Elemental wrote:

I actually paused a bit after I wrote that and thought "really, does he?". But I decided to leave it because that's how I perceive the characters, although it's true that I don't have any concrete proof to back it  up. Maybe I see Sherlock more like a black-and-white, good-vs-evil kind of person, whereas Mycroft looks much more shady to me. Of maybe Sherlock is just more naive and Mycroft has more intelligence and power and ends up making more difficult choices that affect more people (like "do I leave Eurus alone with Moriarty, or do I stop preventing a terrorist attack when I know I could?").

Maybe my comment was also biased because I just rewatched HLV and Sherlock behaves really well in it, fighting CAM, trying to save Johns marriage, etc. 

My position in this is not fixed at all, so thanks for your input.

I do agree that both have "flexible" morals. One having stronger ethics than the other doesn't  mean either of them are moral compasses to anyone.

It's very interesting how differently characters can be perceived. But that's what keeps the discussion interesting  I always had the impression that general ethics were a concept that Sherlock probably wasn't even fully aware of. It's not that he's purposely unethical, but he does a lot of stuff that is considered to be unethical by the majority of people. I think quite often this happens just because he doesn't seem to know better and doesn't have any moral compass at all. For example: 

1) whipping a corpse (ASiP)
2) keeping a severed head in his fridge (TBB)
3) purposely solving a case slowly, not caring at all that there's a victim with a bomb strapped around his body who has to wait in agony hours longer because of the delay (TGG)
4) trying to give his best friend a hallucingogenic drug and scare him half to death to prove he was right (yes, the drug was not in the sugar, but he tried; HOB)
5) Forcing a confession out of h

besleybean wrote:

I don't know if Sherlock does have higher morals than Mycroft...

I fully agree with you there, I was quite puzzled by the remark of Sherlock having stronger ethics than Mycroft as well. Sherlock's morals/ethics are quite - what could be the right word - flexible? 
 

Wow, I never even noticed these changes. Maybe - after the painful events at the end of HLV - Mycroft was (purposely or subconsciously) trying (not very successfully as far as Sherlock is concerned) to distance himself even more from anything that could be even remotely close to friendship or caring (feelings which - according to him - could only lead to pain in the end). Thus the more formal, distant addressing of John.

Elemental wrote:

One question though: if Sherlock had chosen to avoid the fall and condemn his friends to death, John wouldn't have been in Sherrinford later on. And I think I remember Eurus saying something about Jim anticipating that Sherlock would choose John over Mycroft, didn't she?

Or maybe he didn't think it through that much?
 

Thanks for giving me an excuse to watch this scene again (not that I really needed one) 

What Eurus says is: "Jim Moriarty thought you'd make that choice, he was so excited." Then comes one of Moriarty's videos in which he says: "And here you are. The end of the line. Holmes killing Holmes." 

My explanation for this is that Moriarty, when he recorded this video, thought that - if Sherlock should chose not to jump off the roof - Eurus would kill Sherlock in the end. So when he said "Holmes killing Holmes", he actually meant Eurus killing Sherlock, not Sherlock killing Mycroft. Of course, for effect, Eurus created a situation in which she could use this video and make it look as if Moriarty had forseen everything that would happen, make Sherlock believe that his arch enemy had in fact been cleverer than him. But we only have her word that Moriarty had seen this coming, and she's not exactly trustworthy. 

So my explanation in short would be: Moriarty didn't forsee anything of what really happened in that room, he thought that Eurus would kill Sherlock, thus Holmes killing Holmes. 
 

besleybean wrote:

I don't know if Eurus would have even seen it as a distraction...I think her information may just have been part of a her incessant babble, although that is of course how she won her treats.  So she was possibly still quite manipulative at that stage.
I am sure Mycroft felt duty and possibly some love towards his sister, but it was certainly out of duty he would try and extract information from here.

I wasn't saying he mainly did it out of brotherly love and not because he felt duty. I'm just opposed to calling his actions "cold". It would have been cold if he had exploited her talents against her will, if he'd made her or tricked her into helping him. But he didn't. They just made a deal and this deal neither harmed her nor did she have to sacrifice anything for it, that's why I'm opposed to calling Mycroft's actions "cold". They were not exactly heartwarming, but reasonable and fair, not cold.
 

Liberty wrote:

What does seem cold is that Mycroft was using Eurus for the government - but presumably he was saving multiple lives by doing so.   We don't know his motivations for sure, but he's such a softie in TFP that I could believe that he is motivated to save humanity, just as Sherlock is.

Why does this seem "cold"? I assume helping out Mycroft must have been a welcomed distraction for Eurus, I can't imagine life being very interesting or diversified in that cell of hers. I assume Eurus must have quite enjoyed helping Mycroft bust those terrorists, proving that she was far cleverer than anyone else and making Mycroft give her Christmas treats. After all, Mycroft didn't force her to help him against her will, they had a bargain and she helped him willingly. And Mycroft actually gave her a chance to use her abilities to to something good that helpled save many lives, so I don't really see anything cold about Mycroft's actions there.
 

Schmiezi wrote:

Well, he flatlined anyway. What really prevented him from dying was his inner Moriarty telling him "John Watson is in danger."

Agreed, but if he hadn't first figured out which way to fall to minimize the blood loss, he would have lost too much blood and not even made it to the hospital alive. Anway, my point was that in Sherlock's mind, Mycroft challenging him not to be stupid is actually a positive thing, because it makes him focus and helps him be as smart as he can. 

I like to imagine that Sherlock probably was a bit lazy or reluctant when it came to studying (remeber how he doesn't know the basics of the solar system?). So his parents probably were sometimes cross with him because he didn't work/study as hard as he could. So Mycroft came up with his "am I so much smarter than you" routine to make him work harder and do better, because of course little Sherlock would want to prove to his older brother (and his parents) that he wasn't stupid at all.