A Test of Morality

[Alleged_Alec]

but thats beside the point, i belive if its your time to die, its your time to die. and in my opinion, letting 5 people die of natural causes is more just than killing someone in public

How do you know if it's a natural cause they're dying from?

Anyway, I'd pull the lever in the first example. The man is just asking for a Darwin Award. The second example though, is completely fucked up and I won't answer it. Firstly, you can't just ask us to accept all of those factors. If I had to make such a decision, I wouldn't know that the patients were perfect matches, going to be all right and all those other conditions. I would know that I killed a man to give five others a chance of living a few more years.

 

[Rajin Cajun]

#1 is simply easy for my utilitarian mind flip the switch but #2 is utterly retarded. I lack any significant data other then butcher someone to help a bunch of people that are sickly thus it makes little sense to butcher a perfectly healthy man in order to save a bunch of sickly people who will most likely reject the transplants anyways.

somebody didnt read the first post

No obviously you didn't since it quite obviously states kill some random guy in a waiting room. Please read before correcting others. Thanks.

Ahem!

EDIT: For case 2, the person in the waiting room is a perfect match for the patients in the hospital - they will all die at virtually the same time, the only way to save them is with the man in the waiting room's organs. With these organs, they will live normal lives (again, a hypothetical situation, please don't bother posting how probable that is).

Maybe you're the one in need of the reading? You're supposed to read the whole first post.

I'm sorry but it still didn't clear up anything unless he is implying that everyone is going to die even in the waiting room. All I gathered was all the patients would die. If that man is that sickly why is he in a waiting room? Sorry I call bollocks to a poorly constructed "Moral" dilemma.

 

[kommando367]

but thats beside the point, i belive if its your time to die, its your time to die. and in my opinion, letting 5 people die of natural causes is more just than killing someone in public

How do you know if it's a natural cause they're dying from?

Anyway, I'd pull the lever in the first example. The man is just asking for a Darwin Award. The second example though, is completely fucked up and I won't answer it. Firstly, you can't just ask us to accept all of those factors. If I had to make such a decision, I wouldn't know that the patients were perfect matches, going to be all right and all those other conditions. I would know that I killed a man to give five others a chance of living a few more years.

i didn't know that, i just assumed they were all dying from different cases of organ failue

 

[vede]

(Not snipped, but ripped out, brutally.)

I'm sorry but it still didn't clear up anything unless he is implying that everyone is going to die even in the waiting room. All I gathered was all the patients would die. If that man is that sickly why is he in a waiting room? Sorry I call bollocks to a poorly constructed "Moral" dilemma.

He's saying that the guy in the waiting room can be killed and have his organs harvested and transplanted into the five patients, or you can let the guy in the waiting room (who isn't sick) live, but the five patients die.

I'm not saying it's not poorly constructed, you'll find me in page one with comments on that area, but you should at least be able to make sense of what he's saying...

 

[Podunk]

I think, at least in my case, the sequence of events is what makes the answer change.

In #1, you're saving 5 lives, which kills 1 person.
But in #2, you have to kill 1 person to save 5 lives.

I mean, effectively it's the same thing, right? But that's the only reason I can think it matters and in a weird almost subconscious way I think that's what gets to people.

And that one guys idea of using one of the sick guys to save the other 4 and the well guy seems pretty shrewd in my opinion.

 

[xitel]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.
#2: Save the man in the waiting room. The fact that the others have already had organ failures mean they are waker in some way than the man that has not.

 

[Tattaglia]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

What if the five passengers on the train are all neo-Nazis who are on their way to throw puppies off a cliff? Surely one decent person is more valuable than a bunch of ignorant racist puppy-killers? I'm not trying to rile you up or anything by the way, I'm just posing a question. I'm also quite sleep-deprived so my response might be confusing, even to me.

You have cake too? Whhhhhyyyy?! I thought I was unique... like everyone else.

 

[perfectimo]

1. Do not touch the switch, I can not decide to take a persons life.

2. Leave man alone, once again I am not in the position to take a life.

The reason why people won't touch the man in the waiting room is because it is personal, you would have to engage with the person. The train situation involves pulling a lever without consulting the person. The is nothing personal about that situation.

If this was a question of rationality I would have killed the man on the track and the man in the hospital, no second thought.

 

[xitel]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

What if the five passengers on the train are all neo-Nazis who are on their way to throw puppies off a cliff? Surely one decent person is more valuable than a bunch of ignorant racist puppy-killers? I'm not trying to rile you up or anything by the way, I'm just posing a question. I'm also quite sleep-deprived so my response might be confusing, even to me.

You have cake too? Whhhhhyyyy?! I thought I was unique... like everyone else.

The problem with that argument is, the man on the tracks could be someone even worse than 5 neo-nazis. The logic works both ways.

 

[Tattaglia]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

What if the five passengers on the train are all neo-Nazis who are on their way to throw puppies off a cliff? Surely one decent person is more valuable than a bunch of ignorant racist puppy-killers? I'm not trying to rile you up or anything by the way, I'm just posing a question. I'm also quite sleep-deprived so my response might be confusing, even to me.

You have cake too? Whhhhhyyyy?! I thought I was unique... like everyone else.

The problem with that argument is, the man on the tracks could be someone even worse than 5 neo-nazis. The logic works both ways.

Yes, but would you stop to consider that? Or would you just assume that those five passengers were worth a life and pull the lever anyway?

 

[Ronwue]

I never got it with these morality questions. Isn't the point trying to prevent deaths as a whole. And doctors have that oath that they need to take in order to practice their craft. It all boils down to, would you kill 1 man to save x>1 people? The exact situation in which this problem occurs is just ballast so there's no need to come up with whatever implausible scenarios in which this would happen. I will add that both cases stated earlier can be considered murder in a court because with you killed a person. The reason as to why you did it, would only lessen your time in jail. So to stay on topic, I wouldn't intervene in either case.

 

[perfectimo]

I wonder how long until people start arguing the value of a life and if one life can be worth less than another. Then comes all the "What if... ?" questions.

 

[zombiez]

I would do nothing. The decision whether or not to save a life is not mine to make.

 

[xitel]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

What if the five passengers on the train are all neo-Nazis who are on their way to throw puppies off a cliff? Surely one decent person is more valuable than a bunch of ignorant racist puppy-killers? I'm not trying to rile you up or anything by the way, I'm just posing a question. I'm also quite sleep-deprived so my response might be confusing, even to me.

You have cake too? Whhhhhyyyy?! I thought I was unique... like everyone else.

The problem with that argument is, the man on the tracks could be someone even worse than 5 neo-nazis. The logic works both ways.

Yes, but would you stop to consider that? Or would you just assume that those five passengers were worth a life and pull the lever anyway?

Well... um... damn you and your logic! I don't know, this is one of those situations where you can't know what you would do unless you are ACTUALLY doing it.

 

[Tattaglia]

#1: Pull the switch. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

What if the five passengers on the train are all neo-Nazis who are on their way to throw puppies off a cliff? Surely one decent person is more valuable than a bunch of ignorant racist puppy-killers? I'm not trying to rile you up or anything by the way, I'm just posing a question. I'm also quite sleep-deprived so my response might be confusing, even to me.

You have cake too? Whhhhhyyyy?! I thought I was unique... like everyone else.

The problem with that argument is, the man on the tracks could be someone even worse than 5 neo-nazis. The logic works both ways.

Yes, but would you stop to consider that? Or would you just assume that those five passengers were worth a life and pull the lever anyway?

Well... um... damn you and your logic! I don't know, this is one of those situations where you can't know what you would do unless you are ACTUALLY doing it.

*evil laugh*
But I'd probably just pull the lever. I guesstimate about 60% of the world's population are decent, so hopefully the five passengers are all nice enough to not massacre puppies and whatnot after nearly dying in a horrific train crash.

 

[iseko]

I would switch the tracks but wouldn't kill the guy. It's quite obvious why...

In the first scenario your just thinking of numbers. 5 people for 1 isn't such a bad trade. The actual people don't matter becaus you don't see them when they are alive.

In the second scenario however. You would have to kill the guy yourself with your own hands, to save the other five people. It is alot harder. He would probably resist his fate and forcing a person to do so is alot harder. In the first scenario you just have to pull the damn switch.

 

[iseko]

Situation one, (obviously I can't warn the stranger, that would cheat the situation) I would not pull the switch.

Situation two, I would let the patients die.

Reasoning: I do not find it ethical to end one life to save multiple lives. Each life has infinate worth. If I was in the train/a dying patient I would want to live. But if I was the other guy I wouldn't want my life cut short to save complete strangers. It's not fair either way so why sacrifice the guy who would have lived anyway?

It's numbers... If you could save a million people from a terrible death by killing one innocent child painlessly. Why wouldn't you do it? If there is a god you just saved the kid alot of pain and he goes to heaven. If there is no after-life he just stops existing. But you did save alot of other innocent people.

But really there is no point to this thread because people can think rationally about this now. If you have a few minutes to decide in real life you won't be rational.

 

[shadowclouduk]

First off i would pull the lever, and let the man live. But surely if they all match the man in the waiting rooms blood type etc, and he was a perfect match for each of them, then hypothetically they would be a perfect match for each other. Furthermore they could not all need the same organs otherwise one man would not be capable of providing them all. What i'm trying to say is surely you could sacrifice one of the patients who's dying anyway in order to save the others.

 

[incal11]

It's a classic psycological test,
where you have to choose between killing a few or killing many ,
with a limited time to decide.

There is no good decision, it is just a way to test if you have inhibitions about taking a human life.

Your personal preferences about who to save are secondary.

Personally I just hope not to have to make that kind of choice for real , ever.

 

[curlycrouton]

1. Pull the switch.
2. By law the man with the organ/s would have to agree to dying, something which I doubt would happen.