Morally questionable scenarios; What would you do?

[Padawanbater2]

Post scenarios in which the right or wrong answer is morally questionable. Bonus points for answering what you would do and why, I'll go first..


This one is pretty common

1 fat man is standing on a bridge over a set of railroad tracks, on the tracks are 5 workers. You're standing next to the fat man on the bridge. You see an out of control car coming down the tracks in the path of the 5 workers. You can either push the fat man over the bridge onto the tracks derailing the car saving the 5 workers but killing the fat man, or do nothing and watch the 5 workers perish.

What do you do/why?

 

[ThE sAtIvA hIgH]

you have been taken hostage with three of the closest people to you , you have a gun to your head and have to decide , one of the 3 of your closest friends/ familly etc have to die and you have to pick wich one , or all of you will be shot with you being shot last . what do you do

 

[Zaehet Strife]

Post scenarios in which the right or wrong answer is morally questionable. Bonus points for answering what you would do and why, I'll go first..


This one is pretty common

1 fat man is standing on a bridge over a set of railroad tracks, on the tracks are 5 workers. You're standing next to the fat man on the bridge. You see an out of control car coming down the tracks in the path of the 5 workers. You can either push the fat man over the bridge onto the tracks derailing the car saving the 5 workers but killing the fat man, or do nothing and watch the 5 workers perish.

What do you do/why?

I would push the fat man over, the lives of the many outweigh the few... but if the fat man was someone i loved, i would look away as the five strangers were run over by the train.

 

[Zaehet Strife]

you have been taken hostage with three of the closest people to you , you have a gun to your head and have to decide , one of the 3 of your closest friends/ familly etc have to die and you have to pick wich one , or all of you will be shot with you being shot last . what do you do

I would pick myself, and if that didn't work, i would say FUCK YOU and spit at the person with the gun. Unless one of my friends begged me to pick him, i would ask if he was sure, and then i would pick him.

 

[Zaehet Strife]

You're in a house with 20 other people, you are running from gorilla troops who are on the hunt for every single one of you. Your wife has been shot and killed, but you still have the baby. Everyone is huddled around the upstairs attic when 10 troops bust through the downstairs door.

If the troops find you, they will torture and kill every single one of you, but you do not know any of these other people.

Your baby starts to sob, it's a matter of seconds before it starts to cry, alerting the troops leading to everyone's death.

The only solution is to smother your baby, suffocating it in the process, killing it... while saving your life and everyone elses.

What would you do? Kill your baby and save everyone, or allow your baby to cry killing everyone. And why?

 

[tyler.durden]

you have been taken hostage with three of the closest people to you , you have a gun to your head and have to decide , one of the 3 of your closest friends/ familly etc have to die and you have to pick wich one , or all of you will be shot with you being shot last . what do you do

Gotta take out your own family Kaiser Soze style...

[video=youtube;EdeCPGNRjOU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdeCPGNRjOU[/video]

 

[racerboy71]

You're in a house with 20 other people, you are running from gorilla troops who are on the hunt for every single one of you. Your wife has been shot and killed, but you still have the baby. Everyone is huddled around the upstairs attic when 10 troops bust through the downstairs door.

If the troops find you, they will torture and kill every single one of you, but you do not know any of these other people.

Your baby starts to sob, it's a matter of seconds before it starts to cry, alerting the troops leading to everyone's death.

The only solution is to smother your baby, suffocating it in the process, killing it... while saving your life and everyone elses.

What would you do? Kill your baby and save everyone, or allow your baby to cry killing everyone. And why?

i wouldn't kill the baby, there's no guarantee that just because the baby didn't cry, that the troops wouldn't still find you, as they're well trained troops and know all of the places to look to hide and will find you and kill you all anyhoos, so you just killed the baby for nothing..

 

[Hydrotech364]

I would stuff the baby's diaper with steel wool and Gunpowder and place a 9V Battery in the diaper with it.IEB Improvised explosive Baby....I would also let 5 of the people die then finish off the fat guy then take their wallet's and spend the money on Prostitutes and Bubble Hash.Why? Because I am a twisted fukr.

 

[Zaehet Strife]

i wouldn't kill the baby, there's no guarantee that just because the baby didn't cry, that the troops wouldn't still find you, as they're well trained troops and know all of the places to look to hide and will find you and kill you all anyhoos, so you just killed the baby for nothing..

You cannot change the situation. You have two choices, kill the baby and you save everyone and yourself. Don't kill the baby and you all die. There is no other alternative to this question, you may write your own version of you like.

 

[Padawanbater2]

You cannot change the situation. You have two choices, kill the baby and you save everyone and yourself. Don't kill the baby and you all die. There is no other alternative to this question, you may write your own version of you like.

I'd put my hand over its mouth as tight as possible for as long as needed, hoping it would survive by breathing through its nose..

If it came down to killing it or not, I'd have to kill it. As you decided in my question, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.. Which is funny because I have a book that has a few situations where this doesn't apply (utilitarianism), I'll see if I can dig one of those scenarios up for you..

 

[tyler.durden]

You cannot change the situation. You have two choices, kill the baby and you save everyone and yourself. Don't kill the baby and you all die. There is no other alternative to this question, you may write your own version of you like.

There was an episode of MASH where this exact situation happened (first time the word bitch was uttered on US TV) -

[video=youtube;sYjy7uUn7fc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYjy7uUn7fc[/video]

I doubt you'd have to actually kill the baby, you could give it a gentle version of the sleeper hold, cutting off the blood supply to its brain just long enough to have it pass out without permanently harming it...

 

[Mechanical]

Moral Minds <-- Great book with those moral questions and answers from different cultures showing there is no universal moral compass.

 

[Greatest I am]

Post scenarios in which the right or wrong answer is morally questionable. Bonus points for answering what you would do and why, I'll go first..


This one is pretty common

1 fat man is standing on a bridge over a set of railroad tracks, on the tracks are 5 workers. You're standing next to the fat man on the bridge. You see an out of control car coming down the tracks in the path of the 5 workers. You can either push the fat man over the bridge onto the tracks derailing the car saving the 5 workers but killing the fat man, or do nothing and watch the 5 workers perish.

What do you do/why?

In a word.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6c3OTr6yA

Regards
DL

 

[Beefbisquit]

I'd put my hand over its mouth as tight as possible for as long as needed, hoping it would survive by breathing through its nose..

If it came down to killing it or not, I'd have to kill it. As you decided in my question, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.. Which is funny because I have a book that has a few situations where this doesn't apply (utilitarianism), I'll see if I can dig one of those scenarios up for you..

I have one of those scenarios.

The example you listed with the fat man and train(s) is a thought experiment originally proposed by Phillipa Foot, an ethical philosopher. Awesome thought experiment, I did my thesis on it. TEEHEE!

We discussed the idea of creating a 'new' threat, or simply diverting an already existing threat and the differences between them.

Let's say it's war time, and a nuclear missile is headed for New York. In this example, New York has a population of 5,000,000 people and is an area designeated as 'high risk', because it's such an essential city. Essentially, the government was suspecting an attack on New York, and has made it clear to citizens of New York that the threat level is high.

There are only two courses of action, one is to let the missile hit New York, the original target, where people were warned that an attack could be incoming OR launch your own missile (this is the only option) to divert the missile attack towards Newark, a smaller city, with fewer people appox 1,000,000, but a city that the citizens were NOT warned of incoming attacks and no attacks were expected.

Basically, the citizens of New York decided to stay in New york regardless of the warnings of an incoming attack, is it OK to divert the missile to a city where people were assumed to be safe just to mitigate losses?

Does the fact that the people of New York were warned and chose to stay mean they should sleep in the bed they made? Or should the utilitarian ethical argument still ring true?

What about if for whatever reason, the only course of action to save New York was to bomb Newark yourself, for example let's say the only way to stop the bomb was to detonate a bomb in it's path, which happened to be exactly where Newark is located.

So now, it's not even the enemies bomb, it's YOUR bomb that would be required to kill the 1,000,000 people of Newark not the enemies..... hmmmm.... what do you do?

 

[Beefbisquit]

Back to the train problem.....

Let's say there are two sets of tracks, one is off limits, under construction but 5 people have wandered onto the tracks by climbing the fence and breaking and entering. You are on board the train, and the driver has a heart attack and dies instantly. You see on the tracks ahead a boy who has wondered onto the tracks. You have the ability to switch the tracks to the under construction area, which would mean the deaths of the 5 'intruders', but would save the boy. Do you allow the boy to die, or switch the tracks and allow the 5 'intruders' to die instead?

COMPARE TO THIS;

A transplant surgeon has 5 patients, all who are terminally ill and need a specific organ each in order to survive. A man walks into his clinic to get a checkup, and the Dr. notices that he is a perfect match for every single of his other patients. Should he harvest the organs of the one person to save the five, or should he allow the five to die so the one can live?

If you answered 'kill the five' to ANY of the train thought experiments, and 'let the five die' to the surgeon thought experiment, explain why it's ok to kill five people with a train, but why a surgeon cna't pluck people off the streets to harvest their organs to help a greater number of people.

BAM.