simon2 comments on Ethical Inhibitions - Less Wrong
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To the extent that a commitment to ethics is externally verifiable, it would encourage other people to cooperate, just as a tendency to anger (a visible commitment to retribution) is a disincentive to doing harm.
Also, even if it is not verifiable, a person who at least announces their intention to hold to an ethical standard has raised the impact their failure to do so will have on their reputation, and thus the announcement itself should have some impact on the expectation that they will behave ethically.