What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.213 Comments
- AJRiddle, on 10/12/2007, -7/+66Title is "Would you kill 5 people to save 1 person?" but it says "Suppose you could save five lives by taking one" in the description. Whats up with that
- FarcicalFart, on 10/12/2007, -4/+33"I'd use the dynamite to blast the trolley off the rails and then hook the violinist up to the fat man.
Robin, Edinburgh"
This guys comment is genius if you read the article. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27Wow. What a smart thing to do. Get a whole bunch of Diggers spouting their mouths off about philosophy and ethics.
- ynggrsshppr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25You have a "to kill" list? *shocked*
- Doggpound, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Title is not wrong because one of the questions is would you pull the switch to save five and kill one or would you not pull the switch and the 5 would die but the one live.
- Kellan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19Kid: Would you kick a pony in the face to end world hunger?
Model: I don't believe in hurting animals...
Kid: So...you'd let millions of people starve to death just for one stupid pony?
--Wonder Showzen - techmaster7b, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Her argument is flawed. You had no choice what so ever being hooked up to the violinist, but you did have a choice when you had sex. She needs to learn how to properly form arguments before giving an answer to them, otherwise they are of no use.
- highwebl, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22Kill 5 people? As long as they are 5 people I don't know or they are on my "to kill" list.
- Duston, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17@ynggrsshppr
You don't? **shakes head** - admirabumblebee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Why are there no options given to kill all 6 and steal their wallets?
Man, new outlets are always so biased against us sociopaths, how lame, - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Moral of story, stay away from railroads, caves and concert halls.
- mikesum32, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16What if an asteroid is hurtling toward the Earth and the only way to stop it is to have gay sex? What if monkeys fly out of my butt ?
Blah Blah Blah. - tidejwe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I love this: "To your horror, you discover that you have been kidnapped by the Music Appreciation Society." Why is it that anything to do with media is always portrayed as evil? My mind immediately associated this group with EVIL which then turned to RIAA.
ANYWAY, for those of you who didn't RTA (always happens) I don't know if they can use this test in the way they are they trying to associate it. For example, in the first example, they say that you wake up kidnapped hooked up to some machine that is keeping some violinist alive. If you stay for 6 months he'll live, if you don't he'll die. Are you obligated to stay? They then twist your answer to say that it's all about pro-life verses pro-choice (abortion issue). I don't think it can be generalized that far.
This article is determining which form of ethics you generally defer to. Do you go off of what causes the most benefit for the least amount of pain (utilitarian), or do you defer to individual choice/rights, or any of the other ethical methods? - PirateJaxx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I think those five people had it coming if they're standing on that side of the track, so I wouldnt touch the situation.
- cinder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Actually, the title can apply:
"A runaway trolley car is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who will definitely be killed unless you, a bystander, flip a switch which will divert it on to another track, where it will kill one person. Should you flip the switch?"
If you don't flip the switch, you are killing 5 people and saving 1. Now please, digg parent post down. - masterfuol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Would you kill 5 people to save 1 person?
The 5 people are taken randomly from those that are bitching about the title.
The 1 person is someone willing to consider and discuss the philosophical implications raised by the TFA.
Thats a tough one. - sirsteveh, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Love the title. Of course not on the title, and What Kind of Sick Person Are You? to the question. :D
- TopherT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm not sure that it really is the same problem. Certainly the two outcomes are the same, but your actions in the two scenarios are different. In the first trolley problem it is simply chance that governs the initial position of the switch, if it began in the position to kill the one man you certainly wouldn't switch it over to kill the five.
The fat man problem involves violence. You are actively killing someone who would otherwise be at no risk. It could be said that it is chance that the fat man is on the bridge and not in the path of the trolley, in which case he would likely be willing to sacrifice himself to save the 4 others, but that is a much more hypothetical position to take.
To me it seems that it would be much better to ask the person who might be sacrificed in each case to make the decision, that way it would effectively take you out of the decision, but time constraints would likely render that possibility, as well as much of this philosophical discussion moot.
It is my experience that when hard decisions such as this crop up, most people do nothing at all simply out of fear. - xcanadian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9 SPOCK
I never took the Kobayashi Maru
test - until now. What do you
think of my solution?
KIRK
Spock...!
SPOCK
The needs of the many... outway the needs of the few, or the one... I have been... and always will be... your friend...Live. Long. And. Prosper. - yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9There are no CORRECT choices. There are no mistakes.
Buddhist philosophy. - vpcwiu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Now that you bring it up, I would kill everyone who diggs this if it meant the cure for Alzheimer's...
- jholdaway, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Answer to the Title/Typo: Maybe, if the "1" person was me... :P
- supersan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6reminds me of the classic Tolstoy(?) story in which the grim reaper comes to earth and offers a man 100 million dollars for pressing a red switch. The condition is pressing it would instantly kill one innocent person anywhere in the world.. He doesn't even need know who dies - its only that somebody innocent somewhere dies after he pressed that red button. Interesting food for thought.
- yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6No, obviously, the idea is that you have to make a decision only on the information given.
Otherwise you could invent any scenario. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Solutions:
1 [Violinist]: You have no obligation. You may do as you please. (I would leave)
2 [Runaway trolley]: You have no obligation. You may do as you please. (I would do nothing, since you can't really tell if 5 people will die or not, and culpability is avoided by inaction)
3 [Fat man]: You have no obligation. You may do as you please. (I would neither jump nor push Fatso)
4 [Cave]: You have no obligation. You may do as you please. (I would blow up Jack because my life >> his life)
Common thread: You have no obligation to anyone, not even yourself. How you choose to act is purely up to you. Self-interest outweighs the common good in general, since the common good is only useful as a means of serving individual self interest (there is no "community" separate from the individuals therein).
Ethics are a set of unnatural guidelines for behavior (unnatural since we don't need ethics to tell us how to behave without ethics). These must obviously contradict natural behavior. The reason to thwart your natural impulses is that intelligence tells us that they will impair future gain or cause future pain. They are are form of self-discipline, not a universal absolute truth. Just like the laws of the land, they should be broken as necessary, although neither legal nor ethical systems tend to explicitly state this, since otherwise it would invite licentiousness. - Doggpound, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@ VorpalK
@blahblah
The questions are for if you see random people people you do not know - yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@Jimmy
Because everyone hates you?.....
Posting comments on a web page
RULE #1
Never take Internet forums personally. - HarryBauzonia, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I'd rather watch the pretty shooting star................
- Bokista, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I was looking for a comment like this. I wanted to say that the BBC article is the reason that philosophers and not average Joes are meant to answer the question. There's no appropriate answer; the power comes from exploring the reasoning behind all the possible answers.
- johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6When someone didn't know what card to play in Spades we'd say "If you think long you think wrong." You just don't know what you'll do till you're confronted with a situation like this. Thinking about convoluted ***** like this is a guaranteed way to come up with screwed up thinking, and it's not likely to happen.
It's as bad as the real dilemma in the military. If you refuse to obey an illegal order they'll nail you for disobeying an order. If you comply "I was just following orders" is not a defense. There is no good answer. The joy of situational ethics. - FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"all men are created equal" but its the rest of their lives that makes the difference. The question should be, does a life have subjective or objective value? In other words, can society say who is worth living and who is worth dying, or should we agree that everyone has value, even potential value, and therefore no life should be harmed?
- LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8its like saying would you kill one walrus, to save 2 others? but that one walrus is pregnant
hahaha simpsons joke - rays400, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Wow, get over it, it's been pointed out like 10 time before that the title isn't correct. Comments like yours and fanboy wars show just how many idiots are on the Internet.
- LaughingDjinn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Is it just me or does this actually sound like a great reality tv show? Trick people under some sort of false circumstances and then have these situations come up and just see what they do, not with real people of course but it wouldn't be that hard to fake. Be really entertaining and also insightful into how real people would handle this stuff.
- JoeWall, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8but you keep coming back everytime so you must be dumber.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6BY HOOKING HIM UP TO THE FAT MAN--duh!
- apantomimehorse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The viol inst scenario is a very famous argument from Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion," written in 1971. It's meant to be an argument for abortion starting from the assumption that the dependent entity is in fact a human (i.e., something of moral worth). Though I support abortion, and though I'm all for wacky analogies in ethics, I've never found it a particularly apt analogy, nor do I agree with the idea that abortion should just be a matter of free choice regardless of the status of the fetus.
- Doggpound, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6As far as the violinist I would not stay and help him because they kidnapped me. If they had asked me then I might do it. I might have to be in a bed for nine months which would suck but that's a hell of alot of Xbox playin'
- zephc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Man, I'd kill 5 people for a Klondike Bar.
- dooltaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5First of all, thought experiments in themselves are unethical. In real life, scenarios like these are far and few between, and yet they are the basis of numerous theories in ethics, when in fact they do nothing but skew ethical standards into moral relativism. The article says these questions "can sharpen our intellect and enrich our moral lives." however the opposite is true. They only serve to dull and deflate our moral lives by inferring either that there are really no right or correct moral answers in life or that everyone's opinion in terms of ethics is right. This leads to majority rules in ethical guidelines, i.e. slavery is fine if enough people think it is.
A second flaw of these questions are that they all "assume" the future or the end will result in a certain way, which is also deceptive. Therefore, only an atypical answer is appropriate. For instance, an appropriate response to the cave explorers scenario is to solve the problem outside of the limits of the problem. I.E. Using mostly spoons from lunch, dig out the guy from the rock and then blast. Another obvious answer is to call the other party on the walkie talkies and tell them your GPS coordinates and have them bring the vat of butter. - fliz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8people dugg it...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7"All lives are equal. Who has the right to judge another fit for death?"
It totally depends on who the people are. No one really treats all lives equally on issues of life and death. Many people say such things because it sounds nice but if presented with a situation concerning a friend or family member they actions are totally skewed. - TopherT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Only if its cool with person A
- TopherT, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5But you're not killing anyone, you're not doing anything. The trolly, or the ***** that let it get out of control is killing them. Perhaps you could argue that simply being there puts you under the obligation to pull the switch, but that seems to be something of a stretch.
- jamesey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4the article should have included the word utilitarianism and explained the philosophy it was discussing was called negative utilitarianism.
- WiggaZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Guano
I think the point techmaster is trying to make is that the baby is a direct consequence of the mother's actions regardless of whether or not she was being careful (with the exception of rape), while the person who is kidnapped had nothing to do with the violinist's situation. - bryant, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's strange how the same problem with a different face's outcome can vary so wildly...
- endgame, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I have no problem killing one person to save five others. Call me crazy but I have no emotional issue with this subject.
- fohat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Only if it's Spock.
- e3mw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This article seeps with utilitarian ideologies. It's not a new dilemma.
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