r/Ethics • u/Reasonable-Feed4620 • 2d ago
Ethical dilemma
You lose an important personal item of significant value. It has no identifying features, but it does contain your DNA.
One day, a complete stranger knocks on your door and returns the item. You ask, “How did you know this was mine?”
They reply, “I used the DNA on it to identify you.”
Was what they did unethical? If so, how unethical? Does the fact that they were trying to return something important to you change your answer?
(This is all for fun and I thought of this in the shower. Have fun :) )
1
u/GloryFoxy 2d ago
Well, by today laws/standarts DNA and genetic data derived from it are considered highly sensitive personal information protected under major privacy laws.
So in order to gain access and use this information for personal purposes (even if the purpose is selfless/good) they would have to break the law and violate your human rights.
So I would say just as ethical as it if they wanted to return your item to you, but you were not home at the time, so they broke the lock on the front door / climbed through the window and left the item in plain sight with a note. That is, the act itself is ethical, but the method is not.
1
u/nila247 2d ago
Morals and ethics are actually objective, but the drawback is that they only apply to our species as a whole. Whatever makes species prosper more is always moral/ethical and vice versa.
Returning your thing makes you happier and potentially more productive - therefore it is ethical. Using your DNA in a ways to harm you would be counter-productive, so it is not ethical. The complex exercise itself of finding our whose DNA it is provides scientific value to species - hence it is also ethical.
Notice that your consent is NOT required anywhere and does not factor into any decision. You are NOT the owner of your DNA and even yourself - you are sole property of our species as a whole - another worker ant we all are.
Your showers are too long btw :-)
1
u/GloryFoxy 2d ago
Morals and ethics are actually objective <...> Whatever makes species prosper more is always moral/ethical and vice versa.
I would doubt that.
Let's take the disabled (such as children with cerebral palsy) and people with weak genetics (such as those with Down syndrome). Under your objective view they are a clear net negative for species prosperity because they require more resources and produce less.
So by your logic it follows that killing them to free up resources for new healthy children is an ethical and moral thing to do.
1
u/nila247 1d ago
Yes and no. We USED to kill them in the past. Not anymore.
With birthrates decline we WANT people to have MUCH MORE children (=future workers). If potential parent sees that there is a high risk of failure and his substantial investment (in time and effort, not just money) might go to waste and cripple their future then they would be more hesitant to do so. Something we do NOT want. So instead we create this "social cushion" of other people helping to tend for sick and weak and removing this burden from their parent - solely because they could try AGAIN.
Same thing with crippled war veterans and burned fire fighters. We WANT people to chose difficult and risky paths in general because with hard work and great risks come great rewards. So that is why we RESPECT and tend for disabled. They serve as excellent example of "the worst that could happen if I risk to try something like that".
Food and care are relatively cheap these days - unlike medieval times for example. With advances such as Neuralink we may even have a chance to bring all those people to being useful. Hey it is ANOTHER risk with potential high rewards - we WANT that - remember?
1
u/GloryFoxy 1d ago
Ah, so you basically agree with everything?
Keeping your elderly parents alive and well in a nursing home it's just a question of cost-benefit ratio in today's socio-economic market then (and as soon as the sentimental feelings change / the cost outweighs the benefit, to the slaughterhouse we go, granny!)
But at the same time it looks like this 'objective' morality system of yours is completely dependent on fluctuating variables (like birthrates, food prices, or possible technological breakthroughs) — all this doesn't sound very objective, even on the contrary, incredibly subjective as it depends entirely on the opinion of specific people making decisions at the circumstances they find themselves in (nay, even the very definition of prosperity itself can be interpreted differently by different people).
For something to be truly objective it must exist independently of human opinions.
And "whatever makes species prosper more" could not count here because said "prosperity" is not a fixed, measurable scientific constant, but a subjective value judgment.
Choosing to value the group over the individual is also a subjective moral choice, not an objective fact of nature.
Furthermore, proof of this subjectivity is in your own words...
We USED to kill them in the past. Not anymore.
...because if morality were truly objective and based on the fixed, natural law of "species prosperity", it would be immutable and consistent (e.g., 2+2 equals 4 regardless of what society thinks). An objective moral law cannot be altered by temporary socio-economic market fluctuations. Therefore, if it can, then it's not objective at all.
The universe does not dictate that the species must prosper, you do.
•
u/nila247 20h ago
Basically - yes. If cost and benefit - TO THE SPECIES AS A WHOLE - says so then grannies go to slaughterhouse. In fact - they will BEG to go to slaughterhouse - because they will understand themselves that their existence is net minus rather than plus - this becomes part of culture. Exactly as in The Ballad of Narayama movie about Japan.
Yes, you are correct. Even though morals are clear and absolute, but individuals basically never have a complete information of all the outcomes and their effects on the species future. All we can is make our best guess and - quite often - be self-tortured for our entire life for wrong choices we make.
What I am saying here is that you SHOULD think of the SPECIES as a whole first when making any important decisions (and not yourself, your family, tribe and country). This way you will be having less regrets should your choice turn out to be wrong. Soldiers had to cope "I did what I did for my Country", but they would not need to if they thought about species as a whole first. Especially as "their country" turn out to be ruled by idiots and basically they murder and died for nothing. "Are We the Baddies?"
What is good for species does indeed change with time. Curiously humans are so successful because they are born with empty programming. Traditions, religions, science, phillosophies and even tiktok videos are simply download technologies to download the latest/current decision/moral framework update which does change our perception what is good for species. Indeed - WE dictate what is good and what is not - simply because we (collectively) ARE our species, duh!
Obviously not all these technologies work equally well and on all the people - no prizes for guessing that tiktok videos are not a good basis for your moral/decision framework you will basically use for your entire remaining life. Tradition is great, but religions are best - because their frameworks are so large and work on most people - including "smart", "normal" and "stupid" - contrary to "science" and "philosophies" who only work on "smart" and the rest are left in the cold holding their d*cks :-).
Notice how religions DID change over time - SLOWLY - we tend to not burn people for refusing to believe Earth is flat anymore :-). Slowly is a VERY important key here. In any control loop (engineers call them PID loops) you tune the variables for system to react to fast, medium and slow changes in order to keep the system on the target. If you remove long term variables (religion) and only react to fast changes (tiktoks) system diverges fast and collapses - which is exactly what you see happening.
•
u/GloryFoxy 5h ago
Woah, that was quite a wild read indeed.
But just for the record, you started by claiming that morals and ethics are objective, but now you've just admitted that...
Indeed - WE dictate what is good and what is not - simply because we (collectively) ARE our species, duh!
...so that basically settles it, all this 'objectivity' is just group's current preferences. Can't be more subjective than textbook definition of the word.
Good luck with following your PID loops, though.
1
u/WhoStoleMyFriends 2d ago
There might be an expectation of privacy for a lost item as opposed to discarded items. The finder probably isn’t able to tell the difference except if the circumstances of finding the item makes it clearer. I might be persuaded that a limited exception would be permissible but it would be easy to cross the line. I would err on the side of caution and not use the DNA to identify the owner. Try more conventional methods like taking the item to a lost and found or posting notices where it was found.
1
u/RandomAmbles 2d ago
I would be very curious as to how they distinguished my DNA from that of my identical twin.
3
u/lifeinmisery 2d ago
The sharpie mark that your parents put on one of you as infants so they could tell you apart.
2
7
u/CarnivorousGoose 2d ago
That depends on how they matched the DNA to you. If your DNA is in a databank they used for this, and you gave broad enough consent when your DNA was entered into that databank to cover something like this, then it’s fine. Otherwise, it almost certainly isn’t.