[Poll] Could you abandon a dying person?

You only quoted half my comment, the other half is valid regardless if that other world is million times the size of earth or even more.

 

Doesn't matter how big that world is.The only thing that matters is that there are enough people to destroy the balance between production and consumption. It might be the lack of food in general, it might be the problems with logistics. The reason doesn't really matter. Net negative food = death, until it is net positive again. Simple as that.

Ofc. Your original dilemma is also pointless if we speak of absurd level of omnipotency in that 1 meter radius. I would simply wave my hand and manipulate air into a intelligent self replicating nano machine that creates energy out of nothing and could create any possible matter out of that energy and matter into energy to remove waste or diseases. Done. Everything fixed in 1 second.
It goes away and saves the world. But that's just silly.

Edit: Saw your limitation about anything that violates laws of physics e.t.c. disappears outside 1 meter radius.

Simple solution. Wish for an object that alters those laws in the infinitely large area, for your other creations to exist.
The object doesn't leave your 1 meter radius and always works.
Everything else works too as a result.
Done.

 

The risk and reward between doing something mundane and what we're discussing here is clearly different. Based on your logic, since there's a risk in doing everything anyway, we might as well do dangerous things. Furthermore, you're expecting people to put themselves in danger for the sake of others. Here's the worst part, it sounds like you're using "moral obligation" to encourage others into doing dangerous things.

https://slate.com/technology/2013/0...s-from-first-responders-on-saving-people.html

 

Would agree with @ongoingwhy this time. Think his comment was misread.
He was just pointing out that you wouldn't needlessly expose your powers. You could still save lives, in particular that dying person who was hit by the truck, there are countless ways to achieve that (follow him on the ambulance and secretly administer aid, etc).
Probably any well-read modern day isekai-er would know this as standard procedure by now.

So I think your real question is what would you do with your newfound powers, and whether you would willing heal people "indiscriminately" (based on some kind of perceived medical ethics) or would you refuse treatment for whatever reason.
I think @lychee was in med school (or something related) so you should be more familiar with this than us.

It's helpful to use a real world comparison for reference. Way below is the modern Hippocratic oath as defined by the WHO. Some notable points:
-- It does NOT explicitly state that doctors need to save everyone.
-- It includes aspects of climate change, which is kinda interesting. Feels like scope creep.
-- It does NOT include the famous line "First, Do No Harm" which the oath was initially derived from. The interpretation was to always weigh risks/benefits during diagnosis.
-- Therapeutic nihilism (refers to undertreatment). i.e. don't overtreat or undertreat.

My understanding of modern medical ethics is just that physicians do not have unlimited discretion to refuse to accept patients, mainly due to federal regulations.
They can't discriminate on grounds of ethnic, racial, religious, sex (unless the sex of the patient is relevant to the physician's specialty). Outside these protected areas, physicians have great latitude in refusing to accept persons as patients.
I believe that there's also a consensus that refusing to accept patients who need critical care based on financial reasons (not a protected class) is inappropriate, which is why ERs get flooded and they aren't necessarily allowed to turn people away.

i.e. It's a myth that doctors MUST SAVE EVERYONE indiscriminately.
So the magic doctor was mistaken.

I highly encourage you to read "Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery" by Henry Marsh as an added reference. It covers a growing "dignity in death" movement, and multiple opinions from bioethicists, doctors, etc.

In this scenario, I'm assuming you have the ability to perfectly cure patients (i.e. there are no immediate physical risks to the patient).
So a different (but common) dilemma comes in.
Does absolute power mean that it's right to give aid freely? Who gets to decide if someone should be saved or not?

And the simple answer is that there is no good answer to that.
Absolute power REQUIRES omniscience (knowing everything) to work hand in hand.
i.e. you need Santa powers.
Otherwise if you don't know who is naughty or nice, how can you ever appropriately decide who the save? There'll always be a bias.
Note that in the previous argument I'm already clarifying that you aren't required to save everyone.


In 2019, the Hippocratic Oath was changed again, following increasing pressure from planetary health physicians, to require "protection of the environment which sustains us". This further widened the focus of care from the individual, to the community, and to the ecosystem. Dr Margaret Chan from the WHO stated in 2008 "In the face of this challenge, WHO is committed to do everything it can to ensure all is done to protect human health from climate change”

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
-- I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
-- I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
-- I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
-- I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
-- I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
-- I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
-- I will protect the environment which sustains us, in the knowledge that the continuing health of ourselves and our societies is dependent on a healthy planet.
-- I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

 

It means roller skate or skateboard is the best i could manage? Maybe a carriage is faster..

1. Do you agree with the doctor? Is refusing to save someone when you could easily do so the same as killing them?
I dont agree with the doctor. I'll reason it out with him that by doing what he said will lead me to kill myself slowly. that in itself would make him and myself a murderer. And with my death means that no more substantial help will come to a lot more people. Hence he will be the one responsible for killing a lot more people.
however, i will help him cure and improve the situation within a time table and conditions that i find reasonable.
2. Does great power come with great responsibility?
Yes
3. Would you still want a crazy OP cheat power despite being presented with this scenario?
Yes.. maybe? This one is still manageable..
4. If you had the ability to heal anyone that you touch, would you spend all day in the hospital? Would you overwork yourself? Would you feel guilty about saying no to all the life-or-death patients trying to schedule an appointment because you’re thinking about going on vacation?
I would prioritize critical/dying patients that could not be treated by someone else. And handover the other treat-able patients to others. If they dont agree thats their ego problem.
And nope, i would not feel guilty for making a vacation plan. Afterall, i'll only take charge of what others cant do.

Again If they dare to condemn me, then they're condemning their hope, salvation, themself and others(since i'll be relucant to save others. And therefore making others lose their lifes, and making them an accomplice in murder/genocide).

 

Disnt you say i can make anything within 1 meter radius?
I'm basically going to be in contact with the transport at all times, so it should be within the boundary that can defy laws of the world..

 

Eh, to be honest, I don't really care about saving the stranger. I don't mind saving him since it doesn't really cost me anything but doing it right out in the open is definitely a no-go.

 

I don’t think we disagree in any fashion — of course everything is a difference of risk and benefit — although I disagree with your assessment that exposing this OP superpower is a significant risk.

With that kind of omniscient limitless superpower, you can literally make yourself immortal or your mind unable to be tampered with. I don’t buy any of the points about the risks you that raised — and at best I view them as a negligible risk.

I’m probably biased by my existing experiences, but I legitimately think that’s a naive way of thinking.

When someone is in a critical condition, every second counts. If you decide that you’re going to wait in the shadows for 30 minutes for the crowd to pass while somebody is in cardiac arrest, they could literally be dead by the time you get to them — and it does happen.

I think this is a slight misunderstanding of this poll as well. It’s not about the Hippocrates oath or doctors — but rather a poll on the trolley problem.

If you could harm people through your inaction, would you do it?

and

If you had limitless power, would you feel morally obligated to help people with that power?

It’s a fundamental moral question that is removed from medicine or medical ethics in particular.

Of course the Hippocratic oath has no provision the doctors need to treat everyone they encounter. It was never part of the original scope of medicine.

 

Since this is about going to a new world, what exactly establishes the inhabitants of this new world as "human" similar to the new comer, namely me?
I can substitute "people" with "virus" in the problem, and it becomes a trivial problem. Would anyone go to a new world and trying to save the lives of virus? We already encounter trillions and trillions of virus in our world, and do we have moral obligations to save all these virus on Earth?

So clearly there will be no problem if we are encountering mere virus instead of "humans". Then what exactly makes the inhabitants of this brand new world "human" to me? These "people" must interact with me, in a certain fashion, in order to be qualified as "human", and cause me to have any moral obligation to these "human".

Their interaction with me, including how they come into such a bad state, and what they can do for themselves, will determine if I have any moral obligations to them. If these trillions of humans are merely computer generated NPCs that can respawn indefinitely, I surely have no obligations to them, even if they look and behave like a human on a surface level.

 

Yea I was answering part of your point (whether you would save ppl/feel obligated to save ppl) in an addition to my post.
Just slow in typing it out. See above. My point was that you need the power of omniscience, else there'll always be bias.

In reference to the trolley problem, if you knew that 5 men on the tracks were "evil" (some kinda karmic counter or whatever that you can observe with the power of omniscience), and the 1 man you should save is "good", then you would/should logically kill the 5 in exchange for 1. The dilemma occurs because you don't have omniscience and have no way of weighing their lives.

Saving people openly and revealing your powers can have very unintended consequences. Please don't look down on that.
Just because you are physically invincible doesn't mean you are are mentally/spiritually invincible.
Best example is "Watchmen" (2009). Doctor Manhattan was skillfully schemed against by Ozymandias through plotting and manipulation of public perception, even though Dr Manhattan was literally a god.
Won't spoil it for you if you haven't read/watched. But it's a very simple concept ... as long as you have emotions/wants/desires/needs/etc, it can always be used as a weakness against you.

 

There's a reason why nations trade with each other, regardless of how self-sufficient they may be. Because it's not always effucient to do everything themselves. On a smaller scale, communities developed markets for the sake of exchanging/bartering goods/services.

Just because I can make everything I want/need doesn't mean I should or want to.

In any case, why should I offer my services for free to someone who can't /won't pay me? It's better for me to exchange my service with someone who's willing and able to pay me. My time and energy are limited, after all.

 

Fine, since I have such fabulous powers, I'll just make myself invisible and then heal him. As for the poor and the disease, I'll enter the palace and control the king. Then, I'll use the king to distribute the cure and food. Problem solved.

You're a walking cheat, just resurrect him.

 

I mean, there’s sort of the classic scenario of someone getting a heart attack on an airplane — and the pilot on the intercom asks if there is a doctor on board.

If you’re not a doctor, you can easily blow the problem off because the problem has nothing to do with you. The lack of power causes you to be free of worries.

However, if you are a doctor, you end up sitting there wondering if you should get up. If you decide to do nothing, that basically makes you a shitty person, right? Nobody likes to be bothered by something troublesome, and what if the doctor has to miss their next flight or something.

And then there’s sort of a realization that having power just increases the scope of your problems. If you have no power, then the situation is Syria is irrelevant to you. However, if you had the power to resolve the situation in Syria with a flick of a pen, that knowledge ends up weighing on you.

A critical feature of this poll is that you can summon anything you desire with your powers. There is nothing materialistic that somebody could pay you that you couldn’t already obtain yourself.

 

1. Do you agree with the doctor? Is refusing to save someone when you could easily do so the same as killing them?
Morally agree, but like most things, there is a diminishing return point. Sure, I'd save a couple of people, but 1 Qi/Qa? Nope. That's way too much.

2. Does great power come with great responsibility?
Maybe? Though, like most choices, you can choose how much responsibility you apply to yourself.

3. Would you still want a crazy OP cheat power despite being presented with this scenario?
Sure, because it would make living in an unknown world easier; and there are ways around the situation, like erasing the doctor's memories, or maybe giving the doctor more power.

4. If you had the ability to heal anyone that you touch, would you spend all day in the hospital? Would you overwork yourself? Would you feel guilty about saying no to all the life-or-death patients trying to schedule an appointment because you’re thinking about going on vacation?
No. If you overwork yourself, it'll just become a demerit / inefficient. For example, if you kept overworking yourself, you could end up dead, then who could quickly heal people? It's similar to some of the other questions out there about would you save one, maybe someone you know/care for, or many, usually unknowns.

 

Mmmm, am a little confused. So is your question hypothesizing that:

If you had absolute power, but NOT omniscience, would you chose to use your powers for "perceived" morally righteous acts?
I say "perceived", because in the absence of omniscience, it's clearly something you personally judge to be righteous.
And it's not clear what the unintended consequences would be from your actions.

In your example of the doctor deciding whether to save someone with heart attack on an airplane. What if the patient was Hitler?
Classic manga: Monster
Where a doctor struggles with his moral/ethical code when he saves a child, but the child turns out to be a mass murderer and continues murdering people after he was treated.

This is also one of the commonly used critiques of vigilantism. Because why does the vigilante get to judge who is right/wrong? And does a dysfunctional legal system necessitate vigilantism?

 

Wait...so technically you can make yourself live forever? maybe I could dedicate my whole life to the cause...and then after the plague is done, disappear and change my appearance. Perhaps I will cosplay as a homeless elderly and help only those kind enough to help me in return....*Fairytale flag* and then in my spare time I'd be free to find out what persists outside my radius! That said, just because you are safe, doesn't mean your family is.

They could threaten you into compliance with their wellbeing.

 

If the doctor is willing to risk his career treating someone out of the scope of his professional responsibility, he's free to volunteer. But if I'm that doctor, I wouldn't. Because if my treatment fails, that patient or his family could sue me. My medical practitioner's insurance probably wouldn't cover this.

Regarding Syria and other similar cases: why don't you ask the Russians in Afghanistan and the Americans in the Middle East how their "help" ended up? Or those African union peacekeepers in the African hot spots? Their leaders had the power to "resolve" problems with the stroke of a pen, and did so. But we can see how that ended up. Only kids, academics, politicians and fools think problems are easy to solve as long as you have power.

As for doing everything myself: why should I? I could cook all my meals myself, but I don't. There are better uses of my time and energy, and it's interesting to taste different foods or even different variations of the same food.

 

Yes, the point is that it's premature to judge if overpopulation is the problem without knowing more about the world.

The details of the world are out of the scope of this thread, but here's an example I think may work.

Consider a flat world that is infinite in size. You can keep walking North/South/East/West and there is just more land/sea/nature.

Due to the infinite size of the world, resources are also infinite.

The human species many years ago invented technology called a Gate. A Gate is a teleportation portal that allows people to teleport to the other Gate that it is paired to. The Gate tecethnology is very economical and lots of people travel through gates every day.

Consequently, you have this phenomenon where you have an incredibly large human population (due to the infinite size of the world), yet you also have a lot of people concentrated in one area (the capital has all the Gates).

Theoretically there is plenty of food and resources in this universe to sustain an infinitely large human population.

However, due to human nature -- there is political strife. Every time war breaks out, militants will often destroy a gate, disconnecting an area from the network -- and then causing mass starvation or other problems. There are a lot of bad people in the world, and there are still many countries will different beliefs and views. Some governments force their citizens to pay a tax to use the gate, and other governments do various other kinds of bad things. Income inequality is severe in capitalist countries, with 99% of the population owning 90% of the wealth. Blah blah blah.........

 

Then i'll just be one of those upper government and take over some of the gates to build a shelter of sorts. Way better solution than going around a complex and healing/taking care of selected people that made an appointment

 

+100 for this particular reference and argument.