Interesting test - fascinating article.

http://www.time-blog.com/graphics_script/2007/moralityquiz/index.html

The test is about "morality" and compassion.

The article is about both and very interesting.

answers are, but don't know what I'd do if actually in a situation that dire. I haven't read the article yet, but will.

1. Yes, and then want to kill myself.
2. Probably not, though I would suggest it.
3a. Yes.
3b. No, nor would I want to.
3c. No, nor would I want to.

... the solo man was your father or brother? :eyes:

What if, in 3b and 3c, the pack of people are my father, mother, fiancée, brother, and sister? That changes things as well.

Not knocking you, but as a dial-up user, clicking a link could mean 4-5 minutes (or more) trying to decipher the title of your post and it's relevance.

Please include a short description of what you're talking about.

Thanks.

The article is well worth the dialup dilemma.

Here's the quiz:


Scenerio 1: The Crying Baby

It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately. A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?

I could not smother the child.

I could smother the child.

Scenerio 2: The Life Boat
Illustration for TIME by John Ritter
You're in a lifeboat with several other people. The boat is overloaded and will capsize soon killing everyone aboard unless you lighten the load by one person. One of the passengers is grievously injured and is certain to die soon, but is fully alert and aware of everything that is going on. Could you throw that person overboard, knowing that that would save everyone else and that the person would know what you were doing while you were doing it?

I could not throw the grievously injured person overbaord.

I could throw the grievously injured person overbaord.
Scenerio 3a: The Trolley

Illustration for TIME by John Ritter
An out of control trolley is heading down a track toward five unsuspecting people and will surely kill them all. You could throw a switch diverting it to a siding, but an equally unsuspecting man is standing there and the train will kill him instead. Could you throw the switch, killing one to save five?

I could not throw the switch.

I could throw the switch.
Scenerio 3b: The Trolley


In another version of the trolley dilemma, you and the man are on a bridge and you would have to push him onto the track to save the other five.

I could not push the man onto the track.

I could push the man onto the track.

Scenerio 3c: The Trolley

In a third version of the trolley dilemma, you could throw a switch catapulting him onto the track, thereby not having to touch him as you kill him. Could you do either of these other scenarios?

I could not throw the switch.

I could throw the switch.

It's an old test that I've seen in philosophy texts.

There are more creative ways to shush a child.

I'm generally not one to look at "either/or" situations as being the highlight of morality. It's called surviving, but it isn't our highest moral calling.

I also thought in terms of, what if the injured person and you were the same? Would you have the ability to sacrifice yourself for the survival of the group?

understanding morality. I have seen them used to try to trap pacifists, with the sceptics not realizing that many pacifists have been using them themselves to clarify their views.

Anyway, the point is that there are no right or wrong answers. The situations are set up to see how you approach the problem, not solve it. You are supposed to be extremely uncomfortable with the choices, and take a while to work out some sort of answer.

With all of these, your action, or inaction, will end up with someone being killed. One question is whether your actual taking of a life is more or less moral than you inaction resulting in lives being taken-- it's not simply about calculating the numbers of dead, it's about your personal responsibility for actively taking a life by your own hands.

Since events beyond your control have already decided that life will be taken, your decision is how those lives will be taken-- will you decide which lives are most important, or will you leave it to others?

How's this one...

Your spouse is ill and needs medicine "right now" or will die before the night is over. The only pharmacist open is charging $200 for $100 worth of medicine, insists on cash on the counter, and you don't have the money.

What to do?

I'm certain there is no such thing as certainty.

Or, at least, the only honest answer.

... is the scientific research into the biological origins of such morality moral itself if the results of such research can be (will be?) used to "switch off" the biological 'machinery' of morality for the purposes of exploitation?

It might call for a change of the motto to : "Be (Almost) All You Can Be."

Assuming such a "switch" could be reversed ... what's the chance a human could remain sane with such memories?

Hmmmm?

as they assume you have prior knowledge of what will happen if you do not do these deeds. Few real life situations are like that.

not anything I'd be willing to consider as "morality" questions. Not matter how you answer those questions, you can be condemned for making an "immoral" choice.

Is the opprobrium of others of greater concern to you than your own self-esteem? I find it fascinating that "condemnation" (assumedly by others) even rose to the level of posting.

It didn't even occur to me. (Thank God.) But that's just me. :shrug:

no real right or wrong answers. I've been in classrooms where these kinds of questions have been discussed, and you might be amazed at how heated the discussion got, and how negatively some answers were received.

My self-esteem is quite healthy, thank you, and strong enough that I don't need to announce to the world what I'd do in those scenarios -- which are for the most part extremely unlikely to happen. I'm reminded more than a little about the argument that just a little torture is okay if we have a prisoner who can tell us the location of a ticking bomb, but only if we torture that person. Really? Maybe someone's willingness to sacrifice someone, even a baby, in the above situations isn't very much different from being willing to torture someone.

Extreme situations which forced one to make extreme choices.

I'm posting a snip from the article in the hopes that a taste of this interesting piece will prompt more people to read it. I, also, found it to be very interesting.



----------------
If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind—one so sublime, we fold it into a larger "soul." The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

We're a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the very organs from our bodies and give them to one another. And at the same time, we slaughter one another. The past 15 years of human history are the temporal equivalent of those subatomic particles that are created in accelerators and vanish in a trillionth of a second, but in that fleeting instant, we've visited untold horrors on ourselves—in Mogadishu, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur, Beslan, Baghdad, Pakistan, London, Madrid, Lebanon, Israel, New York City, Abu Ghraib, Oklahoma City, an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania—all of the crimes committed by the highest, wisest, most principled species the planet has produced. That we're also the lowest, cruelest, most blood-drenched species is our shame—and our paradox.

The deeper that science drills into the substrata of behavior, the harder it becomes to preserve the vanity that we are unique among Earth's creatures. We're the only species with language, we told ourselves—until gorillas and chimps mastered sign language. We're the only one that uses tools then—but that's if you don't count otters smashing mollusks with rocks or apes stripping leaves from twigs and using them to fish for termites.

What does, or ought to, separate us then is our highly developed sense of morality, a primal understanding of good and bad, of right and wrong, of what it means to suffer not only our own pain—something anything with a rudimentary nervous system can do—but also the pain of others. That quality is the distilled essence of what it means to be human. Why it's an essence that so often spoils, no one can say.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1685055_1685076_1686619,00.html

Without mass understanding of how this works, we could easily be led to that "tribalism"--we are tenuously close already.

Chilling.

Edit: recommended

The only way to silence the crying baby is to kill it? What utter crap.

An unwinnable dilemma, meant only to see how you would react under pressure or your ability to explain your actions.