Help a girl out... take my ethics poll!

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Should you pull the lever?

  • You are morally required to pull the lever.

    Votes: 74 29.1%
  • You are morally permitted, but not required, to pull the lever.

    Votes: 154 60.6%
  • You are morally prohibited from pulling the lever.

    Votes: 25 9.8%

  • Total voters
    254
Utilitarianism. Provide the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people.

Pull the lever.

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In the event that you coudl truly do nothing for the one person on the other side of the track, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
 
prazmatic said:
Everybody here is forgetting the obvious answer here:

Step 1: Pull the lever (5 people are saved)

Step 2: Run like hell to the other side of the track

Step 3: Pull the other guy off the tracks before the train hits (1 person saved)

Net survival: 6/6, everyones happy!! :D

Too obvious. If it was possible, everyone who really cared would pick that, therefore there's no conflict, which is the point.
 
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MoosePilot said:
Too obvious. If it was possible, everyone who really cared would pick that, therefore there's no conflict, which is the point.

Well of course. I just thought Id inject a little humor into the thread. If you want a serious anwer... well... I guess Id just have to ponder that a bit more and get back.
 
TheDarkSide said:
Hello fellow SDNers,

I was wondering if you could help me out by taking a little poll. I'm going to relate a scenario, and I would like you to vote for the option that your gut instinct tells you is the morally correct action to take. Don't worry if you can't think of a specific reason why; I'm interested primarily in your instinct. If you would like to share the explanation of why you feel the way you do, please feel free to comment, though. :)

You are standing by a fork in a train track. Down one fork you see 5 people tied to the track. Down the other fork, you see 1 person tied to the track. A train is coming. If you do nothing, the train will kill the 5 people. But you are standing next to a lever that, if you pull it, will change the direction so that the train will kill the 1 person instead of the 5.

To reiterate, your options are:

Do nothing. 5 people will die.
Pull the lever. 1 person will die (who would have lived had you not acted).

What is the morally correct action in this scenario?

Thanks for your participation!
TheDarkSide said:
This isn't "your" ethics poll.. this is a famous ethical quandry that is given in every intro to phil class- besides, why do you even care what anonymous strangers think?
 
emgirl said:
This isn't "your" ethics poll.. this is a famous ethical quandry that is given in every intro to phil class- besides, why do you even care what anonymous strangers think?
If you read the OPs later posts, it is revealed that the information was used for a term paper. It would also be ok if she was just curious!
 
emgirl said:
This isn't "your" ethics poll.. this is a famous ethical quandry that is given in every intro to phil class- besides, why do you even care what anonymous strangers think?

Who pissed in your Cheerios? Why do you care what polls an anonymous stranger is posting?

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that after I got a decent number of responses I explained about it being the trolley problem and why I asked the question.
 
"Everything happens for a reason"... nope it doesn't... things happen in life that are irrational and absurd...

Yeah... the Tsunami that killed thousands upon thousands of people... yeah that happened for a reason... NO IT DIDNT

Something that would further complicate this problem would be if the five people were prisoners and the one person was a physician who actually contributed to society... Are we equipped to decide which lives are more valuable? As an elitist I would say yes, but the emotional trauma of condeming anyone to death is something that no one should ever have to go through...

I would say cross this bridge when you get to it...
 
astrife said:
"Everything happens for a reason"... nope it doesn't... things happen in life that are irrational and absurd...

Yeah... the Tsunami that killed thousands upon thousands of people... yeah that happened for a reason... NO IT DIDNT

Something that would further complicate this problem would be if the five people were prisoners and the one person was a physician who actually contributed to society... Are we equipped to decide which lives are more valuable? As an elitist I would say yes, but the emotional trauma of condeming anyone to death is something that no one should ever have to go through...

I would say cross this bridge when you get to it...

It's getting harder and harder to read these threads without getting a headache. It seems every argument turns toward "elitism" or other key phrases that people revert to when everything else is said and done.

PLEASE. It was JUST a poll. Do you REALLY think this would happen?

And the tsumani was caused by a huge earthquake in the Indian ocean (9.15 Richter). That sounds like a reason to me. Reason doesn't have to be some philisophical or religious debate. It just means there was something behind the event.

Seriously, people, stop overanalyzing. Save it for the psych rotation.
 
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