stakes are high enough), and cannot be dismissed so easily.
I’m not saying that what you describe is rare, just that it disappoints me.
I don’t particularly intend to criticize your and your wife’s relatives, but I’m afraid that just because a person prides themselves on being very moral and law-abiding doesn’t mean that I’ll consider them moral by my standards, or that I won’t find them disappointing. I think there are lots of, say, political issues where I can find several tens of percent of the population, sometimes more than 50%, advocating a policy I consider disastrous as well as immoral. I think most people are not very developed in their moral reasoning (by my standards).
For a relatively non-political example, Jonathan Haidt went around asking people about a hypothetical case of incest—between two consenting adults, in a country where it’s legal, taking double precautions against pregnancy—and apparently most people say “this is definitely wrong” while being unable to articulate why (or only coming up with reasons that the scenario rules out).
Google’s dictionary definitions for “moral” say “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character” and “holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct”. I think that any serious thinker concerned with “principles” here (as opposed to arbitrary isolated rules) would realize that there’s something wrong when “moral” people start avoiding information so that they won’t feel compelled to act on it. It follows that these people are not serious thinkers concerned with “principles”; this is a conclusion I unhappily accept.
If I were writing your post, I would put scare quotes around the word “moral” (to avoid claiming that Alice’s idea of morality is universally held), thus:
I see you’ve retitled the post to use “Moral” as a proper noun, which is another approach.
Though I would say this: “When the stakes are high enough” sounds like more than just a friend’s party. For example: attending your child’s wedding; giving a talk at a conference that you think would be important for your career. These are probably big enough events that I’d suspect there’s a person declaring COVID rules—imposing them on everyone else—who might not respond well to “Yeah, I tested positive, but it’s really important for me to be there and I’ll try to be careful, so please let me in”.
The question I would ask: Do these people agree that, if they had COVID, then they should stay home from these events? Because if they don’t, then it seems like a simple case of “I disagree with this policy so I’m not going to help implement it if no one makes me” or “Given that I’m going to attend anyway, if I did test positive, someone might find out and punish me, and I’d rather not risk that”. If they do, and if it’s not about false positives or the cost of testing or whatever (which your premise “she usually takes a COVID test when she has a sore throat” seems to cover), then this becomes more of a case of hypocrisy.
The etymology of “hypocrisy” is interesting. “Hypo” means “low” (e.g. “hypothermia”), and the “crisy” seems related to “criticism”; thus I take it to mean “insufficiently critical (of one’s actions or beliefs)”. And that is the meaning I intend above.
Yet I see claims on the internet that “hypocrite” (or its Greek origin word) meant “stage actor”:
Which, I suppose, is the surface-level behavior.
Yes