What Sits Between Right and Wrong

• Sun, Dec 14, 2025
• 5-minute read

I was born in the late 20th century — a human being dropped into a world full of systems, traditions, and expectations that feel natural, but are actually just… man-made inventions. And for most of my life, I took them literally. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. End of story.

Then I grew up and chose a career path that didn’t help at all.

I became a STEM person.

In the world of physics, things behave the way they behave whether you approve or not. And I’m not talking about the usual “gravity makes things fall down” kind of cliché. I mean the everyday things we completely ignore.

why does toast always seem to land butter-side down? It’s not the universe hating you — it’s rotational inertia and the height of the average table conspiring against your breakfast.

Physics has rules. Predictable. Consistent. No arguments.

And then I became a software developer — which is even worse for my sense of certainty.

In my world, if something goes wrong — say your favourite shopping website suddenly freezes, or your phone refuses to load a page — I don’t sit there debating the ethics of the situation. I open the console. I check the logs. I interrogate the API like it owes me money.

In software, things are defined. They’re schemas, formats, validations. A password is either correct or it is not. An API call is either 200 OK or 404 Not Found.

There is no emotional “buffer” in between.

So with this background — physics on one side, software on the other — my brain was completely unprepared for what happened next.

Recently, at work, I had a conversation that… honestly… broke my reality a little bit.

I work in the legal management software industry. Specifically in personal injury — cases ranging from workplace accidents all the way to hospital mishaps where, you know… the wrong leg gets removed.

One day, a lawyer colleague came to me with a formula she wanted implemented. It was to calculate how much financial dependency could be claimed when a person dies — basically, how much their dependents could receive.

She opened a handbook for me.

I swear, it was like reading the instruction manual for a spaceship designed by five different engineers who never spoke to each other.

There were six Australian states, each with different laws, conditions, exceptions, exceptions to exceptions… There were footnotes, stars, double-stars — at one point I think I saw a symbol that might have been a tiny snowflake.

Her job was to interpret all of this and tell me what the correct calculation was. And of course, real cases have so many variations that we can’t test everything.

So I asked her the obvious developer question:

“What if you misinterpret the formula… or I implement it wrong? How would the lawyers know?”

She looked at me. Smiled. And said: “They don’t.”

WHAT?

So I tried again.

“Okay… but surely the judge would know if the number is wrong?”

She said — very casually — “No. The judge asks the lawyers for the numbers. And if one side doesn’t like the numbers the other side provides, they can dispute it. And if they don’t like the judge’s decision… they appeal.”

Appeal. That’s the official term for: “We disagree — let’s try again.”

I was stunned.

For the first time, I realised I was witnessing a system where… there is no absolute right or wrong. Just arguments, interpretations, negotiations — and sometimes intuition.

In fact, this is why legal documents love the word “buffer.” Buffer basically means: “Here’s a reasonable amount we’re guessing based on experience.”

Imagine that — the legal system, the thing we think of as the ultimate authority on right and wrong… is actually full of flexibility and ambiguity.

Meanwhile, in software, if a number is incorrect, the system crashes. In law, if a number is incorrect, people argue. And sometimes… both sides are still right.

That experience made me ask the question that became the title of this speech:

What sits between right and wrong?

Well… the rules that define right and wrong do. And those rules are not given by nature. They’re created by us — humans — with our biases, cultures, politics, and histories.

The lawyer’s handbook uses formulas involving superannuation, life expectancy, and discount rates. Those are the rules. But in real life, judges don’t check if anyone is following those formulas literally. Because the rules in the real world are soft rules. Guidelines. Suggestions.

And they evolve. They update themselves.

It reacts to social events — like how Taylor Swift’s concert changed the train timetable. It shifts with public opinion — like when Australians were convinced Mount Townsend was the tallest mountain until someone measured it properly and everyone went, “Oh… never mind.” The mountain didn’t change height — our opinion did. And it adapts with changing beliefs — which is why we don’t burn witches anymore.

Human society is like a self-adjusting, self-evolving system — constantly rewriting its own code.

And science isn’t that different either.

Even Einstein said, “God does not play dice.” And yet, quantum uncertainty — the thing he doubted — is now powering quantum computers. So apparently, God does play dice… and we’re building machines to take advantage of it.

What sits between right and wrong is the ever-shifting set of rules we invent, revise, and sometimes break.

And just a small disclaimer: please note that this speech may be considered completely obsolete by 2050.