I haven’t thought about Oliver Sipple since I posted my original comment. Revisiting it now, I think it is a juicier consequentialist thought experiment than the trolley problem or the surgeon problem. Partly, this is because the ethics of the situation depend so much on which aspect you examine, at which time, and illustrates how deeply entangled ethical discourse is with politics and PR.
It’s also perfectly plausible to me that Oliver’s decline was caused by the psychological effect of unwanted publicity and the dissolution of his family ties. But I’m not sure. Was he going to spiral into alcoholism, obesity, schizophrenia, and heart failure anyway? I’d be inclined to cite the collider paradox and say “no,” it would be really unusual to find that these two unlikely aspects of his life are not causally linked.
Except that I also think Oliver Sipple’s story wouldn’t be as visible as it is without the tragic ending. If this story had ended 4 paragraphs earlier than it did, it would still be sad, but not quite as profoundly tragic. So it seems plausible that we are reading about Oliver because he had two extraordinary but uncorrelated aspects to his life: his heroism and his rapid decline, and together they make such a good story that we choose to infer a causal connection where there is none. Perhaps his health decline was more related to his Vietnam experience: “Wounded Vietnam vet drinks himself into oblivion.”
I wonder if journalism ethics classes examine this aspect of the story. Because selecting from among all possible lives for those having a tragic shape due to two mostly uncorrelated extraordinary events is exactly the sort of mistake I expect journalists to make.
I haven’t thought about Oliver Sipple since I posted my original comment. Revisiting it now, I think it is a juicier consequentialist thought experiment than the trolley problem or the surgeon problem. Partly, this is because the ethics of the situation depend so much on which aspect you examine, at which time, and illustrates how deeply entangled ethical discourse is with politics and PR.
It’s also perfectly plausible to me that Oliver’s decline was caused by the psychological effect of unwanted publicity and the dissolution of his family ties. But I’m not sure. Was he going to spiral into alcoholism, obesity, schizophrenia, and heart failure anyway? I’d be inclined to cite the collider paradox and say “no,” it would be really unusual to find that these two unlikely aspects of his life are not causally linked.
Except that I also think Oliver Sipple’s story wouldn’t be as visible as it is without the tragic ending. If this story had ended 4 paragraphs earlier than it did, it would still be sad, but not quite as profoundly tragic. So it seems plausible that we are reading about Oliver because he had two extraordinary but uncorrelated aspects to his life: his heroism and his rapid decline, and together they make such a good story that we choose to infer a causal connection where there is none. Perhaps his health decline was more related to his Vietnam experience: “Wounded Vietnam vet drinks himself into oblivion.”
I wonder if journalism ethics classes examine this aspect of the story. Because selecting from among all possible lives for those having a tragic shape due to two mostly uncorrelated extraordinary events is exactly the sort of mistake I expect journalists to make.