You can only save one— who do you choose? - Doug MacKay
You are the captain of the Mallory 7,
an interstellar cargo transport.
On your way to the New Lindley spaceport,
you receive a distress call.
There’s been an explosion
on the Telic 12
and its passengers are running
out of oxygen.
As you set a course to intercept,
you check the Telic 12′s manifest.
It’s currently transporting
30 middle-aged individuals
from some of Earth’s poorest districts
to the labor center on New Lindley,
where they'll be assigned
jobs on the spaceport.
But as you approach the Telic 12,
you receive a second distress call.
A luxury space cruiser called
the Pareto has lost a thruster,
sending them careening
towards an asteroid belt.
Without your help, the 20 college students
headed for vacation
aboard the Pareto are all doomed.
So with only enough time to save one ship,
which one should you choose?
This dilemma is an example of a broader
class of problems
where a life-saving resource—
such as a donated organ or vaccine—
is scarce.
There are many schools of thought
on how to approach these problems,
and one of the most influential
is utilitarianism,
an ethical view first systematically
developed
by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
In this view,
you should choose the action
which promises the greatest
sum of happiness.
Though, how to define and measure
happiness is a difficult question.
For example, hedonists would suggest
a happy life
contains the most pleasure
and the least pain.
Others might say it’s the life
where your desires are most fulfilled.
However happiness is defined,
most would agree that saving 30 lives
has the potential
to generate more happiness than saving 20.
But is it enough to consider
how many lives would be saved?
Or should you also consider how many
life years would be?
Assuming a life expectancy of 80,
saving the lives of the students,
with an average age of 20,
saves 1,200 life years,
while saving the workers,
with an average age of 45, saves 1,050.
All things being equal,
a longer life should promise
a greater sum of happiness
than a shorter one.
So perhaps saving the smaller ship
actually has the potential
to generate the most happiness.
If all these calculations feel a bit cold,
you may want to consider
a different approach.
The philosopher Derek Parfit argues
we should give priority to the worse off,
since benefits to those groups
matter more
than equivalent benefits to the well-off.
In this view, it’s more urgent to help
those whose basic needs aren’t met
even if they’re harder to help
than those who are flourishing.
But often, determining which group is
truly worse off can get complicated fast.
In our case, Earth is still beset
by drastic inequalities
in wealth and opportunity.
And those able to afford
a vacation on New Lindley
and transport on a luxury cruiser
are no doubt among the most well-off
people on the planet.
The workers, by contrast,
are among the most disadvantaged,
traveling away from home for months
at a time to perform service work.
With fewer resources and opportunities,
it’s likely they’ve experienced more
hardship in their lives
than the vacationers,
so maybe they’re more deserving of rescue?
On the other hand, the students have
experienced less life overall—
so perhaps they’re worse off?
Or maybe none of these variables
should influence our decision.
The philosopher John Taurek famously
argued that in these types of cases,
the numbers don’t count.
Each person is deserving
of equal concern and respect,
so the best way to decide which passengers
to save is to flip a coin.
While this might seem arbitrary at first,
this approach treats all parties equally,
giving each individual
an equal chance of being rescued.
Could any passenger argue that they're
being treated unfairly by a coin flip?
It’s tough to say.
But how they— and you— feel about the
result may be another dilemma altogether.
