in which an idiot manages to fundamentally misunderstand the Ring of Gyges, and still somehow manages to land a tenure-track position in philosophy

And then the rest of it is somehow even more of a dumpster fire. I guess the fact that "doing the right thing" can have negative social consequences sometimes means we've solved all of ethics. Because really, what is the worst thing you could do if not quietly chucklefucking along while your racist uncle sings the praises of our president. It certainly isn't the worst thing to be the damn president, who couldn't give one fucking shit about fitting in.

And moreover what is philosophy, if not the assumption that the right thing is written on all of our hearts, and social pressures prevent us from acting on that. There's no fucking substance in this whole article except "peer pressure makes people do the wrong thing sometimes, also I have to work in Trump and cranberry sauce, or even fucking Aeon won't publish this shit."

so argue

Okay.

ctrl-f Milgram, was not disappointed.

Dan Ariely has an entire book about this, which takes the form of thought experiments followed by real experiments followed by results. From a behavioral economics standpoint, it's not a desire to fit in that causes the most harm, it's the belief that we can get away with a little bit because everyone else is doing it. We know right from wrong but it's a relative scale. We know we can't step over the line a whole lot more than the next guy or we'll get creamed. It's not so much a desire to fit in as it's a desire to not be found out.

This doesn't mean people have no morals. It means that our moral compasses are set just a little east of true north where we feel true north is what we're supposed to do. Human misbehavior is almost exclusively constrained within that margin of error because nobody else thinks it's misbehavior. "Wrongdoing" is the stuff that society proscribes and despite Milgram's (outlier, discredited) study, there are no studies indicating that humans will blindly follow other human beings they know to be committing violations of the social code.

"Wrongdoing" is right up there with "problematic" in terms of self righteous word choices.

Maybe philosophy itself rubs me the wrong way.

Maybe I'm just nihilistic and arrogant enough to think I'm above the finger wagging, but life gets a lot more fun when you stop worrying so much about right and wrong, and embrace the scoundrel inside you.

In a way, this concept is present in the narrative of Genesis: "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God." Yet, while this might be a root of wrongdoing under this paradigm, it is not the cause of each instance of wrong doing.