Thursday, June 29, 2006

Two small Questions

  1. If you were driving a train that's heading straight toward a group of 5 people, you can save there lives by pushing a handle and changing the direction of the train, but by doing so, you'd kill one person that's standing in your way in the other direction.

    Would you do it?

  2. If you were driving a train that's heading straight toward a group of 5 people, you can save there lives by pushing a person standing next to you under the wheels so that his body would slow down the train so that the breaks would stop the train in time to save the group




Not that I am trying to compete with Kareem the Master of all psycho-Quiz masters, I am just regurgitating a couple of Moral questions that I have read in La Recherche (June 2006; #398), and the author took it from a test made to explore the physical bases of conscience and moral judgment. I am still thinking of the what I might do in case #2, I don't think I would push the person.

5 comments:

jokerman said...

Both questions are over the top & overly hypothetical.
Who in such a real situation will have time to think & calculate the losses?

Herlock Sholmes said...

Of course I would! I have always wanted to see a body shredded to pieces

Josy said...

Those are not a psych-test questions, those are more like a charade:)

Pazuzu HSP said...

of course they are hypothetical, one can say the same about any question (including a simple question like: would you marry me?) but it's about taking it to extremes in order to make it more simple

KareemFromEgypt said...

what were those 5 people doing in the first place standing in front of a train?
i would do it in case number 1 if i didn't know the guy.
meaning that the second part of the first question should have been "if you answered yes, what if that 1 person was your father?"

as for the second case i wouldn't, i mean pushing a switch is one thing and pushing a person is a totally different thing, but then again it depends on if and how much i hate that person (is his death justifiable or not, in my own head of course)

p.s eshme3na ya3ni crazy egyptians??