"To me (and with all due respect to the parent commenters grandfather) when I hear things like this I think something is trying to prove honesty a bit to much and (once again not to imply the parent commenters grandfather is such a person) that is the type of person I actually watch out for sometimes."

99.9% of the time, that type of statement is more of a sign of your personality and less a sign of others'.

In reality, though, the main point that you missed is that in a world made of shades of gray, the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If you don't have scruples and you don't have honor, you don't have anything.

That's the basic message. Trying to water it down with nuance and personal opinion about honesty in today's world is simply grasping for straws to justify choices made in your own life.

That's a lot more confrontational than I intended. Those are not meant to be the personal attacks they come across as.

Some people have honor in everything they do, they're good people. Some people have honor in only the major things they do, they're good people as well, but there may be some questionable choices when it comes to minor things like finding cash on the ground or speeding. Some people have no honor; avoid these people.

That allows for your nuance, but still allows for a code of honor. Kids need to be taught that. Act honorably, understand that not everyone adheres to your codes, and understand that even if they don't, they're not automatically bad people.

"In reality, though, the main point that you missed is that in a world made of shades of gray, the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If you don't have scruples and you don't have honor, you don't have anything."

Well let me put it this way. I don't think you understand my point about nuances and that I (once again) don't feel any of this is black and white.

As an example the honor that I might display, and scruples I might display, for an individual are not the same that I might display for a corporation. If I hired someone, a hacker, to do programming, I would be much more lenient because of a person relationship and especially because of the knowing that my actions would have a large effect on that individual. Otoh if I had a project that was being done by "IBM Global services" I would absolutely angle things differently if things weren't done right. I wouldn't care about that company not getting it's $10,000 (arbitrary obviously).

If an individual were doing a project for me and made a mistake and under billed me I would point it out. If IBM did the same I wouldn't.

As it happens I have seen various behavior (on the other side, say vendors) of both individuals and corporations over a long long time that I have spent in business. And each situation really is different.

The thing my grandfather taught me was that you live with all of your decisions for the rest of your life. When you make decisions which put other people at risk, you take on the risk that you are going to make someones life harder, possibly much harder. What is perhaps even more important is that no amount of "I'm so sorry I did that ..." will ever undo it. Sometimes its little things, like taking the last serving because you thought everyone had eaten, sometimes its big things like deciding that home is close enough that and you're sober enough to get there safely. They are all decisions we make every day. And as I've gotten older the weight of ones I wish I had made differently doesn't get any lighter. You can lie to yourself about your choices, rationalize them, but that doesn't change them either.

I didn't understand any of that when I was younger.

Very well said. The thing I have noticed is that the selfish decisions and the lies seem to last longer in my memory than the immediate benefit I got.

And I agree -- with me this knowledge has also had to come with age. Maybe others do better.

Unfortunately, some people never come to understand that. Being able to recognize consequences before acting (and changing behavior as a result) is, IMO, the definition of wisdom.

> I didn't understand any of that when I was younger.

Nothing to be ashamed of though, plenty of people never learn that particular lesson.

That is exactly what I couldn't figure out how to say.

> Otoh if I had a project that was being done by "IBM Global services" I would absolutely angle things differently if things weren't done right. I wouldn't care about that company not getting it's $10,000 (arbitrary obviously).

Call it "nuance" or "gray area" all you want, but that is just amoral. You have no idea what situation led to the problem and what consequences your breach of contact will have. The project manager may have been operating on very little sleep and sent over the wrong version of the invoice. At the end of the quarter, they may lose their job.

I would 100% point out the discrepancy and pay them. When I decided to do business with them, I already determined that the terms were fair. To act otherwise when the bill comes in is entirely dishonorable.

Do you actually have a good example of nuance, or are you just trying to legitimize bad behavior?

I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load.

Nobody speeds all the time. Even people who speed a lot will try to slow down for speed traps.

So everyone who speeds even those who speed only every now and then have to be constantly making a choice for when to speed.

They must constantly assess whether the benefits of speeding in this specific moment outweigh the disadvantages. There are dozens of variables: how much quicker will speeding be? will I be caught? is it safe to speed on this road at this time?

Much easier to ignore all that and just to drive below the speed limit.

"I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load."

Never? Never speeding also means not always keeping up with traffic which might be flowing at a higher rate of speed. Consequently you are chancing a greater risk of an accident by not keeping up with traffic and not speeding.

Not exactly. Those that are speeding have accepted the higher risk of accident in exchange for getting to their destination slightly faster (if at all). The choices of the speeders have externalities in the form of a higher risk of accident for all other drivers around them, regardless of others speed. The drivers who obey the law bear none of the of the responsibility for that increase in risk. If you want to argue that speed limits should be raised because everyone is breaking them anyways, I think that is a fairer point of view. But to blame people who are following the law for the externalities caused by those breaking the law is absurd.

Driving at a rate faster or slower than the flow of traffic increases the risk of an accident more than an equivalent increase in speed. Here's a detailed article about it: http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

The link is pretty weak evidence.

> “We all speed, yet months and months usually pass between us seeing a crash,”

This is a stupid argument. Do you really want to be in a crash every few months? Roughly the average person has a 1% lifetime chance of dying and a 10% chance of serious injury in a car crash. To me these are pretty high numbers.

> that sign won’t make people drive any slower

Where I live, speed limits are zealously enforced - loss of licence for a third offence in two years - and people do comply with them. So yes a sign won't do it but you can get people to comply.

As usual the US seems to find the worst solution: overly restrictive speed limits (55mph) combined with lack of enforcement. This causes large divergences in speeds, which is apparently dangerous.

The article seems to confuse the merits of driving slower than most traffic, with the merits of slowing traffic as a whole down. They are very different things. If most people on the autobahn are doing 110mph then one driver doing 55mph would be dangerous. However slowing everyone down to say 60 mph may be a much safer overall situation.

Your personal risk is lower when you drive with the flow, even if that flow is faster then speed limit. This is kind of collective action problem, if most drivers restrict their speed, everyone is safer. If only few of them restrict themselves, those few are not much safer.

The drivers who obey the law do not bear responsibility for the increase in risk, but neither they raised their own safety.

Sorry for the delay in reply.

I live in Durban, South Africa. Lots of people speed here and sometimes the fast lane will be moving faster than the limit. But I don't think I've ever been in a situation where all of the traffic is moving faster than the limit.

Is it common for all lanes to be moving faster than the speed limit where you are?

"I've chosen to never speed because it reduces my cognitive load."

That's a utilitarian approach which is completely orthogonal to what this thread is about.

I think you really missed the mark on what they were trying to illustrate.

It's not following societies rules for the sake of it. It's following your own internal compass, _and_sticking_to_it_ regardless of if it benefits you now or harms you. Theirs just aligned with certain things you obviously don't value in a person.

Side note: You sound as though you think speed limits are arbitrary. You might want to look up the dynamics of braking cars, the percentage of accidents where speeding is a factor and consider the outcome of an accident where it's found that you were doing 65 in 55 zone.