Can you think of a situation where breaking a rule could have a positive impact on others, and
how would you weigh this against your own potential risks or benefits?
Yeah, lots of situations where breaking a rule could have seemingly positive impact on others. I
say seemingly, because maybe it's positive in the short term and negative in the long term. For
example, in school, helping another student cheat on the test would be immediately positive,
because they pass the test, but in the long term could be a negative, because they never learn
the material, develop poor study habits, and each time someone chooses to do something like
cheat, it affects their future self, and makes it more likely that they will cheat again in the
future. Another, more consequential example would be harboring political prisoners and lying to
the police in order to protect the lives of the people I'm hiding. If there is a just cause I
believe in and the police are part of a tyrannical regime I'm fighting, their authority only
comes through force, and their rules aren't just, they're simply enforced by the overwhelming
might of the state. In that case, breaking the rule has a huge positive impact because the
person's life is saved and they can continue fighting for the cause we're fighting for. The
risks and benefits to me would be based on my own moral code about the type of person I want to
be and the type of world I want to be a part of creating and what I'm willing to lose in the
pursuit of creating that world.