We, the team at Gamers Pointe, have been binge watching The Good Place. We believe the show is ultimately about morals and their effect on the human condition. In it, viewers are presented some unique scenarios and essentially asked the question, “How, then, shall we live?”
We don’t want to present any spoilers here, so we’ll focus on more general elements. The Trolley Problem was presented. The Trolley Problem is a situation wherein the pilot of the trolley must decide who dies. The trolley is on rails and the brakes have malfunctioned, making it impossible to stop the trolley. You, the pilot, have to decide to either maintain course or change tracks. On one side, let’s say the left, are a group of 5 workers. If you maintain course, you’ll hit them. On the other, one worker. If you change tracks, you’ll hit that person. It’s then stated that mathematically, it would make more sense to change the track and sacrifice one worker to save five workers. All done, right? Easy. Then more potential problems are added to the scenario to make the situation more difficult to solve. This is calculated. What if you know one of the workers? What if the one on the right is stuck? What if one of them as a world changing idea and is destined for great things? Et cetera. At this stage, most people would freeze. We call this loading the question, and it’s also both cruel and unfair to the subject of the thought experiment. Presenting these potential issues to the pilot of the craft does nothing but guarantee the death of one or five people. So, the solution posed is that you, the pilot, should sacrifice yourself. We’re going to tear that down. In this situation, the pilot could not possibly sacrifice themselves to save anyone. They’re ON the trolley. Getting off the trolley would endanger all, if any, passengers on the craft. That’s not a good decision to make. Furthermore, they don’t even delay the inevitable by jumping out the front of the trolley onto the tracks. In fact, all they would end up doing is killing and destroying the families of either two people or six. Self sacrifice isn’t even slightly applicable here. Doing nothing is also not a solution, as the problem will not resolve itself without intervention of some sort, or a freak accident. So, what is the right thing to do? The situation is also made intentionally vague and no other options are made available. However, none are taken away either. People have a tendency to view scenarios in an either / or sense. Everything is either light or dark; good or bad; black or white. But that is in fact not the truth. The thought experiment plays to the human tendency to resort to fallacy. What we just described here is called a false dichotomy. It is not that clear cut and there is a such thing as a gray area where the two sides meet. Essentially, though the middle ground may be an unpleasant place to occupy, it remains an option nonetheless. In the case of morals, this would be called moral ambiguity. We’ve reasoned that sacrificing oneself is not a solution. We’ve also reasoned that there are other solutions. Finally, we’ve reasoned that one life is factually fewer than five lives, and the subject of the experiment is the value of human life. But we can make the situation unfair as well. We can ask, what if one or all of the people on the side you spared are or become villains? What if the people on either side were going to die anyway? What if you don’t know any of them? What if, what if, what if? None of that actually matters in the moment, as much as it pains us to say that. The solution is to pull the break anyway and switch the track, radio for help as early as possible in hopes that someone can reach someone who can help, and scream warnings to the workers and bystanders. As the trolley races forward, while there is still time, instruct any passengers to aid you in alerting everyone around of the danger of the situation. Together, you can all save at least SOME lives, as opposed to dooming those on either side. You do ALL you can, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. If all other efforts fail, you must choose to destroy fewer lives. No one life is worth more than another, no matter how much potential a person has. Life is objective. Everyone living has one. Even if someone among the dead had no potential to do truly great things, someone in their future lineage may. Or maybe their death is what sets that future descendant’s fate in motion. No one knows and it’s unknowable at the time. Does it matter? Sure it does. It just doesn’t matter when you have to make a decision right then. You don’t have time to consider all of that, and you’re not a bad person for choosing. However, it would be completely understandable for someone to fault you for choosing to save one person over saving five. If you hit five, five times as many lives will be lost. That’s why you change the track. The proctor of the test then changes the situation when you’re sure of your answer. Now you’re a doctor and you have to choose between killing one healthy person to save five mortally ill or injured people, or letting these five victims die to protect the healthy person. The presentation of this scenario is another false dichotomy. These two situations aren’t an equal comparison. In this situation, you, the doctor, have to MURDER someone. That’s different. You have to choose between willfully taking a life, a violation of your oath, or letting five mortally wounded or terminal patients die. You also presented all of the same problems. We’ll just cut to the chase here, what you aren’t presented is this: asking the healthy person if they would sacrifice themselves to save the others. You DO have that option available to you and only by giving up control of the situation to the person who should really be in control can you solve it. In terms of this sacrifice, it’s not yours to make and, therefore, isn’t your choice to make. It would be wrong for you to ignore the rights of these people and make a decision involving their fates alone. Whether the healthy patient chooses to sacrifice themselves or not, you’ve done all you can do in the situation. Doctors deal with this all the time when someone needs an organ donation. If there are no organs available and no one is willing to make theirs available, the doctors have to go tell the patient(s) and / or family there was no way to save them. Medical professionals have already solved this problem. By trapping a person in the circumstances and willfully limiting them to only the options the proctor presents, they are doing the subject a great disservice. What they’ve done was intentionally create a moral paradox to complete an objective. In real life, these situations aren’t actually paradoxical. You do all you can, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. But if you’ve done all you can, you did good. Finally, we’d like to address moral rewards. Should the good deeds of a person be celebrated? The short answer is: yes. However, it’s not a simple answer. Should a person do good deeds for selfish reasons? Nope. Should a good person be celebrated for their good deeds on their own terms? No. But they should be appreciated for them. We say this because people benefit from a sense of accomplishment. People want to feel like their contribution matters; that they made someone’s day. Sure, this isn’t absolutely true of all people, but it’s honestly a fair heuristic. It would be a major failing of the society around these helpful people to deny them that feeling. In our experience, and this is of course anecdotal, we’ve seen a massive expansion of the bystander effect. It happens both online and offline. When people fear getting in trouble, doing more harm, or having their contribution(s) go unrecognized or met with anger, they’re less likely to help. No one wants to deal with the negative consequences. As messed up as that seems, it’s actually understandable. They then feed themselves comfort food, telling themselves that someone else will make the sacrifice. The problem is that most surrounding observers have the same concerns, so the person, or people, in need of help go unaided. Who really wants to help when they’ll be punished for it? Virtually no one. True, some don’t mind taking that risk. That’s just who they are. But it’s the defensive reaction to those consequences that’s telling. Maybe they didn’t care to be thanked. They also didn’t expect to be punished. No, a person doing something good shouldn’t be worshiped. That plays to their sense of entitlement. But they should be appreciated. It feels good and it reinforces the behavior. Yes, positive reinforcement for performing well or doing good deeds is just. For how can we teach others to be their best selves otherwise? They need to feel the good they do. Literally. And they do. There’s a biochemical response when that happens. It’s natural, so let them have it. It doesn’t cost you anything to give thanks. If someone rescues you from a fire and you kiss them, if the kiss is well received, they deserved that kiss. And if they blush, they are happy with your feedback. This exchange is good and healthy. The work we do as the Gamers Pointe team, we don’t do it for thanks. But we appreciate it all the same. It helps continue on when times get rough. We set out to change lives for the better. Receiving that thanks let’s reminds us that we’re doing exactly that. Thank you for reading our thoughts :-) Feel free to discuss the topic in the comments, whether you agree or disagree. Remember to play nice and be mature. We’ll be checking in for the insight. |