Psycholological therapy ( especially if your powers include projective telepathy ) ? Aiding in the diagnosis of people/creatures who can’t talk, like children and animals ? Scanning collapsed mines and buildings for survivors ? If your reputation for integrity is good enough, you could hire out as a perfect lie detector. You could go into security, as long as everyone you scan has signed a consent form, I suppose. More ethically questionable would be working in interrogation, or as a spy. People would pay for all of these things.
Consider the case of a man who wears disguises and successfully enters himself into women’s golf tournaments so that he can win (I’m talking about a guy who disguises himself, not a transsexual, in order to avoid a tangent debate).
I would say he’s acting unethically on two counts:
- He’s breaking the rules of the tournament.
- He’s deceiving other players about his capabilities. Assuming that men are on average stronger than women, and the best male golfers are genetically better-equipped to golf than the best female golfers, he’s bringing an advantage to the table that the others categorically cannot. And he’s not even letting them know this.
The second point is what distinguishes your case from Michael Jordan. What he brings to the court is obvious. Anyone who plays against him knows what he’s bringing, and they can make their decision based on that.
If you hide your magic wish business, then you’re hiding the source of your powers; what’s more, your powers are categorically better than everyone else. The deception is what makes it unethical.
If you want to lead a quiet life, I’d say you’ve got an ethical duty not to use your powers in a zero-sum competition. (You might make an exception for warfare, of course; I’m talking about sports and games). You could always get a job working construction, or with Cirque du Soleil, or as a stunt actor; these would be acceptable uses of the power, inasmuch as the competitive aspect is very minor (you’d be keeping other people from getting your job, but that’s about it).
Daniel
But in both of your examples, poker and boxing, you’re using deception as an intermediate tactic so that you can ultimately win the match. It’s up to your opponent to be on the look-out for deception and not be faked by it. If you’re successful the first time, in the future, your opponents will be aware that you’ve got an ability to fake them out, and will be on the look-out for it.
But you’re not proposing deception as an intermediate tactice in the PGA example. You’re not planning on winning, just to milk the circuit for money. I think that’s a key distinction.
Ask for super strength, invulnerability and super-speed and join a swat team. You’d not only be ethical you’d be fighting crime and you don’t have to be a vigilante.
by the way Bricker, if you were the mind-reading poker player who announced himself, would you refrain from reading mt mind if i asked you not to?
The ethical distinction is that you’re aware of the need for deception in able to profit from your super-ability. If the organizers of the PGA became aware of your super-accuracy, they would probably ban you from the sport, because if one person can win whenever he wants, it’s no longer a fair competition. If the only way you can compete is by hiding your super-abilty, and make money off it, then it’s not ethical.
Similarly with poker and ESP - the rules of the game assume that no-one can directly read minds. If you had that ability, the organizers would not let you play for money, because it’s outside the bounds of the game. If you have to conceal a game-winning ability in order to use it, that’s the ethical problem.
There’s an analogy to card-counting. Some individuals have the abiltiy to count cards and remember them. The gaming organizations view that as a breach of the rules, and will ban known card-counters. If a card-counter resorts to disguises to avoid being caught, that’s unethical - the card-counter is using deception to mask a breach of the rules, for his/her personal profit.
I think there IS an analogy to card-counting… but it’s not that one. Card-counting is not in breach of any rules. Cheating at games is a breach of the law, and casinos can and do have cheaters arrested. Card counters, however, are simply asked to leave. I believe that distinction is a crucial one.
Now, there is a second part to your observation – the use, by card-counters, of disguises or other strategems to conceal their counting.
I’m not so sure I agree that’s unethical. While it’s a close question, the fact of the matter is that they are violating no rule. The casinos have the right to bar anyone from play, for any reason; they choose to exercise that right against card counters. If counters disguise themselves to avoid being barred… I’m not sure I see a terrible ethical dilemna there.
True. But there are problems, even so. Do I leap heroically in front of a bullet that would otherwise hit my buddy? If I do, how long before my secret is out?
This was actually the question that spawned this whole debate. I started out saying that I’d like the mind-reading ability, but I couldn’t ethically use it while playing poker. Then I thought that I’d simply refrain from using it during a game. THEN, I observed that while I’m actually playing, in the heat of a difficult hand, I find myself furiously wishing I knew what the other guy has in the hole. How often could I undergo that sort of temptation without breaching my promise and using it? I concluded that if I had this ability, I couldn’t play poker; I wouldn’t be able to keep such a promise.
And that turned into the all 'round ethics of superpowers discussion, and here we are.
One possibility is the situation in which we are first introduced to psis in Babylon 5 – monitoring both sides of a negotiation to confirm that they are telling the truth.
However, this is being done with full disclosure, and thus wouldn’t suit Bricker’s desire to avoid unwanted attention (unless there were enough other mind-readers in the world that one more wouldn’t be any big deal). For one thing, it wouldn’t take long for the government to make a confirmed mind-reader an unrefusable offer to assist with interrogations and the like.
At the risk of hijacking…there must be some formal name for a principle I’ve observed in volunteer organizations – please forgive my awkward phrasing – that “need” will increase to match the capability brought to bear on it.
The following example is dramatic, but the same principle would apply to normal medical healing. I’ve even seen a similar effect in animal rescue – as soon as we CAN do something about a crisis, the moral and social pressure to actually do it begins to mount. What was previously borne as inevitable now becomes a crying need we long to fill.
When no one can cure cancer, a cancer death is sad, regrettable, even infuriating – but inevitable. Hospice care and say goodbye.
When Brickerman can cure cancer, suddenly there’s a long line of people who will live full and happy lives if, and only if, Brickerman gets to them in time.
The pressure is on! Can Brickerman go on vacation – watch a movie – even take a coffeebreak, if it means people would die? Possibly large numbers of people! Little kids!
What if the government wanted to test Brickerman’s powers to see if they could be replicated…but the testing would take him away from healing for a long time. Is the chance of a future cure for everyone worth sending to death now people who would otherwise be saved?
Is it ethical for Brickerman to do something that might endanger himself? Can he go bungee-jumping with so many people certain to die miserably if he himself gets taken out of the picture?
What if your child was dying of cancer…and Brickerman had announced his retirement? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power to reach him, persuade him, to do that one thing that costs him so little and means everything in the world to your family? What should he charge for such a service? The market will bear practically any price – but can he leave the poor to die? What would he do with wealth anyway, if he can’t take a break without killing people (by inaction)?
To some extent, these issues would affect other non-healing superpowers…just as they affect our current choices of charity and volunteering. Doing ALL we can would be so very difficult – but can we live with ourselves if we do less than all we could?
I don’t have an answer; this is something I am still struggling with personally.*
Sailboat
*volunteer work and charity, not superpowers
Let’s bring this a little closer to home:
As a lawyer with the ability to read minds, you could (when negotiating) always know the absolute limit to which your opponent is willing to go and drive them to get the best possible deal for your client in pretrial (or labor or purchase) negotiations. I am not sure that I would see that as particularly unethical. Have to think about it.
On the other hand, you could also know exactly which bit of evidence or testimony actually resonated with a jury and shape your case to take advantage of those thoughts. You could also discover the strategy your opposing counsel intended to use. Far more troubling.
(And, if ethical, you would tend to be hamstrung if you discovered your client was lying, even though s/he never admitted the point aloud.)
I’d take flight, super strength, and nigh invulnerability. I wouldn’t have a secret identity but I figured I could make a good living in construction being able to deomolish buildings and replace cranes.
Marc
No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do anyway. How much of your life would you give, as Sailboat has asked more artfully, to cure children of cancer? I think the answer is down to the individual hero. I think furthermore that this is the strong subtext in a lot of hero books. They are all about people, sometimes even human people, who have to make this decision every day; we understand, because this is also true about each of us, and our own smaller but unique abilities.
Are we doing enough right now, just reaching across the internet to have a conversation with a few thousand of our closest friends? Could not many of us, in some way, be saving a life, right now - if only by working for money to give away?
Those people are called saints. Are superheroes obligated to become saints? No, and the pressure to do so should make wrecks of them more often than it does, the divine Alan Moore and a few others not withstanding. But may they do nothing and still be free of culpability? Sit on the couch and watch Friends reruns, open cans of Coors with the power of their minds?
I don’t know either. I think they might just have that right, because if they don’t, none of us do, you dig? But they better hope they know a saint or two, because if anybody finds out, it’ll be a lonely life. Though since you’d basically have to be a sociopath to reject your gift entirely, perhaps that’s irrelevant.
Consider Lance Armstrong, who I mentioned earlier in passing. I think it’s fair to say that he is, for the moment, unstoppable. Given that he is essentially guaranteed to win the next, say, Tour de France, is it ethical for him to compete?
If it is, why is it unethical for me to compete on the PGA tour?
It’s not so much unethical as it is game-breaking. Giftedness within the range of un-altered human ability is fair play, but artificial giftedness, as through steroid use, is not, and neither is being the only grown-up in the Go Fish game and playing to win. Let there be a special category for athletes like your superhero golfer alter ego - creation of such categories is hardly new.
Lance Armstrong, against other humans, even with his physical differences, could still lose. He’s not a machine, or a mutant, he’s just very, very physically gifted and very, very good at taking advantage of that. Without the latter, the former is useless. He could lose; you, however, would make Tiger Woods look like a preschooler, and that’s not fair play. It breaks the game, so it’s wrong. You need a new game.
I think there’s a difference between “unethical” and “game-breaking”. There’s nothing unethical about Lance Armstrong entering the Podunk Falls Annual Bike Marathon. There’s nothing unethical about Barry Bonds retiring, going to work as a mortgage insurance guy and joining the office softball team. It’s certainly game-breaking, in both instances.
I would use one of my three wishes to get the power of telekinesis. I would then buy a ticket in a lottery where a) the jackpot prize is high enough to be set for life with a single win, and b) the public gets to attend the drawing of the winning numbers. It would be a very easy way to secretly, maybe even anonymously, benefit from my powers.
And I wouldn’t have much of an ethical problem with it. After all, at the time of the drawing, just about every single ticket holder is concentrating furiously on their numbers, and trying with all their might to make those numbers come up through sheer willpower. So what if I do the same thing and it actually works? Show me where it says in the rules that I am not allowed to influence the winning numbers through paranormal ability.
Well, isn’t it unethical to knowingly break the game, though? Isn’t that what we call cheating?
Cheating is to use means outside the rules… having skill well beyond other players is not cheating, though it is less ‘fun’ for all involved
If it rises to level of making it impossible for anyone else to win, to even approach winning, it breaks the game, just like cheating does. That’s the problem with cheating. I can easily agree that they are not identical acts, but the fundamental problem with each is the same. So I disagree with Bricker that, say, it’s ethical for a professional to compete against amateurs, especially if the other players don’t have fair warning ahead of time. (Perhaps only if?)
What would Jesus do? Apparently he’d use his super powers to turn water into wine at a friend’s wedding. Seems like that opens the door for allowing personal gain. Or at least helping your friends save face, which isn’t that far removed from personal gain.