Viewing Thread:
"Morality Test - Kill 1 for 1000?"

Here's my question to you today: if there was 1000 people inside a building surrounded by terrorists and for them to survive, you have to kill an innocent child. If not, then the 1000 will die. Would you:

- Kill the child so that the 1000 can live.

- Let the child live so that the 1000 die.

I hope for some interesting answers - it's a test of morality and there is no right or wrong answer. Thanks. Flux.

As for the actual topic, kill the child. It'll be hard to do, sure, but it's surely for me the right answer.

MoJoJoJo wrote:
> How about this - a madman is pointing a gun at your best friend and
> your girlfriend. You have to choose which one lives... who do you
> pick? Eh? Eh? Eh? Good, innit?

Well, I'm a bit buggered, because for me they're the same person.

Why so many posts avoiding the question? The point is not what the hypothetical terrorists would or would not do, but whether you personally would rather murder one person, or see one thousand innocents die.

Don't try to outwit the question: that's not the point.

In a real life situation would you trust the word of madmen holding 1000 people hostage? If you killed the child then they asked for more lives what then?

What if instead of the terrorists asking for a child to be killed, they wanted you to shoot and kill yourself before they released the hostages?

Rosalind wrote:
> I don't understand why people value a childs life over an adults.
> Surely any life is equally precious. You could look at it from the
> point of view that an adult may have accomplished many more worthy
> things in their life than a child.

Every situation is different though, I said don't kill the kid because, if this were a real situation, then that'd be the most viable option.

Politically, no one is going to be taken seriously if they criticise someone for not killing a child, and those 1000 would be killed by terrorists making that blamable on them.

If you kill the kid, then even if all 1000 survive and you get the terrorists, its still political suicide and the government of that country would, more than likely, fall.

Of course, it'd depend on who the kid was, whether he was from the same country, which country and a load of other stuff. Different variables could change the solution and what could be done.

~~Belldandy~~

Kill 1000 for 1.

I wouldn't kill the kid. If the terrorists are that messed up to leave the decidion of killing 1000 lives on the basis that you can save them if you shoot this kid, you really have to question their mentality. What evidence do you have that they won't blow up the building, then do the kid, and then do you anyway?

I don't understand why people value a childs life over an adults. Surely any life is equally precious. You could look at it from the point of view that an adult may have accomplished many more worthy things in their life than a child.

You're a Jew in Nazi Germany, trying to escape the patrols looking for you with a group of other Jews. You hold in your hands your very young baby, who won't stop crying, alerting your position to the patrol. As much as you try and muffle the baby, it can still be heard.

A woman faced with this choice in WWII hit her babys head on a rock until it died to enable the group to escape.

:O///////

===SONICRAV---> wrote:
> A much more interesting question is provoked by, say, the war on Iraq.
> Do you go to war knowing that, despite your best measures, thousands
> of innocent people will die. However, as a result, millions would be
> freed.

Or, even more interesting;

Do you, as the person who controls Iraq, defy the will of the United Nations and surrender your Weapons of mass destruction when you know that failing to do so, along with proof of having the weapons you are pretending not to have, could result in a war which will kill thousands of your own people ? However, you will go down in history as defying the west, and you're in ill health anyway so what have you got to lose ?

~~Belldandy~~