IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 21

Intersubjective approach
The criticisms leveled at the NYTT do not seem to
completely undermine the validity of this powerful
tool. Some of the aforementioned objections stem
from the subjective nature of the questions of the
NYTT: if you would not feel comfortable with public
disclosure or public scrutiny for what you want to
do, you will probably not do it. When the subject is
the benchmark, then personal characteristics such
as sensitivity to disclosure or personal attitudes to a
certain course of action can have more effects on
the outcome of the NYTT. There are some similar
ethical advices in religious contexts in which the
intersubjective aspect prevails over the subjective
aspect: Avoid every action that is done covertly and
is publicly embarrassing; avoid every action that,
when asked, the agent will deny or will apologize
for; and do not expose your honor to be treated as
the subject of people's talks [12]. In the intersubjective
version of the NYTT, a typical agent (not the
experimenter) takes a course of action in the thought
experiment. It seems that this new NYTT can mitigate
subjective interventions, overconfidence bias,
and the false-uniqueness effect better than the traditional
version. As such, it can be concluded that the
intersubjective NYTT posits that " if public disclosure
or scrutiny of an action will potentially lead to the
typical agent's shame, notoriety, denial, or apology,
then you probably shouldn't do it either. "
thiS interSubjective verSion of the thought
experiment can be realized in the real world-an ethical
laboratory: an agent faced with an ethical problem
should tell the people his or her decision and
ask them to comment on his or her decision from an
ethical point of view. Also, people can use the NYTT
on themselves in their evaluations. Then, the agent
can reflect on the responses. Today, the expansion
of social networks has facilitated conducting this survey
remarkably. Obviously, this process should not
include the release of sensitive information or violate
anyone's privacy. It seems that implementing this recommendation
will reduce the intensity of some of the
objections that have been leveled against it. It would
appear that attention to others' voice of conscience,
in the real world or in thought experiments, gives us a
more rational way to reach better results when ethical
decision-making is involved.

 References
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March 2022
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