cocktail party fodder #001

[orangerful]

One of the perks of working the Information Desk is finding out random stuff while helping people. I had a high schooler trying to get information for her debate. First she asked me for information on "sacrifice" to which I replied "whaaaaaaaaaa?" -- well, in more professional, librarian terms

"What exactly do you need to know?"

When she told me it was for debate class, I asked her to tell me what she was actually debating. She said it was the idea that killing one person was okay to save many people. Not your typical debate question for 11th grade! ANYWAY, after much searching and gnashing of teeth, I found out this is called The Trolley Problem.

The idea being that, if you were standing on a bridge and there was a trolley full of people out of control coming toward the bridge and you could stop it by throwing a really fat person on top of the trolley, would you? The person you threw would certainly die but you would save everyone on board.

Consequetialism is the philosophy term.

Yeah, so I'm ready for my cocktail party debate now. Throw out those phrases and people will be like "Sam, we were just talking about Wrath of Khan, why you gotta be so serious???"

Comments

[hickumu]

...at first, I thought you'd made that up.

Then I realized you didn't, and I flashed back to Dad's and my last playthrough of Resident Evil 6. And how the last stage of the level is trying to get a ridiculously fat zombie out of the way of the bus and eventually just managing to drive over it.

We did study consequentialism in my really awful Philosophy class last semester. It was not phrased in quite those terms.

Philosophy is goddamn weird.

[geekslave.livejournal.com]

"Sam, we were just talking about Wrath of Khan, why you gotta be so serious???"

LOL. That would definitely be a trippy thing to bring up at a party. :)

Stacey

[elizalavelle.livejournal.com]

Good question. Definitely a tricky subject for a grade 11 student but if the teacher has good control of the classroom it could be a really interesting debate :)

[ekaterin24.livejournal.com]

You were bringing up Wrath of Khan to be ironic, weren't you, as Spock gave his own answer to that question at the end of the movie.

[skindyedindigo.livejournal.com]

That is a pretty heavy topic for high school debates! It has the potential to be a really good conversation amongst growing minds though, and hopefully it is!

[bittertwee.livejournal.com]

How fat?

[bittertwee.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I have never heard this problem posed before with the person potentially being sacrificed being described as really fat. For some reason this is making me giggle.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I hadn't either but it stated that the person was fat enough to stop a trolley...I don't know WHY this is the situation, the lady who did the philosophizing made it up! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)

(I verified it in some actual online reference books too, just easier to link you to Wikipedia)