Random ethical/philosophical question. If you can believe it, I spend a sizeable chunk of my time trying to think of decisions that would be difficult to make, especially those that involve information one could not possibly have. I'll explain that later.
It started with this situation, which was straight from a dream.
I'm in my car, driving in some foreign city. I look around as the rain creeps down through my world, melting reality as though it was graced by Dahli's brush. There is an ambulance some distance in front of me, a semi truck behind. I somehow know that there is a man in the ambulance, a good man who keeps a good family. He is desperately hurt, undergoing some emergency procedure in transit. Suddenly, the ambulance has come to a dead stop in front of me.
The waveforms diverge, and two lives strike me in a flash, two paths fanning out from this moment.
I slam on my brakes, just barely able to stop short of collision. The truck behind tries to stop, but momentum is our enemy. We meet and are carried forward to the ambulance at a critical moment. An earthquake rolls through my world, and then through that of the man ahead of me. Something goes wrong at that precise moment, and the man perishes. His family never recovers emotionally, and confusion with the insurance company ensures that they are never financially secure again. My hands are clean of blame for the accident because my car was first struck. My sleep, when I can sleep, is restless, because I know what I know.
...or...
I do nothing. My car coasts forward into the ambulance a sliver in time sooner than before. The damage has been done by the time the truck hits. The technicians are somehow able to pull the man through, but he is paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. I am blamed for the accident. He and his family sue and win, but my insurance is unable to wholly cover the costs, and so I sink into a deep, life-long, and psychologically debilitating debt. My dreams remain just dreams. I never see the man or his family ever again.
I didn't snap awake after that dream, merely found myself sitting up in bed with my brow creased. What decision could one possibly make?
I'm serious, try to think about this one. Five minutes is just barely long enough, if you've considered everything.
...
Don't read any further until you've really thought about it.
...
Okay, fine, here goes. This is what I took into account.
The man has led a good life. He has thus far done nothing truly wrong.
The man has a family that depends on him, financially and emotionally.
My choice, the sacrifice, is between my comfort and his life.
Given these thoughts, my reaction was to take the second path. I am no doctor, but I value life more than you may know, especially one such as this ideal life weighed against my own. Then I had to consider the potential consequences. I never see the man or his family ever again. Perhaps he continues to lead a good life, but perhaps not. Maybe he is unable, despite his new financial security, to cope with his injures, and he becomes abusive and bitter. Maybe his relationships crumble to ash, and no more good ever comes from his life. In the dream, I knew nothing of this.
Would I be doing him a service by letting him die without all that regret? Would he, given the chance, thank me for it? Even given all of that information, we remain as blind to such things as always.
After a little more consideration, I decided to slam on my brakes. Why? Because that's exactly what I would do if I didn't know anything of this. My partial view of the future did not give me enough to make a decision, so I made a decision based on having no view of the future. Yet, at one point, I could be certain that I would act against my instincts and slam into the ambulance instead, because of a piece of the future that I thought I knew. A partial view of the future is no view at all.
This is all conjecture, of course. Nobody can see the future, in part or in whole. The interesting thing about these questions is that they make us realize how little information we go off of when making a decision. I could take a short-cut to school one day and get into a car wreck with terrorists on their way to deliver a bomb that would have later killed hundreds of people. I could just take the normal way, and I would hear about it on the news weeks later. I would mourn distantly and get on with my life, knowing nothing of what might have been.
We make decisions knowing so very little of what may come of them. Perhaps we flirt and give someone the wrong impression, or perhaps we let go of a loved one prematurely. Perhaps we were even warned of the potential consequences of such actions. We look back on these events when the future is open to us and we regret because we wish that we had been perfect, that our Vision had been complete enough to enlighten us with the wisest answers. We wish we had listened to the minority voices within us that somehow divined the truth, but it is just as foolish to regret ignorance of the future as it is to not consider the consequences of ones actions at all.
I'm kind of babbling and it's 3:30 already, so I'll go ahead and pose my new quandry, now that it is obsolete.
Imagine a person with a unique ability. He sees the future lives of the people he meets. He can feel the melting pot of emotions they will feel. The closer to a person he is, the more of this future he can feel. He uses this ability, when he can, to help those he loves. As he acts, he feels the future twist into its new form. He steers his friends from harm whenever he can.
Right now, you are this person.
You have a friend, a very close friend. You know that his or her emotions are about to come under attack, that in the near future something specific happens from which he never quite recovers. Your view of the future is dependent on how close you are to this friend, and so your view of the future darkens as you consider moments further in time. You know that if you do nothing, you and this friend will stay close, but he will lead a miserable life.
You figure out as best you can the cause of this emotional trauma, and believe that you can halt or prevent it, but there is a problem. The action you believe will prevent the trauma from occuring puts a great distance between yourself and this friend. As such, you have no knowledge of his future if you act, only if you do not. You know that if you take action, you will never be close with him again, but he may be happy. You know that if you do not take action, you will remain close, but he will be unhappy.
You rely on your abilities to make your decisions for you, so you are totally lost. You can act, but if you are wrong your friend will be unhappy and you will never be close again. If you are right, you will not be close with your friend but he may be happy. If you do nothing, your friend will be miserable for most of his life.
This is a different argument from the last question, believe it or not. Think... given all of that, what would you do?
Good night, my friends.
It started with this situation, which was straight from a dream.
I'm in my car, driving in some foreign city. I look around as the rain creeps down through my world, melting reality as though it was graced by Dahli's brush. There is an ambulance some distance in front of me, a semi truck behind. I somehow know that there is a man in the ambulance, a good man who keeps a good family. He is desperately hurt, undergoing some emergency procedure in transit. Suddenly, the ambulance has come to a dead stop in front of me.
The waveforms diverge, and two lives strike me in a flash, two paths fanning out from this moment.
I slam on my brakes, just barely able to stop short of collision. The truck behind tries to stop, but momentum is our enemy. We meet and are carried forward to the ambulance at a critical moment. An earthquake rolls through my world, and then through that of the man ahead of me. Something goes wrong at that precise moment, and the man perishes. His family never recovers emotionally, and confusion with the insurance company ensures that they are never financially secure again. My hands are clean of blame for the accident because my car was first struck. My sleep, when I can sleep, is restless, because I know what I know.
...or...
I do nothing. My car coasts forward into the ambulance a sliver in time sooner than before. The damage has been done by the time the truck hits. The technicians are somehow able to pull the man through, but he is paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. I am blamed for the accident. He and his family sue and win, but my insurance is unable to wholly cover the costs, and so I sink into a deep, life-long, and psychologically debilitating debt. My dreams remain just dreams. I never see the man or his family ever again.
I didn't snap awake after that dream, merely found myself sitting up in bed with my brow creased. What decision could one possibly make?
I'm serious, try to think about this one. Five minutes is just barely long enough, if you've considered everything.
...
Don't read any further until you've really thought about it.
...
Okay, fine, here goes. This is what I took into account.
The man has led a good life. He has thus far done nothing truly wrong.
The man has a family that depends on him, financially and emotionally.
My choice, the sacrifice, is between my comfort and his life.
Given these thoughts, my reaction was to take the second path. I am no doctor, but I value life more than you may know, especially one such as this ideal life weighed against my own. Then I had to consider the potential consequences. I never see the man or his family ever again. Perhaps he continues to lead a good life, but perhaps not. Maybe he is unable, despite his new financial security, to cope with his injures, and he becomes abusive and bitter. Maybe his relationships crumble to ash, and no more good ever comes from his life. In the dream, I knew nothing of this.
Would I be doing him a service by letting him die without all that regret? Would he, given the chance, thank me for it? Even given all of that information, we remain as blind to such things as always.
After a little more consideration, I decided to slam on my brakes. Why? Because that's exactly what I would do if I didn't know anything of this. My partial view of the future did not give me enough to make a decision, so I made a decision based on having no view of the future. Yet, at one point, I could be certain that I would act against my instincts and slam into the ambulance instead, because of a piece of the future that I thought I knew. A partial view of the future is no view at all.
This is all conjecture, of course. Nobody can see the future, in part or in whole. The interesting thing about these questions is that they make us realize how little information we go off of when making a decision. I could take a short-cut to school one day and get into a car wreck with terrorists on their way to deliver a bomb that would have later killed hundreds of people. I could just take the normal way, and I would hear about it on the news weeks later. I would mourn distantly and get on with my life, knowing nothing of what might have been.
We make decisions knowing so very little of what may come of them. Perhaps we flirt and give someone the wrong impression, or perhaps we let go of a loved one prematurely. Perhaps we were even warned of the potential consequences of such actions. We look back on these events when the future is open to us and we regret because we wish that we had been perfect, that our Vision had been complete enough to enlighten us with the wisest answers. We wish we had listened to the minority voices within us that somehow divined the truth, but it is just as foolish to regret ignorance of the future as it is to not consider the consequences of ones actions at all.
I'm kind of babbling and it's 3:30 already, so I'll go ahead and pose my new quandry, now that it is obsolete.
Imagine a person with a unique ability. He sees the future lives of the people he meets. He can feel the melting pot of emotions they will feel. The closer to a person he is, the more of this future he can feel. He uses this ability, when he can, to help those he loves. As he acts, he feels the future twist into its new form. He steers his friends from harm whenever he can.
Right now, you are this person.
You have a friend, a very close friend. You know that his or her emotions are about to come under attack, that in the near future something specific happens from which he never quite recovers. Your view of the future is dependent on how close you are to this friend, and so your view of the future darkens as you consider moments further in time. You know that if you do nothing, you and this friend will stay close, but he will lead a miserable life.
You figure out as best you can the cause of this emotional trauma, and believe that you can halt or prevent it, but there is a problem. The action you believe will prevent the trauma from occuring puts a great distance between yourself and this friend. As such, you have no knowledge of his future if you act, only if you do not. You know that if you take action, you will never be close with him again, but he may be happy. You know that if you do not take action, you will remain close, but he will be unhappy.
You rely on your abilities to make your decisions for you, so you are totally lost. You can act, but if you are wrong your friend will be unhappy and you will never be close again. If you are right, you will not be close with your friend but he may be happy. If you do nothing, your friend will be miserable for most of his life.
This is a different argument from the last question, believe it or not. Think... given all of that, what would you do?
Good night, my friends.
posted by Casey at
03:49
