Existential Comics | Website

Alt Text“At the heart of Batman’s being, like all theater kids, is a boundless narcissism that eats away at his core.”

ExplanationMany versions of Batman have a strict “no killing” rule, which is exactly the kind of intuition the Trolley Problem is attacking. Why is it different to actively kill someone vs passively letting five people die? In particular, Batman’s version seems to be a sort of “honor code”, which something close to a moral system, but it is entirely inward looking. In other words, fulfilling the honor system doesn’t do good for the world, it elevates the status of the honorable man. In a sense it’s the worst possible way to answer a moral question, “I want to kill the five people because I personally would lose something (my honor)”. Also its pretty showy to dress up as a bat. One might even call him a weirdo.

Transcript8 Panel Comic

Panel 1: The Riddler stands at the lever explaining his setup of the classic Trolley Problem. Tied to one track are 5 people, and tied to the diverted track is 1 person. A trolley is prepared to mow down the 5 people unless the lever is pulled, diverting it to the path with one person.

Riddler: Alright Batman riddle me this. A trolley is moving down this track and is going to kill five people, but if you switch tracks it will only kill one, do you pull the lever?

Panel 2: Batman shakes his fist at the Riddler

Batman: Curse your implausible games, Riddler!

Panel 3: Batman hesitates in front of the lever, his hand shaking.

Batman: The right thing to do is save five people, but I have sworn to my code of ethics to never kill!

Panel 4: The Riddler exults in the devious dilemma delaying Batman’s decision.

Batman: I cannot do it! I cannot be the one to kill directly!

Riddler: Looks like the Batman has failed Philosophy 101! HAHAHAHAHA!

Panel 5: Batman watches as the trolley splatters 5 people across the track as the Riddler continues in his exultations.

Panel 6: Batman now sits in his Batcave as his Alfred arrives with his dinner on a covered tray.

Alfred: But what I don’t understand Sir, is how upholding your moral code can have more value than their lives?

Panel 7: Batman smoking a cigarette puts on his best grizzled and hard boiled face.

Batman: Because I’m a narcissist, Alfred. I value my own ego above everything, and I didn’t want to lose the “no killing” thing, because I like bragging about it. That’s all.

Panel 8: Alfred is shocked at Batman’s response.

Alfred: Really, I never thought so…

Batman: I dress up as a bat to fight crime. Of course I’m a narcissist. Your kind of a moron, Alfred, honestly.

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[–] 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Is it ethical for a doctor to kill one healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five people in need of a transplant?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 hours ago* (1 child)

    People tend to bring this up as a gotcha against utilitarianism, with the premise that it's the same situation as the trolley problem rephrased and therefore should have the same answer, even though it "feels" more wrong, but I'm not convinced that these situations are actually equivalent and that the organ harvesting is actually the choice with the most utility. The reason being that, realistically, there are more factors involved that affect the utility of one's choices than just the six people who live or die.

    For example: the operation is likely to be somewhat traumatic for the doctor, diminishing their quality of life, the people involved are not necessarily likely to live the same amount of time following the transplant because we haven't said anything about their age, general health (beyond that they need a transplant and are therefore likely to be rather ill), lifestyle (these factors can push utility in either direction as they apply to the donor as well), and the fact that transplants are not always successful. These people also all have friends and families whose lives will be impacted by what happens (this factor probably pushes for the transplant because more people probably have more people close to them). And finally and perhaps most consequently, if you set the precedent that you both have the ability and willingness to do this, you will likely create a fear in the general population that they or someone they know might be next on the donor list, because people have self preservation instincts and it's difficult to keep things secret forever. That kind of fear is a reduction in the well-being of all who learn about your operation, and though the amount is small, especially compared to a death, a small number multiplied across a significant chunk of the population that eventually learns about this results in a large net harm. It gets worse if anyone prone to paranoid thinking comes to the belief that they're "next" and attempts to sabotage their own health to make themselves a less appealing donor, or if people begun to mistrust doctors and avoid going to them when they would benefit from it- it's not difficult to imagine those last couple things ultimately causing some deaths, and it doesn't take more than a handful of those to counter your initial lives saved even without considering everything else I've just mentioned.

    Now, something a bit similar can be said for the original trolley problem: those people are unlikely to have tied themselves to the track, so there's probably someone who has done it, and now people are going to be scared of some sadistic murder who goes around tying people to trolley tracks, as well as maybe distrustful of public transit infrastructure. However, in this case, this has occurred before the person at the lever arrived, and that damage has therefore already been done, and isn't relevant to their choice. With the organ harvesting scenario, it hasn't, and only occurs if the "kill the healthy person to save the sick ones" option is chosen.

    This gets at a problem I have in general with these kinds of questions though: they usually either ignore the wider context of the scenario, which I believe is always going to be relevant to the answer, or they attempt to ensure it isn't relevant by modifying the scenario into one where no consequences exist except for the lives of the people involved, at which point the scenario can probably be contrived to make any ethical system result in counterintuitive choices with careful question design, but which also renders the hypothetical a bit pointless, became "your system leads to a result you probably don't like" doesn't mean very much anymore if the situation in which that happens is sufficiently unlikely to occur in real life.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 hours ago*

    I actually agree with that analysis completely. If you really press me, I would say yes, pull the lever in the trolley problem. But the problem is trying to take that as a principle to be applied to other situations. When we actually look at practical situations, there are all sorts of other factors specific to that situation that need to be evaluated, and it's rare that the difference actually comes down to whether or not you're applying a utilitarian framework. That sort of thinking also limits what kinds of solutions we're prone to consider.

    The actual, real world solution to the trolley problem would be first of all tracking down whoever's tying people to tracks and making them stop, and implementing better safety mechanisms to prevent trolleys from getting out of control. These solutions are things pretty much everyone can agree with, regardless of their moral framework. And I would expect that even if someone in that situation made the wrong decision from a given framework, people would see them as faced with an impossible choice in a traumatic situation, and even if they made the right decision, it wouldn't be considered "problem solved."

    What is more useful in informing our actual moral decision making is to pull examples from actual reality, in cases that are actually relevant to the decision in question. Because of the doctor example, you cannot just say, "This is like the trolley problem so we should do this," in practical cases, because real life is more complex.

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