Yes, but it’s hardly “many.” Plenty of countries retain the right to conscript in times of war but don’t use it in times of peace, or only have it as a backup should they not have enough volunteers to maintain minimum troop levels for their own defense, but very few have anything approaching universal service.

Those countries that do have universal service are often those that perceive themselves as having to be ready for a potentially existence-threatening invasion on no notice, such as South Korea or Israel. Singapore feels similarly, especially given its tiny population; the only way for it to ever defend itself is to ensure that everyone is trained. Likewise Switzerland, which avoided being invaded in two world wars largely on the basis of having a fully-mobilized population that would make an invasion too expensive for the benefit unless fighting was finished elsewhere. Thus I said that it requires a different level of justification; societies are more willing to accept it as the perceived threat to society increases.

That’s a good point, although again, juries are not actually a common feature around the globe. And in many of the countries that have them, they’re reserved for only the most serious of crimes (e.g., manslaughter, murder, treason, &c.), with lesser crimes tried by professional judges alone. Again, I think that this indicates a willingness to bring in a balancing test where only the most serious issues with the most serious of stakes, involving not only the deaths of victims but potentially the bodily confinement for life or even execution of another citizen, could possibly compel the bodily service of innocents.

I agree, Alison shouldn’t have brought other people in – though I do wish she’d taken the time to sleep on the matter, and, say, seek advice from someone – like, say, Brad – with a proven record of handling problematic situations. General advice, of course; nothing specific, for obvious reasons.

Even that may not have helped – nor, necessarily, been offered, though I like to think Brad would have offered what advice he could – but I do wish it’d been tried.

And that’s my one and only contribution to the never-ending debate. Let’s sit back and watch Gurwara at work! I brought the popcorn 🙂

Loranna

I . . . respectfully decline to argue calculus, as any argument I make will inevitably boil down to me saying, in essence, “that’s silly.” ^_^

That, and long staring at these equations, as well as other equations in other forums and in my personal life, has left my poor brain numb to the idea of moral debate, and I am more interested in wondering how Gurwara’s performance would go if he had been wearing a hat. o/

Loranna

The perfect person to convince Max was already in on all this. In fact, he informed Allison of Max in the first place.
Calling Patrick would have been easier, quicker, and would not have exposed Max to any more people who didn’t already know about him.

Patrick doesn’t mind control, he reads minds.
He would have found a way to willingly convince Max to help, since it would be incredibly easy for him to know exactly how to do this.

I guess we will never know.

So do we all. 😀

That seems fair, but I don’t think computing such a utility function is doable at all.

On a personal basis, there are people who may prefer to die (depending on how) than to lose a limb, people who prefer to lose their lives than to compromise their pride, honor or principles, etc.

At most you may get some heuristic on a perceived utility through voting or through polls, but that’s very far from the actual utility function. And how do you even define “utility from living in a society” for a newborn child ?

In addition to all that, you cannot just average personal utilities into some compound utility. If something drastically raises the expected utility for half the people and drastically lowers for the other half, you cannot consider it to be overall neutral, because in practice it would probably lead to a civil war and low utilities for about everyone.

Well, if you only compare “people not being saved by Max” with “Max being mistreated” and choose the lesser evil, I’d say that you are right.

But I think say that “considering that mistreating Max was ethical”, that “hurting him was okay” is what really hangs in the balance here, and it seems to me to be the worst evil of the three.

And in this specific case, the debate should not even be between those, because there were better ways to make Max do it that were not tried first (as Asimov wrote, “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”): he could have been offered compensation (monetary or not, by Alison or by other people that may want Max to help if they know about him). Should he keep refusing, there may be laws in place that make him not helping illegal (here in France, not helping people in danger when you can do it without any risk to yourself is illegal). And if all that fails, I can’t imagine that making the story public would not make him feel so much like an ass (I mean, not saving millions of people even when offered millions of dollars in exchange? seriously?) that I think that the social pressure would make him do it.

Well, it would be a nuisance to him, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s more harm. And there’s always the possibility of the story being in the news with his identity kept secret.

About “is it right” vs “can it be the right decision”, I agree that the two are separate questions, but I think that the mere fact that we could be willing to make the decision affects the answer for the second one. Like, even if we somehow came to the conclusion that it was the right decision, being willing to go through with it should weight in the balance and I think it would make it the wrong one.

I was not thinking about the “sore arm” part and more about the coertion part. To me, being forced to do things like this seems almost as traumatizing as if he had been raped.

For the “functioned as a police officer” part : that can only be true if there is a law like this in this universe in this country, and even then it’s different than police, because police has oversight so that (at least in theory) they cannot abuse their prerogatives. If they overstep their boundaries, they can be prosecuted and even jailed.

… but I agree that almost all superheroes operate outside the law. Vigilantism is indeed illegal. An being at the same time police, judge and executioner is something that is only found in superhero fiction and in dystopias.

That a very good point. I had to think a lot about this one.I agree that in terms of pure probability you’re right.

I could explore ramifications of the choice when pushing the logic to even further extremes, but that would play more on the emotional side of things so let’s discard this train of thought for now.

Back to the example you gave (the coin/die one). The point I want to make is that probabilities and statistics are not all there is to this problem, so let’s imagine that the probability is the same: either a 1 in 2 chance that a familiy member dies in a car crash, or a 1 in 2 chance that a family member is killed by your country. To me, the second one feels worse, don’t you think so? I had to think a lot about why, though, to understand what made it worse.

I think that what my objection boils down to is this:
1) The main role of a society/political system is to ensure the safety and rights of its citizens
2) Here, the citizens’ rights are respected if we assume everyone agrees to this at one point and it’s in the law and stuff
3) However, as said in 1), the society has a duty to protects each and everyone of us, and that comes into play. “Ensuring everyone’s safety” is not the same as “statistically increasing everyone’s safety”. Let me explain: imagine you were to live your life in peace and eventually die of old age (or whatever convenient), but you get selected for the harvest. This means that you are about to be killed by the country that swore to protect you. Killed so that the country may save others, maybe, but killed nonetheless. Instead of protecting each and everyone of us, this country would protects some at the expense of others (even if it’s fewer others). Isn’t it a form of betrayal? Can this country really be said to protect its people?

I guess the difference is about the same as the one between hiring someone to protect you that has a 1% chance of failing in doing so, and hiring someone who does protects you with 100% certainty but has a 1% chance of shooting you in the face. The probability of dying is the same, but you can only say that one of the 2 is really protecting you, right?