The price of progress, ethical equations and fascism
There is such an interesting thing - ethical equations. It is very entertaining when it does not concern you personally and you do not have to solve them in reality. I will cite a famous historical example:
During the Second World War, the Germans had an Enigma encryption machine, which was considered to be susceptible to hacking all over the world. The British were able to decipher the message about the impending mass bombardment of one English city. The mass evacuation of the population would have prompted German spies that the code was disclosed and in the distant future allied troops would have remained without valuable intelligence information. This could change the balance of power and possibly change the outcome of the war. The British Prime Minister decides not to evacuate people, killing tens of thousands of his countrymen. It was this ethical equation that had to be solved by one person. The main indicator of the ethical equation - a person will feel guilty in any case.
In theory, there is an infinite set of equations that everyone can decide for themselves, purely from an “academic” interest and then evaluate their feelings from the process. For the seed, I will propose the simplest and classical equation:
1. You see that the train is on the train, which is approaching the arrow. An old man stands on one branch of the arrow (or lies), a small child is on the other branch. You only have time to run to the arrow and direct the train along one of the branches. Which branch will you direct the train to?
This is a fairly “simple” equation. The old man has already lived his own, it is better to let the child live.
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2. Complicate the task. On one branch, the child remains, and on the other branch a well-known politician, the Pope of Rome, a popular singer, the president of the state, any well-known personality that you personally deeply like.
3. You can still complicate the task. The child remains, and on the other branch all the people of the Earth are over 70 years old.
Well, is the cat scratching at the soul?
4. Now the choice is even harder. On one branch are your mother / father or another close person, and on the other branch there are 100/1000/1000000 people unfamiliar to you. where do you take the arrow? I confess at once that I don’t care for a million unfamiliar people, so long as my mother lived.
5. And if one member of your family is replaced by all your relatives, and on the other arrow you place all of humanity?
Anyone who wants to do a "mind recharge" or just tickle your nerves can come up with an infinite number of such equations. What does all this say? Read below, and then offer a few more similar problems.
So you personally think about Dr. Mengella? The younger generation is stupid, it has not heard such a name. Many people over the age of 25-30 know that it was a psychopath who inhuman experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. As a vampire drained their blood, cut off the skin with pieces, sawed people into pieces, hammered the glands into bodies and pulled out organs from living prisoners. In short, a fascist with a capital letter, they were all sick in the head. That's just not very widely advertised, and in the USSR in general it was forbidden to publish some details of his work. He drained the blood for wounded German soldiers. Transfusion was performed before, but often was unsuccessful and people died. After killing hundreds of people (both prisoners and his soldiers), he got to the bottom of the fact that there are different Rh factors and blood types, as well as different compatibility. Since then, this discovery has saved hundreds of millions of people. His work was monstrous, inhuman and inhuman, but in peaceful times this discovery would not have come soon. To grow broken bones, they must be immobilized. For about 100 years, a plaster cast is used for this purpose. Mengelle began to drive metal rods through the bone, which accelerated their healing at least 2 times. And the man on the same day could walk, albeit with a cane. His research later served as the basis for creating the “apparatus / methodology of Elizarov,” although one could rightly be called the “Mengelle method”. Cutting pieces of skin was not done in order to satisfy their sadistic inclinations, but for plastic surgery of burnt German soldiers. Having tortured thousands of prisoners, he made discoveries that now underlie the surgical practice and since then hundreds of millions of people have already been rescued. Over 3 years of work in a concentration camp, he created as many revolutionary discoveries and techniques as was done over the next few decades. If you personally or your family had any surgical operation, then they used a blood transfusion or kept the blood of the required group at the ready. Just in case. Knowing this and being able to go back in time, would you kill this greatest doctor and the greatest scoundrel in the history of mankind? I have not yet decided for myself this equation.
There is one interesting report by a scientist, according to which humanity was increasing too rapidly at the technological and agrarian level that was in the early to mid-20th century. To a certain critical mass, there would be rapid population growth, and then a series of diseases and famine would follow, which would kill several billions. The Second World War reduced the number of the reproductive population and slowed down the growth of mankind, which for a long time put off hunger and other cataclysms. I do not remember the author of this work, if someone read this book, write down the name and the name!
Still it is often possible to hear a phrase from the discharge “just so the tear of a child does not fall”. Here are the next tasks:
1. There are two children with cancer. The likelihood that they will survive is completely unknown. They may both die, they may die alone, they may both be cured. Do you consider it possible to allow the death of one child to the second survived with a probability of 100%?
2. The same task, only die alone, and survive 10/100/100000?
3. Do you consider it possible to allow death, i.e. to exchange the lives of ALL cancer patients at the moment, on the formula of a cure for all types of cancer? Those. killing hundreds of thousands of people now will you prevent the painful treatment and death of billions of people only in the next 100 years?
The cold calculation of the rulers sometimes gives rise to fascism, genocide and other terrible things. But so far this is just the price of progress. Is it possible to find an excuse for the vile things in the past that lay the building blocks of a bright future? Are we willing to pay such a price? Is cold calculation and balanced decisions compatible with the notion of humanity?
PS You will come up with more difficult ethical tasks - write in the comments, it will be interesting to think at your leisure.
During the Second World War, the Germans had an Enigma encryption machine, which was considered to be susceptible to hacking all over the world. The British were able to decipher the message about the impending mass bombardment of one English city. The mass evacuation of the population would have prompted German spies that the code was disclosed and in the distant future allied troops would have remained without valuable intelligence information. This could change the balance of power and possibly change the outcome of the war. The British Prime Minister decides not to evacuate people, killing tens of thousands of his countrymen. It was this ethical equation that had to be solved by one person. The main indicator of the ethical equation - a person will feel guilty in any case.
In theory, there is an infinite set of equations that everyone can decide for themselves, purely from an “academic” interest and then evaluate their feelings from the process. For the seed, I will propose the simplest and classical equation:
1. You see that the train is on the train, which is approaching the arrow. An old man stands on one branch of the arrow (or lies), a small child is on the other branch. You only have time to run to the arrow and direct the train along one of the branches. Which branch will you direct the train to?
This is a fairly “simple” equation. The old man has already lived his own, it is better to let the child live.
')
2. Complicate the task. On one branch, the child remains, and on the other branch a well-known politician, the Pope of Rome, a popular singer, the president of the state, any well-known personality that you personally deeply like.
3. You can still complicate the task. The child remains, and on the other branch all the people of the Earth are over 70 years old.
Well, is the cat scratching at the soul?
4. Now the choice is even harder. On one branch are your mother / father or another close person, and on the other branch there are 100/1000/1000000 people unfamiliar to you. where do you take the arrow? I confess at once that I don’t care for a million unfamiliar people, so long as my mother lived.
5. And if one member of your family is replaced by all your relatives, and on the other arrow you place all of humanity?
Anyone who wants to do a "mind recharge" or just tickle your nerves can come up with an infinite number of such equations. What does all this say? Read below, and then offer a few more similar problems.
So you personally think about Dr. Mengella? The younger generation is stupid, it has not heard such a name. Many people over the age of 25-30 know that it was a psychopath who inhuman experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. As a vampire drained their blood, cut off the skin with pieces, sawed people into pieces, hammered the glands into bodies and pulled out organs from living prisoners. In short, a fascist with a capital letter, they were all sick in the head. That's just not very widely advertised, and in the USSR in general it was forbidden to publish some details of his work. He drained the blood for wounded German soldiers. Transfusion was performed before, but often was unsuccessful and people died. After killing hundreds of people (both prisoners and his soldiers), he got to the bottom of the fact that there are different Rh factors and blood types, as well as different compatibility. Since then, this discovery has saved hundreds of millions of people. His work was monstrous, inhuman and inhuman, but in peaceful times this discovery would not have come soon. To grow broken bones, they must be immobilized. For about 100 years, a plaster cast is used for this purpose. Mengelle began to drive metal rods through the bone, which accelerated their healing at least 2 times. And the man on the same day could walk, albeit with a cane. His research later served as the basis for creating the “apparatus / methodology of Elizarov,” although one could rightly be called the “Mengelle method”. Cutting pieces of skin was not done in order to satisfy their sadistic inclinations, but for plastic surgery of burnt German soldiers. Having tortured thousands of prisoners, he made discoveries that now underlie the surgical practice and since then hundreds of millions of people have already been rescued. Over 3 years of work in a concentration camp, he created as many revolutionary discoveries and techniques as was done over the next few decades. If you personally or your family had any surgical operation, then they used a blood transfusion or kept the blood of the required group at the ready. Just in case. Knowing this and being able to go back in time, would you kill this greatest doctor and the greatest scoundrel in the history of mankind? I have not yet decided for myself this equation.
There is one interesting report by a scientist, according to which humanity was increasing too rapidly at the technological and agrarian level that was in the early to mid-20th century. To a certain critical mass, there would be rapid population growth, and then a series of diseases and famine would follow, which would kill several billions. The Second World War reduced the number of the reproductive population and slowed down the growth of mankind, which for a long time put off hunger and other cataclysms. I do not remember the author of this work, if someone read this book, write down the name and the name!
Still it is often possible to hear a phrase from the discharge “just so the tear of a child does not fall”. Here are the next tasks:
1. There are two children with cancer. The likelihood that they will survive is completely unknown. They may both die, they may die alone, they may both be cured. Do you consider it possible to allow the death of one child to the second survived with a probability of 100%?
2. The same task, only die alone, and survive 10/100/100000?
3. Do you consider it possible to allow death, i.e. to exchange the lives of ALL cancer patients at the moment, on the formula of a cure for all types of cancer? Those. killing hundreds of thousands of people now will you prevent the painful treatment and death of billions of people only in the next 100 years?
The cold calculation of the rulers sometimes gives rise to fascism, genocide and other terrible things. But so far this is just the price of progress. Is it possible to find an excuse for the vile things in the past that lay the building blocks of a bright future? Are we willing to pay such a price? Is cold calculation and balanced decisions compatible with the notion of humanity?
PS You will come up with more difficult ethical tasks - write in the comments, it will be interesting to think at your leisure.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/62994/
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