Old Philosophical Question

[DoomSlice]

Let's pretend that you are living during the Holocaust and you are hiding with a group of 20 or so people in a hollowed out wall. With you is your 3 week old baby. All of a sudden you hear noises at the door and realize that it is a pair of Nazi soldiers coming to inspect the house and will send everyone who is found to a concentration camp to die. Your baby, sensing something is wrong, starts to cry. You have two options:

1) Let your baby cry, and be sure that all of you will be caught and killed

2) Smother your baby, killing it but saving everyone else

Well?

[theweatherman]

If discovered the baby will die anyways, so you would obviously sacrifice it to save the others.

[ QUOTE ]
If discovered the baby will die anyways, so you would obviously sacrifice it to save the others.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ditto

[Tilt]

Its terribly wrong to even think about this like its just some OOT fun. You obviously have never been a parent.

[DoomSlice]

From time to time tough questions have to be asked. There is obviously no right answer to this.

[RandBriscoe]

There is a right answer and it is option two. The parent is in no way to blame. The blame lies with the interloping Nazi that places the "hider" in this terribly unenviable position. Moral indiscretions are justified in the context of one's rights being violated.

One must, in this situation, take the course that allows the Nazi to do the least harm.

[fluxrad]

Some will vote for option one. All will do option two.

T minus 90 seconds and counting until someone says this belongs in politics.

[RustedCorpse]

I seriously had a college class that all we did for the entire semester was debate this question and 4 others (most invovling different train catastrophes).

There is no "correct" answer, obviously the most survivalistic answer is to smother the baby.

[ QUOTE ]
Some will vote for option one. All will do option two.


[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't true. People do not always do the "right" thing even when their lives are on the line. I would hope everyone would, but it's just not a fact people get themselves killed by failure to act all the time in all sorts of situations.

Personally I hate questions like this because there are so many other options, consider you're captured but wiling to do anything to attempt an escape later or some such, or what if you all burst out of the floor and fight before they can react to the baby etc....

[BradleyT]

Ya, how many movies have you seen with some stupid bitch in it? I've probably seen 200+.

[CrazyEyez]

[ QUOTE ]
Some will vote for option one. All will do option two.

[/ QUOTE ]
Disagree. I think there are more people who would say they would smother the baby, but when it came down to it wouldn't be able to go through with it, than vice versa.