|
|
#21 | |||||
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
The question is do I let some poeple die and another person live, or by taking action do I make one person die to buy the lives of a few others? The type of question that has been asked in this thread is in and of itself morally repugnant because it assumes first of all that human beings can be weighed in terms of value and secondly it suggests both in error and in extreme arrogance that you or I or anyone who is being asked the question is capable of making such calculations. Quote:
Last edited by Kilroy_x; 03-27-2007 at 05:03 PM.. |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
#22 | ||
|
MCDC 2011
|
I personally think most people in this world should die. Most people are undeserving of life (not trying to go Jigsaw on you) and this world would be a much better place with less people and less sin. I believe that this planet is not just ours, but should also belong to the billions of animals too. Right now this is a one race planet, and we're bastards for making it that way.
I'd probably let the people die, if I didn't know them.
__________________
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
#23 |
|
Resident Penguin
|
no **** it's repugnant, but you still have to make it. That's the whole point of the scenario. You must decide between the lives of 5 and the life of 1. You WILL be held responsible in either case, by the arbitrary nature of the scenario itself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#24 | |
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Quote:
That's pretty sadistic of you, and also highly questionable, but you're entitled to your thoughts and your thoughts do not make you guilty for the state of reality if you don't choose to act on them and effect it. You wouldn't be guilty of anything except perhaps madness, something you are allowed. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
#25 | |
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Quote:
Ability to control does not neccessitate taking an action to control. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 03-27-2007 at 05:09 PM.. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
#26 |
|
FFR Player
|
With great power comes great responsibility, to quote an OWDG (old white dead guy)
__________________
C is for Charisma, it's why people think I'm great! I make my friends all laugh and smile and never want to hate! |
|
|
|
|
|
#27 |
|
Resident Penguin
|
Consider a modified scenario.
You have a nuclear bomb. You can either drop it on a bustling city, or on a lonely hermit's hut. You're going to kill less people if you make the latter choice. You must drop the bomb. You can't say "Oh I'm not going to drop the bomb." Because the rules, which are absolute in this hypothetical universe, dictate that you must make the decision to drop the bomb somewhere. The bomb won't go off on it's own if you do nothing, and you're the only one who will be doing the deciding. There is literally no way for you not to choose the hermit or thousands of city denizens to die. It is completely inescapable, because I declare that it's completely inescapable, and I am creating the scenario and am an absolute authority. Now, where do you choose to drop it? |
|
|
|
|
|
#28 |
|
FFR Player
|
But you are also personally responsible for saving 4.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#29 |
|
FFR Player
|
talisman: I see what you did there. You're trying to force the people who previously argued against the common response to go with it in this exaggerated situation.
But that's what it is. An exaggerated situation. Sometimes quantitative changes can change responses. I wonder if we are going to find anyone who wants to drop the bomb on the city instead of the hut.
__________________
C is for Charisma, it's why people think I'm great! I make my friends all laugh and smile and never want to hate! |
|
|
|
|
|
#30 | ||
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Quote:
Quote:
You can't just subtract one person from another as if it means anything. We aren't dealing with bars of gold or grains of rice, we're dealing with human beings, who are a good deal more complicated and who are entitled to individual sovereignty, and part of that implies not treating them as objects and not treating them all as just means to an end. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
#31 |
|
Resident Penguin
|
no I just removed the inaction vs action "loophole" as it were.
the point of these kind of one vs many scenarios are to exist as a reference point for people's responses to other scenarios that involve different forms of decision making. The theory goes that it's relatively easy to choose one person to die rather than five, but relatively difficult to choose to become personally involved, say by pushing a really fat guy in the way of the train to stop it before it hit the five people. |
|
|
|
|
|
#32 |
|
Resident Penguin
|
kilroy, these scenarios aren't supposed to have any bearings on reality. They exist as little tests psychologists and researchers interested in forms of decision making give to participants.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#33 |
|
Little Chief Hare
|
I understand that, but people's responses in this type of scenario are driven by raw emotion rather than reason, and the questions themselves are phrased in a way that is very unreasonable. I would choose the "loophole", as you call it, because to attempt to act on the thought processes that these questions test would be absolutely and fundamentally incoherent.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#34 |
|
Resident Penguin
|
Well less emotion in the kind we've been discussing and more reason. It's a pretty clear cut rational choice to see that 1 < 5. Emotion comes into play in variants where you have to sacrifice, say, yourself, your children, your mother, whatever.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#35 |
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Not at all, because 1 isn't neccessarily greater than 5 when these numbers reference non-identical units of a property or set of properties. You have no clue what you're measuring, you're just relying on emotion to tell you of its existence and then patching in fallacious reasoning to take over from there. Hidden beneath the straightforward arithmatic is the assumption that human beings have some set of properties which when present in this world are "good", and it is these in turn firstly that we cannot measure, and secondly that we cannot weigh in the type of calculations that are being discussed.
It's also worth noting that any action in these scenarios violates the categorical imperative. Anyways, I'm off to class. I'll pick this up later. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 03-27-2007 at 05:58 PM.. Reason: Off to class |
|
|
|
|
|
#36 |
|
FFR Player
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 117
|
I'm with Kilroy 100% on this one, I don't think I would do anything either, because...darn it its too late to think, I need my beauty sleep.
Basically I would take no action because it would be the only thing I could do that would not be morally wrong. If I push the lever, I am in effect, killing somebody, however if I do nothing, I am just letting the natural order of things occur |
|
|
|
|
|
#37 |
|
FFR Player
|
i wouldnt pull the lever and i would shoot the guy alone on the platform ^_^ so then they are all dead and it wouldnt matter anyway
|
|
|
|
|
|
#38 | |
|
FFR Player
|
Quote:
It might sound a little sadistic but its true. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
#39 |
|
FFR Player
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: New York
Age: 29
Posts: 504
|
Deaths become simple statistics when the number killed cannot be either imagined or be personal to the person hearing about it. To a family who had a soldier killed, they care about all the deaths, but to the general population, it is just another death.
Hope that makes sense. |
|
|
|
|
|
#40 | |
|
Little Chief Hare
|
Quote:
What is done and what should be done, or even what is justifiably done or what makes sense to do, are all things very much dissassociated from one another. War is just one of many things that people do because they think in a perfunctory manner and trust their instincts to make up for their lack of understanding. |
|
|
|
|
![]() |
| Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
|
|