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230 sats \ 3 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 18 Mar \ on: Tough Questions for Libertarians 4/15 libertarian
Are you familiar with the classic SF story The Cold Equations?
(Wikipedia summary if you prefer.)
It's basically exactly this debate (well, with the addition of it being in space, so there's an explicit danger from the existence of the stowaway), and it's pretty much tied with le Guin's "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" as the SF morality story that will have fans debating up into the night at any convention.
I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.
There's a famous thought experiment in moral philosophy that tries to work through this type of situation. In the thought experiment, you wake up one day to find that someone has been medically attached to you. It was an emergency procedure to save the person's life and they'll die if you have them removed from you. Also, the person is a concert violinist, for some reason.
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Re: the convert violinist
It's probably because music & art are considered the most transcendental of all human activities, and the hardest to explain by purely physical objectives like energy and resource production and genome perpetuation. Thus, music and art are most likely to evoke thoughts about the inherent dignity of human life and the transcendental nature of humans over and above animal life.
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Omelas is a brilliant one. Really sticks with you.
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