Pro life thought experiment

  • Thread starter Thread starter willofgods
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
W

willofgods

Guest
The Twitter thought experiment that exposes “pro-life” hypocrisy
The thought experiment: if a building were burning and there were 2 choices - either save a 5-year-old or 1,000 embryos - which would you choose?
The main point:
when having one-on-one conversations with people, they never answer. Never. I never had somebody say, “Oh, I would save the 1,000 embryos and let the child burn to death.” No one’s ever said that. And no one will ever say that. Not when you’re looking at them. And I never had somebody say, "I would save the child," because they know what they’re conceding by saying that.
Click to expand...
He references an article that rebuttals this by Ben Shapiro, but Shapiro has little explaining why we would choose one over the other in his answers - in fact, he comes up with other scenarios and doesn’t really answer the strictest version of the scenario.
 
Last edited:
My answer would have to focus on the fact that embryos don’t feel pain or fear so all things being equal I would have to choose saving the 5-y.o.
If someone chose the other 1,000 lives would they be wrong? Why?
But if instead they were pain-capable fetuses (excuse my expansion on the strictest version) then that argument of mine goes out the door.
To my knowledge, a pain-capable fetus would not be able to feel abandonment or even despair, whereas the 5-y.o. would. So then should we save the 5-y.o.?

I’m not sure if I would know what to do!
 
Last edited:
These “gotchas” from the pro-abortion crowd nauseate me. I’ll conjure up my best Ben Shapiro (italicized) in an attempt to answer your question:

The fact that I choose to save the five year old over the embryos does not mean that I see no value in those embryos. Ask me the question about your mythical embryo factory again, just replace the embryos with your own child and the original child with my own. I would save my own child before I would save yours. This doesn’t mean that I believe your child has no value- I’m basing my decision to save my own child based on my emotional response. My emotions tell me to save my own kid instead of someone else’s kid. Likewise in your original scenario, my emotions tell me to save the crying kid instead of the thousands of embryos because I can hear that this kid is in distress. Now, I don’t know how many of these embryos in here are even viable- but here in front of me is a kid who is clearly in distress, who wants my help, so I’m going to help him.

Ben (both “real” Ben and the “fake” Ben in my example) answers your question, somewhat. It’s an emotional response. We’re more inclined to help someone in obvious distress rather than someone who we can’t tell is alive, dead, or in any distress at all, because of our reaction to what we’re seeing. Furthermore, even if two parties are equally in distress, we’re more drawn to help someone we’re related to, such as our own child, instead of someone else’s kid. One of Ben’s own scenarios is that of a child and someone who’s elderly. He will still choose the kid, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t value the life of the elder.

The reason I’m disgusted by these thought experiments is that they aren’t meant to solve a moral problem. They’re meant to trap your opponent and make them look bad any way they respond. Therefore, I don’t think Ben was even obligated to answer to it. All he could have done was post the following scenario, and he would have equally “destroyed” the author of the thought experiment:

Your kid and someone else’s kid are in a house fire. They’re both in distress and begging you to help them, but you can only save one. Who do you save?

No matter how you answer, you come out looking bad, and as I said, that’s the entire point of these “experiments”. There’s no reason for us to take them seriously. The pro-abortion crowd is free to believe that this “destroys” the pro-life side, but as a simple turnaround proves, that simply isn’t the case.
 
Last edited:
willofgods said:
The thought experiment: if a building were burning and there were 2 choices - either save a 5-year-old or 1,000 embryos - which would you choose?
Click to expand...
There is another answer: Patrick Tomlinson Tries to Lie About Abortion – Chris Lansdown.

You might note that the this “though experiment” tries to find out what one would do if one has to act based on emotion and not on reason. Fire makes sure one doesn’t have time to reason.

And then we are “supposed” to act as if emotions are more reliable than reason? And to derive moral principles from them? Nonsense!

Another problem with this “thought experiment” is that it seems to presuppose the view that we must maximise “profit”. But do we really have to? Why can’t “suboptimal” decisions be morally good too?
 
A thought experiment that isn’t really about thought is always meant to destroy both thought and feeling. A real thought experiment is about physics.

Obviously, real people would be sticking the kid on their backs and pushing the embryos in the front.

Alternately, you beat up the person proposing the thought experiment, until they agree that the theoretical parameters have now changed. Heh.

Not really, but it’s the only real solution. Obviously the proposer of the thought experiment is the theoretical arsonist and murderer, so theoretically beating him up is the way to theoretically save all the theoretical kids at once.

(That’s why you always see the kind of people who like the fake kind of thought experiment, also wanting to see movies and TV shows where serial killers run a Sophie’s Choice thing. They are sadists who just aren’t brave enough to be sadistic in real life, so they pretend they are deep.)
 
Mintaka said:
A real thought experiment is about physics.
Click to expand...
They’re actually pretty common in philosophy. Not just ethics - there’s a whole lot of fun ones dealing with epistemology, decision theory, modality, all sorts of things. Newcomb’s paradox is a great one if you want to get a bunch of philosophers arguing. But most of those don’t filter down to popular media because they aren’t as exciting.
 
Such ludicrous hypothetical situations are maliciously intended to force an impossible decision. They have crafted the outcome to their advantage. Ignore Twitter! Ignore Salon! In fact, I choose to ignore all media other than Catholic radio.
 
I’ll give the same answer I did on another topic.

Saving the embryos would requrie them to be refrozen. Not simply getting them out of the building. Eventually they would also have to be implanted or frozen indefinitely, creating their own set of moral problems from a Catholic point of view.

Therefore I would save the child. There are also probably emotional reasons for it, but rationally it also makes sense.
 
I’ve studied ethics. My least favourite thing is these stupid thought experiments. They don’t really take into account emotion or other factors. Take the runaway trolley scenario. If my kid is on one track and five people are on the other track then I’m obviously going to save my kid.

"No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children," Tomlinson wrote. "Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women."

This would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid. Of course people believe life begins at conception. It’s scientifically proven.
 
Last edited:
willofgods said:
My answer would have to focus on the fact that embryos don’t feel pain or fear so all things being equal I would have to choose saving the 5-y.o.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but this doesn’t help much, either, does it?

Change the experiment to: a building filled with 1000 comatose patients and one five-year-old, and you still have the “don’t feel pain” thing.

Here’s the thing: this thought experiment only works if you subscribe to the moral theory of utilitarianism, whose overarching moral standard is “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” The gotcha is that, if you choose the five-year-old, then you’ve just proven (to a consequentialist) that you don’t see the 1000 embryos as “people”.

Since Catholic moral theology rejects consequentialism and utilitarianism, it would likewise reject this argument.
 
It the 5yo is my child, the answer is obvious.
It the 5yo is the child of someone I know, the answer is obvious.
It the 5yo is the child of a parishoner, the answer is obvious.

The point is this: the 5yo probably belongs to someone living (at least a parent) and that living person would probably never forgive you if you saved 1000 embryo’s instead of their child if they found out. I know I would not. And I would let you know about every single time I saw you.
 
Last edited:
The other massive issue with this scenario is that it’s extremely unlikely and designed to trip you up. You can’t answer correctly.

In all fairness…how likely is it that a 5 year old will be in a fertility clinic storeroom. Or that a container will be labelled “1000 viable human embryos”. All ethical dilemmas should have some basis in reality.
 
Mintaka said:
A thought experiment that isn’t really about thought is always meant to destroy both thought and feeling. A real thought experiment is about physics.

Obviously, real people would be sticking the kid on their backs and pushing the embryos in the front.

Alternately, you beat up the person proposing the thought experiment, until they agree that the theoretical parameters have now changed. Heh.

Not really, but it’s the only real solution. Obviously the proposer of the thought experiment is the theoretical arsonist and murderer, so theoretically beating him up is the way to theoretically save all the theoretical kids at once.

(That’s why you always see the kind of people who like the fake kind of thought experiment, also wanting to see movies and TV shows where serial killers run a Sophie’s Choice thing. They are sadists who just aren’t brave enough to be sadistic in real life, so they pretend they are deep.)
Click to expand...
Definitely worth reading a second time. Thanks for posting Mintaka.
👍
 
Anyone faced with this question should choose the embryos just for the sake of argument and pissing off these people. If they say you are cold hearted you could answer killing a baby inside the womb of a mother is not cold hearted, sure. And put the example of a plane hijacked by terrorist, would not you bring it down?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top