My Random Fiction Bits and Pieces
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
- Location
- Russia
I'd say that there is a certain detail not present in the trolley problem:
In this case, it's the authorities' social contract to do something, while in the trolley problem, this obligation is an entirely moral one.
Actually, I believe removing an option to do nothing, like in this case, makes the problem a lot easier.
In this case, it's the authorities' social contract to do something, while in the trolley problem, this obligation is an entirely moral one.
Actually, I believe removing an option to do nothing, like in this case, makes the problem a lot easier.
...And that removes the moral burden of both options as they are now a Bio-terrorist!
- Location
- united states
I think option 3 is the least morally objectionable for me. With the way technology has developed you can still socialize with other people, and remote work is possible. This will prevent the patient/subject from going crazy from lack of socialization and allow them to participate in society in a productive way with remote work. Paired with a therapist and a strong (remote) social network and you could manage this disease and outbreak vector. It would also allow medical science to be better able to research the disease in order to develop a vaccine or other treatment.
That being said, after being presented with the above solution, if the patient were to refuse, option 2 is the next step. You will still get access to the subject for medical research into the disease and the opportunity to develop a vaccine or other treatment.
The only way I wouldn't object to option 1 is if the patient/subject was given the choice between 2 and 3 and chose the third option only to intentionally break quarantine for the purpose of spreading the disease. In which case the subject should be executed. Alternatively, if they take option 3 after being educated on the situation and what could happen if they break quarantined and break it anyway then they should be tried for terrorism, willful endangerment, or possibly manslaughter depending on the severity of the outbreak and imprisoned. Should medicine advance enough to treat the disease then they should be released after serving their time, assuming the penalty for whatever they were judged guilty for has been payed.
That being said, after being presented with the above solution, if the patient were to refuse, option 2 is the next step. You will still get access to the subject for medical research into the disease and the opportunity to develop a vaccine or other treatment.
The only way I wouldn't object to option 1 is if the patient/subject was given the choice between 2 and 3 and chose the third option only to intentionally break quarantine for the purpose of spreading the disease. In which case the subject should be executed. Alternatively, if they take option 3 after being educated on the situation and what could happen if they break quarantined and break it anyway then they should be tried for terrorism, willful endangerment, or possibly manslaughter depending on the severity of the outbreak and imprisoned. Should medicine advance enough to treat the disease then they should be released after serving their time, assuming the penalty for whatever they were judged guilty for has been payed.
- Location
- Europe
Happend in real life, actually.OK, for amusement value I shall rephrase the trolley problem which everyone is arguing about into a different problem, so you can then argue about *that!*
During the Black Death, with a Maid.
Ended up going from job to job, because they kept dying.
She was not only immune, she was also a sybiotic carrier, after she recovered from caching it.
Sometimes history leasons can be quite fun.
I believe she was killed, for witchcraft or something like that.
Probably the better fate, just think, never being able to interract with anybody, because else they die?????
O and as for that maid, the Church was still powerfull, back then, so sunday morning, you where in the church, praying.
Can you lot see the problem, there?
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You are making her sound worse then Wikipedia does.
"Mallon herself claimed never to believe that she was a carrier..." a few years later
"On February 19, 1910, Mallon said she was "prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection."
"Upon her release, Mallon was given a job as a laundry worker, which paid less than cooking—$20 per month instead of $50. After a time she wounded her arm and the wound became infected, meaning that she could not work at all for six months.[39] After several unsuccessful years, she started cooking again[...]Almost everywhere she worked, there were outbreaks of typhoid.[36] However, she changed jobs frequently, and Soper was unable to find her."
I wouldn't say we can prove malice, but there are mitigating circumstances.
- Location
- Somewhere
Proof of malice is not a requirement when it can be proven that people died because of someone's actions. All the lack of malice means is that premeditated murder (malice aforethought) and homicide (malice in the heat of the moment) aren't charges that can be laid against that person, as both require intent. Manslaughter, on the other hand, simply requires proof that the person's actions resulted in someone's death.
Jadesteele
Out of my Mind - Back in 5 Minutes
- Location
- half-way between 'Crazy' And 'Eccentric'
There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned in the discussion of morality - just how DUMB the whole thing was. Not the story, but the fact that with access to the chronicle, and thus knowledge of how it was GOING to go, instead of using that knowledge to prevent and fix things, Contessa chose to treat it like holy scripture, and set out to, in the words of Piccard, 'make it so.' she and by extension everyone else never even considered that they were granted a look at the whole thing to be able to make things better and save the countless lives that DID die. yes, they resulted in the question of 'the one or the many?' but in truth the question was 'how many who will die can we save anyway?' I wonder how long until the number of casualties to scions rampage leads to someone asking difficult questions, and the consequences - especially when those who DID lose someone want justice for them. Add to that the inevitable guilt that the others will be feeling for their actions, and how it effects them (well, MOST of them...)
In truth, while Taylor may (possibly) one day forgive, there might not be anyone in that group to do so...
In truth, while Taylor may (possibly) one day forgive, there might not be anyone in that group to do so...
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Doctor Mother did originally object to Project Worm, briefly, but Contessa (probably operating under the obvious bias of 'here's a path to victory I can actually path') pushed it.
Also, Cauldron has no reason not to get away with it short of something like QA coming after them. They still have all the things that made them the invincible conspiracy in the first place.
Kinsfire
Verified {Redacted}
- Location
- New Jersey
Yes, to Contessa, life was purely deterministic. If the Holy Path stated that X must happen, then X MUST happen. We have to kill Gandhi, MLK Jr, and the Dalai Lama because it says so, even though that will make it worse for the people left behind? The Path Must Be Followed. Deviations are NOT ALLOWED.
Skrattybones
Chao is all you need
Is it worse? My take on the first two one-shots, at least, is that it's at worst as bad as canon Worm, because it is canon Worm. Like, that's the premise, right? That it isn't an AU but it's meant to be taken as the actual story but from a different perspective.
Now this is an interesting take on the whole Worm concept. Personally, I think it's a great ending to the GM arc.
Continue on, Pi Guy!
Continue on, Pi Guy!
Kinsfire
Verified {Redacted}
- Location
- New Jersey
My take on it is that it IS worse, because look at some of the people there - Lisa, who has no powers and was fed everything. This means that Contessa was running EVERYTHING, and was so locked into ensuring that her Path was never wrong that if it had said to see to it Earth Bet was destroyed utterly in order to kill Scion, she would have had someone else push the button without hesitation, and probably without letting them know what that button was going to do. It strongly hints that there were other things that could have been done, but ONE WOMAN decided the fate of millions of Earths.
Given that I think Contessa has been run by her Path for years, this is going to destroy her, because now there's a HUGE blind spot she can NEVER work around. (And if I was QA, being in charge of the network, I'd put her Shard in Maintenance Mode - she can't use it AT ALL, but it's still connected to her. "Server Busy - try again later." Make her learn to function as a normal, when she's in her 40's (most likely, or late 30's) and has NEVER had to really think about how to do anything for herself - she just follows a Path to Cereal or something.)
Personally I'm going to have to disagree with you (Yes I get that you are the author of this part of the fic and all but we are talking morality rather than what your intentions were while writing so meh) that this version of worm is worse than Canon. Yes what Cauldron and Contessa are doing to Taylor, her family (including the Barneses) and the few actors brought in are absolutely worse during the 5 or so years of project Worm, however the damage done to the world over all is probably less than canon and as much as Taylor and QA may rightfully hate them for their actions many things canonTaylor wished for actually happens this way. Her mother is alive, Emma does actually care for her, and she isn't going to be treated as a monster for the actions she has taken. So yeah still extra horrible for Taylor, but less dark than canon IMO.
Indeed, that was the problem with the Typhoid Mary case and others like it.
They just bar the person from making a living, without giving them any support to acquire skills and training to make a living with an equal or better income. Then wonder why that person goes back to something that supports themselves in a lifestyle they are accustomed to. Basically being all stick, no carrot, usually because they don't want to spend money on the carrot even if using the stick will cost more in the long run.
Now if they had offered to give Mary a full, all-expenses paid scholarship to a university to pick up skills to work as something other than a cook with a stipend for some spending money, she might have been more agreeable, and probably would have cost less in the long run (but NOT the short run) than 30 years of involuntary quarantine.
Granted back then women's opportunities were more limited, but there WERE women's colleges.
However in the short term, colleges are expensive, and people will resist giving an expensive handout like that for political reasons.
I'd say the same would work for almost anyone, in addition to barring the person from their profession, see to it they get sufficient training, education, and certifications to make a better living in another field without going into debt while getting said training and they will probably be a lot more cooperative than just saying "you can't work as a cook/maid/whatever, find another field of work."
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Contessa wasn't the only one who had read Worm prior to the launch of Project Worm.
Admittedly, I'm nor sure Dr. Mother would (or, TBH, should) consider Bet specifically out of bounds as a loss, but Contessa only was on full unilateral authority to the extent that she literally always is by her nature. (Nobody can strictly stop her, and she can probably talk you into not trying if she wants to.)
2a Lock them up in luxury.
1 Kill them.
2b Lock them up in poor conditions.
2c Lock them up and vivisect and experiment on them in the (vain, apparently) hope of finding a cure for everyone else affected.
3 Move to a remote island and let them loose on the mainland and whoever dies, dies.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In this version of Worm, they were reasonably sure that their solution worked. Iirc, they had no reason to be so in the original Worm. If that's correct, the version here is arguably better.
Prep the Chlorine Trifluoride and declare Base Delta Zero to contain the infected area. You don't risk geocide level pandemics and you should just be grateful that you caught it before it became airborne or started permeating the water table.
Typhoid is not actually like that.
And if it was, you'd be in total societal collapse before you were in a position to track down Typhoid Mary.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
My impression from the description is that it's something with a relatively short incubation period, and/or with a relatively late start of infectivity, such that it doesn't geocide because the vast majority of the people who catch it don't actually infect anyone because they're already sick at home by the time they can infect.
(The description as given isn't actually far off from OTL Ebola; there's a reason Ebola hadn't killed off the entire African population yet.)
But yeah, should probably be contained before things get worse, because if it ever mutates to lower lethality, it's going to result in total societal collapse.
PhoebusArtemis
Just a random factfinder.
- Location
- I'll never tell...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well that's a complete monkey's paw of a wish. (Also, weird coincidence: the son's name in The Monkey's Paw story is Herbert - very close to Hebert. If this snippet were to have a proper name, I'd put forward Taylor's Monkey Paw)
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MultipleChoice
(Verified Unverified)
I think I can render the "trolley problem" down to the core question even further: "What is the required cost to benefit ratio required to convince a person to engage in an action?" A look at medical research especially will show you how people differ on this question. The trolley problem is simply a specific instance, where the cost is 1 life and the benefit is 3 lives, that fails to sufficiently detail the situation, leading to people thinking of alternate choices that disregard the point of the thought exercise. However, there are other ways to frame the concept.
Lets say you, in 1920, were given a button, told that pressing the button would kill Adolf Hitler, given a book detailing his entire life into the future, and then isolated from the outside world except for receiving television & radio (to prevent you from simply changing the future otherwise). When do you push that button? If you pick a date too early, you are literally killing an innocent man. If you pick a date too late, he's already formed the Nazi party and killing him may accomplish nothing to prevent the Holocaust. If you never pick a date, are you in part responsible for the actions he committed since you had the means to stop him? It's not an easy question.
In the case of Taylor for this story, to their knowledge she was the only solution to the dilemma of Zion. It's fair to say they could have tried to find another way, but they knew this method would work. Did they have the right to gamble countless lives for fear of violating one innocent? "At least we tried" doesn't bring the dead back to life.
Lets say you, in 1920, were given a button, told that pressing the button would kill Adolf Hitler, given a book detailing his entire life into the future, and then isolated from the outside world except for receiving television & radio (to prevent you from simply changing the future otherwise). When do you push that button? If you pick a date too early, you are literally killing an innocent man. If you pick a date too late, he's already formed the Nazi party and killing him may accomplish nothing to prevent the Holocaust. If you never pick a date, are you in part responsible for the actions he committed since you had the means to stop him? It's not an easy question.
In the case of Taylor for this story, to their knowledge she was the only solution to the dilemma of Zion. It's fair to say they could have tried to find another way, but they knew this method would work. Did they have the right to gamble countless lives for fear of violating one innocent? "At least we tried" doesn't bring the dead back to life.
- Location
- Launceston, Tasmania
OK, for amusement value I shall rephrase the trolley problem which everyone is arguing about into a different problem, so you can then argue about *that!*
As far as I am aware, this has already been through the courts...
There are quite a few cases of people with HIV being charged with various felonies after knowingly transmitting the disease...
There was even one case where the charges were murder (Canada).
Any such disease would be treated like HIV.
As for real world examples...
Guilty verdict in first ever murder trial for sexual HIV transmission
A Canadian man who is thought to have recklessly transmitted HIV to seven women, two of whom subsequently died, has made legal history by becoming the first person ever to be convicted of first-degree murder for sexual HIV transmission. The case has reignited the criminalisation debate in...
[update]South Africa: Life sentence for soldier convicted of attempted murder and rape for alleged HIV transmission
The HIV Justice Network (HJN) is the leading community-based NGO building a co-ordinated, effective global response to punitive laws and policies that impact people living with HIV in all our diversities.
www.hivjustice.net