IT would be an interesting experiment to track the lives of a set of test cases who had somehow been indoctrinated or persuaded to adhere to various moral codes or precepts int heir decision making process, as an examination of the consequences. I suppose a simulation set up could be done, wherein the subjects faced comparable situations which sought to emulate the behaviors of real-life consequences, and had to decide their courses of action based on different mores.

It has not, as far as I know, been done, and a simulation of this sort owuld only capture a fraction of the actual variables each individual faces as he moves his past into his present and contemplates his possible futures in every moment of a day. It should be obvious, I think, that to boil such a confluence of dynamic variables into a short list of rules is not going to acheive any absolute map of right choice, even when such rules help the individual find workable solutions.

I do believe that living along principles based on observations about the hierarchy of good consequences is a positive choicein the individual life. People often estimate the psychological damage of making choices which harm others, for example, because those consequences are not immediately visible; but the pattern of them is worth learning. The use of such principles, however, is successful as a pragmatic exercise. Choosing not to accumulate a lot of crimes in one's life is desireable not for purely moral reasons but because life becomes more difficult when you have to be secretive, for example. SOme people learn this slowly.

It is also important to realize that different rewards motivate different people; some people value power more than their own natural affinities, for example. Aberrated as this may be, it is a fact about the members of our kind. There me be general directions of "good" and "bad" but there is no catalog or map that applies to all beings.

Attributing such principles to an external Entity with absolute power over your fate in detail is, to me, an absurdity barely worth considering seriously.


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