What I was trying to get at was that it isn’t nice to tempt people to do things that are bad for them.
I think we’re saying something similar here. It’s a failure of empathy to tempt people to do things that might be bad for them, but I’m not convinced it’s always a failure of ethics in the sense of perfect duty. There are plenty of forms of influence where I would be comfortable saying that the influencer is being a jerk, but where I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that they are doing something unethical.
I don’t think it’s nice to influence people by selling a product you know is defective,
This is unethical under my analysis, also. It falls into the category of where you know something big that the other person doesn’t which destroys informed consent.
or trying to get them to buy something you know they can’t afford.
If you know this for sure, that would also be unethical under my analysis. My analysis only applies to situations where people are capable of watching out for their own interests. This is the default situation, but if someone gives you strong evidence that they can’t watch out for themselves (e.g. they are trying to buy things you know they can’t afford), then you should scale down the influence. Unfortunately, most real-life situations of influence are less clear-cut.
I don’t think it’s nice to talk your friend into going out to a party the night before his big test.
This one seems a bit less clear-cut. If you get your friend to miss out on sufficient sleep, or get hung over, then yeah, that’s unethical. But if the problem is that he might skimp on his studying? That’s less clear. Your friend knows better than you do whether they’ve done enough studying for their test. If you invite your friend, you know that he can refuse if he needs to study. On the other hand, maybe he’s done enough studying, and would benefit from relaxing. Unless you have some evidence either way, you’re not doing anything wrong by inviting him and letting him decide.
Yes, in some of these cases, the “victim” should have known better, but strong influence can bypass willpower.
Could you give an example of such a scenario? I’m not seeing it in either of the three in your post. Can you give an example of influence that is morally suspect, and (a) involves adequate informed consent, unlike the defective product scenario, (b) involves someone capable of watching out for themselves, unlike the scenario of buyers trying to buy things you know they can’t afford, and (c) is actually strong, unlike talking your friend into going to a party?
I tried to come up with an example, and the first thing I thought of was running an unhealthy fast food business and influencing people to eat your food. Then I realized that this example fails the test I proposed, because it would be known that many people don’t watch out for their health. While eating at your restaurant every once in a while might not be a health risk, your advertising will pull people in on a regular basis (in contrast, if you are running an ice cream shop, you aren’t trying to get people to eat there every day, and they won’t be eating ice cream instead of healthier food). There is something inherently wrong with supplying tasting food that is unhealthy, but if you do it in a way that influences people to substitute healthier food for what you are providing, and eat your food regularly enough that it’s a health risk, that’s unethical.
The better you are at tempting people, the more responsible you are for the results of the temptation.
The best way to tempt people is to offer them what they want (in a way that they identify it as satisfying one of their wants). I think your claim implies that people who can offer things that other people want more should have higher responsibility for the results of influencing people. That principle may be a little to broad, and lead the people who actually have good things to offer (which is influential) to have a moral panic and become too shy.
In terms of sales and products, there are four simplified categories:
Bad products with bad salesmen
Bad products with good salesmen
Good products with bad salesmen
Good products with good salesmen
The principle you suggest would make good salesmen with bad products more inhibited… but it will also make good salesmen with good products more inhibited! Actually, many of the most influential products may be good products with good salesmen… should these salesmen with the good products really be fretting the most about responsibility just because they are good at sales?
I think we need to articulate a principle that makes good salesmen with bad products scrutinize themselves more than good salesmen with good products.
The degree that people want what you offer isn’t quite the right index for the degree of responsibility you should shoulder for the result. People who want something really badly might be more likely to throw caution to the winds and make mistakes, so degree of want is weakly related to the responsibility you should take to protect them. But there are other variables that are much better indexes for the level of responsibility you should take:
Your estimate of the expected value to them of accepting your offer
Your estimate of how well they are watching out for themselves
Your confidence that they have enough information to be giving informed consent
The reasons that someone is consenting to whatever you are influencing them towards, and whether those are the type of reasons that are well-known to be correlated with buyer’s remorse
How do these criteria sound to you?
On the contrary, I don’t think I’d mind being influenced to do something that turned out to be good for me
Unfortunately, people who influence you can’t predict the future and know whether the results will turn out good or bad for you. Of course, they should make guesses, and refrain from influencing you if they think the expected value of the result will be negative for you, and you haven’t given informed consent to that risk. But when there is uncertainty about the result, the ability of people to make those sort of guesses varies depending on the domain.
In financial services, your broker really does know better than you about whether their product will be good for you, and the criteria for satisfying your preferences is objective and easily understood by them. As a result, a lot of responsibility falls on their shoulders.
In social interaction and dating, it’s a lot harder to know whether you are a good match with someone better than they do. You don’t know exactly what their preferences are and how you fit into them. Responsibility for protecting them from buyer’s remorse falls primarily (but of course, not completely) on them. Since they have the higher quality information about how you fit into their preferences, it’s their responsibility to communicate their preferences to you to help protect them from being unhappy later.
I think we’re saying something similar here. It’s a failure of empathy to tempt people to do things that might be bad for them, but I’m not convinced it’s always a failure of ethics in the sense of perfect duty. There are plenty of forms of influence where I would be comfortable saying that the influencer is being a jerk, but where I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that they are doing something unethical.
This is unethical under my analysis, also. It falls into the category of where you know something big that the other person doesn’t which destroys informed consent.
If you know this for sure, that would also be unethical under my analysis. My analysis only applies to situations where people are capable of watching out for their own interests. This is the default situation, but if someone gives you strong evidence that they can’t watch out for themselves (e.g. they are trying to buy things you know they can’t afford), then you should scale down the influence. Unfortunately, most real-life situations of influence are less clear-cut.
This one seems a bit less clear-cut. If you get your friend to miss out on sufficient sleep, or get hung over, then yeah, that’s unethical. But if the problem is that he might skimp on his studying? That’s less clear. Your friend knows better than you do whether they’ve done enough studying for their test. If you invite your friend, you know that he can refuse if he needs to study. On the other hand, maybe he’s done enough studying, and would benefit from relaxing. Unless you have some evidence either way, you’re not doing anything wrong by inviting him and letting him decide.
Could you give an example of such a scenario? I’m not seeing it in either of the three in your post. Can you give an example of influence that is morally suspect, and (a) involves adequate informed consent, unlike the defective product scenario, (b) involves someone capable of watching out for themselves, unlike the scenario of buyers trying to buy things you know they can’t afford, and (c) is actually strong, unlike talking your friend into going to a party?
I tried to come up with an example, and the first thing I thought of was running an unhealthy fast food business and influencing people to eat your food. Then I realized that this example fails the test I proposed, because it would be known that many people don’t watch out for their health. While eating at your restaurant every once in a while might not be a health risk, your advertising will pull people in on a regular basis (in contrast, if you are running an ice cream shop, you aren’t trying to get people to eat there every day, and they won’t be eating ice cream instead of healthier food). There is something inherently wrong with supplying tasting food that is unhealthy, but if you do it in a way that influences people to substitute healthier food for what you are providing, and eat your food regularly enough that it’s a health risk, that’s unethical.
The best way to tempt people is to offer them what they want (in a way that they identify it as satisfying one of their wants). I think your claim implies that people who can offer things that other people want more should have higher responsibility for the results of influencing people. That principle may be a little to broad, and lead the people who actually have good things to offer (which is influential) to have a moral panic and become too shy.
In terms of sales and products, there are four simplified categories:
Bad products with bad salesmen
Bad products with good salesmen
Good products with bad salesmen
Good products with good salesmen
The principle you suggest would make good salesmen with bad products more inhibited… but it will also make good salesmen with good products more inhibited! Actually, many of the most influential products may be good products with good salesmen… should these salesmen with the good products really be fretting the most about responsibility just because they are good at sales?
I think we need to articulate a principle that makes good salesmen with bad products scrutinize themselves more than good salesmen with good products.
The degree that people want what you offer isn’t quite the right index for the degree of responsibility you should shoulder for the result. People who want something really badly might be more likely to throw caution to the winds and make mistakes, so degree of want is weakly related to the responsibility you should take to protect them. But there are other variables that are much better indexes for the level of responsibility you should take:
Your estimate of the expected value to them of accepting your offer
Your estimate of how well they are watching out for themselves
Your confidence that they have enough information to be giving informed consent
The reasons that someone is consenting to whatever you are influencing them towards, and whether those are the type of reasons that are well-known to be correlated with buyer’s remorse
How do these criteria sound to you?
Unfortunately, people who influence you can’t predict the future and know whether the results will turn out good or bad for you. Of course, they should make guesses, and refrain from influencing you if they think the expected value of the result will be negative for you, and you haven’t given informed consent to that risk. But when there is uncertainty about the result, the ability of people to make those sort of guesses varies depending on the domain.
In financial services, your broker really does know better than you about whether their product will be good for you, and the criteria for satisfying your preferences is objective and easily understood by them. As a result, a lot of responsibility falls on their shoulders.
In social interaction and dating, it’s a lot harder to know whether you are a good match with someone better than they do. You don’t know exactly what their preferences are and how you fit into them. Responsibility for protecting them from buyer’s remorse falls primarily (but of course, not completely) on them. Since they have the higher quality information about how you fit into their preferences, it’s their responsibility to communicate their preferences to you to help protect them from being unhappy later.