[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

They should be erring on the side of caution such that such deficiency will not lead to breaking a law and are supposed to turn themselves in if they fail in that regard.

Turn themselves in to who? It's not like we're talking about grand theft or murder where the concept of "turning yourself in" is meaningful.

You don't seem to be reading the text of the trait, which says: "You also assume that others are honest unless you know otherwise".

Yes. That's what it says. So? If you don't do that then you are assuming that they are criminals unless you know them very well.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

You don't seem to be reading the text of the trait, which says: "You also assume that others are honest unless you know otherwise".

Well, yes, when you're out in traffic and someone is speeding, you know otherwise. The people I know of who seems to have the Honest disadvantage (as I interpret it), complain about this regularly when we're out on the road together.

But I think the key here is that the assumption is not about the Honesty disadvantage, it's simply the assumption that people are upstanding and fair-dealing (lower-case "honest"). I think that's probably true for many people who lack the full disadvantage. I certainly presume that most people are small-h honest and this belief hasn't seemed to hamper me terribly in day-to-day life. As a teacher, of course I have students who lie and/or cheat, but they're not the norm. It would be impractical and exhausting to assume otherwise, always wondering if people are lying, trying to trick me, etc.

[Anthony]

There are plenty of people who are inclined to think the best of other people, absent evidence to the contrary, but I'm not sure this is strongly correlated with a tendency towards being law-abiding; 'other people are like me' is a quite common belief for all sorts of personalities.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Turn themselves in to who? It's not like we're talking about grand theft or murder where the concept of "turning yourself in" is meaningful.

True, so there's another issue with the trait description.

[Phil Masters]

It’s probably sanest to interpret “turn yourself in” as in that pulp/warehouse gunfight story someone posted earlier in the thread, most of the time. You don’t generally stomp into a police station, put both wrists on the desk, and sob “Lock me up! I did forty in a thirty zobe!”; you do hang around after a firefight, walk calmly up to the first cop on the scene, and say “Let me explain what happened here...”

[jason taylor]

At the least the Honest person believes law has a moral status of it's own distinguishable from other moral considerations to which it applies. That is it is not only safety consciousness or politeness to other drivers to refrain from speeding, it is the law and therefore it is wrong to speed when no other drivers are present.