A social experiment

An unstoppable train is coming down the track, which splits into two. One track leads to 3 kids, while the other lead to 1 adult man. The train, at default, will head to the track with 3 kids and run them over, killing all of them.

There is a switch that can change the track of the unstoppable train. If someone pushes the switch, the train will instead run over the 1 adult man, saving the 3 children.

The unstoppable train, obviously, cannot be stopped. The 3 kids and the adult man cannot leave the tracks. No matter what happens to the switch, either group of people have to die.

You are at the switch...what would you do?

Things to keep in mind: Doing nothing to the switch is a type of action, in which you choose to kill 3 kids instead of the adult man

Personally, I would not touch the switch. I know I am making a choice of killing the 3 kids by doing nothing when I could have saved them.

If you have seen Batman *spoiler alert*, near the end of the movie, the Joker was doing a social experiment, in which he told people on two different boats that there were bombs on both boats. They both have a switch that will activate bombs on the other boat. If they blow up the other boat, they get to live. One boat was filled with criminals - the other boat was filled with the good citizens of Gotham.

In the movie, one person on both boats had the switch in their hands. The argument was made that the boats filled with criminals are worth less than the boats filled with good citizens, and the criminal boat should be sacrificed. But in the end, no one on either boat had the heart to push the switch that would kill hundreds of people.

And that is why I would not touch the switch in this train track scenario either. Shooting someone in the head and letting someone starve to death are both evil, but I do think that they are different levels of evil, as shown by the Batman example - no one could do it because they felt it was wrong, even though by not pushing the switch, they are murdering their boat-mates. There is a difference in pushing the bad fortune onto someone else instead of letting the bad fortune take its course.

Hippocrates said, "First do no harm." Why is it that doctors who didn't stop to help dying victims from a car crash do not get arrested, while the ones that poisoned patients with cyanide do?

If you answer that you would push the switch so that the 3 kids could live, imagine yourself on one of the Gotham boats, would you really push the switch?

If there were a 100 people on earth...

A very cool project that echos my sentiment in the note I wrote earlier "When It Rains on the World...", courtesy of Dave:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTFKpIaQhM

As the holiday season approaches, appreciate the gifts you've been given, and please remember the less fortunate around you and around the world. You can imagine how difficult it would be when everyone celebrates and feasts while you are starved and dying.

Appreciate what you have, and do your best for a better world

Dont let murderers get away! Take action on Burma NOW!

Back in 1988, the Burmese military junta massacred 3,000 demonstraters. Since then, they have nullifed a landslide victory that elected Aung San Suu Kyi to the head of a demoncratic gov\'t and have continued to jail/kill activists. Burma is ranked 164 out of 168 countries in the Reporters without Borders ranking of freedom of press.

Back in 1988, Burma was not in the world\'s eye. We didn\'t have the internet and global communication of today see into that troubled nation. The government was not under as much scrutiny, and they got away with it.

This is a different time. Now, the Monks\' Resistance in Burma is getting coverage from NYT, MSNBC, and Time Magazine. Now is the time to tell the military junta that the world is watching and will not tolerate such repression. NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT.

Click on the links below and sign online petitions to pressure international leaders to take action about the situation in Burma (it’s fast and easy).



Online Petition to President Bush- Amnesty International

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/c.jhKPIXPCIoE/b.2590179/k.C43E/Take_Action_Online/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=9315

Online Petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon- US Campaign for Burma

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/uscampaignforburma/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=5521

Online Petition to Chinese President Hu Jintao- US Campaign for Burma

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/uscampaignforburma/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=730&t=HomePage.dwt

When It Rains on the World...

The world is not about us.
The world is not about how awesome we will be as doctors, not about how many Nobel prizes we will win, not about when we will be chief of surgery.
The world is not about how we need a new dress for the next party, not about how we need new shoes to go with that new dress, not about how baller our cars are.
The world is not about how we need our nails done or we won't feel confident, not about how many uninspiring activities we can rack up on our resume, not about how we can best manipulate the system or other people.
The world is not about getting the biggest house and two cars for our family, not about making sure our kids are smarter than everyone else's, not about living the unsustainable American dream.
The world is not about us, because we don't need help.
The world is about them.
The world is about children who never live past 5 years old, about how they can never dream of going to school, about how they will never have a chance to win that Nobel prize because their potential cannot be realized without education.
The world is about poor people who wear one dress all their lives, about how they can never take a proper shower because they can never take off that one dress and wash it, about how they die because hospitals are too far to walk to.
The world is about how they can benefit so much from the same amount of money we spend on a can of coke, about how they don't eat so their kids can go to school, about how they will never live the unsustainable American dream.
The world is about them, because they are the world, and the world needs help.

We all do it - we all have ambitions, we all need when we merely want, we all pretend, we all search for the best for ourselves and people *we* love.

And where are we heading with that mentality?

In a few years, some of us will drown because there is simply not enough land to stand on. Even the richest cannot escape from poverty, because rich people do die from HIV, the virus that jumps over to humans because people are too poor to eat real meat, so they eat infected chimps instead.

When it rains on the world, it rains on all of us equally, without discrimination.

So if we don't help them, we're not helping the world, and we're not helping ourselves.

Feel free to disagree or argue, but I hope you will consider the possibility that this might be true.