Content of Character

People sometimes say this almost braggingly, as though being particularly skilled at deception somehow changes the nature of deception itself. But there is a problem hidden inside the sentence.

Being good at something does not mean what you are doing is good.

A person can be a good liar. A good thief. A good manipulator. A good con artist. Someone can become extraordinarily skilled at recognizing weakness, exploiting confusion, creating urgency, or getting another person to agree to something they do not fully understand.

Skill tells us how effectively someone can perform an action. It tells us nothing about whether the action itself is good.

Perhaps we have become too comfortable confusing effectiveness with goodness.

There is an old saying that when a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience ends up with the money and the man with the money ends up with the experience.

It is funny because there is often some truth in it. Experience has value, and lack of experience can be expensive.

But there is another possibility.

The man with experience could help the man with the money gain experience without taking his money.

That possibility changes the entire observation.

There is nothing wrong with being compensated for knowledge or experience. Much of civilization depends upon it. We hire people because they know things we do not know. We pay mechanics, accountants, plumbers, teachers, engineers, attorneys, consultants, and countless others because their knowledge saves us the time and expense of acquiring that knowledge ourselves.

There is a difference, however, between being paid for what you know and being paid because of what someone else does not know.

One creates value from knowledge.

The other creates opportunity from ignorance.

The distinction becomes even more important as our ability to understand and influence human behavior improves. A salesperson may understand persuasion better than the customer. A lawyer understands a contract better than the person signing it. A financial professional may understand risk better than the investor. A software designer understands an interface better than the person clicking through it. An advertiser may understand attention, impulse, fear, desire, and habit better than the person being targeted.

None of these advantages is inherently wrong. Knowledge is not immoral. Experience is not immoral. Persuasion is not immoral. Profit is not immoral.

The moral question is what we choose to do with the advantage.

Consider something as ordinary as signing up for an online service. There may be boxes to check and boxes to uncheck. There may be optional services, recurring payments, saved payment information, additional accounts, privacy settings, free trials, and pages of terms and conditions. Everything necessary may technically be there. Nothing may technically have been hidden.

Yet there is an important difference between making information available and intending for someone to understand it.

That difference deserves more attention.

If I know where your attention is likely to go, I also know where it is unlikely to go. If I know which button you are likely to click, which box you are unlikely to notice, which paragraph you probably will not read, and which default you are unlikely to change, I possess an advantage.

I can use that knowledge to make your decision easier to understand.

Or I can use that same knowledge to make my preferred decision easier for you to make.

The skill required may be identical.

The intention is not.

This is not limited to technology. Human beings have always possessed unequal levels of experience. Parents know things their children do not. Teachers know things their students do not. Experienced workers know things new employees do not. Older people have encountered situations younger people have not. Some people understand money, business, relationships, contracts, technology, or human nature better than others.

Experience creates an advantage.

What we do with that advantage reveals something about us.

Some people use experience to make certain the inexperienced person pays tuition to the school of hard knocks just as they did. Others use their experience to prevent someone else from paying the same tuition.

They say, in effect, “I have already made that mistake. You do not have to.”

There is generosity in that exchange that goes beyond money. Someone is giving away something that may have taken years, failures, embarrassment, loss, or pain to acquire. They could have used the difference in knowledge for their own advantage.

Instead, they reduced the difference.

That may be one of the better uses of experience.

The opposite is also possible. Experience can teach someone precisely where another person's vulnerabilities are. It can teach the experienced negotiator what the inexperienced negotiator will overlook. It can teach the salesperson which fear will close the sale. It can teach the manipulator which emotion will produce compliance. It can teach the liar which details make the lie believable.

The person may become exceptionally good at it.

But being good at doing something wrong does not transform the wrong into something good.

It merely makes the person more effective at doing it.

Perhaps this is why competence alone is such a poor measure of character.

Intelligence can solve problems or manufacture them. Experience can protect the inexperienced or exploit them. Persuasion can help someone recognize value or convince them to act against their own interests. Technology can make choices clearer or make manipulation almost invisible.

The tool does not answer the moral question.

The person using it does.

There will always be people with more experience, more information, more money, more influence, more intelligence, more power, or a better understanding of the situation than someone else. Perfect equality of knowledge is impossible.

Perhaps it is not even desirable.

Human progress depends upon people learning things others do not yet know and then doing something useful with that knowledge.

The important question may therefore not be whether one person possesses an advantage over another.

It may be what that advantage causes them to become.

When the person with experience meets the person without it, someone may indeed leave with the money and someone else may leave with the experience.

But there is another possible outcome.

Both can leave a little wiser.

And nobody has to be tricked for that to happen.