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Comment by briefcomment | Hacker News Reader

Also, (I can see it being possible that)* when it is communicated that the only thing stopping you from stealing is your own conscience, a burden is placed on your conscience every time you shop. I think people will be surprised to see how worn down the conscience can get when you keep invoking it for insignificant situations (in other words, when your conscience belies rationality). People may find themselves stealing when they never would've before.

*added as an edit

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This doesn't jibe with my personal experience at all. Do you have any evidence for this phenomenon existing?

I've heard of willpower being an expendable resource, but not conscience. I don't feel like it places a burden on my conscience to do the right thing, in fact, the opposite is true - doing things against my conscience causes a mental burden or strain, maybe explainable by cognitive dissonance (I am a moral person // I just did something I consider immoral).

I don't have evidence. I've updated my first comment to qualify that.

I think what distinguishes this situation from most others is that it is generally rational to follow your conscience. It makes sense to me to follow my conscience and not steal from BestBuy because there are people at the door who may catch me, there are security tags on products, and there are probably cameras. If all of those things disappeared, it is not so rational for me to not steal. In those cases, every time I listen to my conscience, it is with reluctance. In time, I may steal, or I may alter my behavior to not be put in that situation (I'll shop somewhere with those checks). Again, this is a thought exercise, so it may be different in practice.

I hope the act of not murdering or not stealing isn't slowly wearing you down.

Murdering people has a totally different risk/reward situation than petty theft. Additionally, situations where murdering someone confers a benefit on the murderer are much rarer than situations where petty theft confers some benefit to the thief.

It is not, and I think that is because it is generally rational to not murder or steal. I think irrationally following your conscience wears you down.

Murder takes physical effort. Stealing something you already have in your posession does not take any extra physical effort. Don’t conflate the two. You may also be completely ignoring some of the work people have done studying self check outs. My understanding is that people who would never think to hide items from an actual checker are much more likely to leave items unscanned. And that many of them justify the behavior in various ways.

I think petty theft is far more instinctive than you may realize. I personally have to fight the urge to steal my daughter’s holloween candy, even though I can easily afford my own, and she would give me some if I just asked. I don’t know where the urge comes from but I know it’s there, and I doubt it’s an uncommon type of urge.

Social interactions can really help to bolster behaviors we prefer in ourselves. I can see them being useful in keeping honest people honest. In the same way a gym buddy makes it harder to skip a workout.

There certainly would be more murders if concrete deterrents were relaxed or eliminated. We definitely do not rely on the honor system to keep murder rates in check.

In any case, someone raising questions about emergent behavior in the general population shouldn't invite questions about that specific person's imminent ethical lapse.

You clearly have not worked retail.

Heck I would have murdered a few by now if murder was legal.

> I think people will be surprised to see how worn down the conscience can get when you keep invoking it for insignificant situations.

At least in the US, there are so many opportunities to steal. In so many stores, it's so easy to just walk out with merchandise. So many private properties have items that aren't bolted down.

(Someone could steal about $1000 of firewood from my backyard, for example, plus the nice racks.)

Somehow, I don't think your prediction will come true.

I think you're right. I think volume of exposure is a factor too though. If I walk past your backyard once, it is effortless for me to ignore the opportunity to gain firewood in the name of conscience.

If I walk past it all the time though, and I

- don't have other ties to you (like knowing you or living in the same neighborhood)

- am not at risk of getting caught (you're blind and deaf for example, and there are no neighbors to see)

- need firewood

it's not obvious to me that I won't steal. There are probably a lot more checks in place that are involved that don't come to mind, but having shoppers rely on themselves simply make theft more likely I think.

I have heard of people regularly stealing from self checkout after first doing it by accident and then realizing how good it felt to get away with.

It won't feel so good when they realize they've been positively profiled by the company and the store's cameras have been used to build a case against them. This is not really different than a normal checkout and just pocketing candy and gum. It might not be karmic depending on your view, but it definitely is illegal and loss prevention will come knocking eventually.

If they did then it would be active policing, not just conscience based.

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