Hot Dogs and Chapstick

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My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

The water from my shower this morning smelled like hot dogs and Chapstick.

Just sharing.

 

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Topic #92: An out of control train is about to run over a pile of happy puppies. You are standing at the control switch and can pull the lever to direct the train onto a different track, saving their lives. But that other track has a smaller pile of equally happy puppies on it. What do you do and why?

I think this is a lame remake of the original philosophical question of the value of lives and self involvement.

There are two original scenarios, both involving different degrees of self involvement. The first places you in front of a lever of a trolley that is headed straight towards three people. If you pull the lever, the trolley will switch to a different track and start heading straight towards two people. If you do nothing, the trolley will kill three people, but if you get involved, the trolley will kill two people. Most people would say that they would pull the lever because saving two lives is better than saving three.

The second original scenario is that you’re on top of a bridge next to a fat man when you see a trolley heading straight towards two people. If you push the fat man off the bridge onto the tracks, he will block the way and stop the trolley so the two people will survive. In this scenario, most people would choose to let the two people die because they would feel like a murderer for pushing a man off a bridge to save two other people.

Finally, a variation of the first scenario is if the three people the train is heading towards are three homeless people, and the two people are the president and his wife. After this change, people start pondering about the value of an individual life, and if everyone really is equal (which, in my opinion, is obviously not true).

However, this answer may surprise many people, but if I was the person at the lever, I would not flip it to save three people and sacrifice two rather than save two people and let three die. I think that the fact that these people are standing on train or trolley tracks is dumb in the first place, but I don’t want to interfere with the randomness and dynamics of life. It just happened to be that on that day, there are three people who are unlucky rather than two, and the two people who got lucky that day should not be sacrificed to reverse the misfortune of three people. However, in the case of the president, if the president was standing in the group of three people, I would switch the lever because the president has enough status and power for others to be sacrificed for his survival.

In the case of the puppies, I would do the same thing; I would not pull the lever because based on the randomness of the world (or, if you’re religious, then because of the choice of your god), the larger pile of puppies were, for whatever reason, destined to die.

 

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

 

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