[ExI] Morality (was: atheists declare religions as scams)

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, John Clark wrote:

> 1) A  trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 
> five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. 
> Fortunately you could flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a 
> different track saving the lives of the five. Unfortunately there is a 
> single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch and kill 
> one man or do nothing and just watch five people die ?

Maybe I shouldn't but I probably would. Unless, judging from five people 
positions and the fact that it only takes one to stop the trolley it would 
make more sense to do nothing... Unless I took some other thoughts on 
this, how about saving those who were younger or more sympathetic?

Or maybe something else, like yelling loud. Depends on how much I would be 
prepared to flush away any rational thinking. I don't think morals & 
ethics apply here.

> 2) As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. 
> You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by 
> dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very 
> fat man next to you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him 
> over the bridge and onto the track killing him to save five people. 
> Should you push the fat man over the edge or do nothing? 

My cynical me tells me, stay away from the fat man, because you weight 
less and if he has same thinking it will be him throwing you rather than 
the other way. So, step back. And again, step back, slowly.

However, if at any time later I would become convinced that mad 
philosopher forced me into his mad experiment, I would probably set on 
finding him and kicking his ass very, very hard. Maybe he wouldn't learn 
much from this but I guess I would feel better. But if he had enough wits 
to tie five people, he would certainly learn, even if only a bit.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **