[Read the First Post in FULL before voting] Morality Questions

[[R-DEV]Masaq]

READ THE WHOLE POST CAREFULLY BEFORE VOTING.

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The following are a some morality-exploring questions. Read them, think about them, and then click the checkboxes above.

You should end up ticking FIVE boxes, one for each question below.

After voting, share your choices and your reasons why.

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Question 1
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A train is out of control. It has six people on board, and is careening down a hill towards a station where it will kill all on board and will certainly kill twenty more people on the platform.

You are standing by some points on the track and can divert the train down a siding by throwing the switch.

Select (1.) to leave the points alone.
Select (2.) to throw the switch.

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Question 2
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You're standing at the same place at the same time next week, and the same train careens out of control again. Again, there are several people on board, and again, you have the option of throwing a switch to send the train down a siding.

However, this time there is a second train on the siding with another six people on board. Throwing the switch will certainly kill all twelve people on board the two trains but will save the 20 others on the station platform.

Select (3.) to leave the points alone
Select (4.) to throw the switch.

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Question 3
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You are standing on a bridge above the same railway line, when another out-of-control train comes hurtling down the hill. This time you're too far away from the points to stop the train by throwing the switch, but you can drop a very large heavy weight onto the track. Again, all six people on board will be probably be killed by the twenty on the station will be saved.

Select (5.) to let the train pass
Select (6.) to push a rock onto the tracks.

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Question 4
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The same situation as above. However, you look around frantically for a rock or a tree trunk to roll onto the tracks but you can't find one!

However, a hugely obese man is sat on the side of the bridge admiring the sunset. He's perched so precariously that one quick shove would knock him onto the tracks below, but so ridiculously fat that he'd almost certainly derail the train, at the expense of this life.

Select (7.) to leave the man be
Select (8.) to throw him off the bridge.

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Question 5
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You are a gifted surgeon working in a hospital. You have six critically unwell patients lying in your ward, all awaiting donor organs. All of them are so ill that you doubt any of them will survive the night unless they get healthy tissues donated this very day. You could do all six surgeries and save them all, if only you had the organs you need.

However, a nurse on the ward has just received a phone call - the refridgerator units at the city morgue have just failed and the organs they were about to send over from a road accident this morning have all become too warm to transplant.

Whilst walking back to your office, you walk past a fit, healthy young man in tears in the hallway. He's just lost his entire family in a horrific accident involving a smoothie maker, a pineapple and a can of WD40.

You suddenly realise that this man has all the vital tissues you need. Both his kidneys, his liver, his heart and both lungs could be donated to the six patients you have in his ward... if he were to die today.


Select (9.) to leave the young man alone
Select (10.) to kill him and use his organs for your patients

[[R-MOD]KP]

I always chose to kill the few to save the many. Quite simple.


It is, of course, easy enough in theory, but not necessarily so in real life.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

ld just hope the people you saved would pitch in to pay for your funeral because killing that many people, even to save more people, would drive me insane.

[nicoliani]

1. As long you know that the P in the train will get killed you have the right throw the switch.
2. Leave the switch, you have no right to choose who will live or die.
^ But what if it was 100 000 people that you could save, what would I do? Now it comes to numbers. Little help here (natural law) the strongest survive, so apperenly this 100 000 wasn't so strong to survive.. So leaving the switch again.

[[R-MOD]dunehunter]

I say that I'll kill the people to save more lives, but I'm not sure whether I'd be able to do it in real life.

[[R-DEV]Masaq]

That's a very very poor interpretation of Darwin's laws. He said nothing about fitness to survive train accidents


These questions are taken more or less verbaitum from a cross-cultural study of morality done a few years ago (sadly I've lost the reference to it, sure I could dig it up though). No matter where the interviewers posed these questions, no matter what religious or cultural background people presented from (even from very sheltered areas of the world with limited outside contact), when put into a culturally significant context (ie.: six people in a canoe...), most people took the action to save lives when they could so long as it didn't involve directly harming another individual.

[[R-PUB]Viper5]

The last one depends on whether he's a registered organ donor :P

TBH I chose flipping the switch or whatever saved the most, but its the obvious choice. Perhaps better questions would be by flipping the switch you are sure all onboard will die, by by letting it go they 20 on platform may or may not live.

[LekyIRL]

I choose to kill the few to the save the many in all the questions.But I must say,I found it very difficult to answer theses questions and I doubt I'd be able to do it in real live.

[[R-DEV]coderedfox]

I think the questions are far two easy, most of us would kill the few to save the many. What would be a twist is to add a important person with the few.

[[R-CON]Wolfe]

These questions address two important points:

1) are two lives better than one
2) does the assumed impending death of a person justify us to pass judgment on their fate in order to further justify the first point.

If you agree to either of these, then by that logic it is ok to sacrifice 100 thousand people to save 100 million. Moreover, since all people are going to die someday anyway, their impending death becomes moot and now the fate of all lives is open to someone else's judgment regardless of when they will die. At that point, the world becomes a morally scary place to live.

I have not been granted superior judgment over another life, nor it is my right to take. I would leave the switch alone. If I could save their lives without sacrificing another, I would, but beyond that, destroying one life to save another is not in my authority, nor do I believe it should be in anyone else's.