Mediated distance between actions and outcomes erodes moral culpability

Evidence

In personal transactions, there is a close connection between actions and outcomes. In the cyberworld, a hacker’s actions can affect a multitude of interconnected networks in diverse distant places that, in turn, determine the outcomes via their functional properties. The hacker is the initiator rather than the sole author of the outcomes. This complex mediation blurs the link between actions and outcomes. … Many computer crimes are directed at faceless corporate and governmental systems. These types of impersonal transgressions are more likely to be viewed as legal threats than as moral violations. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 475

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 475
• XREF: connects to: Utilitarian optimization erodes the sense of agency needed for ethical commitment — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 123