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People often think of the less extreme act that more people can get behind as being more extreme. It's the same reason that the person who risks death to save 1
by spiffage 15y ago
People often think of the less extreme act that more people can get behind as being more extreme. It's the same reason that the person who risks death to save 100 people is more heroic than the person who risks death to save 2 people.
- kiba 15y agoThe person who risk deaths to save 100 people is indeed more heroic than the person who save 2 people. Are you saying there's no difference between 1 or 100 people?
- chc 15y agoHeroism is a question of character, not just results. For example, an assassin who gets cold feet when he sees his target's bodyguards is not as heroic as a police officer who takes a bullet to save the assassin's victim, even though both decisions save the person's life. It requires a greater degree of selflessness to value two lives over your own than it does to value a hundred lives over your own. A fairly large number of people would consider sacrificing themselves to save half the world — that many lives lost is such a tremendous tragedy, it almost seems like an obligation. But few people would seriously think about exchanging their life for a stranger's — they'd say sorry, too bad, you got unlucky.
- sliverstorm 15y agoOn the other hand, the level of sacrifice and risk is usually quite great when you consider heroic acts that saved hundreds of people.
- spiffage 15y agoI'm saying that a person taking the same risk to save just 2 people is more heroic, even though peoples' intuition is the opposite. Risking yourself to save 2 people takes guts and a serious commitment to the greater good. Doing the same for 100 people takes guts, but is kind of a no-brainer.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoI think you're on the verge of discovering that a utilitarian philosophy isn't the only way to look at the world. It's just so ingrained in us that it's hard to look beyond it.
- aidenn0 15y agoReally? I find that utilitarianism is not at all the common way of looking at the world. It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoIt is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version. That's true. But the typical formulation for utilitarianism -- "if a trolley is hurtling down the track, certain to kill 5 people ahead of it, is it OK to divert it onto a different track if that will result in killing a single person?" -- is very difficult to talk someone out of. The idea that minimizing the number of deaths overrides any absolute prohibition on taking a person's life is pretty much impossible to overcome. Hence my conclusion that utilitarianism is, or has become, the default mode of reasoning.