Questions of Ethics

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by betenoire

If I would personally be killed in saving those five people by flipping the switch - I would absolutely not flip the switch. I don't think that's even a question of ethics. The sense of self-preservation is strong with this one.

Even if those five people were not strangers, I would not flip the switch if the result would be that I die. Better that I live with their deaths than they live with mine.

As much as we may not wish it to be so, this is who we are. As it was put quite well a couple of hundred years ago:

"Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its
myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an
earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe,
who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would
be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful
calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very
strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he
would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of
human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could
thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was
a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the
effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of
Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And
when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane
sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his
business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with
the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had
happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself
would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his
little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but,
provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound
security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and
the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object
less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own."

Cheers
Aj