A hypothetical choice lets you claim a character that has never had to pay its price.

Deciding what you would do costs nothing, which is precisely what makes the answer unreliable. In the imagined version you are brave, honest, and generous, because nothing has been taken from you, and the actual situation charges a price the hypothetical never mentions. Character claimed in advance is untested.

So be careful about the self-image you build from thought experiments, and look instead at the record of what you have done when something was actually at stake. Small real tests are worth more than large imagined ones. Choose one this week where doing the right thing genuinely costs you something, and see what happens.