Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions

On Monday you promised your neighbour you'd bring her groceries every Saturday while her hip heals.

She said yes. She's been planning her week around it ever since.

Now it's the first Saturday, and you'd rather sleep in.

Nothing stops you. The store is open, the car starts, you're not sick. And nobody would ever find out. She'd never mention it, and there's nobody else to tell.

Would it be wrong?

And if it would, wrong according to what?

Most of us feel the answer is yes. It's harder to say what that feeling is about. No law forbids sleeping in, and nobody is watching. So what is the feeling tracking?

A fact. This post shows how it's built.

The short answer

Yes, it would be wrong. The reason isn't an opinion, a custom or a feeling. Right and wrong are facts about the permanent record of what actually happened. Reality keeps a permanent record of every event, and nothing in it is ever erased. We call it the Ledger. Morality is physical structure, as objective as charge or temperature.

Whether an act is right or wrong depends on what was undertaken, who relied on it, who had control, and whether everyone it covers can go on. No vote, mood or opinion enters any of those.

And nothing stops you. The wrong act is as available as the right one, and that is what makes it a wrong and not an impossibility.

I'll use a promise to feed someone as the example, because it's the case we've worked out exactly. Here's the whole answer in six steps. The rest of this post takes them one at a time and shows how we know each one.

1. Every act changes bonds, and the Ledger writes down who did it. Each bond between two people carries a number, and every number but 1 has an exact cost. An act changes the numbers. The Ledger writes down which ones, by how much, and who changed them.
2. A promise is two acts, and it changes what she does. You wrote the offer. She wrote the acceptance. Because of it, she did something different that week. The Ledger has all three.
3. On Saturday, both acts are possible. Bringing the groceries leaves you with 3/2 and her with 1/2. Sleeping in leaves you with 7/4 and her with 0. Nothing physical stops either one.
4. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. An act is permitted exactly when it's possible and meets that. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation: a possible act that isn't permitted.
5. Responsibility follows control. The requirement is on you and the act is yours to do or not, so you're responsible. Her yes made the promise. It didn't make skipping fine. Only she can let you off.
6. A lower total isn't the test. The total cost can read the same after the right act and the wrong one, and it can fall while someone pays.

Why this matters: "was that wrong?" has an answer you can go and find. Look for what was undertaken, who relied on it, who had control, and whether everyone it covers can go on. A wrong isn't a bad feeling or a rule somebody made up. It's a fact about the record, so you can be mistaken about it, the way you can be mistaken about a temperature, and somebody can show you.

This post stands on its own, and it leans on four earlier ones. Part 1 of The Universe Writes in Pen introduces the Ledger. Meet in the Middle works out what a lopsided bond costs and what love does about it. Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape is where this post's small world comes from, and it covers repair and forgiveness. A Favor Isn't a Yes covers what a yes is and who can be wronged. Each step names the post it leans on and recaps what you need.

In the drawings, the Ledger is a book in reading glasses with one response to everything: Noted. The face is a drawing. The record is real, and so is the past in it. It still exists, written down.

Here's the route. I'll stop after each step to zoom out, so you always know where we are, what we have and why the next step comes next. The Ledger keeps the map.

Step 1: Every act changes bonds, and the Ledger writes down who did it

An act changes the numbers on bonds between people. The Ledger writes down which bonds changed, by how much, and who changed them.

Between any two people the Ledger keeps a bond. Its number is one side's amount divided by the other's. When the two sides match, the number is 1, and I'll call the bond level. Each person also has a bond of their own, a number for how heavy their own load is, and 1 is level there too. The bond is real: it's what the Ledger keeps for a relationship.

Level costs nothing. Any other number costs something, and the cost has one exact formula: add the number to its flip (1 divided by the number), halve the total, and subtract 1.

For 4: 4 plus 1/4 is 17/4, half of that is 17/8, and 17/8 minus 1 is 9/8. The cost is never negative, and it's zero only at level. The formula isn't a choice. The rules for comparing things, plus one choice of scale, leave exactly this one.¹ Meet in the Middle builds it from scratch.

Now an act. An act multiplies some bonds' numbers by some factors and changes nothing else. In Meet in the Middle, a friend moving apartments has her own bond at 4, and yours is level at 1. You take on part of her load, and the two bonds meet at 2. Her cost falls from 9/8 to 1/4. Yours rises from 0 to 1/4.

A person's cost is the total cost of the bonds they sit at the end of. I'll call the change in it the harm to them. Her harm there was 1/4 minus 9/8, which is minus 7/8. A negative harm is relief. Yours was plus 1/4.

Relief needs a lopsided bond to relieve. Start with everything level and nothing can cost less than 0, so no act can lower anyone's cost.

Every act also has an author. In the Ledger nobody holds the pen: the act is the entry. So the Ledger writes down who made each change, on a line of its own, apart from the numbers. Two acts by different authors can leave every number identical, and then the numbers can't tell you who wrote which. (A Favor Isn't a Yes shows a pair.)

How we know. The cost is the forced one in the footnote. The rest is definition and arithmetic you can check with a pencil: an act is a change to a bond, harm is the change in a person's cost, and the 9/8, 1/4 and 7/8 are the numbers from Meet in the Middle. Carry one thing out of this step. Harm is a readout of an act. It isn't the verdict on it. Step 6 shows why.

Zoom out. Step 1 is done. A bond has a number and a cost. An act changes the numbers, and the Ledger writes down who made each change. Harm, the change in a person's cost, can be relief. Next, and why: a promise is the plainest way to set up a requirement. What is one, in a record that only takes new lines?

Step 2: A promise is two acts, and it changes what she does

A promise is an offer and an acceptance, written by two different people. The one who relies on it does something different because of it. The Ledger has all three.

On Monday you said, "I'll bring you groceries every Saturday while your hip heals." She said, "Yes."

That's two entries by two authors. The offer is yours and the acceptance is hers. Neither is a promise alone: an offer nobody accepts is just a line you wrote. With both in the Ledger, there is a promise, and it holds what the promise says (groceries, every Saturday), who wrote each side, and who it's for. It's for her, because she's the one who accepted. Nobody picks that afterwards. The record already says.

There's a third entry, and it's what gives a promise its weight: her yes changed what she did.

Say she has strength for one outing a week. Before you promised, she'd have spent this week's outing shopping for herself. After her yes, she spent it on other work that earns her no food, because the food was handled. That's reliance. It isn't a feeling. It's a change in her week, and it's written down.

By your first Saturday it has a number. Count what each of you has left in units, and call that your reserve. You have 2. She has 1/4, because her week of work earned her no food.

These are the small world's numbers from Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape, where you're Alice and she's Bob. They're chosen so the arithmetic fits on a napkin, and the results below are exact for this world.²

How we know. Two things about the record. The offer and the acceptance are separate writes with separate authors, and who the promise is for is read from the accepted record. Nobody ranks who deserves care afterwards. And reliance is a difference between worlds. Take either write away, your offer or her acceptance, and she shops for herself that week. Both ways of taking the promise away leave her in exactly the same place, so "where she'd be without the promise" has one answer. Step 4 uses it.

Zoom out. Step 2 is done. A promise is two writes by two authors, it's for the one who accepted, and it changed what she did. Next, and why: Saturday. What can you do, and where does each choice leave the two of you?

Step 3: On Saturday, both acts are possible

Bringing the groceries and sleeping in are both possible. They leave the two of you in different places, and nothing physical stops the wrong one.

I'll call an act possible when nothing physical stands in its way: the food is in the store, the car runs and you have the strength. (The research papers say "legal". It means possible. It doesn't mean permitted.)

You have strength for one trip, so you have two possible acts: make the trip or don't. The rules of this world:

• Every week, each of you pays upkeep of 1/4 from your reserve, just to stay in working order. That's the cost of a bond at 2: life pushes each person's own bond to 2 every week, and putting it back costs 1/4.
• A trip uses 1/4 of your reserve in work, and it gives her 1/2.

You bring the groceries. You pay 1/4 for the trip and 1/4 upkeep, so your 2 becomes 3/2. She gets 1/2 from the groceries and pays her 1/4 upkeep, so her 1/4 becomes 1/2.

You sleep in. You pay only your upkeep, so your 2 becomes 7/4. She gets nothing and pays her 1/4, so her 1/4 becomes 0.

Sleeping in saves you 1/4. It leaves her with nothing.

At the end of the week the promise has a checkpoint, where it's checked that she can go on. I'll say someone can go on when they have more than nothing left in their reserve. Zero isn't enough (Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape shows why). "Go on" is bookkeeping, nothing grander: it's a statement about the reserve. After the groceries she can go on. After sleeping in she can't.

Both acts are possible. That's the first thing to see about right and wrong, and it's easy to miss. The wrong act isn't blocked. Physics doesn't forbid it and the Ledger doesn't prevent it. It's right there, as easy as the other one.

And nobody has to find out. Yeah-But, the voice in the back of your head that has never once said wow, has his arms crossed. "But nobody would ever find out!"

The Ledger doesn't look up. "Noted."

Finding out isn't how anything gets written. The offer and her yes went in on Monday. If you sleep in, Saturday goes in too, and so does her empty reserve. Whether anyone ever reads those lines changes nothing about whether they're written.

How we know. Every number is the rules above applied once. Check them with a pencil. "Possible" does real work here: both acts pass every physical check, the food, the strength and the trip. A second trip the same day doesn't, because you only have strength for one. So the possible acts are exactly two, and the wrong one is on the list.

Zoom out. Step 3 is done. Both acts are possible. Bringing the groceries leaves you at 3/2 and her at 1/2. Sleeping in leaves you at 7/4 and her at 0. Next, and why: possible isn't permitted. What does the promise itself require, and who fixed it?

Step 4: The promise requires one thing

The promise requires exactly one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. An act is permitted exactly when it's possible and meets that requirement. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation: a possible act that isn't permitted.

Two more words. An act is permitted when it's possible and does everything the promise requires. It's a violation when it's possible and isn't permitted.

Notice that "possible" sits in both definitions. A violation has to be something you can do. If sleeping in were impossible, there would be no wrong left to explain.

In this world the promise requires one thing: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries meets it. Sleeping in doesn't. You can go on (you'd have 7/4), and she can't (she'd have 0). So the groceries are permitted, and they're the only permitted act. Sleeping in is a violation. In this world, that's what right and wrong are: meeting what the promise requires, or breaking it.

How we know. Four moves.

One: the promise is a physical record, written before Saturday. It holds your offer, her acceptance and the terms, and it carries a check: any act can be compared with what she accepted. The check passes bringing the groceries and fails sleeping in, because sleeping in leaves her with nothing at the first checkpoint. The record exists before you act, so what it requires isn't picked afterwards to fit what you did.

Two: exactly one requirement is the record's. Plenty of requirements can be written down for this promise. The record carries exactly one. Here are five statements, checked against both possible acts:

The first four rows always agree. Four questions that sound different (was the promise kept, is she back where her trust left her, can she go on, can you both) get the same answer every time, because each one, worked out from the physics, comes down to one fact in this world: whether she has anything left at the checkpoint.

The fifth row is the odd one out. "You can go on" sounds like a fine requirement, and sleeping in meets it. But it isn't the record's, because the record's check fails sleeping in. A requirement that sleeping in meets can't be the one carried by a check that sleeping in fails. The promise was for her, and the record says so.

Three: why it binds. Take either write away and she shops for herself, ending the week with 1/2. Bring the groceries and she ends it with exactly 1/2. Sleep in and she ends it with 0. The requirement puts her back where trusting you took her from. That's what "owed" means here: what the promise requires, with her reliance as the reason.

Four: says who? Yeah-But has been waiting for this one. "Says who?"

The Ledger: "Noted. Monday."

Nobody says. The requirement was fixed on Monday, when you two wrote the promise, five days before you hit snooze. No vote, opinion or mood enters any step, and anyone who works it out gets the same answer.

Nothing moves your hands, though. The record selects the groceries. It doesn't compel them. You can still sleep in, and then there's a possible act the promise didn't permit. Nothing in the Ledger makes anyone kind: people live under this same cost and still skip the groceries.

All of this is proved for this world.²

Zoom out. Step 4 is done. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation, and it was possible the whole time. Next, and why: a violation belongs to someone. Who answers for it, and who can let them off?

Step 5: Responsibility follows control

You're responsible because the requirement is on you and the act is yours to do or not. Her yes made the promise. It didn't make skipping fine. And only she can let you off.

Responsible. Responsibility takes two things together: the requirement is on you, and you control the act. In this world the groceries are yours to bring or not. She can't, and nobody else is there. So you're responsible, and nobody else is.

Control alone isn't enough. Being able to affect someone doesn't put a requirement on you by itself. It takes the promise as well. You have both.

She bears the cost of your skipping, and bearing a cost isn't controlling it. She's the one with the empty reserve. She isn't answerable for it.

Gary, the coin-flipping drummer from Part 1, says it's the hip's fault. Noted. The hip didn't promise anything.

Her yes. Her yes is in the Ledger, written by her, so it's consent in the one sense the Ledger carries: her own act of accepting. It's a yes to being fed. It isn't a yes to being skipped. Accepting a promise isn't blanket permission for whatever you do afterwards. (What a yes covers, who can write one and who can be wronged are the subject of A Favor Isn't a Yes.)

Her release. Only she can let you off. That's one of the promise's rules: the release belongs to the one who is owed. The promise is cleared exactly when she writes the release. If you write "I release myself," the Ledger notes it and nothing changes. And a release never erases a miss that's already written. Sleep in, get forgiven next week, and Saturday's line is still there. A meal brought the next week lifts her reserve again, and the missed checkpoint stays missed. Repair and release have a whole post: Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape.

How we know. The same proof that fixed the requirement settles these, for this world. You hold the requirement and the control. She holds neither. Her yes is her own act of accepting, and the proof shows it doesn't make sleeping in permitted. Given the promise's rule that the release is hers, her release clears it exactly, and yours changes nothing. And neither repair nor release removes the checkpoint that was missed.

Zoom out. Step 5 is done. A violation has an address: the one who controls the act and carries the requirement. Her yes made the promise but not permission, only she can release you, and a release never erases the miss. Next, and why: a test that sounds easier. The Ledger puts a cost on every bond. Couldn't the verdict just be what the total says?

Step 6: A lower total isn't the test

The total cost can't be the test of right and wrong. It reads the same after the right act and the wrong one. It can fall while the giver pays more. It can fall while a bystander pays. And no single score matches the person-by-person comparison.

By now there's a cost for every bond and a total for the Ledger, and it's tempting to make the total the test. Surely the right act is the one that makes the total smaller, and a wrong act is one that raises somebody's cost. The record says neither.

How we know. Three checks.

The same total after both Saturdays. Both Saturdays leave every bond level: you pay your upkeep and she pays hers, and both bonds go back to 1. The total cost is 0 after bringing the groceries and 0 after sleeping in. It reads the same both ways. What tells the two apart is her reserve: 1/2 against 0.

Give it one more week with no new groceries and the total does change. She can't pay her upkeep, her bond stays at 2, and the total reads 1/4, where bringing the groceries would have left it at 0. But by then the verdict is a week old. It was settled on Saturday.

The total falls and the giver pays. In Meet in the Middle you took on part of a friend's load and met her at 2 and 2. The total fell from 9/8 to 1/2. And you went from carrying nothing to carrying 1/4. Compare the two situations person by person. She carries less, and you carry more. Neither is at least as good for both of you. Any single score either ranks one situation above the other or ties them, and person by person the two are neither. So no single score matches the person-by-person comparison.

The total falls and a bystander pays. A new scene, with three new people: they sit in a ring, each with a bond to the next. Call them Alice, Bob and Carol. Alice and Bob have a lopsided bond between them. Carol has level bonds on both sides. The two of them can close their own gap, and Carol is untouched.

Now settle the whole ring in one go, with a rule that keeps each person's overall position where it was and picks the lowest total cost. A little strain on a level bond costs almost nothing, while the same strain taken off a lopsided bond saves a lot. So the lowest total moves some strain onto the level bonds. The total falls, and both of Carol's bonds now carry a cost.³

She wrote nothing. She was never part of the gap. She sits at the end of two bonds, and that's all it takes for someone else's act to reach her.

So the cost is a readout. It's exact, it's forced, and it's the same for every bond. But the verdict needs more than it: who promised, who relied, who had control and who can go on. Harm is one readout too. A wrong isn't "somebody's cost went up," and a right isn't "the total went down."

Zoom out. Step 6 is done. The total cost reads the same after the right act and the wrong one, it can fall while the giver pays, it can fall while a bystander pays, and no single score matches the person-by-person comparison. The verdict is read from the whole record. Next: one honest note about what's still being worked out, then the whole trip in one breath.

What's still being worked out

We have proved this law exactly for one worked case: a promise to feed, written by two people. The rule for competing promises and changing authority is the work in progress. Promise the same groceries to two neighbours when there's food for only one of them. Which promise governs, and whether making the second promise wronged the first neighbour, hasn't been derived yet. Neither has the reason the release belongs to the one who is owed. In this world it's one of the promise's rules.

The other step is from this small world to a real neighbour. That means finding what her bond and her reserve actually count, and how her yes and your morning's choice connect to the record in the example. The numbers in this post are the example's own.

The whole trip, in one breath

Reality keeps a permanent record, and an act is a change to the bonds in it, with its author written beside it. A promise is two acts, an offer and an acceptance, and the one who relied on it does something different because of it. On Saturday, bringing the groceries and sleeping in are both possible, and they leave her in different places: 1/2, or nothing. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation, a possible act that isn't permitted. You're responsible because the requirement is on you and the act is yours. Her yes made the promise and didn't make skipping fine, and only she can let you off. And the total cost can't be the test: it reads the same either way, it falls while the giver pays, and it falls while a bystander pays.

So, would it be wrong? Yes. Wrong according to what? According to the record: what you promised, who relied on it, who had control, and whether she can go on. Nobody has to vote on it, and nobody has to find out. Right and wrong are as objective as charge, and you can still sleep in. That's what makes it a wrong and not an impossibility.

That's how reality is built. The wrong act isn't walled off. It sits right beside the right one, and the record holds everything needed to tell which is which.

(The Ledger has noted the groceries, the snooze button and the "nobody would ever find out." It notes everything. Don't take it personally.)