What would you do?

Imagine there is a runaway carriage hurtling down the track, and further down the line are 5 people stuck facing certain death. You have a choice: with the flick of a switch, you can divert the carriage down another track where only one person is stuck. I guess most will argue to flick the switch to lessen the number of deaths, right?

What if it was a little different? This time there is no switch or alternative route. This time you are standing on a bridge and in front of you is a large man. By pushing that man off the bridge and onto the track, his bulk would be enough to stop the carriage and save the 5 people.

So what would you do?

Tough one.. I'd probably be frozen from shock and not do anything..

But I think I'd probably leave both alone anyway.. In impossible decisions I tend to let things run as if I wasn't there.. Thats probably cowardly lol..

What if you knew that this event was going to occur, what if you had time to prepare yourself emotionally? As much as you can lol

I suppose it depends on a lot of things.. If for instance there were children or very young people there, whether I knew the people..

It depends on a lot thats going on at the time I would think.. Even down to what they're wearing.. If you have seconds to decide your brain can make its decision on the strangest things..

I'd wait for chuck norris to roundhouse kick the carriage out of the way.

Is he a US thing or am I just very out of the loop?

I probably would not push the man onto the tracks unless i had knowledge that this event was going to happen. If I knew it was going to happen before hand and was not able to prepare anything else to throw on the tracks, then yes, I would push the man onto there, then tell everyone he did it to save the others. Under no circumstances would I throw myself onto the track... thats just silly.

I'd do my best impression of Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack skulking away after the priest gets struck by lightning

I'm thinking you hire some shady guy to push the fat man, wait down near the tracks, film the whole thing and sell the film to Inside Edition or some such TV show.

Nice

I'd set the bomb off that I hid in the tracks.

I'd wonder why people in these parts were so delicate as to be instantly killed upon contact with a baby carriage.

Maybe I'd try to convince the big guy to jump on the track with me to save the five people (can't ask someone to do it unless your willing to do it yourself, that's just plain wrong and I could not live with murdering someone in cold blood or allowing five people to die)

Basically your damned if you do and your damned if you don't so you may as well jump yourself along with the big guy. If he refuses, just jump and take him along with you, selfish bastard.

.

But what if he was about to donate all his organs to a bunch of small children. Thus saving 6 lives!

No problem - harvest one of the blokes on the train. That way 10 people live- four on the train and six kids, only three have to die, you the selfish bastard and the poor bloke who's organs you pre-sold.

Myself, not being very large....

I would move briskly away from the big guy before he comes to the conclusion he could try and throw me in the track.


This seems to be a very hazzardous area, Im not even sure why I am here, I would probably make haste to leave... perhapse even the country (and leaving is a great idea, I just let a bunch of people die)

one murder vs 5 accidental deaths.

Would anyone witness me pushing the big guy?

Can me and the big guy pull a TJ Hooker and jump on the hood of the carriage and make faces at the driver?

heh, save the big guys life. If he's that big he's not likely to be the one who ends up on the tracks.

Hiro proposes one of the classic conundrums. A choice between active and passive participation in an event. Ironically, to be passive - to see the accident happen - can be active only when you know that pushing the man on the bridge will avert it. Interesting that the size prejudice is part of this; fat is an emotive word, far beyond the physics that his weight will stop the train, which is ludicrous if you look at the physics. The implication is, sadly, that a fat man is somehow worth less, even though this probably was not considered in the original posing of the dilemma.

However, these questions are stressors in themselves. They following format:

Choose A and Z will happen
Don't choose A and Y will happen.

These are false assumptions that can only work in theory. The real world is, thankfully, much more realistic. For example, to work out that the fat man would stop the train would take even the best engineer/scientist a fair amount of time. Easily enough time to shout a warning to the people concerned.

Assuming that was not an option - to suspend disbelief - and we have to accept the limitations of the problem, and we knew ahead of time that the man's girth would save the others, then morally we have two choices; neither is pushing the man!

1) Tell the man that he can save them by jumping, and let him decide.

2) Don't tell the man and accept that there was nothing that you could 'reasonably' do.

These are MY two options. Others may have more. For example, if one of the people about to die was my wife, it would be harder. However, I think I would not be able to live with myself making a trade like that.

<SPOILER> In I Robot, the movie palimpsest (i.e. summary of) all Asimov's robot stories



















the main character is saved from a car sinking in a river. The robot decides that a little girl is less likely to survive, and so decides to rescue the policeman. The decision is made on pure statistics (apparently) rather than emotion; Will Smith's character orders the robot to obey him and save the girl, but the robot disobeys. It is a wonderful example that shows how incredibly sophisticated the robots are (in this fiction) to even be able to make such deliberations. However, the humanity of the story is that the policeman being saved, enables the overthrow of mankind to be averted. An unexpected and unpredictable greater good.

The fat man could be the love of my life; the inventor of a cure for cancer; someone who is a really good father....


One of the victims could stupidly invent a killer virus; could beat her husband (it happens); be a serial killer...

So many possibilities. The thing to remember is that there are events that are unpredictable, are uncontrollable. When they are both, we get post traumatic stress disorder and are as much a victim as the persons hit by the train.

^ That was incredibly insightful and fun to read at the same time! And on top of that you nodded to Asimov. And even on top of that I now know what "palimpsest" means! Absolutely stunning.

Reminds me of those lists I see emailed every now and then, of people who were born crippled but went on to be great contributors to society, like Helen Keller. Even Michael Jordan wasn't such a hot basketball player when he was young, and many poor pupils turned into great, self-motivated achievers.

There's a great ep of Star Trek I've never seen in its entirety that deals with this too. Called "The City on the Edge of Forever". I like time travel movies too where someone thinks they're doing humankind a favor by saving a life, and as you pointed out DoctorMike, goes on to do some horrible things.

I'm constantly reminded of that here in the SL Forums, how we continue to write pages of the books of our lives, and Second Lives. So many things are redundant and sadly repeated, but I always look for anomalies in the timestream. Lateral thinking, alternate ways of considering problems. I've been improving my abilities at picking up on those, and "giving the new" as I like to call it. (Having already "received the old".)



Sheer brilliance! I lurve this! Well, I don't mean I lurve PTSD, but of considering the aftermath of what happens.

The first is a choice of lesser evil. In both cases, people would die. By choosing to flick the switch, you lessen the loss.
In the second scenario, pushing a man on to the tracks is outright murder. You also didn't say what would happen if the train were not stopped. It has to run out of fuel eventually, right?

I can only hope this is a train that is not fueled by the body fat of humans.

Two logialy equivalent situations, yet 2 diff outcomes for most. For many decades, philosophers and psychologists have been split into two camps: one argues that moral judgements are a response of rational thought, the other is that the roots are emotional. This thought experiement is to illustrate that perhaps both play a part.

Hmm... Good one!

I actually had an exactly similar situation, only I was that "One"!

I used to do sheet metal at one point in my life. Dormer vents are the odd, half circle type vents you can find on alot of roofs for attic ventilation purposes. One day, while carrying 8 "flat" dormers (6" flange for nailing extending all around it, and yes 8 is way to many to be carrying in the first place) up to the top roof of a 2 story mansion, the ladder lost its footing when I procceeded to step unto the 3rd rung. This caused myself, as well as, the 8 very heavy dormers to shift, throwing me off balance & on my way off the ladder, followed by the roof. Haha

In the split second I had to react I noticed 5-7 people on the ground doing a main electrical box inspection. Normally, I would have just let the dormers go, effectively saving myself but damaging the very cheap sheetmetal in the process. Now, remeber the people, if I were to let them go they (The dormers) would have split apart, tumbled down the roof pitch gaining momentum, off the roof & possible killing several people, definately injuring them for sure.

In an effort to not let this happen & save my own life in the same proccess, I torqued the weight back into balance without falling. This was successful in accomplishing several things:

1. 5-7 people avoided death or serious injury.
2. Saved my own life! Yay!
3. Proceeded to blow several disc in my lower back out.

Hello sciatica! (Definition: Chronic pinched Sciatic nerve = PAIN!)

That was my life saving choice I had to make.

Killing someone to save someone else is murder. The test is of whether it is murder is pretty basic and doesn't really involve other people getting saved.


The question, I think, isn't so much do you kill the 1 man to save the five but how many people does it take before you kill the 1 man?

It would take a lot of people before I'd kill someone. A thousand, maybe? I dunno. If I had time to think, probably a lot more than a thousand. Frankly, the more time I thought about it the more people it would be.

Now, if I had to chose between someone I knew and killing someone, that would be different. But, again, the more time I had to think about it the harder it would be to commit murder to save someone I knew. My wife, my child, no problem, but beyond that .. it would be pretty hard.

I think Heinlein said it best in starship troopers, men are not potatoes.

well... one is witnessing a horrible accident while the other is murder. I guess I wouldn't try to play 'god' (NOW DON"T START). I would be a witness.