fandomhigh | Philosophies of Good and Evil, Tuesday

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Philosophies of Good and Evil, Tuesday

The first person to enter the Danger Shop today would find themselves escorted to the wall, which they’d be facing for at least a few minutes. The next one after that would be directed to sit on the floor on one side, while the next few students had to sit on the other.

And then the program flipped on, surrounding them in what looked like an old cartoon. Green hills as far as the eye could see, a comically blue sky, and– train tracks. One on one side, one on the other. By the wall sat a switch.

A train honked loudly in the distance.

“The trolley problem is probably the most famous and most chewed-out moral problem in the multiverse,” Atton said brightly. “It poses a very utilitarian question: if a train is going to hit three people, and you have the power to throw the switch and send it in the other direction so it hits one person instead, should you throw the switch?”

Lana beamed at the person facing the wall. "You can choose to flip the switch or not. You can't do anything else. Now, if you do flip the switch, you've actively chosen to kill someone. If you don't, perhaps you'll have the moral superiority of not choosing to kill someone, but you've also passively chosen to allow three others to die.

"So, is active intent versus passive important?" she asked. "Is it purely a numbers game, whether you kill or save more people? Does it matter which people are on which side? You don't have much time to decide."

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It only seemed to make no sense to Stark because Stark desperately seemed to want it not to?

"Because this isn't a class called 101 Ways To Make You Feel Like Everything Could Be Okay Even If It Isn't Realistic," Atton said flatly. "It's an ethical philosophy class. Which means we think about ethically complicated situations and we don't try to worm our way out of them because gosh darnit wouldn't it be nice if the world was a nicer, cleaner, kinder place?" Beat. "But thanks. You actually gave me an actual answer: 'trying almost always makes it worse.' Killing three and keeping your hands clean, it is."

Edited 2023-10-24 20:27 (UTC)

Stark rolled his eye.

"No, trying to save everyone would result in more than just the 3 or 1 or all dying."

He still felt those 10,000 deaths that were a direct result of his trying to save them and he always would.

"Letting 3 people die isn't keeping your hands clean. Or your conscience. It's just letting them die because you hope you might have done the right thing but you'll never know because you can't so you just have to hope and maybe you'll be able to sleep again eventually. Knowing nothing else, directly harming 1 person is better than directly harming 3."

"Now was that so hard?" Atton asked dryly.

"I didn't say it was hard I said it was ridiculous."

So there!

"I really don't care," Atton said. "Not about the 'aw, shucks' routine, not about how much you'd like us all to have nice things, and definitely not about whether you think a question is 'ridiculous' because it doesn't give you buckets of extraneous detail you can use to lawyer your way out of it." He shrugged. "This is an ethics class. The only thing I care about is that you show up here ready and open to answering difficult, often abstract questions you might not always like, because otherwise there's no point to you being here."

"Routine?" Stark echoed with a soft snort. "It's not a routine. Maybe I just think thought exercises need not always be unpleasant to consider. Or maybe..."

He shrugged. "Maybe it's important to recognize that sometimes there is no correct answer and pretending things are as simple as that doesn't do any good. Or maybe I just didn't like your question today. That's hardly unethical."

"Did I say it was unethical?" Atton said. "Or that there's 'a correct answer'? Or that you couldn't say 'this is a complicated question and it depends'? No. I'm saying that what you did here today, which is storm in, yell about how a question is 'ridiculous' and pummel me with questions that come down to 'okay but why can't I not wiggle my way out of this thought exercise?', is counter to the entire point of the class. I'm also saying that I don't care whether or not you want pleasant thought exercises. Maybe you'll get some nicer ones in the future, maybe you won't, but I'm not here to coddle you or make you feel nice. If you want that, I'm sure Sidon will teach underwater basket weaving again or something."

"I didn't yell at all," Stark pointed out. "Nobody was pummeled with anything. I said it was ridiculous and why I thought so and you seemed to take offense that I didn't like your scenario."

"Because your reasoning was stupid and in bad faith, and a classic - and boring - case of trying to loophole yourself out of a situation you didn't like," Atton said flatly. "I'll take any answer you've got to any question we pose here, but you do have to engage with the actual question. And if you can't take a step back from a thought exercise to think about what's actually being asked, then there's no point in posing the question to you at all."

"I wasn't aware I was here to entertain you with my answers."

"Again, putting words in my mouth," Atton said. "I am not asking you to entertain me. I'm asking you to engage with what you're asked. And in the end you had answers. 'Inaction is the same thing as action if lives are at stake'. That's a useful answer. And there are factors that might affect your decision. Fine, let's talk about those. If you'd given me any of that up front, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead the question made you defensive, had you looking for an exit, block yourself off from even thinking about it. Maybe you should take a while to think about why."

"You just complained that my reasoning was boring," Stark pointed out. "And how is it being defensive to ask why there wasn't another way? You can't tell me I'm putting words in your mouth and then immediately start ascribing motives to me based on what you think I'm thinking when I dislike a question."

"I said that loophole abuse is boring. Because it happens so damn often in every ethics class, and it's never as clever as the person doing it thinks it is," Atton said. "And the entire point of the question is that there isn't another way, because if there is another way, the central moral question can't exist. So asking why you can't switch on the brakes on a train barreling towards you at hundreds of miles an hour means you're being either deliberately or accidentally obtuse. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that it was the latter, but now I'm not so sure."

"Why do you think I was trying to be clever? Not everyone is trying to prove they're clever all the time. Sometimes we're just trying to understand how an extremely unlikely situation is meant to have occurred. That doesn't mean I'm an idiot, either, and I'd rather you weren't implying that just because you don't like the way I react to your 'thought exercises.'"

"Because in fixating on the situation instead of the actual moral question being discussed, you were being an idiot," Atton said. "I don't know you well enough to say whether that's a temporary or a permanent state of being."

"I'm not an idiot," Stark said, voice gone soft and low. "And no, you don't know me. At all."

"You were acting like one," Atton said mildly. "If you want me to think otherwise, prove me wrong next time."

"Asking questions isn't idiotic and maybe you're not worth proving anything to if you think it is."

"Asking questions in general isn't idiotic," Atton agreed. "But when someone poses you a moral question in the shape of a scenario like this, asking 'but why can't I just get out of the scenario instead?' is pretty stupid. We're not here to figure out how to avoid answering moral questions. I thought that was implicit, but apparently not."

"Stop calling me stupid," Stark said flatly.

"No," Atton said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have paperwork to get to."

"No I won't, and frell you."

"I'll refer you back to exhibit A: I don't care," Atton said, already half-turning midway into that sentence, and well on his way to his desk by the end of it.

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