What will you do? (Ethical dilemma question)

[Catholic_Lady]

I wonder if Pool is actually in a real-life situation, and he wants to spin it as a dilemma to justify it as being morally ambiguous or difficult. It really isn't, is it?

No

[I_am_not_mafia]

I'd have to tell my best friend to explain why her boyfriend's balls are now crushed.

[ignoramus]

I wonder if Pool is actually in a real-life situation, and he wants to spin it as a dilemma to justify it as being morally ambiguous or difficult.  It really isn't, is it?

To think, Pooley's been a theist for what 20 minutes, and already commiting the deadly sins!
Life is so much easier when you're religious ..3 hail Marys' and start again... Us atheists need to take responsibility for our actions ...

[I_am_not_mafia]

The scenario isn't about winning or losing anything.  It is about being honest with the people closest to you.  I would much rather take the risk of damaging a friendship by telling a mate some uncomfortable truth that may save him a lot of heartache down the road, than I would maintain a friendship by retreating into a lie of omission. 

Exactly. Chances are that the unfaithful partner will try it on with someone else anyway so the friend will eventually know that you are telling the truth even if they don't want to believe you.

Or to put it another way if your partner was being unfaithful, would you want your friends to hide it from you? I wouldn't.

[Mystic]

I know a woman who tried to help her friend by telling her BF was cheating, and everyone turned against her and said she was trying to break them up, even though she had the means to prove it.

[Edwardo Piet]

I wonder if Pool is actually in a real-life situation, and he wants to spin it as a dilemma to justify it as being morally ambiguous or difficult.  It really isn't, is it?

It just seems like a lazy and selfish way to excuse yourself from an ethical problem AFAIC.

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I'd have to tell my best friend to explain why her boyfriend's balls are now crushed.

"Crushed balls" sounds like a cocktail.

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I know a woman who tried to help her friend by telling her BF was cheating, and everyone turned against her and said she was trying to break them up, even though she had the means to prove it.

Sounds like the people who didn't believe her didn't deserve her friendship anyways.

[The Grand Nudger]

If you see your friend stepping out on his/her significant other....do you tell the significant other, confront the friend, or mind your own business? What do you do when two people who aren't your friends are cheating?

Many people who would rat out their buddies gf/bf...wouldn't rat out their buddy to some rando, and that;s difficult to square away in transition between the actors and their place in this hypothetical drama. If, for example, you were a "confront the friend" type, then wouldn't you also be a "confront the cheater, not the friend" type if the roles were shuffled back to the original? If you were a "tell the buddy" type in the original formulation, wouldn't you also be a "rat out your boy to a rando" type in this formulation?

What I;m getting at, /w the above, is that the answer (whatever answer one gives) to this question or the initial question probably has more to do with what ones own ideas are regarding personal complicity and duty..not some overriding and uniform proposition regarding the other or any harm potentially done. It's an area of incredible inconsistency. Even in the case of minding your own business in any case..the reference to harm caused by busybodying explicitly ignores the potential harm caused by the act of infidelity, or at least determines that it's likely to be greater than the harm caused by a wayward kiss.

I know I harp about this one alot, but it seems more an issue of exclusively sub-optimal ethical choices than an ethical dilemma. A "which kid do you save from the burning building" scenario. Our rationalizations for why we choose a b or c aren;t always directly related to the problem at hand..and sometimes we just don;t have a clue, so we throw shit at the wall and hope for the best. For the most part, imo, our lives are a constant stream of such decisions..as we aren;t in a position to arrange the particulars of events beyond our control so that at least one option matches up to the cut and dry specifics of a "good choice" or "the right choice" (whatever that means to a given individual). We do our best as we see it, and our idea of "the best" can change even between otherwise identical situations in which the only difference is our relationship to the situation or to an actor in the situation.

[Shell B]

I have implied responsibilities to my friends, not strangers. That makes a huge difference.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think so too..though, in my case, I don't see this as one of them.  My implied responsibilities to a friend end at declining.  Your's extend to informing your friend.  

In telling your friend..you're discharging what you perceive to be your duty.  You likely don't feel, however... that it's your duty to inform your friend of everything that they do wrong or every wrong done unto them that you're aware of.  I don;t know if your friends are anything like mine...but that would be exhausting, lol. It may even be the case (particularly if the partner made advances on someone else) that you wouldn't feel any such duty to a friend who..for example, had been told before but stubbornly stayed with a cheating partner.

In neither of our cases does this present a meaningful moral dilemma, it's just a reflection of our sense of duty.

[Shell B]

I'd lose a friend who wouldn't tell me as soon as I found out. I've got expectations. lol