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Would YOU kill the baby?

Would YOU kill the baby?


  • Total voters
    61

Such Irony

Honor Thy Inferior
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I really don't know what I'd do. I'd try to suppress the baby's crying as much as I could. If that didn't work, I'd try to temporarily move away from the baby and pray that I didn't get caught and that I'd be able to reunite with the baby. I don't think I'd have the heart to kill it.
 

miss fortune

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sorry, but my will to survive is greater than my love of babies (which isn't all that great in the first place)... if it's down to everyone or the baby, the baby is dying... it'd die if the Nazis discovered it anyways, so the kid is doomed :yes:
 

LEGERdeMAIN

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Yes, I will kill the baby, but only because Nazi-occupied France is no place for children.

inglourious_basterds-still-3.jpg
 

citizen cane

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I'd kill the baby. Seeing as I have a disability, if the Nazis found me, I'd go straight to my death.
 

Edgar

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You are a Jewish person inside Nazi occupied France. You are hiding under the floorboards with many others Jewish people, when evil Nazis come in to search houses near by. As you are there, a baby with the jewish hiders starts to cry.


This baby cannot stop crying, and you know if it continues to cry, you, and everyone under the floor, could possibly be discovered by the nazis and killed. You don't have time to find out if they're going to skip your house or not, and even then, there is still the possibility of them hearing it.

Do you kill the baby?

Is it an ugly baby?
 

Beargryllz

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I am hiding with many other Jewish people. Surely someone else will deal with my problem for me. I'm not the killing type anyway.
 

Edgar

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Depends how I feel about the baby. Not all babies grow up to be perfect. Otherwise, I don't think I'd have brought myself to be hiding from the invaders in the first place - I'd want to fight the nazi's instead.

Oh yea... you were selling baked goods a month ago, and now you're gonna take on an armed force that conqured lands from Sahara desert to Moscow. That's hardcore. They should make a movie about you.

When the Soviets invaded the Germans in their towns, the Germans met them with heavy resistance, so I don't see why jews should *necessarily* be running from the Nazi's, in the same context.

You mean the indoctrinated child soldiers from Hitler Jugend and such?
Yeah, Jews definately didn't have those.
 

Not_Me

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An acquaintance of mine told a story of a situation like this when she was a child. The Japanese soldiers would have hacked everyone to death if they were discovered. The mother had no choice but to pass her baby over to one of the village elders who did whatever was necessary.
 

Patches

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I wouldn't hide somewhere with a baby in the first place. Talk about liability. That motherfucker is getting tossed out the window before the Nazi's even make it there.
 

Snuggletron

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most people would not kill the baby, myself included.

I'll just pray to Allah I'll make for a tasty jew stew.

There is no rational answer to this question.

well yeah, that's the point of these extreme ethics questions...Gotta cut out all decent options to see how much of a bastard you are.
 

Savage Idealist

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So options are:

1. Kill the baby, everyone else lives.

2. Don't kil the baby, everyone, including the baby, dies.

Either way the baby is a goner, so yeah I'd kill the baby.
 
P

Phantonym

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I'd probably wait for someone else to kill the baby. It's disgusting, I know. I don't really see a way to win even if we end up alive and the baby dead, a part of all of us in there would be dead anyway. Life goes on but what kind of a life would it be anyway, knowing what happened. :(
 

Coriolis

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So options are:

1. Kill the baby, everyone else lives.

2. Don't kil the baby, everyone, including the baby, dies.

Either way the baby is a goner, so yeah I'd kill the baby.
Option 3: kill the baby, but at least one other person in hiding has qualms about the act and raises enough fuss, or struggles to prevent it, that all are discovered anyway. Lose/lose.
 

Jonny

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I don't really think it is moral to kill an animal unless it is for sustenance. So if I did kill the baby, I'd have to make sure we ate it, and every part of its body was used for something practical.
 

Savage Idealist

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Originally posted by Coriolis
Option 3: kill the baby, but at least one other person in hiding has qualms about the act and raises enough fuss, or struggles to prevent it, that all are discovered anyway. Lose/lose.

Assuming what YWIR was intending in her OP, no third oprion would be avaliable, but even so going with option 1 is still the most rational course of action, at least from a utilitarian perspective.
 

citizen cane

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I'd probably wait for someone else to kill the baby. It's disgusting, I know. I don't really see a way to win even if we end up alive and the baby dead, a part of all of us in there would be dead anyway. Life goes on but what kind of a life would it be anyway, knowing what happened. :(

a slightly more traumatized life? a part of you wouldn't die unless you allowed it to.
 

Beorn

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For situations like this I find Aquinas's principle of double effect helpful. It seeks to assess the morality of performing an act in pursuit of a good when full knowledge is present that the act will result in an evil consequence.

There are four conditions that must be met:

1 the action contemplated is in itself ethically good or ethically indifferent
I think the analysis can stop right here. The action is the purposeful taking of innocent human life. It is murder. You can't do it.

But, we'll continue anyway...

2 the evil consequence is not directly intended.
The way the question is framed by YWIR seems that the evil would be directly intended. Under other circumstances the baby may be accidentally suffocated while keeping it quiet without the intent of murder.

3 the good result must not be a direct causal result of the evil result.
In this case the saving of other lives would be a direct result of the murder.

4 the good result must be “proportionate to” the evil result.
In this instance the good would outweigh the bad.

Notice that Aquinas is willing to balance consequences, but only after hard principles have been considered.

If I don't have principles and things that I'm not willing to do under any circumstances then what makes me better than the nazis?
 
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