fandomhigh | Ethics, Friday, September 11, 2020

"Good morning, everyone," Anakin said, sweeping into the classroom. "Today we're going to re-discuss the ethical quandary offered up by our guest speakers from this week's assembly."

Since some of the reactions to it had been...clarifying.

"The Trolley Problem at its most simplified form goes like this: there is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track or pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?"

Anakin smiled. "Now our guests were unaware of many of the abilities we on the island have to manipulate the scenario in order to save all the lives involved."

Or smush everything, but...Mae.

"So that meant at the assembly we got to wriggle out of the actual moral question posed by this scenario: by being a witness to what is happening, do you have a moral obligation to intervene, and if so, does that mean pulling the lever to divert the trolley into only killing one person? Does pulling the lever make you morally culpable for that one death, where doing nothing just makes you a horrible witness to an accident?"

He shrugged. "It's an interesting discussion, so let's have it. Without the teddy bear explosions."

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"If you are capable of intervening and choose not to, then you're as responsible for what happens as the man who pulls - or doesn't pull - the lever," Wei Wuxian said firmly. He considered his options. "I'd throw myself on the track, if I were close enough. If I couldn't make it in time, I'd raise the victims as fierce corpses and send them to get revenge on those that killed them." He rested his hand on his flute without thinking about it.

Anakin blinked. "So you'd raise an army of the undead?" he checked. "How would that help things?"

"I wouldn't consider just one or five people to be an army," Wei Wuxian said. "But look, if you have people die in this way, they're going to be full of resentful energy and become fierce ghosts anyway. Why not have their energy directed at the people who caused their deaths?" He got ready to dodge in case Master Skywalker was the sort of teacher to throw things, like Grandmaster Lan. "This was clearly an intentional setup and these people have a right to revenge."

"A committee of the undead, then," Anakin amended. "What if it wasn't an intentional setup to test you? What if it's just a random collection of people tied to railway tracks?"

Because that was a thing that happened in ethics and weird math problems.

"If they just tripped and fell onto the ropes and rolled in such a way that they were trapped?" Wei Wuxian asked. "All right. Then if there is no way to get vengeance, I would have to suppress the resentful energy and put them to rest."

Ethics, Friday, September 11, 2020

Re: Answer the questions!

Re: Answer the questions!

Re: Answer the questions!

Re: Answer the questions!

Re: Answer the questions!