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Would YOU kill the baby?

Would YOU kill the baby?


  • Total voters
    61

Not_Me

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Affect and emotion is more powerful than reason, the best you can do is rationalise after the fact but it will not provide you would a completely clear conscience, if you doubt that you should consider the longitudinal studies which have been carried out on the psychological costs of killing in wars by soldiers who were to all intents and purposes fighting just wars or fighting just for their own personal survival even.
The fact that some will suffer mental anguish does not mean that everyone will.
 

Hera

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I wouldn't be able to kill the baby. I wouldn't want anyone else to do it either.
 

Magic Poriferan

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If the two choices you have put forth are indeed the only choices, then it stands to reason that I kill the baby.
 

ZPowers

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Can I not banish the crying baby and it's parents from the hiding place? Wait...they might snitch. I'd have to go with killing it, but then again, it's highly unlikely that I'd hide with or near anyone with a child. If the Nazis are planning to kill us, then either way the baby dies, but there is a higher chance of survival for the adults. I am a self-preservationist and if you stand in the way of the only viable path, I will remove you.
Every third person does this. You are avoiding the question. It isn't a question of "likely situation". Maybe with the baby is the only place TO hide, it doesn't matter. This isn't a situation you will probably ever be in. It isn't some kind of practice for specific situations, it is a general question about what you consider morally right in larger terms.

If I could choose my circumstances, they are: Oh, I'd just not live in Nazi Germany, especially not as a Jew, gay, gypsy, cripple or non-Fascist activist. This scenario, a lifeboat scenario, whatever else, isn't about you avoiding making a choice because it probably makes you uncomfortable, but making a choice because IT DOES. That's the definition of a good and consistent moral code. Considering very difficult choices and being able to determine what to do.

Posturing or avoidance like this makes me think people who do it don't know what they believe morally.
 

WildCard

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I know I'll probably catch rip for this, but here I go. Yes, I would kill the child because if you allow him/her to live, it will simply die with the rest of the group once the Nazis discover you. It is a lose/lose situation no matter how you look at it. You have to look at the good of the whole over the good of the individual. That is how society works.
 

NegativeZero

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Not only would it be ethically impermissible to kill the baby, I don't think anyone here would be capable of killing a baby (even if they had to).
 

ZPowers

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Morally impermissible is relative to moral ideas. In any real morality it is morally not ideal, not impermissible. It is, from a utilitarian perspective and in this scenario, fully permissible and even correct. A Kantian or absolutist position says it is evil (of course, so is killing the Nazis). Moral relativism is relative (and also very difficult to make a logical argument for in many cases).

As to wether or not we could actually make ourselves do it: this is unknowable. The folks who say the would, in dire situations, maybe couldn't. Those who say they wouldn't, if they truly looked down the barrel of certain death, might be able to or even do so readily. Since it is individual to a degree that is absurdly personal and nearly impossible to test, it is irrelevant. This is a test of theoretical systems of morality, not what someone would literally be able to do.
 

strychnine

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Absolutely. Who knows how long we might have to hide there. Someone might get hungry down the line, then they could just eat the baby. I think that would be harder to do if it were alive, because it would kick and stuff if you tried to bite into it. Plus, it would just cry harder. Babies taste better than adults, anyway...adults have thicker hide. Did you know that livers are nutritious and eyes taste just like grapes, hearts just like apples and brains just like custard. If someone could eat it, there'd be no waste whatsoever. I think it's time for a 3:25 am snack.
 

ZPowers

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Absolutely. Who knows how long we might have to hide there. Someone might get hungry down the line, then they could just eat the baby. I think that would be harder to do if it were alive, because it would kick and stuff if you tried to bite into it. Plus, it would just cry harder. Babies taste better than adults, anyway...adults have thicker hide. Did you know that livers are nutritious and eyes taste just like grapes, hearts just like apples and brains just like custard. If someone could eat it, there'd be no waste whatsoever. I think it's time for a 3:25 am snack.

Who hasn't been mildly hungry and come to the totally reasonable conclusion "the only way out of this pickle is to murder a child"?

Ridiculous.

Let me take the slippery slope in the opposite direction.

Oh shit, my cricket is making noise and I'm hiding in a room with every single person who would be killed in the holocaust. Well, I guess I have to let 11 million die to save my favorite cricket.

Jonathan Swift was still mocking the oppressors, not the oppressed.
 

strychnine

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Oh shit, my cricket is making noise and I'm hiding in a room with every single person who would be killed in the holocaust. Well, I guess I have to let 11 million die to save my favorite cricket.

Why can't you eat the cricket? If you had a cricket and a baby, you could use grind the cricket up and use it as topping, no?
 

ZPowers

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Why can't you eat the cricket? If you had a cricket and a baby, you could use grind the cricket up and use it as topping, no?

We've nothing to grind it with!

We do have some chutney though, and my grandma made a pretty mean Newborn and Chutney Stew*!

*Prep time: 9 months, 3 hours
 

EcK

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She's actually checking for the % of sociopaths on the forum.
 

NegativeZero

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... This is a test of theoretical systems of morality, not what someone would literally be able to do.

Of course, and I didn't mean to speak for everyone and sort of scoff with that statement.

As for WHY I believe it to be ethically impermissible, taking the baby's life involves imposing on its right to live and in most cases, putting the mother and likely the person who killed the baby through emotional trauma afterward. For those that say it is better than the alternative (death), know I staunchly disagree.

Now, what about the others' right to live? They too have a right to live, and in order to defend that right they'll have to be aggressive in their attempts to usurp control of the baby and then kill it. I'd like to believe that in all hypothetical cases, the mother would probably not be okay with the idea of her baby being killed at the expense of the them likely living. Who is to say that after the baby is killed that the mother won't break down and start sobbing? This would be an equally difficult problem to surmount.

With arguments about utilitarianism rising, I think it is time to speak upon my preferred system of utilitarianism, which is preference utilitarianism. I think the decision whether or not to kill the baby really lies in how many people actually want to kill it as opposed to those that don't, and how adamant the mother is in not letting anyone kill it. If the mother truly doesn't want it to be killed, then the baby should not be killed; regardless of what others want. The value of human lives and the value that others feel FOR a human life cannot be measured, so it is not as if killing one person at the cost of the mother is justified even if everyone else wants to kill it.

Although I know this is a hypothetical scenario, it is presented in a way that is logically fallacious (false dilemma): in reality, there are a number of things that could be done to quiet the baby aside from killing it.

Ethically speaking, I still strictly conform to the view that you should not kill the baby. However, I do not have any personal qualms with it being killed.
 
F

FigerPuppet

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Yeah, I would kill it, assuming that I wasn't strongly emotionally attached to it. And I don't think I would feel too bad about it. Its existence at that moment would be a direct threat to my life. To protect one's own life is a natural right, and that is what I would use to justify the murder - or rather, the preservation of my own life - to myself.
 

WildCard

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On a completely random thought: The dead babies are coming and you should start running for you taste good with custard. That is all. >.>
 

syndatha

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To answer the question: No, I wouldn't kill babies. Ever. People answerring 'yes' to the question are probably mostly NOT parents.
I would probably try to breastfeed/make someone else breastfeed. Give the baby skin contact/comfort.
But being an intuitive J, I would probably had left the country months ago, and never have got in this situation in the first place. Even though it's a hypothetical one. ;)
 
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