Let’s start with what happened after I blogged after lunch yesterday.

I worked on the paper some more. I’m having some problems with figuring out what to write based on what we already have. I also have to get started on the procedural instructions. Lucia and Alec came by at 2pm, so we updated them on what we were working on. We’re almost done with the VE, and the avatar is a work in progress. We don’t have content view-able in the HMD yet, but we’re working on it. Afterwards, I continued to work on the Literature Review, but I’m overwhelmed with how much I have to read and write for that. It could definitely use more work.

During craft of research, my team worked on the Discussion section of the paper. We couldn’t answer all of the questions because we don’t have any results yet. We did brainstorm some ideas on what the implications of our experiment is, and we’ve already discussed what we can do to continue improving our experiment.

This morning, I finished the last changes on my MCA presentation that Alex suggested that I make. I’m relieved to be finished already. That never happens when I design things! (It’s probably because my hardcore design professors aren’t here. They make us redo everything.)

I checked the calendar for this morning, and I saw that we had an Ethics class. I was agitated after the class. People gave answers, but I feel that we were digging a couple of inches on the surface. I was hoping we’d get philosophical and dig 10+ feet deeper. We didn’t seem to define ethics in a few words, which bugged me. Saying that the definition is “Open to interpretation” just wasn’t a way to get any questions answered. That being said, I’ve not read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics yet, so I just identify ethics as what one believes as right or wrong. Then morals was brought into the picture. From what I could tell from the discussion, morals and ethics may have been translated into making sure everyone is a good person and does the right thing.

I don’t think the law should require an individual to be a good person by enforcing ethics or morals. I like to think of the example of a driver passing by someone with car troubles on the side of the road. It takes a good person to stop and help, but should it be required by law? The truth is that some people wouldn’t stop, but they shouldn’t be breaking the law if they choose not to. It could be predicted that less of us would adhere to the law if those “good person” laws existed. How do we revere the law if everyone who didn’t stop broke it?

Governments instituted on the basis of making people good have a history of failure, starting with religious regimes. The United States was founded to protect the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The government protects those rights, but under that legal scope it limits its control over the rest of our lives. Morals and ethics are beyond government. Since they seem to open to human choice, why should they be law?