[Dolmen 2.0]

I often wonder about several religions and ethical cultures that put equal weight to the sanctity of any and all life. I have discussions about this with vegetarians, Budhists etc.
I've met some pretty interesting opinions on the matter when sitting in on a few rhetoric classes.

If you've attended a philosophy 101 class you've probably been posed a question like this or similar. The question runs as follows:

Trolley Problem

Quote

There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is a servicing agent working on the side track.

You do not have the ability to operate the lever in a way that would cause the trolley to derail without loss of life (for example, holding the lever in an intermediate position so that the trolley goes between the two sets of tracks, or pulling the lever after the front wheels pass the switch, but before the rear wheels do).

You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?

There is another connected question to consider here.

The Fatman

Quote

As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?

Now I ask you to consider your own personal reaction to the second scenario based off your beliefs and personal set of ethics. Then I'd like you to provide your answer (with reasoning) to the first Question. Is there a difference? Would like to hear more on that too.

DISCLAIMER: Not a loaded question. not trying to single anyone out, just curious on everyones views on the subject and how it works out in your mind.

This post has been edited by Dolmen Lamora: 22 August 2014 - 03:36 AM

[Trull's son]

How fat are we talking here? If the guy resists, it might be that I end up pushed over the edge. Also, there is a measure of uncertainty with regards to the fat man's ability to stop a trolley to begin with. A moment's hesitation might cost lives. I honestly couldn't say what I'd do. There's the obvious issue of being personally -- physically -- responsible for lives lost in this scenario.

For the first example, I suppose it depends on who might die. If I'm buddies with the service guy and not any of the trolley riders it's pretty much decided. Alternatively, if there are friends in the trolley, that's goodnight service guy. If I know neither party it might become a numbers game but then I suppose that the age of the people involved may be important. It would not be crazy to say that younger people at risk, like children, should be saved if only to give them the same opportunity to live and experience as some of the older trolley riders/service guy.

Is there a difference between the two scenarios? The consequence might be the same, but the method is clearly different. You directly oppose the fat guy in the second example, and he is aware of the choice you make for him for the rest of his brief life. In the first example, the service man does not know that a choice exists when his life is forfeit. There may be a moral scale measured in one's infraction on another's freedom and that other's awareness of the infraction. Or whatever...

[Saitama]

For the most part, I'm with Trull's son on this one.
If they are my friends or there are children, I will probably push the lever. Sorry, dude. Life just hates singles.

But if I don't know any of them and the're all adults? I do nothing. Most of the time, I'm in the 'what works out for the majority' camp, but that ends when taking a life is concerned. Greater good never justifies murder. There is a subtle difference between not rescuing somebody and killing him. It's a blurry line, and I don't claim moral superiority, because the net effect would be the same as murdering them. However, I'm not the guy that put them in this situation. But the single guy? That would be entirely on me.

[Obdigore]

Do I know any of them? If I do and I like them more than the random stranger on the street, I will make the choice to save that/those people.

I don't believe I would be willing to kill one person to save five if I don't know them. It would be easier in the first option, of course, since the 5 are clearly there not of their own will and you are pulling a lever, not throwing someone to their death.

If, in the second part, the people are there of their own free will, I certainly wouldn't kill the large person next to me.

[Gothos]

Excluding the issue of knowing someone in either group, I'd likely not pull the lever. You don't know why these people are there. The worker guy hasn't led his life to the point where someone ties him to train tracks, he's an outsider to the matter - while tying people down to train tracks and rolling a trolley over them tells us of considerable intent and amount of cold blood involved.


Counter-question: same scenario, but you have no knowledge if someone would be killed on the other track. Could be nobody, could be a set of 10 people. What do you do?




Fat guy scenario: as much as I dislike obesity in general, I wouldn't push him over to do that. Unless he was the guy who tied the people down to the tracks...

[Cause]

I would flip the switch. The first case I think you would be legally required to. Your moving the trains paths to save five people. The killing of the 6th guy is an unintended and unfortunate consequence and I will use the term 'act of god' though I mean bad luck. The second scenario involves killing one man to save the five. The order of events is switched. Its an important difference.

I could highlight the difference by changing the scenario slightly. Should I be murdered and organ harvested so I can save save seven dying people. Compared to should a Dr not give five patients the medicine they need to save their lives if it means he won't have enough left to save the sixth man in line. The first sends an uneasy chill down your spine, the second is obviously no ones fault and life is sometimes unfair,

I think peoples instictual responses to these questions are often the correct answer even when they sometimes can't explain them.

[Saitama]

Cause, on 22 August 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

Compared to should a Dr not give five patients the medicine they need to save their lives if it means he won't have enough left to save the sixth man in line.

That is not the same, though. The doctor does nothing, because running out of medicine is a natural thing to do. He has it easy because he doesn't have to make any choice.
If he didn't make any choice in the trolley example and let the nature take its course, 5 people would die.

Now let me rephrase the question. The doctor sees that 5 people got hurt in a car accident, and all of them will probably die. But he knows a certain healthy nurse that is a blood match for all 5 of them. Does he have the right to call security, whack the nurse and harvest her organs so that the greater good is achieved?

This post has been edited by Second Sword: 22 August 2014 - 10:04 AM

[ultor]

is the repair guy deaf ?switch tracks to the single guy,and hope to( god) he ain't deaf

[Illuyankas]

You guys would all have been blown up by the Joker. Y'all need more faith in the Batman.

[Saitama]

The same batman that thinks maggie gyllenhaal is hot? Thanks, I'll take my chances with the Joker.

This post has been edited by Second Sword: 22 August 2014 - 10:08 AM

[Cause]

Second Sword, on 22 August 2014 - 09:56 AM, said:

Cause, on 22 August 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

Compared to should a Dr not give five patients the medicine they need to save their lives if it means he won't have enough left to save the sixth man in line.

That is not the same, though. The doctor does nothing, because running out of medicine is a natural thing to do. He has it easy because he doesn't have to make any choice.
If he didn't make any choice in the trolley example and let the nature take its course, 5 people would die.

Now let me rephrase the question. The doctor sees that 5 people got hurt in a car accident, and all of them will probably die. But he knows a certain healthy nurse that is a blood match for all 5 of them. Does he have the right to call security, whack the nurse and harvest her organs so that the greater good is achieved?

I already made that comparison, its closer to the second scenario than the first.

[Saitama]

ultor, on 22 August 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

is the repair guy deaf ?switch tracks to the single guy,and hope to( god) he ain't deaf

He is a deaf, blind guy that was abused by his parents and now lives only to make minimum wage in order to provide for his niece who has down syndrome. And you just killed him, you bastard.

Cause, on 22 August 2014 - 10:13 AM, said:

I already made that comparison, its closer to the second scenario than the first.

Yes, but both of your changed scenarios don't have any actual choice on your part.

[D'rek]

In a real-world scenario, there would almost always be other factors and options in a situation like this. I think, if such a thing happened in reality, at the very least society in general if not the justice system would accuse you of making the wrong choice regardless of which one you picked, if all you did was stand next to the lever and flip it or not. As far as our societal morality goes, I think either option is wrong.

As far as abstract philosopher's morality goes, though, the "right" answer simply depends on which philosophical view of morality you prescribe to, none of which can be proven to be more or less moral than any other. Since it's an abstract situation that only pretends to fit in the real world, there's no right philosophical view on it and I would say anyone's choice is right as long as it feels right to their conscience.

I tend to lean towards moral particularism. I'd absolutely flip the lever and kill the one guy. In a binary situation like this, I see doing nothing as just as much of a choice as flipping the switch. It's a choice to kill 5 or a choice to kill 1, neither of them with any more or less 'intent' than the other. And I wouldn't consider either of them murder, because the situation was already guaranteed to kill someone before I even had to make the choice.

Similarly, if I was a hostage in a bank robbing and the robbers told me they were going to kill these 5 hostages, but if I said not to they would kill 1 other hostage, instead, I would have no problem saying so. It's not me that put any of us in this situation, I'm just trying to reduce the casualties.

For the fat-man version, would I still do it? Probably not, I don't think I would be able to bring myself to personally and intentionally kill someone even if I wanted to. Even if its for the greater good, that particular act of murder would be too immoral for me to accomplish.


Another variation I've heard to this one is that the 5 on the tracks are elderly while the 1 is a toddler.

[Aptorian]

Where does the questions originate from Dolmen? I remember seeing them before somewhere. Maybe a uni course. EDIT: I can't read.

Personally I am a very pragmatic person. I have no qualms about the flip the switch scenario. The Fatman scenario on the other hand is obviously murder but more disturbingly, you would need to be a special kind of sociopath to see the escalating crisis, analyzing it and coming to the conclusion that the person standing next to you could be thrown into the path of the trolley.

In terms of the question of the sanctity of life, I think the notion that you can't put a price on a human life or that life is sacred is horseshit. It's lies we tell each other to convince ourselves that we are good people and we live in a good world. In reality of course human life is cheap. Brown people are worth less than white people. Women are worth less than Men. Children are extremely precious but honestly in a cost benefit scenario you should probably sacrifice them because they are unexperienced, unskilled and they can't work hard enough to fend for themselves. We pay illegal immigrants a pittance to clean our offices and trim our gardens. We buy products from companies that run sweatshops and destroy natural habitats and violate every "human right" they can get away with. We say that tyranny is unacceptable, that torture is a warcrime and nobody should starve or die of sickness, but millions of people are starving to death across the globe, people are dying from diseases we could cure for next to nothing and everyone is looking the other way as the industrial elite continue to stamp that iron boot down on the throat of the little guy. But hey, who wants to pay 10,000 dollars for a new iPhone?

Life is meaningless. It only has the value you put on it. As such, life is fucking cheap.

This post has been edited by Apt Hoc: 22 August 2014 - 04:20 PM

[Saitama]

Apt Hoc, on 22 August 2014 - 04:12 PM, said:

It only has the value you put on it. As such, life is fucking cheap.

How much for yours, then?

[Aptorian]

Nothing? Everything? Are you asking how much I value my own life? Some place between not very much and more than anything, I guess. My personal philosophies range some place between buddhist, nihilism and an odd affection for the communist mindset.

As such I'd prefer if we could all just live in a state of mutual co-acceptance and peace, on the other hand sometimes I think 1984 sounds fucking awesome.

EDIT: I didn't actually answer the point. The point is, a life has value when it has meaning. When it creates instead of uses. When it supports and sustains and builds, rather then taking and consuming and breaking things down. We exist to breed and to work. That is more or less the real value of a human being. You need to pass on your genes and you need to work to help sustain the population or city you live in. That is the only real quantifiable value you can put on human life, past the emotional bonds we build between one another.

This post has been edited by Apt Hoc: 22 August 2014 - 04:56 PM

[Saitama]

Yes, I was asking about how much you value your own life. Not that I disagree with you in general. But it's interesting how highly we value our own, and how lowly other (anonymous) people's. Also, I was planning on offering 50$ for my own Maybe Brent Weeks. Seems like no deal.

What bothers me about the main question, is that the choice is not simple 5 vs 1. The 5 people are already part of the event. They are gonna die, unless you decide to act. But the repairman is not involved in that - you involve him by makig him a sacrifice without his knowledge.
I don't know if anybody else feels that way, but in a certain way it seems... cruel.

[Aptorian]

Second Sword, on 22 August 2014 - 04:58 PM, said:

I don't know if anybody else feels that way, but in a certain way it seems... cruel.

Sounds like politics to me. The few must suffer for the sake of the many. You are trying to prevent death but you compromise on your values by willingly killing 1 to save 5.

[Saitama]

Or you can reject choice (of who deserves to be saved) as inherently flawed. Future built on sacrifice of those who didn't have any say in their own fate is not worth much (at least I think it's not, history kinda disagrees with me on this one...)

[Dolmen 2.0]

This question's a pretty common one and I love hearing the variations on it. The doctor choosing to kill a nurse to save 5 patients is a really interesting version I've yet to hear. Thanks for that. Also glad you gave it another scuz there apt

I prefer to imagine this questions with a few case restrictions:

1. These are all people you've met but do not have a friendship with.

2.They are all in their late 20's and have gotten into this situation by no design of their own.

3.you are too far to shout warnings, this is all made known to you via cam.

Heck imagine a live stream of this as you sit there where you are right now. It's very real. Quite possible.

One click saves the 5 and kills the one. No click and the 5 die and the service agent just keeps on keeping on.

This post has been edited by Dolmen Lamora: 22 August 2014 - 07:36 PM