An Ethical Problem

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I saw a television show that was very Lord of the Flies-y. Our heros accidentally became entrapped in what appeared to be an inescapable prison. There were no natural resources in the prison, so everyone already there was living on killing newcomers as they were snatched and dropped into the prison.

On entering, our heros narrowly escaped getting killed off, but at the cost of almost all their supplies. A nicer guy who had been there for a number of years informed them about the nature of the prison, that it was inescapable, that it had been a death-trap for so long that an entirely new species of man had evolved specific traits to survive in the environment, how new arrivals were constantly showing up and getting killed blah blah blah.

Sure that they could escape where everyone else had failed, they tried and also failed, losing most of their remaining depleted supplies in the process. Learning from their errors, they tried to form alliances in the every-man-for-himself anarchy that existed in the prison.

Their fragile little alliance fights off attacks, makes friends with the natives, and finally manages to cooperatively escape.

So, four learn how to escape and do. Fifty remain inside. And perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty natives remain inside. The four that escape just stroll off their separate ways, never looking back.

When I saw this, I got so mad. Here was an enormous ethical problem, and they totally ignored it.

1) Do they not have a minimum obligation to at least mark out the area so that future people can avoid getting trapped in the prison? Putting up signs costs you nothing and saves hundreds and hundreds of lives a year (since the vast majority who go in are not ready to defend themselves and are killed almost right away for the supplies they carry).

2) Knowing now how to escape with minimal risk to self, do they not have an obligation to go back in and help everyone else escape? The interesting twist here is that everyone inside are themselves murderers, having had to kill new entrants to get supplies to survive. You would be rescuing and releasing murderers back into society.

3) But what about the natives, who have known no other life than that in the prison? If you do #1, the influx of raw materials will halt, and they will die out. So if you save others, you are at a minimum destroying a habitat of sorts, and condemning a native population. (When asked if they wanted to escape with the members of the alliance, they declined. The prison was their home, they said.)

This is a fascinating little ethical maze to work your way out of, and by ignoring it, they chose the worst of all paths -- do nothing, and condemn hundreds a year through inaction.

The first obligation seems a simple utilitarian calculation. The average life-span in the prison for those who survive the first day is, say, five years due to attrition from constant fighting. There is a stable population of fifty inside, and two hundred are captured and killed every year. If you cut off the influx of new prisoners, the fifty inside will die within a year at the outside through lack of food. Ditto the hundred and fifty natives.

So, in the worst case, you are condemning 200 people, depriving them of five years of live. 1,000 man-years lost.

For those who get sucked in and in the best case would enjoy 5 years of life and in the normal case will die instantly, they are deprived of an average of 30 years of life that they would have enjoyed in the world outside of the prison.

So, by putting up notices, you are saving 200 people a year, preserving 30 additional years of life each. 6,000 man-years saved.

Moreover, the 1,000 year loss is only incurred one time. Whereas the savings are 6,000 a year, every year. So over a ten-year period, your simple warning signs that it cost you maybe a day's effort to put up save 59,000 man-years of life.

In that light, just walking away and leaving the prison 'ecosystem' intact is just unconscionable.

To the second possible requirement, going in and saving those who remain, the case is less strong, but still seems pretty compelling. This will require you scavenging for fresh supplies to last you back inside the prison, going back in, defending yourself against initial attacks, explaining the escape, and helping the remaining 50 people out. Because the escape is a small-group effort, you may have to do this several times.

So, there is some risk to yourself (granted, a decreased risk because you will be known on your re-entry, and more known each time after that). Also, the murderers you are saving are not people whom society would normally be enthused about saving.

To the latter, you respond that the situation demanded a certain anarchy and the killing of the majority of those who joined, or all would have died since the prison has no native resources to feed everyone with. It is pretty gruesome, but the criminal seems to be the environment, set up so that your only sustenance is gleaned from new entrants to the prison. They were unlikely to naturally be murderers, but were forced into it by circumstance.

In fact, it seems more than likely that once it is known that escape is possible after all, and that life can be more than just a struggle for straight survival, the anarchy will quickly resolve into a cooperative effort to escape.

By the earlier equations, there are 50 prisoners currently in the prison. If you free those same people, they can enjoy an average 30 years on the outside instead of 5 inside. So you would be increasing 250 man-years to 1,500. You are birthing fifteen hundred new years into the world by helping them out rather than leaving them to die because your sign-posting activity cut off their food supply.

Given a manageable level of risk to self, it seems a no-brainer here as well. As risk to self increases, your case is stronger and stronger for just walking away, unless you are a saint.

Okay, then to the third problem; the natives. By cutting off the food supply, 150 natives are going to die. They did not choose to live in this ecosystem, but once born into it, it is all they know and they want to continue to enjoy their lives there.

Is it okay, even for the cause of saving your own kind, to condemn an ecosystem?

For this, I have to say yes. The system should never have existed in the first place. It fails all the self-contained or self-sustainable criteria that we would normally expect from an environment. It exists solely by leaching off of the surrounding space. So I have no problem with the reduced variety, because without human input, it would never have survived this long.

For the natives, I think they have to be forced to leave. The rings all Trail of Tears-y to me, and I am uncomfortable with it, but allowing them their preference of living environments means condemning 6,000 man-years every year to sustain that preference.

Do with your own life what you will: live in the Arctic and die young, whatever. But a preference for an environment does not justify even the taking of a single year of someone else's life.

So, the natives get relocated too, evacuated as part of the escape with everyone else. Leaving the prison empty, with signs posted outside to warn people away, and signs posted inside detailing how to escape.

Anything else, when you have the tools and resources to prevent it, is choosing to be a murderer.

So, I saw the show (Star Trek: Voyager, I am deeply sad to say) and got in a big huff about them strolling off carelessly, when strolling off was an atrocity so huge that even I could see it.

Then I had to start playing the game back to myself. What populations am I aware of that with equivalent throwaway effort I could be saving man-years for? Food aid organizations that I am not donating to, despite having disposable income every paycheck, and so forth.

Is the case equivalent? Am I a passive murderer, just like Janeway, for choosing the convenience of just strolling off over the non-effort of giving money that I would not even really miss?