Morality - what would you do?

[Lakitu]

Here's the situation:


It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately.

A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child.

Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?

[dustypuss]

yep

[SKA]

cant we just tape the baby?

[Lakitu]

No question about it dustypuss?

SKA - LOL, isn't that smothering it in the end anyway?

[cazzz1975]

what would you do lakitu?

[Lakitu]

I don't know, I've umm'd and aaaah'd about it for ages.

On one hand I'd be saving X amount of lives, but on the other hand who am I to deprive a barely new life from the world?

[dustypuss]

no question about it at all if you are all going to be killed including the baby then it going to be killed any way so i say top the rug rat first :-0

[ChuckFickens]

and dustypuss is available for baby sitting at very reasonable rates :0) LOL

Theoretically yes, not smothering it wouldn't save it if everyone was going to be killed if the noise gave the hiding place away. In practice, not sure if I could bring myself to do it

[Octavius]

There was a question sometime back on here, which presented a similar moral/immoral dilemma � something about a runaway tram or suchlike.

Is it for you to decide that the baby dies and the rest live?
Is it for you to decide that the baby lives and the rest die?
Is it for you to decide who decides, and who does the ultimate killing/let live decision?

There are no right/wrong answers, society will judge you as both moral and immoral whichever you chose.

[weeal]

gawd no, I couldnt, if I smothered the baby I would want to die anyway, someone else would have to do it

[dustypuss]

what i think that i would do is strangle the baby first then do in the idiot who brought the baby into the basement in the first place ;-)

[WaldoMcFroog]

The overwhelming majority of people, faced with a hypothetical situation like this will apparently indicate that an act of ommission is less bad than an act of commission - that is, to let everyone die by not killing the baby would be considered more morally acceptable than killing the baby to save everyone.

Sociopaths will kill the baby, and interestingly, brainscans clearly show that they use different areas of the brain to make their decisions.

[Octavius]

If no-one else is prepared to smother the baby, then they and I would die by their own decision. I would smother the baby them kill the lot of them, since that seems to have been there initial desire � to let me die!

[WaldoMcFroog]

...and sometimes it's obvious just by reading what they write!!!

[Octavius]

Egoism and self-preservation, I guess the words and wisdom of the AB atheists is starting to rub off!

[keyplus90]

Just by imagining that the enemy soldiers would come and kill all of us would not make me kill a baby. That would be a murder. I would rather wait for the last moment and see.

Soldiers may never hear baby.

Something else may change the course of action of the soldiers outside and they go away.

Soldiers may just arrest all of us and later everyone could survive.

I would rather fight the soldiers if I have to and try to save the others instead of killing an innocent.

[ruby27]

Well I guess that I must be a sociopath as I think I would kill the baby.

Fortunately for me and the baby I have never faced such a dilemna.

[oldgrape]

hit over the head and knock it out and hope and pray there is no perminant damage.
i personally would rather die than live with my guilt and myconscience for the rest of my life

[naky-nag-nat]

I couldn't do it... so I'd make damn sure I was hiding in the basement with... dustypuss ;o)

[angeldraws]

I would stick my tit in its gob and hope it didnt bite - that would at least pacify the child....