The Good, The Bad and the Neutral

I happed upon a moral quandry the other day that lead me to really think about my constitution (term borrowed from D&D). I believe there are 3 constitutions in the real world. Law, Neutral and Chaos. Not everybody fits into just one of these boxes (some do though). My theory (not necessarily mine) is that people might not (should not?) be considered evil if they fail to act against "evil" deeds and people should not necessarily be considered good if they do no evil. The third box which is neutral, is really there for all the apathetic people of the world. I consider myself on the Law side of Neutral, where as most people I know are on the Neutral side of Law.

The dilemma is one of a friend of mine, lets call him Humphrey, who works for a software company. Recently, he was working remotely and found he could access other computers on his network, more specifically the computers of the CEO, CFO and HR Head. He could access every file on their machine and a tremendous amount of personal data. Now he was VPN'ed in and has an account on their network, but he still thinks that these people are exposing a tremendous amount of personal data. He asked me if he should tell these people to lock up their machines. Now, I told him, what if they asked why he tried to access their machines? And he didn't know. There definitely seemed to be a possibility for him to be fired for exposing this, but there was also a possibility for him to be lionized or treated as a hero. He asked me what he should do, because he felt personally that not revealing this fact was tantamount to negligence.

I described to him the following breakdown and asked him to describe:
The best and worst case if he told.
1. Best Case: He would be thanked, and he could sleep at night
2. Worst Case: He would be fired for attempting to access other peoples machines

The best and worst case if he remained silent
3. Best Case: Nothing happens
4. Worst Case: Personal data is breached, but he does not have any liability in the matter.

Then I asked him to look at all of these possibilities and decide which was more desirable.
He listed them from least desirable to most desirable.
2. 4. 3. 1.

2 was worse than 4 and 1 was better than 3. Since 2 has a higher probability than 4 and 1 is only marginally better than 3, I recommended that he go the "not tell" approach.

This is a very mathematical view of the situation, but the real problem is the question of is 2 really worse than 4? Is self preservation better than the greater good and does this make you Neutral or Law?

On Girls, Boys and Transformers

My son received a transformer toy the other day for his birthday. The toy transforms between a robot and a hovercraft. Both my daughter (3) and son (5) play with the toy, however my daughter prefers it to be in its humanoid form where she calls it her baby robot and puts a blanket on it, and changes its diaper and gives it food, where my son prefers it to be in the hovercraft where his Hulk toy can ride on it, and shoot the lasers and blow stuff up. The difference between boys and girls is hard wired: boys are destructive and girls are nurturing.