Midnight Musings

[Taffer]

Probably debated ad nauseum, but still.

As I was drifting off to a restful slumber, a thought came to me. It was interesting, to me at least, and lead me to get back up, fire up my lappy and post this thread. I like to share the love. :)

My thought was this. How much importance do we place on other peoples' lives? Or even ourselves? Consider the following different scenarios:

a) You are in the situation whereby you can choose to directly lead to the taking of one person's life to save anothers. You do not know either of the two people involved.
b) You are in the situation where you could forfit your own life to save anothers. You do not know this other person.
c) You are in the situation whereby you can choose to directly lead to the death of one person to save 5 others. 10 others? 100 others? 1000 others? Etc.
d) You are in the same situation as above, but instead you must forfit your own life to save similar numbers of lives.
e) The same as c) and d), except the chance of saving the group of people's lives is not 100%. At what value of saved lives would it become equal to your answer in c) or d) if the chance of saving other peoples lives was only 60%?
f) You are in the situation where you can choose to sacrifice 5 poor, uneducated beggers from the slums to save a single, double PhD professor.

In each case, what would you decide. Would you need to know other factors involved? If so, what would they be?

As for my answer, it varies. I like to think that the sacrifice of a few is fine if it saves many. But then again, I am not want to be the chooser of the fates of peoples lives, no matter the situation. What gives me the right?

[tkingdoll]

I have a priority list for these sort of hypothetical dilemmas. In order of importance, the lives of:

1) My husband, my sister and my mum
2) Myself
3) My friends
4) Strangers

Numbers don't come into play until we get to the strangers, in which case I would kill 1 stranger to save 50, and kill 50 to save a million. However, if the larger number all had a short amount of time left to live anyway (say, they were terminally ill, or aged over 80), then I'd be likely to favour the smaller number, although I wouldn't allow 50 old people to die to save one baby. But my 1-3 criteria overrule any number of strangers, with the possible exception of sacrificing my own life to save the entire world.

In terms of the life of one stranger over another, I'd have to judge it on the merits of each case and the individuals involved, otherwise there's no difference between one person and another.

I'm not uncomfortable with being the 'fate' chooser as I don't think it's a matter of having the right. No-one has the 'right' to do anything to anyone else, but the nature of an ordered society means that we have to assume some rights to keep us from anarchy. Hence, a stranger in a uniform may arrest me and take away my liberty, and I may not land a helicopter in my neighbour's garden. Rights are what we assign to ourselves and our property, not a natural concept.

[Taffer]

I'm not uncomfortable with being the 'fate' chooser as I don't think it's a matter of having the right. No-one has the 'right' to do anything to anyone else, but the nature of an ordered society means that we have to assume some rights to keep us from anarchy. Hence, a stranger in a uniform may arrest me and take away my liberty, and I may not land a helicopter in my neighbour's garden. Rights are what we assign to ourselves and our property, not a natural concept.

The rest of your post is good, and this paragraph in particular. This is a very good point, Teek.

[Sceptic Realist]

I would have to know more about the situation before I could even consider ending anyone's life. If that was not possible, I would be forced, reluctantly, to play the numbers game mentioned above (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. gee, that's catchy!).

[Zygar]

You are in the situation where you can choose to sacrifice 5 poor, uneducated beggers from the slums to save a single, double PhD professor.

What's so special about a double PhD professor? I say throw him under the bus now and be done with it. Pompous jerk, with his 2 PhDs... *storms off muttering*

[CapelDodger]

What's so special about a double PhD professor? I say throw him under the bus now and be done with it. Pompous jerk, with his 2 PhDs... *storms off muttering*
You gotta hate over-achievers. Seriously. Name a megalomaniac that wasn't an over-achiever, and when you total up the harm you have to conclude that megalomaniacs are not a good thing. IMO.

Midnight musings, I see 23:56 in the bottom right corner, and I put my trust in MicroSoft. Exactly that far.

Is there a degree of ambition that is so egregious society is entitled to apply a culling edict? Is it not self-defence? The vast majority of people want only to be able to lead a decent life and bring up a family decently, they would like to leave their offspring better-off than them because of what they'd built and contributed. Tangible incremental improvement suffices. Exponential improvement really has to be sold hard, and is obviously not sustainable.

Ordinary people want the opportunity for reasonable ambition, and they don't want to see merit unjustly thwarted. People do not innately ask a lot, certainly not within the capacities of the modern world.

What people definitely don't want is war sweeping across them and destroying decades of invested effort. When it happens regularly - poor Poland - people stop investing at all. Why make the effort to rebuild? They also don't want to be taxed and conscripted so that war can sweep across other people's homes for the gratification of some sociopathic over-achiever.

Musings.

[CapelDodger]

I would have to know more about the situation before I could even consider ending anyone's life.
I'm vegetarian, but if it ever comes down to me or the rabbit ,the rabbit gets it. I extrapolate from there. Him or me : I'll try for me. Him or someone I know and care for : not him, obviously. Him or someone I know and don't care for : don't care. Him killing people I don't know and so have no reason not to care for? Kill the agressor, they chose the ground-rules.

A simple construct, but it works for me.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Probably debated ad nauseum, but still.

As I was drifting off to a restful slumber, a thought came to me. It was interesting, to me at least, and lead me to get back up, fire up my lappy and post this thread. I like to share the love. :)

My thought was this. How much importance do we place on other peoples' lives? Or even ourselves? Consider the following different scenarios:

a) You are in the situation whereby you can choose to directly lead to the taking of one person's life to save anothers. You do not know either of the two people involved.
b) You are in the situation where you could forfit your own life to save anothers. You do not know this other person.
c) You are in the situation whereby you can choose to directly lead to the death of one person to save 5 others. 10 others? 100 others? 1000 others? Etc.
d) You are in the same situation as above, but instead you must forfit your own life to save similar numbers of lives.
e) The same as c) and d), except the chance of saving the group of people's lives is not 100%. At what value of saved lives would it become equal to your answer in c) or d) if the chance of saving other peoples lives was only 60%?
f) You are in the situation where you can choose to sacrifice 5 poor, uneducated beggers from the slums to save a single, double PhD professor.

In each case, what would you decide. Would you need to know other factors involved? If so, what would they be?

As for my answer, it varies. I like to think that the sacrifice of a few is fine if it saves many. But then again, I am not want to be the chooser of the fates of peoples lives, no matter the situation. What gives me the right?




When you say directly lead to tetumtetum, do you mean kill?

[Taffer]

Sort of. I mean, you make a choice, and by your choice it results in the death of one party or another. You needn't directly kill them yourself.

[jmontecillo01]

You might get interested in John Nash's Game theory. It covers a lot of application such as economics, politics, military tactics, etc. There are two results involved. That is Zero-sum and Non-Zero-Sum.

Zero-sum is when two players play their hand until they reach a situation where in they neither lose nor win. They just come to an aggreement to end the game.

One of the applications of the theory is called Prisoners Dilemma. It is a Non-Zero Game.

In political science, for instance, the PD scenario is often used to illustrate the problem of two states engaged in an arms race. Both will reason that they have two options, either to increase military expenditure or to make an agreement to reduce weapons. Neither state can be certain that the other one will keep to such an agreement; therefore, they both incline towards military expansion. The paradox is that both states are acting rationally, but producing an apparently "irrational" result. This could be considered a corollary to deterrence theory.In the last war between Israel and the Hezbollah, Israel entered Lebanon because of two of their soldiers were kidnapped. This resulted in both sides suffering more death and destruction.

[Taffer]

Indeed, it does apply. I took a paper that dealt with Game Theory, and in particular political PD's. It was very interesting.

[Oxymoron]

You're question raises the whole "for the greater good" arguement. My ethics professor would be chomping at the bit. I'm not sure I can answer the question, but many arguements have been made through out history. It all boils down to the perception of the given situation. Hitler made very many statements aobut how "his race" of people dominating the world would only benefit the world. In many third world countries "ethnic cleansing" consistently exists.

This has taken place so many times in the past not just limited to my two examples. I think whether we choose to admit it or not, by nature, people are selfish. We either want to benefit directly, or we want our society to benefit, or we want our offspring to benefit. I think it's fair to say a mother would save her child before saving anothers. I believe we have a habit of dressing it up under the guise of some acceptable motive, but the skeleton in the closet will always be selfishness. Just thinking out loud.