Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

At sometime in your life, you’ve been presented with the quandary of whether one person’s life should be sacrificed for many lives, or whether the life of a child is more valuable than that of an adult. There are 10 famous moral quandaries, titled: Lifeboat, The Mad Bomber, Drug Bust, Hit & Run, Nieces & Daughters, The Pregnant Woman, The Neighbor, Spam Filtering, The Accident, and Concentration Camp. If you take these tests, you’ll find the choices are inscrutable, but there is a logical & rational way to view them, to wit: no one can know the future, no one has all information, and there are no moral choices, so do the most expedient thing given the information you have, no guessing.

For example, most things you know nothing about, so don’t act; who knows where the next lightening strike will be; it could be exactly where you’d be standing if you moved. If your children are threatened, save them, and hope the rest of the people transport through a space portal just in the nick of time. Often hostage-taking is used to justify betrayal: if a kidnapper said you had to violate all you believed in or they will kill your son, what are you going to do? Do whatever you can to rescue him but certainly don't let the kidnappers win twice by destroying your honor. To sacrifice yourself so that a child can live, or even a whole town, is futile at best, and could possible make the situation worse: one of the people in that town could be the next Hitler.