By Carl-Richard
in Intellectual Stuff: Philosophy, Science, Technology,
A YouTube channel asked a question: "If you're told to press a button for $100,000, but the catch is that pressing it means a random person on the planet gets a one-way ticket to the afterlife, would you cash in?"
As of the moment writing this topic, the answers were: While you can doubt the sincerity of these answers (especially because the channel that posted it has an audience that would be prone to make extreme statements for comedic effect), I think the numbers aren't actually too far from the norm. Now, you can also doubt the accuracy of self-report, especially because you would probably expect less people to actually go through with it than merely reporting that they would go through with it (due to seriousness of the action). Nevertheless, it think the numbers do reflect reality to some extent. Even if the numbers were highly in favor of "no", I think this topic is still worth talking about. How do we approach these people? How do we instill a sense of moral responsibility in them? Assuming they're capable of rational thought, are there any arguments that are likely to work? I posed a question to the comment section which tries to provide such an argument: Then I followed it up by a thought experiment exploring the question further were they to still answer yes: Essentially, I was trying to prove that what they interpret as self-concern actually cannot be distinguished from care for others. In a sense, their self-concern involves caring for other people, which is a natural human tendency. The question is just how far the circle of concern extends, and the thought experiment is also constructed to show that this circle of concern is arbitrary. In reality, if you care about other people (which you most likely do), there is no principled reason to care about one person over another (or at least that is the argument, which may or may not be entirely true, but at least it makes you think). The reason you would act to the contrary is merely because you act that way, not because of some principled stance (although you can feel free to prove me wrong; I actually intuit it's not fully correct, I'm just not sure how). So far, I've not gotten any signs of serious engagement, but do you think the argument sounds convincing? Are there any flaws in it? Were you yourself affected by the argument somehow? Also, feel free to share any of your own arguments if you have any.
As of the moment writing this topic, the answers were: While you can doubt the sincerity of these answers (especially because the channel that posted it has an audience that would be prone to make extreme statements for comedic effect), I think the numbers aren't actually too far from the norm. Now, you can also doubt the accuracy of self-report, especially because you would probably expect less people to actually go through with it than merely reporting that they would go through with it (due to seriousness of the action). Nevertheless, it think the numbers do reflect reality to some extent. Even if the numbers were highly in favor of "no", I think this topic is still worth talking about. How do we approach these people? How do we instill a sense of moral responsibility in them? Assuming they're capable of rational thought, are there any arguments that are likely to work? I posed a question to the comment section which tries to provide such an argument: Then I followed it up by a thought experiment exploring the question further were they to still answer yes: Essentially, I was trying to prove that what they interpret as self-concern actually cannot be distinguished from care for others. In a sense, their self-concern involves caring for other people, which is a natural human tendency. The question is just how far the circle of concern extends, and the thought experiment is also constructed to show that this circle of concern is arbitrary. In reality, if you care about other people (which you most likely do), there is no principled reason to care about one person over another (or at least that is the argument, which may or may not be entirely true, but at least it makes you think). The reason you would act to the contrary is merely because you act that way, not because of some principled stance (although you can feel free to prove me wrong; I actually intuit it's not fully correct, I'm just not sure how). So far, I've not gotten any signs of serious engagement, but do you think the argument sounds convincing? Are there any flaws in it? Were you yourself affected by the argument somehow? Also, feel free to share any of your own arguments if you have any.
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