Morality- what would you do?

No guarantee that the 'kid' has not already infected others or that the source of his infection can be removed. ?????

Haven't ya ever seen 28 days later?

Yeah, I'd be the one wielding the ax without a blink.

^ turning to look over Neo ^

Take one for the team, kid.

neo

In this scenario the kid hasn't infected anyone else at the time when the judgement needs be made. And disregard the source of the infection in this particular scenaro. It was a monkey that died in a fire before it had the chance to infect anyone but the little kid.

Given that it was only a 10% chance that a cure would ever be found, I would not risk others being infected. With those odds a cure would be found sooner or later, but chances are that more than a few people would die before that could happen. So I'd burn the kid. Kill one to save many.

I'm curious what makes this question fall into the spirituality and religion forum.

A question of moral fibre. I posted it here because this is where are the religious people are, those upstanding moral strongholds that we look to for the righteous path...

I would kill the child to save the rest of the population, without blinking an eye.

I would probably blink my eyes to avoid getting the blood spatter in them as the axe fell...

If you got blood spattered, you might be the next victim. Why not just quarantine the 'kid'?

Neologist- Did you read the original post on this thread????

Shoot the little son-of-a-b*tch, but leave him lying in the street, so as to spread the infection.

That way, you get the best of both worlds.

Though you have tightened the parameters considerably, this is a common conundrum. The philosophical/religious periodically debate the question. When one, or a small number have to be sacrificed to insure the survival of the many is a popular dramatic device. Steinbeck's "Lifeboat" and "Sophie's Choice" are two well-known examples.

However, the question isn't so much whether the few should be sacrificed to insure the survival of the many, but upon who's authority is that choice made. The decision is pretty much foregone, so long as we accept that survival of the many has value. Even in that event, who decides whether surviving is worthwhile?

The most fundamental positions are that the decision rests either with the individual, or with the group as a whole. At one end of the spectrum the decision can be made in one of three ways. First, the individual can decide to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. We term those folks heroic, and is the most common solution in literary situations of this sort. The old, infirm, or individual with the least to live for generously die to preserve the women, children and socially valuable. The individual assesses the situation and makes a personal decision. The second approach is that one or more individuals acting more or less separately of the group make the decision to sacrifice another individual. The third method is for one individual to make the decision for and on behalf of the entire group. The first approach is commendable, the second is an expression of anarchy, and the third may be either despotic, or representative in nature.

By the terms of the case before us, a child of tender years, the first approach is unlikely to prevail. The child's parents might make a decision for sacrifice independently, but that too is something unlikely to happen unless Momma and Poppa are either philosophers or utter rogues. For the decision to be taken by individuals acting independently, but it would be an expression of anarchy and the destruction of civilized behavior. That raises the question of how much should we value civilized behavior, social norms and the law of the pack. That brings us to the third possibility that a single individual, a leader, acting on behalf of the whole group takes on the responsibility for making such a wrenching decision.

Where does a leader gain the often-awful power and responsibility for making difficult and perhaps undesirable decisions on behalf of others? Naked and brutal force put Stalin at the head of the Soviet Union, and he held within his grasp the power to utterly destroy not only his own people, but a good part of the rest of humanity. The followers in such organizations have virtually no say in the matter of who is going to make monumental decisions affecting the whole. Decisions might be good, proper and necessary, but will be entirely dependant upon the character of the decision-maker. In Stalin's case, that's a pretty scary prospect. Sometimes the decision maker for a group will hold their position of leadership by right of birth, and the prospect of the decision genuinely being made for the good of the group goes up considerably. The group may choose as their representative for a limited time/purpose a leader, and this sort of leader is most likely to make decisions responsibly.

There are other special cases. For instance; in a small group the decision to sacrifice an individual for to insure the survival of the group can be made by a purely democratic poll. The other main special case is where an outside authority vests ultimate life/death decisions in the hands of a designated leader. The Captain of a naval vessel has absolute authority to make life/death decisions without regard for the feelings of his subordinates. That Captain, perceiving a danger to the rest of the fleet, is expected to sacrifice himself, his ship and his crew to preserve the fleet.

now.....what if it were your child? could you make such a swift decision. I know I couldn't.
(just throwing that into the mix too)

Suppose I have ten coins. A thief steals one of them and won't give it back unless I gamble my remaining nine in a wager with him. If I win, I end up with my original ten coins, if I lose I end up potless. For the gamble to make sense, I require a success rate greater than 90%. Since I estimate my chance of success to be only 10%, I should not proceed with the gamble and accept the loss of the one coin. Alternatively, if that one coin is a very special coin, having a value greater than 81 times the value of any one of my remaining coins, then again the gamble would make sense.


See, as all good psychopaths know, it's much easier when people are viewed as mere commodities. :wink:

DOH! It was so far back, I forgot!

Well, a bird in the hand....

BBB just had a thread on this, you brain-damaged freaks:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=93418

...is worth two in the bush. I suppose so, afterall ten unknown quantities are probably worth ten times one to somebody.

Let me ask, if you were that kid, would you sacrifice yourself to save the many?

If I was that kid...

I think I would. On the other hand, if my life was doomed anyway, I'd might not care about the consequences of my actions. Maybe I'd want to live, and resisted all efforts to end me and thereby ending the threat.

It's hard to know until something like that really happens. I'd like to think that I'd sacrifice myself though...

There was a study done in world war 2 of American soldiers who had been in battle for too long...they found 90% of them suffered combat fatigue, and the other 10% were sociopaths (they enjoyed killing).

...if 10% seems a high percentage, I'd say that sociopaths are more likely to enlist, and they would also be more likely to seek ways to get to the front lines.

Anyway...point being, I've no doubt that the sociopaths would happily take the kid out...but for those that aren't sociopaths, I doubt the ability to take the kid out is something they can profess (ie. I think that some who say they would, would not...and some who say they would not, would).