and then stop, calmly sipping a Diet Pepsi as the train bears down on the second child.
But what if, while sipping this diet coke, you’re fiddling on your laptop computer to organise the shipment of HIV drugs to Africa? If, at the moment the second child’s skull gets crushed by the onrushing train, you manage to secure governmental support for a deal which will save thousands of people? If you wipe the splattered blood from your suit, as you rush off to open a new orphanage in India?
Something still feels wrong. I think our intellectual urge to save lives is at war with our heuristics in the same direction. And those heuristics certainly predate statistics, and urge: save what you visibly can. The child in front of you is a sure bet—you can save him, you’re certain of that. More distant lives feel much more uncertain.
Your organisation of HIV drugs is likely something that could wait a minute, especially with an excuse as universally acceptable as saving a child from being run over by the train.
Thus, it is nigh certain that you could achieve both goals.
and then stop, calmly sipping a Diet Pepsi as the train bears down on the second child.
But what if, while sipping this diet coke, you’re fiddling on your laptop computer to organise the shipment of HIV drugs to Africa? If, at the moment the second child’s skull gets crushed by the onrushing train, you manage to secure governmental support for a deal which will save thousands of people? If you wipe the splattered blood from your suit, as you rush off to open a new orphanage in India?
Something still feels wrong. I think our intellectual urge to save lives is at war with our heuristics in the same direction. And those heuristics certainly predate statistics, and urge: save what you visibly can. The child in front of you is a sure bet—you can save him, you’re certain of that. More distant lives feel much more uncertain.
There’s also the issue of immediacy.
Your organisation of HIV drugs is likely something that could wait a minute, especially with an excuse as universally acceptable as saving a child from being run over by the train.
Thus, it is nigh certain that you could achieve both goals.