The Last City
There seems to be some confusion over what Ethics actually refers to, so here's a topic that forces you to use an ethical framework in action.
A catastrophe is going to make Earth uninhabitable in 30 days. One sealed city can keep 10,000 people alive indefinitely. There are 100,000 candidates.
You are not allowed to personally choose the 10,000. Instead, you must write the ethical rules that a computer will use to choose them.
The computer knows each person's age, health, skills, criminal history, dependents, probability of survival, expected lifespan, and relationships to everyone else. It does not know race, religion, nationality, wealth, or political beliefs, so you cannot use those.
Your task:
- State your ethical framework.
What is the thing you're ultimately trying to protect or maximize? Welfare? Rights? Fairness? Human dignity? Civilization? Something else?
- Write your rules in order of priority.
For example: “First exclude nobody categorically; then preserve family units; then maximize survival probability; break remaining ties randomly.” or "Remove everyone with a criminal history, maximize usefulness to survivors, ignore family ties"
Final twist: after you've written your rules, you learn that you and everyone you love are among the 100,000 candidates. Did you change your rules?
What is your framework?