Torture vs Drones

[Flying Pig]

As to the bold part - responsibility - that depends on the law of the land and in the end morality/ethics.

Legally you don't, unless you're in France - the point that we're trying to make is that you don't have one morally, or at least should act as if you don't, most of the time. Otherwise, you end up with first aiders taking risks to save people and ending up causing more trouble, or feeling that they have failed because they didn't manage to save the day perfectly. You give what help you can, but if that means taking a risk - even the risk of infection from providing CPR - you have no obligation to do so.

 

[Global Skeptic]

Legally you don't, unless you're in France - the point that we're trying to make is that you don't have one morally, or at least should act as if you don't, most of the time. Otherwise, you end up with first aiders taking risks to save people and ending up causing more trouble, or feeling that they have failed because they didn't manage to save the day perfectly. You give what help you can, but if that means taking a risk - even the risk of infection from providing CPR - you have no obligation to do so.

I think France is not the only country with such a legal demand. As to the risks - you are in the command of a life boat, which can carry 30 souls and you have 20 aboard. In a limited distance away is a large group of people in the water, you estimate 20+. Should you try to save some of them?

 

[Borachio]

Except you could save one by making a simple choice. If you fail to make it, their death is indeed predication upon your own lack of action.

Nice try. Doesn't work like that though. Once you pay the Danegeld you'll never be rid of the Dane.

Some maniac comes up with some crazy deal I'm having none of it.

You do realize that is still playing the game, right?

No, it isn't.

If I'm standing on a football field and I don't take part in any decisions that are going on around me, I'm not playing the game. I am present, but not participating.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think France is not the only country with such a legal demand. As to the risks - you are in the command of a life boat, which can carry 30 souls and you have 20 aboard. In a limited distance away is a large group of people in the water, you estimate 20+. Should you try to save some of them?

I would do so, but you are entitled to make the judgement call that it would be dangerous to do so - you might be afraid that they would all try to clamber aboard and sink the boat. The point is that it's not a moral obligation; that doesn't mean that it's not a good thing to do. Most first aiders would risk significant bodily harm to help a serious incident if there was no other option.

 

[Global Skeptic]

I would do so, but you are entitled to make the judgement call that it would be dangerous to do so - you might be afraid that they would all try to clamber aboard and sink the boat. The point is that it's not a moral obligation; that doesn't mean that it's not a good thing to do. Most first aiders would risk significant bodily harm to help a serious incident if there was no other option.

Thank you for your answers. As to the morality of giving first aid that is different from learning to do it properly. My training is primarily in the philosophical part of it.

 

[Formaldehyde]

A real incident in Afghanistan instead of a hypothetical:

KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan — Five-year-old Sadiq was not a casualty of war. He was simply unlucky. The boy had opened a sack of grain at his home early on Wednesday morning, and a pit viper coiled inside lashed up and bit him above the lip.

His father, Kashmir, knew his son was sure to die. With no hospital anywhere nearby, he rushed the boy to an American outpost to plead for help. By midafternoon, Sadiq’s breathing was labored. Respiratory failure was not long off.

The events that followed unfolded like a tabletop counterinsurgency exercise at a military school. On one hand, the United States military’s medical capacity, implanted across Afghanistan to care for those wounded in the war, could not be used as primary care for the nation’s 29 million people. On the other hand, would the officer who upheld this policy be willing to watch a 5-year-old die?

Sadiq’s father appeared with him at a Marine outpost in southern Helmand. It was clear that local care could not save him. The Marines requested an evacuation helicopter.

At the Camp Dwyer airfield, to the north, Major Davis and a co-pilot, First Lt. Matthew E. Stewart, saw the request posted on their operation center’s electronic message board. With an escort aircraft trailing behind, they soon lifted off from Camp Dwyer and headed south, expecting that the mission would be approved.

After flying perhaps 15 minutes, they were called back. The boy was not eligible for care. Sadiq was on his own.

A few hours later, a new request for medical evacuation, or medevac, appeared on the screen, this one from another Marine outpost. A small boy, it seemed, had been bitten on the face by a viper.

Everyone knew what this meant: Sadiq’s father had brought his dying son to the next Marine position and had started over.

There were no other medevac missions under way. While the pilots stared at the message board, wondering whether this time the mission for Sadiq would be approved, an officer at the second outpost issued a blunt challenge: would whoever denied the mission, the officer wrote, acknowledge that they knew the boy would die?

The typed answer came back on the screen. The mission was approved.

One can only hope that far more officers like the one at the second outpost are deployed to combat zones. The Afghans still want us to leave their country as soon as we possibly can, largely due to the massive number of civilians who have been killed in incidents they didn't think should have occurred. But they might remember that there were at least some soldiers who actually cared about them because they are also fellow human beings, even if it meant that American soldiers might be slightly more at risk.

It all reminds me of the movie Babel:


Link to video.

As stated in part in SS-18 ICBM's sig:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” Mark Twain

 

[MobBoss]

Nice try. Doesn't work like that though.

The hypothetical does. Precisely so.

No, it isn't.

Of course it is. Very often in life doing nothing is just as much a decision as taking action. This is indeed one of those type of choices.

If I'm standing on a football field and I don't take part in any decisions that are going on around me, I'm not playing the game. I am present, but not participating.

No one on a football field asks you to make a choice. Once they do, you are involved...you are no longer a spectator.

I'm not saying its fair, right, or wrong. The hypothetical is what it is. You can save one....or none. Apparently your choice is to save neither.

And lets add some quotes from Forms link that he left out:

Under NATO rules, any Afghan civilian wounded as a result of military activity is treated in the Western military’s medical system. Black Hawk helicopter crews often scramble and collect them. But each day, Afghans seek help for other injuries and ailments — for heart attacks, for trauma from vehicle and agricultural accidents, for twisted backs, cut hands, spiking fevers, infections, insect bites or dental pain.

For these ordinary medical conditions, unrelated to war but often urgent, Marines and Navy corpsmen in Helmand Province provide first aid. Getting approval for a Black Hawk is another matter.

So it seems the issue wasnt the care of the child in question, but the obligation of the helicopter as an asset. It appears those heartless bloodthirsty soldiers do indeed give first aid and care to the locals for a wide variety of problems. Odd how that wasnt part of Forms quote of the story. Story continues:

The helicopters are few. They are spread out. Picking up Afghan civilians with routine ailments puts aircraft and crews at risk. It could also put a helicopter out of position for a gravely wounded soldier or Marine.

And this is precisely what I indicated earlier in the thread. A gravely wounded soldier or marine would indeed be a priority; but as there were no other current medevac missions ongoing, this one was allowed to continue. Thanks for providing a link that supports my claim, Form. Very nice of you.

 

[Borachio]

The hypothetical does. Precisely so.
Of course it is. Very often in life doing nothing is just as much a decision as taking action. This is indeed one of those type of choices.

Your position might have some merit if it was a rational actor demanding I make a decision. But it isn't. There is every reason to think that no action of mine will have any bearing on the final outcome.

The only sane thing to do with any ultimatum is to ignore them completely or answer with a "Do what you think you have to do."

 

[MobBoss]

Your position might have some merit if it was a rational actor demanding I make a decision. But it isn't. There is every reason to think that no action of mine will have any bearing on the final outcome.

Actually, the hypothetical is quite clear. Your choice has meaning, and you are required to make one. 'Choosing' to not make a choice results in two deaths as opposed to one. That is your choice and the final outcome of the hypothetical in your case.

The only sane thing to do with any ultimatum is to ignore them completely or answer with a "Do what you think you have to do."

Actually, I think the sane thing to do is to at least save one life with my choice.

Btw, i'm sorry this simple hypothetical has caused you so much anxiety. Not sure why 'pick one and one lives, pick neither and both die' affects you in the way it does, but again, its just a hypothetical.

 

[Borachio]

Actually, the hypothetical is quite clear. Your choice has meaning, and you are required to make one. 'Choosing' to not make a choice results in two deaths as opposed to one. That is your choice and the final outcome of the hypothetical in your case.

I'm required to make a decision by a madman?!!!

Actually, I think the sane thing to do is to at least save one life with my choice.

But it's not your choice is it? The madman says it's your choice. But he's mad. You can't rely on the information you have been presented with.

Btw, i'm sorry this simple hypothetical has caused you so much anxiety. Not sure why 'pick one and one lives, pick neither and both die' affects you in the way it does, but again, its just a hypothetical.

I'm not at all anxious about it. My logic seems perfectly valid to me. I'm a little amused at your intransigence, to be frank.

And the hypothetical was a situation presented in the film "God on Trial". A man was asked to choose which of his sons he wanted to save - and he was unable to choose at all. But this is not my point.

 

[MobBoss]

I'm required to make a decision by a madman?!!!

Its called a 'hypothetical' for a reason.

But it's not your choice is it? The madman says it's your choice. But he's mad. You can't rely on the information you have been presented with.

Actually, the claim that there is a madman is your addition. It wasnt part of the hypothetical given in this thread. You know, the one where two people are mortally wounded, so which one do you choose to save? In that one, doing nothing absolutely results in two people dead.

I'm not at all anxious about it. My logic seems perfectly valid to me. I'm a little amused at your intransigence, to be frank.

As I am about your claim that not making a choice to allow both to die here is somehow moral. Is allowing two to die as opposed to one moral?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Its called a 'hypothetical' for a reason.

But imagine it's not a hypothetical.

 

[MobBoss]

But imagine it's not a hypothetical.

Are you giving me a hypothetical of my hypothetical?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Are you giving me a hypothetical of my hypothetical?

I see your turtle, and raise you one turtle.

 

[MobBoss]

I see your turtle, and raise you one turtle.

Oh yeah?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Since that's on a handpalm those are tiny turtles. And they can't see each other ... by the looks of it.

Reminds me of the original Siamese twins. One of them was a drunk while the other wasn't. Both were married and had lots of kids. One of them got into a fight but couldn't be arrested because that'd mean an innocent man would be locked up.

How did we get here? Oh yeah, hypotheticals.

 

[Borachio]

Actually, the claim that there is a madman is your addition. It wasnt part of the hypothetical given in this thread. You know, the one where two people are mortally wounded, so which one do you choose to save? In that one, doing nothing absolutely results in two people dead.

Ah. But no. You see the original hypothetical referred to was a man with a gun asking me to choose which of two people should be shot or not. If your logic doesn't lead you to conclude it's a mad man, I don't know what would.

I agree, if it's a choice between which of two to save from some natural disaster, things are different. The choice is then impossible for other reasons. All things being equal there's no reason to choose either. But if you can only save one, your choice could just be random, and equally good or bad. There's no way to tell.

Hypotheticals are inane though. Such situations never arise in practice.

 

[Farm Boy]

The world is mad. It might not create situations that are as neat and tidy as a hypothetical, but it certainly can provide ogrish options where somebody gets hurt no matter what you do or refuse to do.

As stated in part in SS-18 ICBM's sig:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” Mark Twain

Far be it from me to disagree with Mr. Twain, but I know many who try with a pretty good degree of success in an industry with little locational flexibility.

 

[MobBoss]

Ah. But no. You see the original hypothetical referred to was a man with a gun asking me to choose which of two people should be shot or not. If your logic doesn't lead you to conclude it's a mad man, I don't know what would.

I agree, if it's a choice between which of two to save from some natural disaster, things are different. The choice is then impossible for other reasons. All things being equal there's no reason to choose either. But if you can only save one, your choice could just be random, and equally good or bad. There's no way to tell.

Hypotheticals are inane though. Such situations never arise in practice.

Perhaps you missed the real world application of the hypothetical I mentioned and that Form originally alluded to: a critically wounded afghani or a critically wounded US soldier. I'm sure that situation has indeed arisen.

The choice simply isnt impossible, as I am sure there are more than a few that have had to make this kind of choice over the last decade.

 

[Borachio]

Oh yeah. I learnt something about the Afghani situation you allude to. Forget the kid. Fix the soldier every time.

In real life, I'd have gone for the kid. But, you know, military discipline wins. Besides that I wouldn't want to get court martialed, my mates do have a high priority.