EPTSo say there is a village of 100 anonymous people held hostage. You have the ability to save those one hundred people, but in order to do so, you have to kill your best friend.
Poll: Would you kill your best friend?
No (42)
70%
Yes (18)
30%
60 total votes
Yes (18)
60 total votes
Your vote: Would you kill your best friend?
Say there is a village of 100 anonymous people held hostage. You have the ability to save those one hundred people, but in order to do so, you have to kill one anonymous person.
Poll: Would you kill him/her?
Yes (43)
74%
No (15)
26%
58 total votes
No (15)
58 total votes
Your vote: Would you kill him/her?
Why did you choose the answer you chose?
EDIT: For clarification purposes, it's a very strict dichotomy: either you save your best friend and 100 people die, or you kill your best friend and save 100 lives. The same goes for the other question.
+ Show Spoiler +
My brother is going through medical school interviews right now, and he posed this question to me a few hours ago. We ended up getting into a heated debate and I said some things he took a lot of offense to and I deeply regret. I shortly found out that entire family disagrees with what I think, but I am incapable of understanding why that is. I might post my opinion later, but for now, I don't want to influence anyone's thoughts. This is actually very distressing to me, despite the fact that I know there isn't a black and white angle to this, I still feel like there is a very key part that I'm completely missing. At least I hope there is, because otherwise it means I'm a complete lunatic because I can't even begin to understand the other side.
EDIT2:
+ Show Spoiler +
Since this has already generated enough results I'm going to post the issue I had with it...
What Sultan.P said is the exact dichotomy I had with my brother; he also refused to play God (as it were) and said that it is impossible for him to judge the worthiness of human life, while I was on the same side as the purported Russian and agreed with him: essentially, that the needs of the many outweigh the few.
However, I've come to realize that simple numbers is an overly simplistic way to quantify something like human life, and that it simply does not do justice to something that is so heavy. An interesting thought that I thought about was in-line with the Russian's: if one healthy individual can save five lives by donating all his organs, then why do we not simply kill the healthy individual and take his organs? Theoretically speaking that seems to be the same issue: after all, in both scenarios we're exchanging the life of one normal person for that of many in peril. Putting things into perspective though, the situation I just mentioned many would consider morally evil (I do myself as well).
Yet, that being said, if I had to make a choice in this scenario, no matter what, I inevitably gravitate to the killing of both my best friend and the anonymous individual. I'm actually startled by the difference in polling results. The difference between killing a best friend and killing an anonymous individual is simply the personal relation/attitude, and I was under the erroneous assumption that anyone who was willing to kill the anonymous individual would not let mere feelings interrupt with their judgment. And of course, I'm completely wrong. Still, I breathe a slight sigh of relief and I understand something else my brother was talking about: that there perhaps a significant part of humanity is not only the ability to act on empathy and sympathy, rather than cold callous reasoning, but also the choice to act irrationally (that is, act against simple logic). And perhaps that's a good thing after all.
Or maybe I'm just writing a load of bullcrap. lol. Anyways, thanks guys. I feel a lot better after this.
What Sultan.P said is the exact dichotomy I had with my brother; he also refused to play God (as it were) and said that it is impossible for him to judge the worthiness of human life, while I was on the same side as the purported Russian and agreed with him: essentially, that the needs of the many outweigh the few.
However, I've come to realize that simple numbers is an overly simplistic way to quantify something like human life, and that it simply does not do justice to something that is so heavy. An interesting thought that I thought about was in-line with the Russian's: if one healthy individual can save five lives by donating all his organs, then why do we not simply kill the healthy individual and take his organs? Theoretically speaking that seems to be the same issue: after all, in both scenarios we're exchanging the life of one normal person for that of many in peril. Putting things into perspective though, the situation I just mentioned many would consider morally evil (I do myself as well).
Yet, that being said, if I had to make a choice in this scenario, no matter what, I inevitably gravitate to the killing of both my best friend and the anonymous individual. I'm actually startled by the difference in polling results. The difference between killing a best friend and killing an anonymous individual is simply the personal relation/attitude, and I was under the erroneous assumption that anyone who was willing to kill the anonymous individual would not let mere feelings interrupt with their judgment. And of course, I'm completely wrong. Still, I breathe a slight sigh of relief and I understand something else my brother was talking about: that there perhaps a significant part of humanity is not only the ability to act on empathy and sympathy, rather than cold callous reasoning, but also the choice to act irrationally (that is, act against simple logic). And perhaps that's a good thing after all.
Or maybe I'm just writing a load of bullcrap. lol. Anyways, thanks guys. I feel a lot better after this.
