IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 20

Opinion
and this can be as damaging as an actual conflict of
interest in professional ethics. In some codes of ethics,
it is advised that the appearance of a conflict of interest
should be avoided. For example, the IEEE advises
its membership as follows: " We, the members of the
IEEE...do hereby commit ourselves to the highest ethical
and professional conduct and agree...to avoid real
or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible,
and to disclose them to affected parties when they do
exist " [3]. The NYTT is, to some extent, sensitive to this
appearance of a conflict of interest [15].
Fourth, " overconfidence bias " is a cognitive bias
in which the subjective confidence of a person in
his or her judgements is greater than they actually
are, objectively [13]. Similarly, the " false uniqueness
effect " refers to the tendency to overestimate one's
own uniqueness [10]. Asking the right questions can
mitigate these biases given sound critical thinking.
For example, the NYTT paves the way to foresee
others' reactions and to mitigate partly these biases
by posing questions such as the following: How will
people ethically evaluate my actions? [8].
Some criticisms of the NYTT
The NYTT has been subjected to various criticisms.
One criticism is that every possible result in a
moral dilemma will be negative in a significant way.
As such, there will always be people who complain,
whatever the decisions might be. Suppose that a
corporation faces serious economic problems and
that after due moral deliberation, the CEO decides to
lay off a thousand workers. The resulting unemployment
will thus lead many of the redundant workers
to become involved in violence, alcohol abuse,
and in physical and mental illness, and the local
economy will become decimated, crime will soar,
and lives will be ruined. All of these are standard
consequences of mass layoffs. Obviously, the CEO
would not want such an eventuality to appear on
the front page of the newspaper. But the problem is
that the alternative options are even worse, and this
level of complexity is not something that the NYTT
is equipped to take into consideration [4]. Although
this example demonstrates a difficult situation in
ethical decision-making, it is not a counter example
to the NYTT. If all the adverse consequences of
the alternative options were to be published in The
New York Times, then the majority of public opinion
would probably affirm the CEO's ultimate choice.
Additionally, the condition for using the NYTT is
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the absence of pertinent ethical guidelines, whereas
decision-making guidelines for such an important
issue are usually available.
Another criticism is that the NYTT does not accommodate
the need for keeping company secrets. But
this criticism is invalid because the thought experiment
does not pose a real conflict of commitment
because the NYTT is only a thought experiment and
sensitive business information does not need to be
disclosed. Additionally, focusing on ethical aspects,
the NYTT can be performed in general terms without
the need to include any sensitive information [7].
It would seem that there are, however, objections
which cannot be responded to easily. First, the NYTT
is not robust enough to people's sensitivity to disclosure.
Not all people are sensitive to the disclosure of
their secrets to the same extent. For example, anyone
who has already lost his good repute in society
to some extent is probably not as sensitive about
making a disclosure as a reputable person would
be. Conversely (and in fewer cases), there might be
some people whose fear of disclosure of a certain
action of theirs is unreasonably high, leading to a
false result when the NYTT is applied.
Second, different people in society might have
different beliefs, values, and attitudes concerning
any given issue. In some cases, this diversity might be
ethically justified or it might not be [11]. For example,
there are some people who, according to their
beliefs and attitudes, easily turn to consumerism with
a clear conscience, while there are others who would
disapprove such behavior. It is not always easy to
understand or master this diversity of opinion. In this
case, the agent or decision maker might not be fully
or properly informed of the extent and nature of such
diversity of opinion, and this would then lead the
NYTT to yield a false recommendation. Furthermore,
if the decision maker is familiar with the nature and
extent of such variation of opinion, the test might be
unable to converge to a unique answer in some cases.
Third, the effectiveness of the NYTT is reduced in
cases where a person knows that his or her action
cannot or will not be disclosed, or in cases where he
or she knows that even if his or her act were somehow
to be disclosed, that he or she would be able to
deny the allegation convincingly.
Fourth, and most importantly, it might be possible
that a moral person is positioned in an immoral society
[9]. In this case, the NYTT will not only not help
the agent, but will act to mislead him.
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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