fandomhigh | Student Assembly, Wednesday afternoon, September 9, 2020

Entry tags:

!event: assembly

Student Assembly, Wednesday afternoon, September 9, 2020

Well, there wasn't an obstacle course this week, so things were looking up, right, students? Maybe? A little?

Anakin made his way to the front of the stage, holding out a piece of paper he'd received from the office. "Today we have some very special guests," he began, "so everyone shut up and listen to them, right? We have--" he read from the paper, "--Mikhail Robespierre and Janet, presenting about moral philosophy. Ethics students, I very much expect you to be paying attention."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh boy, another one! You are probably not armed today, so you have that going for you.

Mikhail Robespierre and Janet, take it away!

So the pings don't fall out.

An older man in a lavender suit and a peacock bow tie took the stage followed by a woman dressed in a purple dress and shirt.

Neither of them were a man or a woman. One was actually a demon and the other was a mainframe interface to universal knowledge but unless you can see in nine dimensions you might not pick up on that.

“Hello, My name is-”

There was a slight pause there as the man struggled to remember his name and the other person began to shake their head back and forth sensing oncoming doom.

“-Mikhail Robespierre.”

The person who had been shaking her head just closed their eyes and sighed.

“And this is my assistant-”

“Janet!” They said cutting him off entirely but with a cheerful smile. “My name is Janet.”

“Mikhail” smiled and continued on. “Today we are going to talk a little bit about moral philosophy. Not in an abstract way but how in each of our lives we face choices every day and how we resolve those choices. We all have a voice in our head. That voice doesn't tell us what to do or not do, but it does warn us when we do things that don't feel good or right. We’re going to explore that today with something called ‘The Trolley Problem’. Could we have our volunteers come up?”

As the volunteers made their way up, “Mikhail” continued to talk. “The Trolley problem was first introduced by Philippa Foot in 1967. In this thought experiment we are in control of a runaway trolley headed toward five people who will be killed by the collision, but it could be steered onto a track on which there is only one person. Today with the help of my assistant here we’re going to experience a little more interactive-"

“But wholesome!” Janet interjected

“-but wholesome version of this little experiment. Now, there are many variations of the trolley problem and we’re going to walk through a couple of them Janet? If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Janet said and gave a simple nod of their head.

As Janet nodded their head, the auditorium changed slightly and there was an audible "ding". Now instead of the stage there was a giant view screen for all in the auditorium to see. But now the voluntolds were standing on a trolley that was running out of control down the street to a set of five large teddy bears which were all in the middle of the road having a picnic. To the right was another teddy bear sitting on a separate track and waving cheerfully at the trolley.

"Let's get started shall we?"

"Hello cat-person!" Janet said with a cheerful wave.

"Mihail" smiled. "In front of you is a switch that allows you to change the track you are on. You cannot stop the car as the brakes are not working and the momentum will not allow you to slow down. You can either stay on this course and knock over the five teddy bears or change course to knock over the one. What do you choose?”

“Okay, Eleanor-”

“Wait. How did you know my name?”

“Lucky guess. Same situation, Trolley, five teddy bears over here and one over there. What do you choose?”

"Hello, young lady," Mikhail said politely and gestured to the controls. "In front of you is a switch that allows you to change the track you are on. You cannot stop the car as the brakes are not working and the momentum will not allow you to slow down. You can either stay on this course and knock over the five teddy bears or change course to knock over the one. What do you choose?”

“Now for you my stylish friend we are going to do something slightly different. Here we have five bears wearing knock off Michael Kors and on the other side a very well dressed bear that is wearing Christian Siriano. What do you choose?”

"Here we go my well-robed friend," Mikhail said waving to the controls. “In front of you is a switch that allows you to change the track you are on. You cannot stop the car as the brakes are not working and the momentum will not allow you to slow down. You can either stay on this course and knock over the five teddy bears or change course to knock over the one. What do you choose?”

“Now for you my stylish friend, we are going to do something also slightly different. Here we have five bears wearing knock off Louis Vuitton and on the other side a very artistically acclaimed bear which could be the bear version of Banksy. What do you choose?”

Mikhail sighed. None of this was really working out as he expected. “Okay. Let’s change this up a bit. Janet?”

Janet smiled and nodded. There was a ding and suddenly the room had shifted from a trolley into an operating room theater. “In this particular case we have five teddy bears that are in need of organ transplants. The one teddy bear here is completely healthy. As a doctor do you… um. Remove the organs from the one teddy bear or let the remaining teddy bears go nappy time for good?”

For those who need reacting

Eleanor poked at the switch that would switch between tracks. "Can I make this go faster?"

"Um. I guess?" Mikhail said feeling slightly disturbed. "Janet?"

"Okey Dokey!" Janet said with a thumbs up and the trolley sped up.

"What are you going to choose Eleanor?"

"I'm choosing the five bears," Eleanor said now perching herself on the edge of the controls. "I want to see those forkers explode in a ball of fuzz."

"Yeah," Rosa murmured, wondering how she got stuck doing another one of these but at least the last one had paintball, "because that's how the medical world works."

She sucked in a breath, considered the teddy bears, and then shrugged.

"Remove the organs from the healthy teddy bear," she decided, "then make the other five fight for who gets them."

Rosa.

This was for school.

Actually, that had probably influenced her answer a lot.

Mikhail looked slightly disturbed by this.

The five bears were hit and they flew into the air all crying out "Wheeeeeee!" before exploding into puffs of fluff and glitter that spelled out "No one was harmed in this thought experiment."

Mikhail looked at Janet. "You know. That didn't have the effect I thought it would."

Janet just shrugged in turn.

"Well that was cool," Eleanor said happily. "And will probably have no bearing on my future whatsoever."

Definitely not what Mikhail was expecting.

"Uh. Yes. Thank you Eleanor. Next please!"

"I'm not a cat, lady," Mae told Janet.

She looked at the switch. She looked at the bears.

"Why the fuck would you have a picnic in the middle of trolley tracks?"

"Well, wait, you see the point was-"

"Okay!" Janet said happily and with a ding the operating room was now a wrestling match with the five bears wearing luchador masks.

"Yeah. I think this is getting away from us," Mikhail said as he was suddenly tossed to the floor and then pinned by a teddy bear. "I'm not wrestling!" he called out.

That didn't stop the other bears from giving each other a smackdown.

"That's okay," Janet said with a cheerful grin. "I'm not a lady."

Mikhail cleared his throat. "Um. Yes. Well the whole idea here is to make the thought experiment more palatable and wholesome for a teenage mind."

Mikhail had no idea what a teenage mind was like.

"Of course I can stop the car," Adora declared without a moment's hesitation. "For the honour of Grayskull!"

A moment later, the now much taller and glowier Adora had leapt out through the front window of the trolley and was now trying to push the car back to a halt.

Yeah, that was a thing that was happening.

"Have you ever actually met a teenager?" Mae asked. "We're, like. Chaos incarnate. Just, big bubbling balls of hormones who want to test all our limits by doing things like running over teddybears in trolleys."

She reached up and flipped the controls to steer the trolley towards the solo bear. Then flipped it back. Then did it again, and again and again at a rapid pace, until it was anybody's guess which way the trolley would go when it finally got to the split in the track.

If the bears didn't know enough to clear out of the way at the sound of her manic cackling, they deserved what they got.

Mikhail was not expecting this. "Um. No. You see in the thought experiment-"

But the car was now completely stopped just inches away from hitting the five bears.

"Oh. Okay then. Ah. But what would have happened if you couldn't stop the trolley?" Mikhail asked trying in a vain way to get this whole thing back on track.

Yes. I'm punning in narrative. Deal with it.

Edited 2020-09-09 14:14 (UTC)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 3

Student Assembly, Wednesday afternoon, September 9, 2020

Arrive and Chat!

And Our Guests!

OOC

Lecture!

Voluntold - Mae

Voluntold - Eleanor

Voluntold - Adora

Voluntold - Alexis

Voluntold - Anakin

Voluntold - Tahani

Voluntold - Rosa

Audience reaction

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Rosa

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Eleanor

Re: Voluntold - Mae

Re: Voluntold - Rosa

Re: Voluntold - Mae

Re: Voluntold - Adora

Re: Voluntold - Mae

Re: Voluntold - Adora