Deontological Confusion

Sorry. That thing that happened? It was just business.

I'm watching Peaky Blinders recently – a TV show about gangsters – and the justification of the unjustifiable with "it was just business" comes up frequently.

But what is this "business" they so much talk about? And how does that apply to us? Why do we use the "it was just business" excuse, and why?

Brace for the abrupt jump, but let's talk about board games.

Board games and context

In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport talks about a board game café called Snakes & Lattes, and describes a phenomenon he calls supercharged socializing – interactions outside our daily norms:

Playing games also provides permission for what we can call supercharged socializing — interactions with higher intensity levels than are common in polite society. Sax describes the excited chatter and loud belly laughs he encountered at Snakes & Lattes during a busy night.

He later goes on to talk about CrossFit and other communities, and to describe how they foster personal expression:

[T]he activity provides some sort of structure for the social interaction, including rules you have to follow, insider terminology or rituals, and often a shared goal. As argued, these constraints paradoxically enable more freedom of expression.

Newport, Cal. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (p. 184). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Now, what else commonly provides us with a "structure for the social interaction, including rules you have to follow, insider terminology or rituals, and often a shared goal?"

That's right! – Work.

So there's this mode Cal Newport calls supercharged socializing, when considered in a leisure setting like board games or CrossFit that often exists in other contexts – particularly when we're at work.

In the work game, like in other games, the hierarchy is different, the goals are different, and the rules are different, and so we play differently.

But what is it that makes us justify some things that we wouldn't otherwise justify, when it's business?

Let's go through another leap, and talk about professional soccer and playing to win.

Gosh, I should really work on my transitions, eh?

Playing to win at soccer

When I was much younger, I remember thinking about ethics in soccer. I grew up enjoying soccer, both playing it and watching it.

At one point, I noticed something interesting about soccer: people were often quite dishonest while playing it, both amateurs and professionals alike.

Particularly, I have a vivid example from professional soccer: Barcelona's right winger Daniel Alves was attacking, and gets hard tackled by a defender – his leg flies back with the impact and he falls on the ground, rolling back and forth in pain.

But after the replay from another angle, I was astounded – his leg wasn't touched at all! He managed to pull his leg at just the right time to prevent any contact by the defender.

I don't know why that one example stuck in my mind, but it did. "Wait, why is it OK to be dishonest when playing soccer, but not otherwise? And is it OK to be dishonest?"

In David Sirlin's book Playing to Win, he talks about how a professional player, typically one wants to be the best or a champion in any competitive endeavor, has to play by the rules, but only the rules. The derogatory term "scrub" is ascribed to the player that "makes up their own personal rules" on top of the official ones, lowering their chances of winning.

The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

Sirlin, David. Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion (p. 17). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Now, David Sirlin is talking about the typical moves and tactics of the game, such as repeatedly using a move that's difficult to counter in Street Fighter, not about lack of "sportsmanship" (which he covers later in the book), but in some games, particularly real-life ones, it can be hard to tell one from the other.

For example, let's talk about UFC's norm of touching gloves before a fight, and its conflicting guidance to protect yourself at all times.

MMA Sportsmanship

The UFC is in the "hurt business," as president Dana White likes to say. In this hurt business, the goal is to hurt your opponent. From there comes the guidance "protect yourself at all times" that judges emphasize before every match begins.

But there's a norm taken by most fighters in the UFC: touching gloves AFTER a round starts. When touching gloves, you're not expecting your opponent to attack you, and in fact Eric Silva got really criticized by attacking his opponent while pretending to touch gloves, even though he was technically following the rules .. and playing to win.

Sometimes, particularly on really tough fights, the fighters will actually hug each other, all smiles, after a round starts and just before proceeding to try and hurt each other as much as they can. Commentators often have mixed opinions about the .. uhh, hugging norm.

Now, why the controversy? Why are there different opinions about whether fighters should hug each other after a round starts, even though the rules tell them to protect themselves at all times and to attack and beat up their opponents? Why no consensus among informed observers?

Well, because hurting your opponent when the round starts is what the rules say! In the hurt business, there are no touch gloves (or hugging) rules. Just hurting rules.

And as humans, particularly when placed in a very specific context like a game, we're really sensitive to understanding what the rules are and, when playing to win, following the rules ... and only the rules.

That reminds me of another TV show – Physical 100. A show where 100 people compete against each other in physical feats for the title of the fittest person.

Well.. I guess technically the prize is for "the best physique" or something, hehe, but it's a fun show otherwise.

Physical 100 rule following

In Physical 100, there are many original games that its creators came up with, where players learn about the rules just minutes before they compete: They need to do hang from a rope as much as possible, do as many squats holding coal in their backs, push their opponent out of an area, etc.

In one of the games, there's a leather ball in a playground, and two competitors fight for control of the ball: whoever is in possession of the ball when the 5 minute timer runs out, wins.

Typically, when the round starts, competitors start running as quickly as possible to get the ball: the fastest competitors grab the ball and try to outrun the presumably stronger but slower for 5 minutes. But something interesting happened in one particular confrontation.

Lee Won-hee, a Judo Olympic medalist, surprised everybody when he did something different: he came out slowly at the start of the game (even though he didn't particularly seem as strong as his opponent) turned to him, and bowed! The opponent, startled by his act of respect, stopped, came back walking, and bowed as well, and only then did they start competing – fiercely.

Now, there was nothing about the ruleset or norms that required bowing to your opponent – it was win at all costs on a brand new game with brand new rules!

So why bow? Was Lee Won-hee just being a scrub, unlike all other competitors who were actually playing to win?

I think there's something deeper here, something about layers of moral guidance and deontological confusion, which I'll tie up talking about my religious friend.

A religious friend who also happens to be a lawyer.

Rule obedience, and disobedience

We were chatting about politics, how people disagree about what's right and wrong and struggle to hear each other when they do, and the topic briefly went to civil disobedience.

When I mentioned civil disobedience and how people had to decide, sometimes, whether to follow or not follow the law, my religious friend quickly intervened: "I'll follow the law of the church first, and only then the law of men."

Now, regardless of whether you're a religious person or not, it's hard to fault my friend for being amoral. His point was there was a higher order of rules he must follow first.

In ethics, the way of thinking that ethics come from whether or not we follow rules is called deontology. From Wikipedia:

In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: δέον, 'obligation, duty' and λόγος, 'study') is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles,

Much ink and spit is spent between philosophers and others about whether following rules is the right way to think about ethical behavior and, if so, which rules those are.

The thing about rule following though is that humans are really inclined to do it. Having evolved to live in communities where rules are a great mechanism for collaboration and conflict avoidance and resolution, we typically see rule following as good, and rule breaking as bad.

And so, we get into a world where a number of humans are just following the rules, and whether what they do is good or bad depends, to a large extent, on what the rules are.

Which gives a lot of power, and responsibility, to whoever gets to write the rules.

Most importantly, this creates a deontological confusion when you go a layer down on the ruleset. Play a game, practice a sport, or work on a business, and if a new set of rules applies, it's easy to forget the old set of rules you were following before.

In these cases, we put overarching rules in some sort of rule suspension, and follow only the rules of the context one level deeper.

You could be a religious lawyer who follows the rules of religion first and foremost. Or you can be a religious lawyer who, whenever practicing law, suspends the rules of religion and follows only the law of men. But you can't do both things at the same time.

This deontological confusion caused by rule layering and suspension is quite common, and it means we must be on the lookout whenever a new ruleset is introduced on top of existing ones.

Which is why "it's just business," along with "it's company policy" and "I was just following orders" is so often used as an excuse for otherwise reprehensible behavior.

Summary: Rule layering and suspension

What I'll call Deontological Confusion happens when humans make faulty judgments about which rules to follow.

Commonly, this confusion happens with a mix of rule layering and suspension: We go into a new context, like a game, a sport, or business, and this new set of rules overrides the previous rules we followed.

This ability of humans to create a new set of rules, together with our propensity to follow the rules but nothing else when playing to win, can cause us to justify (and rationalize) all sorts of higher-level rule breaking.

To ensure we are living a deliberate life, we must, therefore:

• Ensure we have a clear moral code. Have a clear definition of what it means to live a good life, to be a good person, to do the right thing.
• Watch for any new sets of rules that break our overarching moral code. Be on the lookout whenever a subset of rules, typically ones defined by other people in business and games, encourages us to break our own rules, and justify it as right.

In the end, there's no right or consensus over what the right set of rules is, or even if a set of rules is the right way to think about what's right or wrong.

But if you defined what's the right way for you to live, the least you can do is be on the lookout when a new subset of rules, in the context you're inserted in, encourages you to act against the right way you defined for yourself.

And to resist.