A Test of Morality

[theklng]

so a question about ethics...

it would depend on other factors for me. it would depend on how well those people sacrificed perhaps could help mankind in the future. i mean, if the guy you sacrificed was the next albert einstein, would it be worth the sacrifice to let 5 people live, when he, perhaps, could save a thousand the next month?

what i don't like about these hypothetical questions is that it's always a boolean function: you either do something or you don't do it and take the consequences. it's like being next to that kid in school that would always ask, "what would you rather? eat a booger or kiss a girl?", where the usual response from me would be, "why would i do either?".

i would argue that there would be other options in both hypothetical scenarios and that those would be my first choice; the world is not black and white and abstract principles will not work well if not first tested in the concrete world. that being said, i would sacrifice my own life if a thousand people could live because of it (in both scenarios this seems a viable option).

 

[orifice]

In both cases I would do nothing but observe. I do not know enough about all the people concerned to risk tangling my karma with theirs.
For instance what if all the people in need are criminals? Would you really consider sacrificing an innocent, so that killers criminals and peodophiles might live, I don't think so.

 

[Markness]

For number 1 you are manipulating a disaster in order for the best outcome to occur.

For number 2 you are creating a tragedy in order to save people. It's murder.

That is the difference in my opinion, and that is why I would do number 1, but not number 2.

Exactly my views

 

[Rajin Cajun]

(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...

That is exactly how I took it maybe you should read my post instead of posting useless corrections for things I already answered?

 

[John Stalvern]

1/2 I would allow the train to crash into the civilian, take the man in the waiting room and use his organs to save the patients and use the remains of the civilian to save the man.
The only one who dies is the civilian, who should have known to look both ways while on the train tracks.
Genius.

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

1) I pull the lever... clearly since I am at the lever it is my job and the lives of those on the train are my responsibility. As for the twit who randomly hangs out on railroad tracks, not my problem. He has a brain he should be able to figure this one out on his own.

2) Let the patients die. Assuming I am a doctor it is unethical for me to kill another human being. Addittionally, there is no garauntee that these dying patients would survive the surgery or that they would even be recupperated to a condition as healthy as the living indivudual.

These were easy.

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

In both cases I would do nothing but observe. I do not know enough about all the people concerned to risk tangling my karma with theirs.
For instance what if all the people in need are criminals? Would you really consider sacrificing an innocent, so that killers criminals and peodophiles might live, I don't think so.

The laws of karma aren't tabulated and executed by arbitrary people. You're kind of muddling ideas here.

 

[Skalman]

I would do neither, I'd just turn around and be on my way.

 

[ndogg34]

Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?

It's a trick question, the bread is poisoned, and it's not your real family, you've been cockled by a stronger, smarter male.

 

[Seann]

I don't think I would do anything in either. Not without the consent of those people anyway.

I think the reason that most people would choose to kill the first guy and leave the second would be because the first would just be the flick of a switch and you've ended somebody's life but saved five others. The second however would be more like "Hello I'm Sean. There are 5 dying people in there so we're going to cut you up and give them all of your organs."

 

[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.

oh its on! it said that the people WOULD ACCEPT THE ORGANS. oh yeah! thanks!

So? It just proved he sucked at creating an actual moral dilemma. So how do I know they would accept it? If I have these omnipotent demigogue like powers why in the fuck am I in a hospital wasting my time? Seriously the whole notion was stupid that he needed to tack on oh yeah they will accept the organs means he saw how poorly constructed it was and tried to fix it which failed. Thus destroying it from becoming a morality problem into a simple utilitarian problem.

 

[Convenient_Label]

So? It just proved he sucked at creating an actual moral dilemma. So how do I know they would accept it? If I have these omnipotent demigogue like powers why in the fuck am I in a hospital wasting my time? Seriously the whole notion was stupid that he needed to tack on oh yeah they will accept the organs means he saw how poorly constructed it was and tried to fix it which failed. Thus destroying it from becoming a morality problem into a simple utilitarian problem.

Actually, the people asking those questions made it into a utilitarian problem. A hypothetical quandry of this type ought to be assumed to work as stated. The original formulation states that the patients will die without organs and that organs are available from one place, a living man in the waiting room. Demanding data on additional factors such as tissue rejection is simply a mental dodge performed to avoid the intended purely hypothetical nature of the question, which was obvious from context.

That said, I would both flip the switch and have the man in the waiting room killed for his organs. My choice would be to engineer situations with the fewest deaths regardless of circumstances, though I feel I have a very clear understanding of the fundamental difference between the two circumstances, which is roughly as follows:

In situation 1 the event which will cause deaths has already occured, a train is out of control before I become involved in the situation. My only interaction with the event is to select victims via an intermediate operator (the lever).
In situation 2 the event which will cause deaths is indeterminate until I interact with the situation. Either I will arrange the death of a man or I will allow five people to die of organ failiure. Rather than selecting the victim of a predetermined event via an intermediate operator I am choosing to arrange a new event which will directly cause the death of the man in the waiting room.

Essentially, whatever you do in situation 1 you are not involved in the hazard and it is realised regardless of your action but in situation 2 the hazard is only realised via your inaction, if you choose to act you prevent the realisation of the original hazard by creating a new hazard and immediately realising it yourself.

 

[D.C.]

both ... i'd sit back and say not my problem ..

so basically i'd end up saving the one guy/girl

 

[Rajin Cajun]

So? It just proved he sucked at creating an actual moral dilemma. So how do I know they would accept it? If I have these omnipotent demigogue like powers why in the fuck am I in a hospital wasting my time? Seriously the whole notion was stupid that he needed to tack on oh yeah they will accept the organs means he saw how poorly constructed it was and tried to fix it which failed. Thus destroying it from becoming a morality problem into a simple utilitarian problem.

Actually, the people asking those questions made it into a utilitarian problem. A hypothetical quandry of this type ought to be assumed to work as stated. The original formulation states that the patients will die without organs and that organs are available from one place, a living man in the waiting room. Demanding data on additional factors such as tissue rejection is simply a mental dodge performed to avoid the intended purely hypothetical nature of the question, which was obvious from context.

That said, I would both flip the switch and have the man in the waiting room killed for his organs. My choice would be to engineer situations with the fewest deaths regardless of circumstances, though I feel I have a very clear understanding of the fundamental difference between the two circumstances, which is roughly as follows:

In situation 1 the event which will cause deaths has already occured, a train is out of control before I become involved in the situation. My only interaction with the event is to select victims via an intermediate operator (the lever).
In situation 2 the event which will cause deaths is indeterminate until I interact with the situation. Either I will arrange the death of a man or I will allow five people to die of organ failiure. Rather than selecting the victim of a predetermined event via an intermediate operator I am choosing to arrange a new event which will directly cause the death of the man in the waiting room.

Essentially, whatever you do in situation 1 you are not involved in the hazard and it is realised regardless of your action but in situation 2 the hazard is only realised via your inaction, if you choose to act you prevent the realisation of the original hazard by creating a new hazard and immediately realising it yourself.

True but I am Utilitarian by nature so it would be impossible for me to answer the question as is. Anyways even without the additional "evidence" I would still let the 5 die they are no use to the collective good if they are already weak and sickly they are more likely going to continue to be a drain on society and its resources so thus they should be cut off. Though I already answered it this way and a bunch of humanists complained.

 

[Convenient_Label]

Actually, as a utilitarian you should have been more interested in the people in the second situation. In the former you are unable to collect evidence on the individuals, so flipping the switch is a statistically more favourable choice, but in the latter you don't have to rely purely on statistics. You are in a position to at least guess at which would be more useful to society. Perhaps this all occured in 1953, the individual is a bricklayer and the five dying people include Norman Borlaug, who needs a new heart. At that point I think any utilitarian would already be breaking out the scalpels.

New houses or disease resistant dwarf wheat?! He's responsible, personally, for saving between eight hundred million and two billion lives, to date...

 

[Axolotl]

1. Pull the switch.
2. Leave the patient.

However I've seen this debated hundreds of times on some old DnD forums, I know that the correct answer to both situations is suicide as my life is clearly being controlled by an omnipotent being who likes to put people through cruel morality tests.

 

[Cheesebob]

#1) Pull the leaver

#2) Leave the man alone, he may have an entire family waiting for him to come back from visiting some sick friend or relative

 

[Rajin Cajun]

Actually, as a utilitarian you should have been more interested in the people in the second situation. In the former you are unable to collect evidence on the individuals, so flipping the switch is a statistically more favourable choice, but in the latter you don't have to rely purely on statistics. You are in a position to at least guess at which would be more useful to society. Perhaps this all occured in 1953, the individual is a bricklayer and the five dying people include Norman Borlaug, who needs a new heart. At that point I think any utilitarian would already be breaking out the scalpels.

New houses or disease resistant dwarf wheat?! He's responsible, personally, for saving between eight hundred million and two billion lives, to date...

True but again I wasn't provided data other then 5 sickly people are dying thus it was a simple solution. Again why I hate this kind of blind decision making at least for the hospital one because it seems completely half-assed unless we are just to chop people up for no reason? I could also reverse it on you what if it was Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer in the waiting room with a bunch of geriatrics dying? See hence the need for more data.

 

[Mr. Squirrel]

1, I would condemn the cicilian to a trainy death.
2. I would use his organs if the guy would agree. I won't take his organs if he doesn't want to.