[lisper]

> You can play this moral dilemma forever.

Yes, of course. That's the whole point. It's a very hard problem.

> In reality, there is no dilemma. The people who can help are morally obligated to help in non-theoretical situations.

Really? How much money have you donated to help provide clean drinking water to poor children in third world countries?

> If a child is drowning, and by jumping in I have to ruin my $5,000 watch which I would have otherwise later sold to help 100 children, my moral obligation is still with the immediate need of this drowning child.

Really? You would sacrifice 100 to save 1? That's a very peculiar moral calculus you have there.

[ddingus]

Seriously?

Tell me how a person watches a child drown.

Sorry fam, next week I plan on donating to save 100 kids living in worse places than your dead kid lived in...

Actually facing a scenario like that, and the people involved plays out very differently.

[umanwizard]

There is no argument here other than an appeal to emotion.

Yes, it's true that no normal person would actually avoid jumping into a pool to save a drowning child, even at the cost of $5000 that could save 100 other people. That is the entire point -- human moral faculties are not based on logic, and overweight the interests of people you can see, or whom you can help in obvious, concrete ways, relative to diffuse total global happiness. But the fact that humans are wired to think in a particular way doesn't prove that it's rational or correct.

[ddingus]

News flash!

Emotion, character and reason are all valid in this discussion.

Let me put it to you just a bit more directly:

An aggrieved mother and father are there, facing you and their dead child.

Now, having made this call to let their kid die, what do you say to them?

I will wait...

Actually, I won't. It is one thing to speak of optimal choices when one is seperated from, or above, disassociated.

Real life, where the actual humans are plays out much differently.

Above, when I asked, "Seriously?" it was this I was getting at.

The claim of strange morals, based on some 100 to one, as if!

I found the whole thing deeply disturbing. Not a negative to the participants. Not my intent.

No, what I found disturbing was the detached nature of the whole thing.

Maybe Liberal Arts education remains more relevant than I realize.

Again, not a negative toward anyone. Context matters, that's all.

I very seriously question the general wisdom in having some percentage of us so far isolated from people overall, and any sort of meaningful policy, moral debate being beneficial.

You completely failed to make a meaningful rebuttal. Correct... ?

Like I said, seriously?

[umanwizard]

> Now, having made this call to let their kid die, what do you say to them?

This wouldn't happen, since I'm a (non-sociopath) human.

You seem to have missed the point of the argument completely.

> Real life, where the actual humans are plays out much differently.

Nobody disagrees here.

[ddingus]

The person questioning morality did.

And that is OK. Let me be clear. It was thought provoking!

[mirkules]

> Really? How much money have you donated to help provide clean drinking water to poor children in third world countries?

I was born and raised in a third world country, and I assure you the problem is much bigger than simply throwing money at their problems.

> Really? You would sacrifice 100 to save 1? That's a very peculiar moral calculus you have there.

The sacrifice is only hypothetical, while the drowning child is something of immediate concern. If a person were to stand by watching a child drown in exchange for throwing money at a problem that is neither directly visible nor immediate, I would conclude there is something fundamentally wrong with that person.

[quickthrower2]

Not that uncommon. Seeing how many gadgets get sold e.g. iphones where the money could go to charity to save kids.