Bittersweet Candy Bowl

I heard this on the radio today.

Say if. Say if there is a train track with 5 people tied on it and a train is running straight to the people, and the train CANNOT brake. And you are on a bridge above it and a fat man is next to you. You could push the fat man off the bridge and the man’s wideness and the belt would stop the train, and kill the fat man (I am not too sure HOW the belt thing works, i forgot what the guy said on the radio :/ sorry ). Would you push the fat man to save to save the five people and kill him? Or would you let the train run and kill the people?
And this made me think.
If you pushed the man and saved the people, people might say that you were a murderer. But if you didn’t push the man off the bridge, people might think that you were an idiot.
But, what do you think about this?

I would convince the fat man he should jump by bringing up parts of his life he’s deeply ashamed of, that way I’m not the murderer, only the guy who drove him to jump. Then as he jumps over the edge I pull up the collar on my coat, adjust my hat, and walk down the street while fumbling with a pocket watch and planning my next move.

Some would call me a savior, some would call me a psychopath, all would call me:
“The Toasty Jester”

Your question is wrong. I’m not on the bridge, I’m driving the train and protocol says not to stop. Ever.

It’s not yours to decide if he should jump, and you’re pretty fucked up for your first instinct to be to try shoving ONE fat guy onto the tracks to stop them.

The math doesn’t even make sense, the train’s momentum is so great that’s like trying to stop a car with a wet cotton ball, instead of five dry ones.

Train? Why bother with it? Pushing fat people off bridges is my hobbey, stupid fatties. It’s my way of dealing with the obiesety epidemic.

I would get mad at videogames and throw the fatman. Fuck the police

If the train has so little force that this fat man’s mound of flesh could stop its momentum, why don’t you simply just signal it to stop? Because if this is a real train, the five people are as good as dead.

id push the fat people onto the tracks for entertainment. i wouldnt care about the result if no-one who saw lived
(yes, im becoming an increasingly horrible person.)

Now I’ve been smilin’ lately
Thinkin’ about all the good things to come…

ive been thinking about violence. violence and sweet sweet revenge.
im the happiest ive been in a long time like this

Nobody gets my jokes anymore.

I heard this quite a long while ago it doesn’t have a right answer but is merely a tool to help show the kind of person you are how you think
What does it say about me from the fact that I have completely avoided the question?

Awww screw it shove the fatty if I’m going to be a murderer either way, then I want to feel as if I had some control over the situation that I did something. Rather then sit there let them die and beat myself up for not doing anything at all.

if only the train in question was the peace train…..

Ugh I know myself too well and If this actually happend I’d probably be too indecisive to push the fat man.

KILL THE BASTARD!!!!!

The physics of this makes no sense, but that’s not the point of course. The point is, do you feel that it’s more moral to take an action which kills one person, or to take no action and, in doing so, allow five other people to die. there is no third option or anything like that.

This is a major philosophical question which will get different responses from different people based on some of the deepest, fundamental foundations of their moral code. As for me, I have as part of my personal moral code that conscious inaction is equivalent to action, so, assuming that I know nothing about these people, I’d kill the fat man to save the other five people. I’d do that because, in my opinion, to do otherwise would make me complicit in the death of four people (well, five, but the net loss of life would be four) and thus, if not guilty of murder, at least manslaughter (if not legally, morally). Of course, if this was an actual split-second decision as in the OP, I’d probably freeze up, but, given enough time to think, I’d act as indicated above.

I wouldn’t ever use a fatman to stop a train. The fallout just isn’t worth it.

The train won’t kill anybody, because there is an elephant on its way XD

I think it’s kind of a good representation of what’s flawed in our society. There are a lot of people who seem to think murdering one person is okay as long as a couple people benefit from it, but this is contradictory to our principle freedoms.

It is not, however, contradictory to capitalism. Capitalism often defends the right of the higher ranking members of society to make small sacrifices on other’s behalf, without their consent, to benefit their favored cliques. You see this in special intrest groups, law suits, hell any time you turn on the news someone is getting a finger pointed at them about something.

I’m a bit disappointed that no one thinks the person who you would throw into the train’s way should have the right to make that decision on their own.

Here’s the better question: Would you throw yourself on the tracks with the other man to ensure the safety of those five? I mean if it is completely the right thing to do, you would be the first to lead by example and do everything in your power to save those people right?

Because you’re not selfish and you don’t project what you believe on everyone else without walking your own talk… right?

Shit you guys just brought on the rant. But this is what I’ve been saying for years.

Like you’ll see some congressman voting to raise taxes, and he’ll lobby and lobby and lobby for the bill to pass BECAUSE WE NEED IT. Then, a month later, the bill is shot down and there’s no tax hike. Does that congress man still send a check to the IRS? Does he still follow his beliefs and pay what he can because he’d rather do the right thing on his own than force everyone to do it?

The answer: fuck no, he’ll keep the money to himself. So tired of all these people saying shit like “we should all have free health care”, but you’d be damn hard pressed to see them giving up their friday night six-pack so little timmy down the road can get treatment for leukemia. Fuck, now it’s politics. I better shut up.

Not only will there be ultimate devastation but super mutants as well
Nice reference to fall out NINJA

It is like when someone throws a nade and you can push an ally onto it to save the squad (ill push the fat guy he will die from a heart attack sooner or later)

I’d hope that I would. In reality, I doubt that I would live up to my ideals, but I feel that if me throwing myself in front of the tracks would save five lives, and if I failed to do so, that would be an immoral act. However, that was not the original question.

Also, no, that person should not have the right to make that decision for themselves. I’d hope that they’d choose to sacrifice themselves, but, ultimately, one person’s life is worth less than five peoples’ lives. The needs of the many (or in this case multiple) outweigh the needs of the few (one).

By the way, I disagree that pushing them on the tracks is the ‘capitalist’ way. In the purest form of capitalism, no one should ever be forced to help another at their own expense (a philosophy I disagree with).

I’m sorry that the maths isn’t right, I fail my tests in both Maths and Physics :/

I agree with happeh, somehow.

If I had time to consider, and if it could help at all, I’d rather risk my own life than killing another. If that would have no effect, I believe I would not do a thing. The five people on the tracks would be a terrible and tragic loss of life, but if I had to push someone else to their death… If the object in question was a grand piano, or a sofa, or something like that, I would of course push it down if it could do any good.

I think I could never take a life to save another. Because that single death would be my responsibility, and mine alone. If I could throw myself onto those tracks, I believe that is what I would do, but if not, that “fat man” should not lose his life because I thought it less worthy than those of the five on the tracks.

Let’s rephrase this:

Would you sacrifice the life of one person for which you might have mild disdain for five people?

After all, I don’t think the exercise works if its avoidable in any way, and if this was just a numbers game it wouldn’t matter that the man was fat or not unless they were using it as an excuse for why his one life could stop the train.

And yet, if we put it into numbers, if you value 5 unspecified lives over 1 unspecified lives and don’t see being fat as a positive indicator, it doesn’t matter. If x=’a life’ and n=’the modifier to one’s evaluation of an individual due to being fat’, then as long as all terms are positive, x-n<5x.

Furthermore, if you feel that mathematics cannot be applied to this situation, you probably either disagree with my statement that conscious inaction equals action or feel that you should have ‘no right to judge’ or some such.

Therefore, the indicator that the man is fat seems to be useless except as an excuse for why you jumping wouldn’t stop the train.

EDIT: Of course, if you feel that the moral thing is to cause as much death as possible, or that the individual being fat is something that induces you to be more likely to save that individual, this is not the case, but I suspect that these would not be common moral judgments in the general population.

Iron ent, I didn’t say that, I was saying that it is common for people to make sacrifices on OTHER’S behalf, without their consent, such as throwing a free human being onto the tracks “because it’s the right thing to do” and it will save five people.

It isn’t your choice to make unless you make it FOR YOUR SELF. You can always the YOU on the tracks, but it is immoral to force someone else to make a sacrifice for your ideals when you won’t sacrifice yourself for your ideals. Now I didn’t say the fat guy shouldn’t do the same, but if you’re not going to lead by example, you shouldn’t lead, you shouldn’t make descisions for other people without their consent, and you shouldn’t pretend like saving five is always better than allowing one to live.

What if the fat guy was a mechanical engineer that after witnessing the accident invented a safety mechanism which would later effectively save thousands more? Who’s life is worth more now? What if the people on the tracks were all convicted child molesters and the fat guy was the president of the united states? you just CANT know all the factors that go into a situation like this, and it’s really ignorant for people to pretend that they do.

As I said, I would not kill one to save five. If I directly and with intent caused a death, that would (to me) be much worse than watching five people die.

Of course, mathematically the sensible thing to do would be yielding that one life in favour of the five. But if we start seeing lives as numbers, then we’re in trouble either way. (This is not an accusation, just a fact. ) And in any such situation, there are many more factors than just mathematical superiority. happeh, again, brings up many important and valid points.

I do wish that C) Self-sacrifice was an available option, though. I’m not worth a dime. ^_^

If by “not worth a dime” you mean “significantly more than a dime,” then yes, I’d have to agree with you.

No, I don’t know the factors. If I did, my judgment would be different, in all likelihood. However, knowing nothing about these people, I can’t allow ‘maybes’ into my thought process, as I don’t even know the likelihood of such possibilities. So, I judge five unspecified lives to be worth more than one. You’re right, I can’t know the factors, and I don’t presume to think that I do; I make the best judgment I can based on what I know.

Also, as I said, for me, I consider conscious inaction to be equal to action, so whatever I do, I’m making a choice, to kill the fat man or the five people. If I could kill myself, I would, but the fact is that the only moral option (in my mind) is to kill the fat man to sae the five, given the circumstances in the OP. If you disagree, that’s fine; this is a moral point of wide disagreement and I have no way to know that my morals are correct here. Nevertheless, they are my morals, and I would feel worse about killing five people than killing one.

Here’s another circumstance. A madman tells you that he has six hostages. Either you must pick one to be killed, or all six will die. Do you choose one at random, or let all six die?

Choose the oldest/sickest

Rush the madman, he can’t kill all of us at once, let luck decide if skill is not enough to save them.

You’re dodging the question. Say that he’s talking to you through 2-way video. You can’t interfere other than to choose a hostage. What do you do?

I’d tell the mad guy I’m not going to pick, and then when he’s out of hostages he can be dealt with accordingly.

It’s one thing to kill someone for something they did wrong, it’s another to play along with someone else’s misdoings to try and manipulate a good outcome from it.

Well, you’re consistent, at least, even if I strongly disagree with your position.

The problem I have with situations like this is that it’s an attempt to get someone to do something undeniably immoral by disguising it with moral intentions.

Murder is murder, it’s neither necessarily good nor evil, but in only a few circumstances can it be justified. I can only justify it myself if the person being murdered is the one DIRECTLY at fault in a situation which poses a threat of equal or greater consequence than the murder in question. For example, I’d condone killing the madman to save the hostages, but not a hostage to kill a hostage.

Self sacrifice is a different story, if a person chooses to throw themself into harm’s way to save multiple others, then so be it. However, I am adamantly opposed to able-bodied people sacrificing others before themselves to do what they think is “the right thing to do”.

And that is where we disagree. While I feel that, of the three scenarios (kill the madman, self sacrifice, kill a hostage) you gave, killing a hostage is undoubtedly the least moral, it is still far, far more moral (five times as moral, in fact, knowing nothing else about the hostages) than letting all six die.

So, actually, I am denying that killing one hostage to save five is immoral.

EDIT: I should elaborate. I don’t feel that morality is an on/off switch; it’s a sliding scale. An action is only moral or immoral relative to the other choices available. I also feel that there are moral-neutral actions, incidentally.

I believe that there is always another way. You can’t say that you only have two choices, people are just too unpredictable, and the world we live in even more so. It may seem like I’m just dodging the question, but it is true.

Sure, there might be another way for that situation. But, even so, that’s not really the point of these types of questions; the point is to figure out what morals you value highest. Therefore, by taking a third, unintended path, you’re defeating the purpose and dodging the question, even if it is a possible answer.

But even that tells you about the person, showing that they cannot or will not decide between two deeply held beliefs that are in conflict and instead seeks an inventive solution to circumvent the problem. It really doesn’t matter what answer the person gives, it still shows you plenty about them, even if they “dodge the question”.

Well, true, I suppose. It tells me that they’re likely to freeze up if no other option is there or choose not to act.

Ok, then. Point conceded, dodging the question does tell me something about them, though I’d still like to know what their non-dodging answer is, even if it’s ‘I can’t decide’

I like the way vanilla thinks. I agree very much with what he says.

Outside the box.

Because there aren’t any cookies in the box. And it’s dark in there.

I think forcing people to make an “inside the box” answer is deceptive to their real nature. When the possible answers are few, people will just go with whatever they think will be the most socially accepted answer or whatever is at least somewhat close to what they’d choose. People can engineer some surprising solutions to problems at the drop of a hat if the stakes are high.

And if you give them the freedom to answer how ever they would like, assuming you don’t let them see other peoples responses, you can learn even more about what they are thinking (or at least claim to think, a healthy dose of cynicism never hurt anyone).

Why wouldn’t someone just cut the ropes?

Willing suspension of disbelief.

Or rather, of the victims.

Weren’t they tied down, not suspended?

Depends on your perspective. If they were on a bridge, then yes, they were suspended in that the construction kept them (and the train from falling). The ropes kept them “suspended” in their place. ^_^