Ethics [Thursday, April 21, 2011, 1st period]

[sith_happened]

"Good morning, class," Anakin said, sweeping into the classroom with his cape billowing out behind him. "Today's your final exam. As with most things in this course, there are not necessarily right or wrong answers. I only want you to explain your choices. If you leave me with half-assed or badly argued replies, that's when I grow unhappy."

He passed out the exams. "You've been an adequate class, more or less." Which was high praise, for Anakin. "Begin."

Comments

Question #3

[sith_happened]

A rebel who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been caught. Unfortunately, she has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It's possible that hundreds of people may die and the authorities cannot make her divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. What do you do and why?

a) Torture her to get the information. There's no time left to be reasonable.
b) Torture her and her family to get the information. If you're going to do something illegal, might as well be really, really thorough.
c) Continue working through the the legal structure of the judicial system and hope for the best.
d) None of the above. Perhaps your dimension works differently?

Re: Question #3

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

A rebel who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been caught. Unfortunately, she has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It's possible that hundreds of people may die and the authorities cannot make her divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. What do you do and why?

a) Torture her to get the information. There's no time left to be reasonable.
b) Torture her and her family to get the information. If you're going to do something illegal, might as well be really, really thorough.
c) Continue working through the the legal structure of the judicial system and hope for the best.
d) None of the above. Perhaps your dimension works differently?

Katniss wasn't sure whether she was going to utterly fail this test, or do really, really well. Didn't really matter, all the same.

Threaten, but take no further action. Frighten her into talk, if she is weak enough. It depends entirely upon who is endangered here, and who I'd side with.

She'd be that rebel. And she knew which answer Snow would chose.

Re: Question #3

[angelo_wings]

Dammit. It would have been too easy if all the questions were as simple as the last one. This one took her a while.

The first thing she wrote -- above the question, before circling an answer, was:

I want to know what she's rebelling against and why. Is she fighting a repressive government? Are people being killed, and she wants to bring light to it? I mean, how serious is this resistance movement? It's never okay to kill civilians, though, so I'm still against them, but why did they feel they had to go that far?

Maybe she was sympathizing too much with the rebel, since she'd been a resistance fighter herself.

She very, very hesitantly circled a but wasn't anywhere near to being done.

Are we sure the bombs are really there? Is there no way to make them shut off without information from her? Do we not have time to evacuate? If there really, really, really isn't any choice and really, really, really isn't any time left, then I pick a, but can we please just maybe do weird psychological stuff to her instead of, I don't know, cutting her liver out? I don't like what it would make us into if we had to torture her but I don't think I could deal with the bombs going off if I didn't.

Re: Question #3

[heromaniac]

Momoko had to stop and look up at Professor Skywalker. Really? Torture?

She circled d and c.

I'd make sure she was handed over to the police to take care of questioning her more, then phone the Professor to see if he had anything that could find the bombs, while my team and I searched for the bombs.

Re: Question #3

[notlikebobby.livejournal.com]

c) The legal structure of the judicial system is there for a reason. There's no reason why major areas can't be evacuated as much as possible in the short time left and that qualified professionals can continue their efforts to find the bombs.