Sinking boat moral dilemma

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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BlackBird
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Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by BlackBird »

Well I was having a wee look through the archives this arvo and came across David's thread on the classic train track 5 vs. 1 moral dilemma, and I went looking on the internet for others to satisfy my curiosity, and I came across a good one, at least I think so anyway:

You're on a ship in the North Atlantic, the ocean is freezing cold. The ship hits an iceburg and begins to sink. The crew ready the lifeboats and everyone finds themselves a place. As the lifeboat you are sitting in is lowered into the water, you and the other 9 passengers realize there is a hole in your lifeboat, and it is taking on water. Using your genius, you calculate that if 9 of you bail out in shifts, with one person taking a 10 minute break at a time to recover their strength, you will be able to keep the raft afloat for 5 hours. During this time you hope to be rescued by another ship but it's really down to chance whether you will be rescued, or drown/die of hypothermia when your lifeboat finally sinks.

As you thought up the idea, you elect to be the first to take a 10 minute break, and as you're taking said break you look across the water and notice your friend from aboard the ship in another of the lifeboats not far off, he yells to you that there's space for one more person in their life raft and that you should swim across and join him. They can't take any more than that or the boat will be swamped.

You do some quick deductions and realize that if you leave your current lifeboat, without being able to take a periodic rest, the 9 people left will lose their strength over time, and instead of the boat taking 5 hours to sink - If you decide to leave, it will only take 2 hours to sink, this greatly diminishes their already tenuous chance of being saved.

You realize that your friend's lifeboat is in a current and is quickly drifting away, which will soon make it impossible to swim to, time is of the essence and you must make a decision:

1. Stay with the 9 people in your current sinking lifeboat, and hope that a ship arrive to pick you up within the next 5 hours before it sinks.
2. Leave your lifeboat, swim to the safety of your friend's lifeboat where you will eventually be saved. Resulting in the people in your old lifeboat only having 2 hours left until they sink.

Do you stay with them and risk all of you perishing after 5 hours when nobody comes to the rescue? Do you secure your own life and live with the guilt of knowing that your actions may have led 9 human beings to a watery grave?

What would you do?
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Path Press - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page - Ajahn Nyanamoli's Dhamma talks
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Ben
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by Ben »

Jack,

Realistically, given that after about thirty seconds exposure to freezing arctic or antarctic water, one is going to either die from drowning or hypothermia then I would recommend staying put in the boat and putting a plug in the hole.
kind regards,

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

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BlackBird
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by BlackBird »

Ben wrote:Jack,

Realistically, given that after about thirty seconds exposure to freezing arctic or antarctic water, one is going to either die from drowning or hypothermia then I would recommend staying put in the boat and putting a plug in the hole.
kind regards,

Ben
Hi Ben, for the sake of the moral dilemma one should ignore practical concerns - As such all holes are unpluggable and one can safely swim to the other boat. This is a hypothetical situation put forth as a mental exercise,

If it doesn't interest you that's cool, but given the multi page interest in David's rail switch dilemma a few months back, I figure I'm not the only one that likes these kinds of thing.
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Path Press - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page - Ajahn Nyanamoli's Dhamma talks
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Ben
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by Ben »

No, that's fine Jack. I didn't mean to hijack or derail your thread.
The training for my cert II in first aid is still fresh in my memory and as you have discerned my interest in ethics isn't so much in the hypothetical.
kind regards,

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
befriend
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by befriend »

i think when we answer these questions we should get to the meat of it, an not get sidetracked in well is the raft full of good people or bad people etc...just suspend the eroneous details. i would stay with the raft and prepare for death, and do whatever practice a buddhist does before death. if you can increase the chance of your rescue by three hours to save your raft then i would say that is noble. i think that deed of extending the time of possible rescue would brighten the minds of those aboard, and clearly brighten your mind, so if your werent rescued your mind state before death might be wholesome. another element to add to the quandry.
Take care of mindfulness and mindfulness will take care of you.
alan
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by alan »

Swim over to your friend. After all, she cared enough to help you, right? It wouldn't be proper to leave her wondering why you ignored her for the rest of her life.
Once you're rescued, sue the lifeboat company for negligence, then use some of the money to buy a sheep farm in New Zealand--preferably with a nice view over a quiet lake. With the rest, set up a Dhamma center in your town.

Simple!
Sadge
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by Sadge »

Stay, I'm an optimist and would think we would be saved. Plus I would not want them to have less of a chance because of me. Also could not live with the guilt of leaving.
binocular
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by binocular »

BlackBird wrote:Hi Ben, for the sake of the moral dilemma one should ignore practical concerns
But moral dilemmas are necessarily shaped by practical concerns; if there would be no practical concerns, there would be no moral dilemmas.
If resources (time, energy, money, material means etc.) would be unlimited, then there would be no problem, no dilemma.

That is, unless one were trying to explore pure evil. Ie. if one were to explore scenarios where resources are unlimited, but agents nevertheless choose morally reprehensible courses of action.
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
santa100
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by santa100 »

BlackBird wrote:
your friend from aboard the ship in another of the lifeboats not far off, he yells to you that there's space for one more person in their life raft and that you should swim across and join him. They can't take any more than that or the boat will be swamped
Yell out to your friend in the other life boat to row as hard as he can against the current to slow their boat down while at the same time ask the people on your boat to row as hard as they can to speed your boat up. Once the 2 boats meet, apply the bail out in shifts as usual, except that the person who "bails out" simply jump onto the other boat, thus avoiding the freezing water and risking death of hypothermia. At the same time, have all 20 brains on both boats thinking real hard to come up with the best solution to plug that darn hole. Hopefully there'll be a genius among them who can solve the problem..
SamKR
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by SamKR »

I don't know what I would actually do in the situation.
But based on the Buddha's teachings it is crystal clear that staying is the best option in that situation.
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manas
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by manas »

Here in the comfort of my warm living room, it would be easy to say I would stay - after all, that is the more noble thing to do. But in such difficult, life-threatening conditions, I'm going to be brutally honest and say, it would depend on who is in the boat with the hole in it. I am willing to risk my life for other close family members, but otherwise, I would say sorry to the others, wish them luck with keeping the boat afloat, and consider my children and how much they need their father in their lives - (myself being a parent with young kids) - and swim to the safety of the other boat.

:anjali:
To the Buddha-refuge i go; to the Dhamma-refuge i go; to the Sangha-refuge i go.
Samma
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by Samma »

Take a poll of the boat or ask most knowledgeable person and ask if they think it likely we will be rescued in 5hours and however long you could swim.
If not, bye-bye.

Secondly, is someone in the boat that should have priority?
World renown cancer research or whatever.

Or the dark ending. When the other people in the boat hear, half jump and swim to the other boat swamping it and all of them die? :candle:
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Modus.Ponens
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by Modus.Ponens »

From the 1st precept view point there's no breaking it if you decide to escape death. You didn't cause their deaths. You simply abstained from helping them. Most of these moral dilemas (I enjoy them, don't get me wrong) have the same flaw: they equate lack of action in one direction with action in the opposite direction.

So yeah, I think I would leave.
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' - Jhana Sutta
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reflection
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by reflection »

What happened to 'women and children first'?

That's what I would choose - here from my comfortable chair behind the computer at least. Let a woman or child take the seat to be saved.
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BlackBird
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Re: Sinking boat moral dilemma

Post by BlackBird »

Modus.Ponens wrote:From the 1st precept view point there's no breaking it if you decide to escape death. You didn't cause their deaths. You simply abstained from helping them. Most of these moral dilemas (I enjoy them, don't get me wrong) have the same flaw: they equate lack of action in one direction with action in the opposite direction.

So yeah, I think I would leave.
I don't read that into it, I read that if you leave you have to deal with the potential guilt of knowing that you may have been able to save the lives of 9 others by remaining aboard, not that you're actually a killer.

I'm with Manas on this one. Hypothetically speaking I would stay, but put in the reality of the situation I cannot say that the drive for self preservation would not lead me to jump ship.
alan wrote:Swim over to your friend. After all, she cared enough to help you, right? It wouldn't be proper to leave her wondering why you ignored her for the rest of her life.
Once you're rescued, sue the lifeboat company for negligence, then use some of the money to buy a sheep farm in New Zealand--preferably with a nice view over a quiet lake. With the rest, set up a Dhamma center in your town.

Simple!
Glad to see you're still around Alan.
Ben wrote:No, that's fine Jack. I didn't mean to hijack or derail your thread.
The training for my cert II in first aid is still fresh in my memory and as you have discerned my interest in ethics isn't so much in the hypothetical.
kind regards,

Ben
That's cool Ben, no harm done. :)
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Path Press - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page - Ajahn Nyanamoli's Dhamma talks
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