The Bandaid Question

[Luigison]

Feel free to answer the poll and change your answer after watching the video.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

About the talk:
"Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it's OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we're predictably irrational -- and can be influenced in ways we can't grasp."

This was one of the most insightful videos I've watched in a long time.  He starts out a little slow, but give him your time because it gets more interesting and has some pretty far flung implications. 

I'm not going to give my answer yet since some of you are probably reading this instead of watching the video, but let's just say my initial answer was wrong. 

[Turtlekid1]

Should probably be in NatDT, being a thread about morality.

Anyway, the video didn't really surprise me.  People will do wrong things if they can fool themselves into believing they're not wrong things to be doing.  They'll take any justification they can get.  Just human nature.

Dealing with the bandaid issue, it becomes complicated if you're a burn patient and bandages cover... 70%, right?... of your body, because at that point the pain is going to be present for a long time either way, but from my own experience I can say that I've always found it easier and better to remove the bandaid quickly.  Now, maybe it isn't rational for me to think this, taking into account how the brain handles pain, how the nervous system reacts, etc., but what matters is that I believe it, and that's going to affect the experience for me.  Kind of like the placebo effect, I guess?  That's the most similar thing I could think of.