fandomhigh | Ethical Dilemmas, Thursday, (Per 1)

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Ethical Dilemmas, Thursday, (Per 1)

After one week in the Danger Shop and one off for a trip abroad, class was once again being held in the conversatory in the creepy mansion in the woods. In addition to the regular selection of beverages, there was a selection of various delicious handpies, each platter accompanied by a discreet list of ingredients, so nobody would have to worry about allergens or dietary restrictions.

"Good morning--" a stretch, considering how early it was and how much Liliana could still be sleeping, "--and welcome back to class." Anyone who expected Liliana to apologize for canceling class while she flitted off to Argentina to get engaged was in for a very long wait. "Today, we're discussing another short story, this one called The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. It is, in fact, very short, and I highly recommend that people read it, either before the discussion, or on your own time; I've enough copies to pass out. But, as a summary, a pilot in a tiny Emergency Dispatch Ship is making his way to a planet on the frontier of space. He is carrying six vials of a serum for an outpost that is located there; the people in that outpost have all contracted a disease that is invariably fatal if one doesn't have the proper medication, and their supply of said medication had been destroyed by a tornado.

"All EDS pilots know Paragraph L, Section 8, of the Interstellar Regulations: Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery. For them to function as they do, EDS ships are designed to be small and everything onboard is carefully weighed, measured, and calculated to ensure that the pilot of the ship has exactly enough fuel to reach their destination safely; again, these are emergency pilots, they are sent out when it is literally the matter of life and death. And when they are sent out, they are almost always alone in that part of space; the nearest ship with any capacity to help is light-years away. The grim reality of Paragraph L, Section 8 is that any stowaway will vastly throw off those calculations; their weight is unexpected and unaccounted for, and the pilot must remove them from the ship as soon as possible to ensure they can continue to their destination and the people in need there.

"The pilot of this ship is aware of this rule when he gets a notification that there is someone onboard his ship. He goes to confront the stowaway, and discovers, rather than a grown man he expected, trying to escape some crime or head off to make a fortune, a young woman. Almost a girl, really. Eighteen, fresh-faced, and innocent, Marilyn heard that this ship was going to the same planet her brother is on and snuck onboard to surprise him with a visit. She is, of course, apologetic for sneaking onboard and promises to be a model prisoner, and assures him that she will pay whatever fine she accrues and will make herself useful on top of that, but that it's been years since she'd seen him, and she missed him so much--"

Liliana's voice caught in her throat briefly, and she paused to take a sip of her tea. The perils of talking so much, surely. "The problem is, Marilyn is from Earth - safe, prosperous, and abundant Earth. She doesn't know about Paragraph L, Section 8. She doesn't know that her slight form - she's only 5'3, only 110 pounds, is the difference between the medicine getting to the planet safely and saving the lives of the men in that colony, and the ship running out of fuel during the deceleration process, and crashing into the unforgiving ground, killing her, the pilot, and the men waiting for the medicine. She thought she was doing something harmless, and then she learns that it is a mistake that she will have to pay for with her life.

"The pilot isn't heartless. He tries to see if there's another ship around, radios back to have the computers calculate how long he can keep her onboard and alive with the amount of fuel he has, tries to find a way to make it work. But the numbers don't lie and the laws of the universe are not easily broken. There is not enough fuel to support another hundred and ten pounds of weight and still make the landing."

Liliana looked around the class, violet eyes dark and fathomless. "So here is your cold equation, darlings. You are the pilot. You have medicine for 6 dying men. You are the only ship in the area, there is no chance of a last minute rescue. There is a girl standing in front of you, telling you that she's very sorry, that she just wanted to see her brother, and your ship's computer is informing you that you will reach the point of no return in just a few minutes. What do you do?"

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"In the story, the pilot manages to emotionally prepare himself to jettison a man on his way to the closet where the stowaway is hiding," Liliana continued. "He is completely taken aback when he discovers it's a teenage girl. His whole demeanor changes, and so does that of command when he calls to inform them that he has a stowaway. Clearly, he weighs the life of a teen girl differently than he does a grown man. How about you? How would this scenario change for you if it were a grown man there. Easier? Remains the same? What about other demographics? An elderly woman? A young boy? More importantly than how your decision making process might change, why does it change? What does that say about you? About your society? Do you like what it says?"

Jack shrugged. "It always sucks when they're young. Lost potential," he said. "But life doesn't often give you a soft landing."

"So, would a grown man be easier for you to jettison than a teen girl?" she pressed. "If so, does that bother you?"

"I wouldn't have any trouble jettisoning either of them," Jack said. (Space knew he'd killed younger for less.) "Just saying the lost potential's always sad."

"We could argue that potential is potential either way," Liliana said with a languid wave of her hand that suggested she really had no desire to do that. "So, in your eyes, there is no real difference to you, emotionally? Any scenario would be the same? Not the answer, mind, simply the emotional weight of doing as pragmatism demands?"

"In as much as we choose based on generalized demographics? Sure," Jack said. "Death is death." (There's always another body...)

Liliana nodded, unsurprised by his answer. "Hard to work up a fuss once you've seen enough of it."

"I think it's absurd," Luma said with a sniff and a toss of her hair, "that the fact that it's a teenage girl changes it so much for the pilot. No matter who it is, they did something brash and selfish that put the lives of others in danger, and that's that."

"Very cold calculus indeed," Liliana said with a small smile. "So, for you, only actions and consequences matter? Not context or intentions? Would you go so far as to say that she deserves what happens to her? Fitting punishment for the problem she created?"

"Actions and consequences matter in this case because no matter what the intention was," Luma explained, "the results are the same. But with these intentions? Yes. A bit. I think she was being foolish and shortsighted. I'm sure she was very torn up about missing her sis--"

She caught herself sharply. Cleared her throat.

"--brother, but you can't just do things without thinking of what it means first. How it affects other people."

Yes. Brother. Of course. Everybody is doing just fine right now and this is hitting nobody in ways they didn't anticipate.

"But how was she to know how it would affect other people? It's all well and good to demand that of someone who has had the opportunity to learn and has chosen not to, but how was she to know? This isn't something that was taught in her school that she conveniently ignored. This was a situation that she had no reason to think would end in anything but minor inconvenience. Do you take the time to learn absolutely everything about everything before you take an action? Or do you simply do nothing but what you've always done, in order to not stumble into unanticipated consequences?"

"I can understand," Eleanor offered, still rather reserved and quiet, but with a little more to it, a little more compassion and firmness, "why the pilot wouldn't want that weighing on his conscious, even if it meant the people he was meant to help were helped. A grown man really would know better, so it would be a situation where he could comprehend the risks. But someone younger, maybe more inexperienced, who didn't know any better, that's still different. No, it doesn't change the horribleness of the situation, but it does feel....more difficult, when you know the person didn't really even understand what they were doing..."

Not that she had any idea what that was like! But she did realize that her words were maybe a bit less for the class as a whole and more for someone specifically, someone she was still fighting to not actually look at right now.

"Is that the full difference, you think?" Liliana asked. "The pilot is more emotionally affected because it's someone with less experience?"

"If it were an actual child who couldn't understand what they were doing was wrong, it would feel different," Lydia said. "But this girl is old enough to know it was wrong, she just didn't care. She thought the penalty would be mild, as I'm sure everything else in her life had been up until that point, and she was wrong." Lydia sympathized immensely, but she wasn't going to eject herself into space about it, so the girl had to go.

"So, if you were the pilot, you'd feel exactly the same jettisoning a grown man and a girl your own age?"

"Why shouldn't I? They're both fully grown adults capable of facing the consequences of their actions."

"I agree with Lydia," Rey said. "Someone innocent who doesn't realize there will be consequences is different, but I don't think it could change the decision if we'd all die anyway."

"Oh yes, but we're not talking about the change to the decision, but a change to your feelings. Even if it didn't sway you into changing your mind, would different types of people hang differently on your conscience?"

"A child I would feel badly about for the rest of my life," she answered. "Old enough to know better... no."

"Does context matter for you?" Liliana asked. "The why they're there, as well as the who they are?"

"I think the only thing that would change how I felt was if it was my relative," Anakin said. "It's harder to maintain clarity when you're emotionally tangled already."

And his relatives would all know how to fly the damn ship.

Well, since he brought it up... "And in that scenario, what would you do? If it were one of your relatives?"

"It would depend on which relative," Anakin admitted.

He'd airlock you with nary a second thought, Jacen and Cade.

"Okay, if this ship legitimately cannot handle the fuel for a kid weighing under sixty pounds, I'm going to die anyway because this piece of shit is going to come apart if the solar winds breathe on it wrong," Illyana complained. "Food, okay, I can see that being a problem, but this is just bad science and I hate it."

Said as someone who had been yeeted into space against her will multiple times already.

"Still giving them my easy-out pill, if I've got one. I don't have to be cruel in the process of doing what I have to do."

"If...if it was someone who understood what they were doing, I'd have less problem, I suppose. Because they knew the risks. But she didn't."

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Ethical Dilemmas, Thursday, (Per 1)

Question #2: Examining Our Inner Beliefs

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