Yeah, I was homeless at 15/16/17 too.... I don't remember stealing to support myself.

I was homeless for 1 night when I was 16 - I slept in my stepdads car and my mum still hears about it when she pisses me off...

Now that you admit to knowing you are not being billed and are aware, sounds like theft of services to me, at the very least i would start paying asap so when they do figure it out you wont have one huge bill due.

yay you :thumbsup

yeah I can remember being so hungry I went down and stood on the corner about 2am.... luckily for me it was a crazy lady that picked me, she took me to Denys and fucked me ...

Correct. It's stealing.

As for rationalizations, it's worth pointing out that comparisons of pirating movies or whatever are not the same at all. What purported harm someone theoretically causes and nameless, faceless corporate behemoth is not the same in terms of how this situation is processed on a neurological or psychological level. The primary difference is personally entering into a contract with another individual, agreeing with that individual that if he does X, you'll pay Y, shaking hands and walking away with a contract in place. He then fulfills his end of the contract and he other party rationalizes that for no reason relating to performance or his proposer fulfillment of his obligations, that he is not going to pay... fulfilling his end of the obligation.

There is also a massive difference in terms of neurology in how we process stealing from someone we don't know and don't see and where no one will know and from someone we do know and have personal contact with.

This behavior is one that is shunned by others instinctively as we have evolved to react harshly to what evolutionists calls "free riders"... I.e. Those that unfairly take from the group, offering less or nothing in return. All successful species on the planet have successfully dealt with his problem. Ours is wired into our brains and our behavior

Believe it or not, we are born with the fundamental framework for morality hard wired into our brains. A sense of right and wrong, to help those in distress, to act fairly, to expect fairness, that those who violate these basic rules are to be shunned and punished and so on. This has been extensively tested in infants for decades now. So when someone says "hey, I've decided not to live up to my end of the deal" for no real reason, it's a very safe assumption that something is miswired in their brain and with how they are processing these scenarios and understanding their own obligations and more importantly, it is a red flag as it is a question likely asked by a narccisstic or sociopathic personality to see how normal people would react.... being that they are incapable of processing moral questions based on a personal sense of obligation, fairness and doing what's right as those concepts and emotional responses don't exist In their mental processes which guide much of our behavior.

^ for my part, it wasn't a rationalization comparing torrenting etc, but rather as an example of how it's easy to take the moral high ground in scenario A, whilst stealing in scenario B. Which pretty much everyone does, unless they have always declared every single penny to the taxman, amongst other honorable traits :)

I stand by my point of view that morals aren't a yes/no situation.

Moral intuition is a response which is both instantaneous and without conscious thought. The rest is conscious thought rationalizing the means to the desired end. In other words "I want to steal this movie ... How do I do it and feel like its acceptable"

yep, most likely.

Well,
Speaking from a standpoint of neuroscience that is exactly correct. The first thing that happens is a flash of negative or positive emotion. That does not involve conscious thinking or awareness. Conscious awareness is an "after the fact" phenomenon. Once that positive or negative emotion ties to conscious awareness, we can easily override it by rationalizing our determined course of action.

This is what underpins the "go with your gut" type expressions. Your immediate response is the most honest... Then your lying and conniving conscious mind gets involved and confuses things. :)

Surely that's what morals *are* though? Your conscious awareness of a situation, and whether to rectify it if you feel it is wrong. The rest is just nature working, no? The initial feeling of it being right or wrong that we get in itself isn't morals, it's as you say, that initial positive or negative emotion naturally occurring. Morals only come into it after the fact (even if only a split-second), and are subjective to each person - though the majority of the time most people have a fairly 'standard' moral compass to which we adhere.

Incidentally, my interest in the question is that it suggests the individual considering such a question would likely have some deficiency in their processing of morality based and unconscious reactions... ie no internal response of right or wrong and confusion/lack as to why others instantly think it's wrong when a sociopath or narccisstic personality for example, can only reason that "this is great for me.. so how can it be wrong"

Conscious awareness ONLY comes after unconscious mental processing. An analogy to your awareness of anything might be like the headline versus the article. Your unconscious mind has studied, weighed and argued to death the content of a 3000 word article, all that rises to conscious awareness is the headline.

Your FIRST response in terms of moral intuition ... Note "intuition".. not "conscious thinking". Is 100% unconscious and instantaneous. All that might rises to conscious awareness is "good" or "bad". Your conscious mind then takes over and creates a story - either based in experience and known facts, or in the absence of some or all of the facts, it will make something up.

So in my view, someone considering such a question either

1) is confused by to responses of others
2) confused by his own lack of response
Or
3) wants to steal and is searching for rationalization or a socially acceptable explanation for stealing

well yeah, I do agree with that if such a 'clear' case as the example in the OP were a genuine question. Not 1 person has said don't pay, and I don't think anyone on this board would genuinely give that as an answer to the OP.

Having the OP as a hard and fast case though of 'morals' in it's entirety is different though imo, eg I know for an absolute fact my dad wouldn't cheat the taxman out of a penny, because with his moral code, that's wrong. I'm pretty sure most people have a different moral code when it comes to that particular scenario though :upsidedow

I think I should have said this better.

Moral reasoning centers of the brain
Rational reasoning centers of the brain

These both provide the framework for social decision

Your scenario of downloading say ... a song.There is no real perception of stealing from another person, of harming another etc this decision does not engage the moral reasoning centers of the brain. It relies solely on the rational reasoning centers. I. Other words, weighing primarily risk vs reward. Basically zero risk of getting in trouble, no real perception of harming another and the immediate reward of getting what you want.

It, like any number of scenarios is a "moral dilemma" philosophically but is not in terms of how your brain makes the decision as brain scans demonstrate.

However, if I put a picture of the artist in front of you and said "this is bob, it's his song". Now there is a name, face and real person associated with the song. This starts to also engage the moral reasoning centers as we introduce a real person and a vague idea that maybe a real person is being harmed.

The number of people willing to download that song would start to decrease as moral reasoning is then introduced to a small degree into the decision to commit the act.

If we went further and Bob met the downloader, shook his hand, bought him lunch and Bob have him a nice gift, again the willingness to download would dramatically decrease... as moral reasoning increasingly takes over rational reasoning as the primary decision driver.

My point to your point is that the understanding of what is a moral decision and what isn't is easily misunderstood in terms of how the brain actually processes the decision.

Also, it's important to note that in the case of the USA for example, mental disorders such as narcissistic personality disorders, antisocial personality disorders, sociopathy and psychopathy are exploding. Well over 6-7% of the population have a severe deficit or even complete inability to even processing a moral question in a healthy manner. That format mean that they don't appear normal as these people have a lifetime of experience in faking a socially acceptable emotional response. I would guess this is largely due to the fact that this untrue emphasizes me me me and the individual where "fuck everyone else" is really a very small and even logical step to take.

We are born with the framework for morality hard wired into our brains. From there, environment, experience and disorders/disease come into to shape things further and individual values tend to slightly differ. HOWEVER, that is not the same as someone being genuinely confused as to why stealing from another man they personally entered into a contract with and who has faithfully fulfilled their end of the deal is wrong. That is indicative of a problem with that person.

Or... "I am waiting for the billing to start."

At the heart of this contrived dilemma is simple truth. People do what they want to do. End of story. If a person wanted to lay for the services they are aware they are stealing, they would.

I called two companies this week to get payments started because I didn't want to wait for them.

Just saying?

Last time I did that the guy was a complete fucking dick he was instantly like "Pay me right now or I am going to sue you".

Sounds legit

May it was meant to be an Oral Question thread?

If the guy never asked for money I'd think he was banging my girl. Pay him before he tries to bang your girl. He might be trimming bush as well as your lawn. :1orglaugh

been screwed so many times by companies I would welcome the gift

Eventually they'll want to be paid, so would you rather do it now, or when the bill is racked up to a large amount?

Well... if after six months they haven't billed, I probably won't realize it, so the question might be moot.

But if I did notice, I'd probably say... hey, where ya been lol...

:D

Oh he was a dick. A year later he emailed me telling me I owed interest on the back payment. I told him to fuck off.

So here is how this played out...

This was for my kid's braces, for which they should bill me $150 a month. It's been four months now and we've never seen a single bill. I went down and spoke to the staff there and the woman that handles the billing issues... Was let go on Friday - Turns out I wasn't the only one who noticed they weren't getting billed.

They told me there was no charge for the first four months and gave me a small discount on the entire cost.

Winning.

Maybe he did a bad job and he knew it and so didn't want to collect? There are some people like that who take a lot of pride in their work. Then again if that were the case the right thing would have been to tell you father.

Are you really banned?

Of course. You offered to pay someone early and they threatened to sue you.

Makes perfect sense.

so much for that assumption

Another wall of nonsensical psycho babble from the expert at psycho babble.