That one was raised by a visiting philosopher at my college as an argument (from intuition) against utilitarianism. I pointed out that if we tended to kill patients to harvest them to save more patients, people would be so fearful of being harvested that they would tend not to visit hospitals at all, leading to a greater loss of health and life. So in this case, in any realistic formulation, the less comfortable option is also the one that leads to less utility.
I suspect that this version feels even less comfortable than the trolley dilemma because it includes the violation of an implicit social contract, that if you go into a hospital, they’ll try to make you healthier, not kill you. But while violating implicit social contracts tends to be a bad idea, that’s certainly not to say that there’s any guarantee that the utilitarian thing to do in some situations won’t be massively uncomfortable.
There are a number of science fiction stories about uncomfortable utilitarian choices. “The Cold Equations” is the most famous. I think Heinlein wrote a novel that had a character who was in charge of a colony that ran out of power, and so he killed half of them in order for the remaining life support to be enough to let the others live until relief arrived. No one stopped him at the time, but after they were safe, they branded him a war criminal or something like that.
I don’t think that’s a Heinlein. I don’t have a specific memory of that story, and his work didn’t tend to be that bleak. I’m willing to be surprised if someone has a specific reference.
There’s also Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide, which has a short aside on ships trying to take on just one more passenger and getting caught in the nova. And I think the movie Titanic had an officer cold-bloodedly executing a man who tried to get onto a full lifeboat, potentially sinking it.
It’s possible that you are referring to the secondary plot line of Chasm City by Alaistair Reynolds in which gur nagvureb wrggvfbaf unys gur uvoreangvba cbqf va uvf fgnefuvc, nyybjvat vg gb neevir orsber gur bguref va gur syrrg naq fb tnva zvyvgnel nqinagntr.
Alistair Reynold’s “Chasm City” has a similar back-story. Several colony ships are heading to a new planet, but after generations in space have developed cold-war style hostilities. The captain of one of the ships kills half the cryo-preserved colonists and jettisons their weight so he doesn’t have to slow his ship as soon as the other three. Arriving several weeks before the rest, his colonists get all the best colony landing spots and dominate the planet. He is immediately captured and executed as a war criminal, but generations later people view him with mixed emotions—a bit of a monster, yet one who sacrificed himself in order that his people could win the planet.
That one was raised by a visiting philosopher at my college as an argument (from intuition) against utilitarianism. I pointed out that if we tended to kill patients to harvest them to save more patients, people would be so fearful of being harvested that they would tend not to visit hospitals at all, leading to a greater loss of health and life. So in this case, in any realistic formulation, the less comfortable option is also the one that leads to less utility.
I suspect that this version feels even less comfortable than the trolley dilemma because it includes the violation of an implicit social contract, that if you go into a hospital, they’ll try to make you healthier, not kill you. But while violating implicit social contracts tends to be a bad idea, that’s certainly not to say that there’s any guarantee that the utilitarian thing to do in some situations won’t be massively uncomfortable.
There are a number of science fiction stories about uncomfortable utilitarian choices. “The Cold Equations” is the most famous. I think Heinlein wrote a novel that had a character who was in charge of a colony that ran out of power, and so he killed half of them in order for the remaining life support to be enough to let the others live until relief arrived. No one stopped him at the time, but after they were safe, they branded him a war criminal or something like that.
I don’t think that’s a Heinlein. I don’t have a specific memory of that story, and his work didn’t tend to be that bleak. I’m willing to be surprised if someone has a specific reference.
There’s also Eliezer’s Three Worlds Collide, which has a short aside on ships trying to take on just one more passenger and getting caught in the nova. And I think the movie Titanic had an officer cold-bloodedly executing a man who tried to get onto a full lifeboat, potentially sinking it.
It’s possible that you are referring to the secondary plot line of Chasm City by Alaistair Reynolds in which gur nagvureb wrggvfbaf unys gur uvoreangvba cbqf va uvf fgnefuvc, nyybjvat vg gb neevir orsber gur bguref va gur syrrg naq fb tnva zvyvgnel nqinagntr.
No, that’s different. I was referring to a commander who saved lives, but was condemned for doing that instead of letting everybody die.
Does less-wrong have rot13 functionality built in?
No, I used http://www.rot13.com .
Alistair Reynold’s “Chasm City” has a similar back-story. Several colony ships are heading to a new planet, but after generations in space have developed cold-war style hostilities. The captain of one of the ships kills half the cryo-preserved colonists and jettisons their weight so he doesn’t have to slow his ship as soon as the other three. Arriving several weeks before the rest, his colonists get all the best colony landing spots and dominate the planet. He is immediately captured and executed as a war criminal, but generations later people view him with mixed emotions—a bit of a monster, yet one who sacrificed himself in order that his people could win the planet.