I think the real question would be do they want help? Person A feels like they are making a personal choice, which B is likely feeling stressed, and might be more willing to accept help.
If the risk is low for me, I might explain the danger that I see, and ask if they would like help. I don’t believe that I can make an accurate model of their motivations to really predict their choices to a high degree of accuracy. B might feel a civic pride and feel confident of their choice, and A might feel like this risky action is their only way to accomplish some very important goal, but when presented with an alternative, might choose differently.
Ultimately I think that utilitarianism fails to provide an adequate answer here, because there is no objective measure of utility. Without getting the other person’s perspective, we are essentially making an arbitrary decision. We just don’t know how to weigh the possible outcomes from the perspective of the person being saved.
There is a reason why Give Directly is successful: they give the people being helped the agency to find solutions to the problems in their life, of which they are able to best prioritize. We can guess, but our answer is going to have a certain degree of error.
Without their input we may be robbing them of their agency with our meddling. With their input, I think that it is likely they the problem completely dissolves.
I think the real question would be do they want help? Person A feels like they are making a personal choice, which B is likely feeling stressed, and might be more willing to accept help.
If the risk is low for me, I might explain the danger that I see, and ask if they would like help. I don’t believe that I can make an accurate model of their motivations to really predict their choices to a high degree of accuracy. B might feel a civic pride and feel confident of their choice, and A might feel like this risky action is their only way to accomplish some very important goal, but when presented with an alternative, might choose differently.
Ultimately I think that utilitarianism fails to provide an adequate answer here, because there is no objective measure of utility. Without getting the other person’s perspective, we are essentially making an arbitrary decision. We just don’t know how to weigh the possible outcomes from the perspective of the person being saved.
There is a reason why Give Directly is successful: they give the people being helped the agency to find solutions to the problems in their life, of which they are able to best prioritize. We can guess, but our answer is going to have a certain degree of error.
Without their input we may be robbing them of their agency with our meddling. With their input, I think that it is likely they the problem completely dissolves.