Cookie Thread Act 3: The Cookie Strikes Back

General
#28850

Kill the boi

1 Like
#28851

True

#28852

Results Summary

  • You passed
  • There are no tensions in your responses
  • Complication: it’s possible you’re an annoying nihilist
3 Likes
#28853

real

#28854

Absolutely not? Like what this is just objective fact

B might just be slightly less virtuous, or it might be slightly less reprehensible. We have no guidance here

2 Likes
#28855

im a winner

#28856

This activity is designed to explore our intuitions about a particular class of killings: namely, those that are also instances of “letting die”. The two killings featured in this activity fall into this class because the act by which the agent (i.e., the surgeon) kills takes time to cause death - time in which the agent can intervene but does not.

An interesting thing about this class of killings is that in particular circumstances it represents a challenge to what most people will take to be a moral rule that killing more people is worse than killing fewer people. In the two scenarios featured here, it is possible for the surgeon to avoid killing five people by killing a single other person (and using their organs to save the lives of the five people). However, according to the philosopher, Judith Jarvis Thomson, it is evident that he should do no such thing:

The surgeon must not operate on the young man. If he can find no other way of saving his five patients, he will now have to let them die - despite the fact that if he now lets them die, he will have killed them.

It seems, then, that the proposition that killing more people is morally worse than killing fewer people must be false. However, Thomson denies this, arguing instead that sometimes people will have to do what is morally worse, since it won’t be permitted for them to do what is morally better:

If the surgeon does not operate, so that he kills five, then it will later be true that he did something worse than he would have done if he had operated, killing only one - especially if his killing of the five was murder, committed out of a desire for money, and his killing of the one would have been, though misguided and wrongful, nevertheless a well-intentioned effort to save five lives. Taking this line would, of course, require saying that assessments of which acts are worse than which other acts do not by themselves settle the question what it is permissible for an agent to do.

1 Like
#28857

Dodging the issue in broad society often makes it worse, but I think in the case of Fortress of Lies dot com, it ends up being more productive to have a mutual understanding of “we’re not debating contentious topics here”. It’s difficult to moderate, it’s frustrating for the people involved (in a way that they would not be frustrated if the topic never came up in the first place), it often consumes entire threads and makes it difficult to have other conversations, etc.

3 Likes
#28858

Can we NOT do ethical dilemmas thread again

#28859

TOO LATE

3 Likes
#28860

STOP

1 Like
#28861

ONTO THE NEXY QUIZ

1 Like
#28862

More

1 Like
#28863

There is yet hope for your soul litten

#28864

the killing vs letting die distinction is fake btw

2 Likes
#28865

But not if you do the next quiz

#28866

You’re taking part in a quiz show where you’re going to win either a Ferrari or a goat. You’d prefer the Ferrari. This is non-negotiable. You may be the world’s greatest lover of all things goat, but in this instance you want to win the Ferrari.

You will be presented with three closed doors. Behind one door is the car, behind the other two, goats - the goats that you don’t want to win. The placement of car and goats has been randomly determined. There is no trickery involved here. The host of the quiz, the eponymous Monty Hall, will ask you to choose a door. He will then open one of the two remaining doors. There are three pertinent facts here. 1) Monty knows what is behind each door. 2) He will always reveal a goat when he opens the door. 3) He has no preference for any particular goat or door.

The question you have to answer is whether or not you increase your chances of winning the Ferrari by switching your original choice to the remaining unopened door.

So to repeat:

  • There are three doors, one has a Ferrari behind it, the other two, goats.
  • You choose a door.
  • Monty, having no preference for any particular goat or door, will open one of the two doors you haven’t chosen, revealing a goat.
  • This will leave two doors still closed, the door you originally chose, and the door that Monty could have chosen to open, but didn’t.
  • One of these two remaining doors has a goat behind it, the other a Ferrari.
  • Will you increase your chance of winning the Ferrari if you switch from your original choice, and ask Monty to open the other door?

To make your choice, select one of the options below, then click the Submit button!

Switch - I’m going to increase my chances of winning if I switch.
Don’t Switch - There are two doors, one has a goat, the other a car. It makes no difference if I switch. It’s a fifty-fifty chance.

1 Like
#28867

STOOOOP

2 Likes
#28868

this is literally the monty hall problem. the answer is switch

4 Likes
#28869

everyone knows this one