Groundhog Day and Palm Springs are movies based around the same basic concept. One man is repeating the day over and over again in a small town, which nobody else remembers. How the universe works, whether everybody goes on with their life or just ceases to exist at the end of the loop is unknown.
How ethically wrong is it to seduce and have sex with someone, mainly based on false pretenses, just learning the lines your target has the best reaction to and honing them each iteration, not meaning anything you say?
Phil in Groundhog Day promised to marry the girl, something that obviously wouldn’t happen, we only saw it happen once, but nothing in the film suggests it was the only time. Nyles in Palm Springs has had sex with Sarah thousands of times before Sarah starts remembering, but there’s no evidence there was a direct deception.
To see just how unethical it is, here is a real world question: How ethical is it to research/spy/stalk a potential partner to tailor a strategy of seduction? Just because the strategy involves the supernatural, doesn’t make it any less objectionable.
Time loops aren’t real (as far as we know) so applying real world ethics to a supernatural event is a bit dodgy.
Knowing that the seduction and real world consequences will evaporate in a few hours nullifies the questionable ethics. If consent was given, they won’t exist long enough to regret their decisions.
Are you using information you wouldn’t have known if there wasn’t a time loop to elicit an action or response from someone that wouldn’t have acted that way otherwise, and said action is to your immediate benefit and them not acting the way you elicit would cause you no harm? Then you are acting unethically.
My issue would be that you don’t know that. It’s not like you’re in control of the loop. And, once time loops get into the equation, then you don’t have any reason to believe that the other timeline doesn’t continue even though you’ve reset.
If the person were sincere and was actually concerned about what would happen in the future if this particular timeline continued, I would not consider it unethical. It would be okay to learn to improve yourself, or to just get up the guts to try something would be afraid to try otherwise.
But the second you throw in being dishonest, and I say it’s being profoundly unethical, for the same reason it would be without the time loop. Any lie that goes beyond the kind that just simplifies or leaves out unimportant information is wrong.
Now, if this becomes a simulation, that’s where I think it becomes trickier, as you get into whether or not the simulated people are actually sentient creatures. How good is the simulation? Is a perfect simulation of something as conscious and sentient as the real thing?
One thing I appreciated in Star Trek’s holodecks was that they, after a couple episodes, made it clear that the holograms weren’t (as a rule) sapient or conscious, and later showed that they were programmed with perception filters and such to prevent sapience from occurring.
Not quite the same thing, but The Good Place does something similar. Michael (an immortal being, for those that haven’t seen it) is learning about ethics. The group realizes the big reason he won’t take it seriously is that he’s immortal. He can do anything he wants, ethical or otherwise, and who cares. A few million years pass by you’ll hardly remember it anymore.
How about the The Good Place’s lesson on The Trolley Problem. If you’ve never seen The Good Place, this is great scene. We can talk about The Trolley Problem day in and day out, but in the end it’s just that, talk…
Where the line? Sure, stalking is objectionable. What about asking her best friend what movie or restaurant she might like?
Is it objectionable to try 100 different variations of pickup lines on 100 girls and see what works?
I think the ethical issue is around intent and approach. Henry (50 First Dates) romantically pursues Lucy in good faith. He doesn’t try to mislead her. Phil Conner(Groundhog’s Day) OTOH intentionally misleads and humiliates at least one woman. Nyles (Palm Springs) seems fairly moral and probably was able to hook up with Sarah without much guile because she was into him already.
The moral of the story is - if you get stuck in a time loop, you better freakin find true love fast.
In Palm Springs, Andy Samberg comments that harming people is still unethical in the time loop because you are still causing real pain for those people.
Also, we don’t know that these universes just “evaporate”. Each day may simply create a new parallel universe that just continues on Loki style.
But is an actions ethicality based on actual consequences or intent? Is it “wrong” even if you don’t get caught?
What puts a spin on Groundhog Day, specifically, is it seems that the endless repeating day finally releases Phil when he wins the girl*. Apparently, consequence-free stalking is a good thing in that universe. The moral lesson - win the girl get the prize. Do whatever it takes. Her moral agency is not an issue.
*unless it was his buying insurance from Ned. The jury is still out
Or it stopped for completly unrelated reasons, or it didn’t stop and for some reason the movie’s narrative decides to follow this Phil as he goes on, not the other Phil who’s back in the loop.
We just have no idea what happened in Groundhog Day
I didn’t think it was because Phil “got the girl” – rather it was because he’d finally become a decent human being. And becoming a decent human being happened to be what his romantic interest was really interested in.
While I agree, I’m taking the movie at face value. What a filmmaker choses to show or not show in a movie is a choice in telling the story they want. The filmmakers stopped here, therefore this was the “moral lesson” they wanted. (I’ve even posted my theory here that every loop lives on.)
Yes, this is what happened. After he stopped trying to get the girl by manipulating her, and just focused on bettering himself and others in the town, he actually became attractive to her, and THAT’S what got the girl and stopped the loop.
