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> The irony of his mom being on the Board of Advisors of Stanford University’s Ethics is astounding. Your sentence was cut off? She is a member of the Board of
by jessriedel 2y ago
> The irony of his mom being on the Board of Advisors of Stanford University’s Ethics is astounding.
Your sentence was cut off? She is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Stanford Ethics in Society Program. That means she helps direct an academic program researching ethics, not that she enforces ethical rules within Stanford.
Professional ethicists and moral philosophers do not, and generally do not claim to, act morally better than others. Their profession is about researching the consistency and implications of moral rules.
Judges are generally held to a higher standard than the general public, so I guess there is irony/hypocrisy when they commit a crime they have convicted others of. But that’s not what Fried was doing.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoIndeed. Academic ethics are more theoretical then practical.
- atherton33 2y agoThose who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
- soneca 2y agoConsidering all you said, I still consider it ironic that her son is so unethical
- dexwiz 2y agoIs it ironic that someone specialized in ethics would have a son so adept in using them to his advantage? Seems like a natural conclusion to me. Effective altruism seems like a weaponization of morals to support wealth hoarding.
- jessriedel 2y agoExactly. A professional ethicist giving a complicated justification for why what they did was OK even though everyone else thinks it was wrong isn’t ironic, it’s apt.
- yyyyybb 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nullc 2y agoIn this article she pushes a navel gazing argument that, essentially, culpability can't exist because people lack free will: https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/barbara-fried-beyond-blame-moral-responsibility-philosophy-law/ https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/barbara-fried-beyond-blam... If I assume that she authored the piece sincerely rather than as some navel gazing intellectual and virtue signaling exercise, then it isn't a shock that her child has a defective comprehension of right and wrong (or at least was atypically vulnerable to having one installed by others-- e.g. utilitarian consequentialism and 'effective altruism'). It's also not surprising that such a person would strive to get themselves placed in a position of authority on the subject-- not in spite of a psychopathic, ethically defective, or just overly rationalized worldview but specifically because of it.
- georgeecollins 2y ago>> Professional ethicists and moral philosophers do not, and generally do not claim to, act morally better than others. That is a little like saying people who teach music don't claim to play an instrument very well. Universities are full of professors who can't do the thing they teach about very well. But I think we should be skeptical of people who study a thing they can't practice.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Kronen 2y agoYou didn't understand what he said at all and you are wrong. I ask you this... there are very different ethics and morals around the world, even many differences in ethics and morals between your home and your neighbors, so which ethics or morals should you have to be able to teach ethics and morals? The ones you have? lol
- lanternfish 2y agoI know music theorists who definitely don't consider themselves strong performers or composers.
- richrichie 2y agoOTOH, people who "do the thing well" suck at teaching. At least, most of them. There are exceptions. Teaching in itself - understanding a complex topic and communicating to newbies - is a skill that is independent of the ability to do the thing.
- jessriedel 2y agoIt’s like saying people who study music theory don’t have to be skilled players of musical instruments. And they don’t. You can be skeptical all you want of ethics/morality as a field of academic research! I think there are some good reasons to be. That doesn’t mean the researchers are hypocritical when they sometimes act immorally (as all inevitably will on account of being humans), or that it’s ironic or whatever.
- __loam 2y agoYou're being incredibly pedantic.
- recursive 2y ago> do not claim to, act morally better than others The bar here is so much lower.
- wpietri 2y ago> do not claim to, act morally better than others They do however claim a better understanding of ethics. So unless she's been saying, "Gosh, I knew it was wrong but did it anyway," then it looks like the contrast between her professional expertise and her behavior would still qualify as ironic. As would her role teaching law and ethics when contrasted with both SBF's behavior and his many, many shady statements.
- jessriedel 2y agoShe’s saying neither "I knew it was wrong but did it anyway“ nor “I didn’t know it was wrong” but rather “It wasn’t wrong”.
- wpietri 2y agoThen that too would be ironic.
- jessriedel 2y agoWhy?
- arugulum 2y agoYou could easily make the other argument: As a professor of ethics she studies many different ethical systems, including ones that are not mainstream. This means that she can more easily find some ethical system under which a given action is considered ethical. The "ethics expert = more ethical" connection has never held up and mainly serves as a gotcha.
- wpietri 2y agoIt's a good thing I never claimed "ethics expert = more ethical", then. What I'm saying is that I agree there's an irony here. It's true that, as you say, she could use her knowledge of ethics to be less ethical. But that would just be a different kind of irony for somebody who teaches on law and ethics.
- rqtwteye 2y agoSo basically she knew all the ethical loopholes?
- viscanti 2y agoIf you know a great deal about what is right and wrong, and you choose to do something bad, that feels worse than being bad and not knowing any better.
- Barrin92 2y ago>If you know a great deal about what is right and wrong, and you choose to do something bad, The issue is that when you start studying ethics you'll learn pretty quickly that what's right or wrong isn't exactly that obvious. You don't go to a philosophical ethics class and get taught what's good and bad like in church, you get taught how to think about the many ethical systems that exist. That means you're going to enounter the ethics of Max Stirner, who was so radically Egoist he makes Ayn Rand look like a puppy loving communitarian, and you're going to encounter Jesus Christ. That people who study ethics for a living often have views that seem so unethical to most people isn't really surprising simply because they're exposed to such a broad range of views. People who have are perceived as ethical are usually the people least exposed to ethics as a field of study, because they're exactly the people most likely to adopt the beliefs of people around them.