5 ms·
I don't believe that the dilemma faced by Ender is akin to the traditional trolley problem. It's not a straight utilitarian choice of 1 innocent or 5 innocents
by LordKano 8y ago
I don't believe that the dilemma faced by Ender is akin to the traditional trolley problem. It's not a straight utilitarian choice of 1 innocent or 5 innocents die based on your decision to act or not.
Namely, the people on the trolley have intentionally run down innocents in the past and to the best of your knowledge, they are doing so again.
You have the choice to do nothing and allow those innocents to be killed or to throw the switch and kill those whom are trying to kill the innocents.
- scotty79 8y agoIf you are seeking analogy he had a trolley problem where 5 people are his family and on the other track there is a guy who commited serious crime, maybe killing, some believe it was even a murder. Everyone around agrees he should make every effort possible to throw the switch while he himself is led to believe that he's throwing training switch and even after throwing real switch the bad guy will rather be maimed not killed. Still, he throws the switch, it was the real switch, guy is killed and eventually it turns out his offence was an accident and if left alone the trolley wouldn't kill 5 people. Ender is guilty of killng a guy even though what he did was perfectly reasonable considering circumstances.
- LordKano 8y agoThe occupants of the trolley had intentionally run over many people in the past. Ender had reason to believe that they intended to do so again. We only have the word of the dormant hive queen that they didn't intend to again. (Spoiler Alert) In the Shadow series, it's revealed that the hive queen lied to Ender about some things. The formic males struck a deal with Bean's children to keep Ender from finding out. Even if he had known, his actions were still just.