The least convenient world is one where there’s no traveler and the doctor debates whether to harvest organs from another villager. I figure that if it’s okay to kill the traveler for organs, then it should be okay to kill a villager. Similarly, if it’s against general principle to kill a villager for organs, then it shouldn’t be okay to kill the traveler. Perhaps someone can come up with a clever argument why the life of a villager is worth intrinsically more than the life of the traveler, but let’s keep things simple for now.
So, let us suppose that N sick people is the threshold wherein it is okay to kill a traveler, and hence a villager. If it’s good to do once, it’s good to do anytime this situation comes up. So we have ourselves a society where whenever the doctor needs is in dire need of organs for N patients, a villager is sacrificed. If we scale it up to the national level we should have ourselves a proper system wherein each month a certain number of people are chosen (perhaps by lottery) for sacrifice and their organs are harvested. I should imagine an epidemic of obesity and alcoholism as people seek to make their organs undesirable and so avoid being sacrificed.
I find that a fair number of morality puzzles of this sort exhibit interesting behavior under scaling.
The perverse incentive to become alcoholic or obese can be easily countered with a simple rule—a person chosen in the lottery is sacrificed no matter what, even if he doesn’t actually have viable organs.
To be truly effective, the system needs to consider the fact that some people are exceptional and can contribute to saving lives much more effectively than by scrapping and harvesting for spare parts. Hence, there should actually be an offer to anyone who loses the lottery, either pay $X or be harvested.
A further optimization is a monetary compensation to (the inheritors of) people who are selected, proportional to the value of the harvested organs. This reduces the overall individual risk, and gives people a reason to stay healthy even more than normally.
All of this is in the LCPW, of course. In the real world, I’m not sure there is enough demand for organs that the system would be effective in scale. Also, note that a key piece of the original dilemma is that the traveler has no family—in this case, the cost of sacrifice is trivial compared to someone who has people that care about him.
If we scale it up to the national level we should have ourselves a proper system wherein each month a certain number of people are chosen (perhaps by lottery) for sacrifice and their organs are harvested.
I think China used to have a similar system, except that instead of lottery they just picked prisoners from the death row.
That seems entirely reasonable, insofar as the death penalty is at all. I don’t think we should be going around executing people, but if we’re going to then we might as well save a few lives by doing it
People die on an overall statistical basis (because people who are poorer die sooner, and paying taxes makes them poorer) rather than by loss of organs so it is hard to point to an individual death caused by taking things from one person to give them to someone who is more needy.
For the second system,
We call it “a justice system”.
The harm to innocent people is again statistical—because all justice systems are imperfect, they will convict X innocent people, and we’ve decided that harming X innocent people is an acceptable price to pay to convict more guilty people and protect the populace from criminals.
The least convenient world is one where there’s no traveler and the doctor debates whether to harvest organs from another villager. I figure that if it’s okay to kill the traveler for organs, then it should be okay to kill a villager. Similarly, if it’s against general principle to kill a villager for organs, then it shouldn’t be okay to kill the traveler. Perhaps someone can come up with a clever argument why the life of a villager is worth intrinsically more than the life of the traveler, but let’s keep things simple for now.
So, let us suppose that N sick people is the threshold wherein it is okay to kill a traveler, and hence a villager. If it’s good to do once, it’s good to do anytime this situation comes up. So we have ourselves a society where whenever the doctor needs is in dire need of organs for N patients, a villager is sacrificed. If we scale it up to the national level we should have ourselves a proper system wherein each month a certain number of people are chosen (perhaps by lottery) for sacrifice and their organs are harvested. I should imagine an epidemic of obesity and alcoholism as people seek to make their organs undesirable and so avoid being sacrificed.
I find that a fair number of morality puzzles of this sort exhibit interesting behavior under scaling.
The perverse incentive to become alcoholic or obese can be easily countered with a simple rule—a person chosen in the lottery is sacrificed no matter what, even if he doesn’t actually have viable organs.
To be truly effective, the system needs to consider the fact that some people are exceptional and can contribute to saving lives much more effectively than by scrapping and harvesting for spare parts. Hence, there should actually be an offer to anyone who loses the lottery, either pay $X or be harvested.
A further optimization is a monetary compensation to (the inheritors of) people who are selected, proportional to the value of the harvested organs. This reduces the overall individual risk, and gives people a reason to stay healthy even more than normally.
All of this is in the LCPW, of course. In the real world, I’m not sure there is enough demand for organs that the system would be effective in scale. Also, note that a key piece of the original dilemma is that the traveler has no family—in this case, the cost of sacrifice is trivial compared to someone who has people that care about him.
I think China used to have a similar system, except that instead of lottery they just picked prisoners from the death row.
That seems entirely reasonable, insofar as the death penalty is at all. I don’t think we should be going around executing people, but if we’re going to then we might as well save a few lives by doing it
We have two such systems today, except
We call it “taxes”.
People die on an overall statistical basis (because people who are poorer die sooner, and paying taxes makes them poorer) rather than by loss of organs so it is hard to point to an individual death caused by taking things from one person to give them to someone who is more needy.
For the second system,
We call it “a justice system”.
The harm to innocent people is again statistical—because all justice systems are imperfect, they will convict X innocent people, and we’ve decided that harming X innocent people is an acceptable price to pay to convict more guilty people and protect the populace from criminals.