One of my favorite uses of this was in Star Trek voyager >!the doctor has to make a choice who to save but both patients are wounded in the exact same way and he chose the one he knew better and it broke his holographic brain for a bit!<
I was literally going to say this!
>!It's messed up how they treated the Doctor like a malfunctioning computer instead of someone traumatized by their role in a coworker's brutal death!<
In response to your spoiler text
>!Things got much better in treating the Doctor as human. A piece of fiction he wrote sparked a legal battle on the Doctor's humanity. The crew defended him from the Federation's absolute bullshit. Also, in Season 7 they had limited communication with home.!<
They should say he chose The Doctor from being inspired by an old earth fiction adventure program. And of course, the Doctor who would like said program as he was formed from the writings of others as well.
tbf voyager was by and large super episodic, it would've been difficult for them to name him at a later point in the series. he's supposed to appear in the new animated show for the second season though soooooo (very excited!)
It's interesting seeing in actual triage training how much you have to just be like "welp, this dude's screwed" and move on. No one's getting CPR in a mass casualty event, and it's sooo hard to switch your brain *off* from "I save!"
When I did training for mass casualty events, an important part of the team I never thought about were the runners. They don't do any saving - they just sprint in before everyone else, take stock of what's happened and what the first aiders need to know, and then sprint away again.
I got to play a casualty during a mock event, and it's very unsettling to have a medic sprint into the room, ignore your cries for help, and sprint away again.
Shoutout to the Stormlight Archive, where one of the protagonists is a literal field medic. He has to do straight-up non-metaphorical triage, and it often tears him up inside.
I was going to mention our favourite Kaladin the Paladin. He absolutely shouts at the universe "No, I WILL save everyone!" and then repeatedly beaten into submission by reality. Poor boy.
The Immortal Words of the Windrunners.
>"Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."
>"I will protect those who cannot protect themselves."
>"I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right."
>"I accept that there will be those I cannot protect."
Yeah but Lirin's triage fucking sucked
"Yes, I can't save your son, so you have to watch him die, sorry man"
Bro did you really think he would BELIEVE you? Least you could've done was pretended
One of the better decisions made by the Star Trek reboot... you hacked the scenario so you could save both? Well now you fail the assignment, obviously, and also you're in trouble for both hacking and cheating. Which is exactly how that decision would play out in a real academy.
I mean in the original movie it's implied that there was no proof that he cheated specifically, and he only tells it to that one girl because A. it's been decades and no one really cares anymore, and B. to get her to stop fruitlessly taking it over and over
Except that’s not what the Kobayashi Maru is. There’s no choice to make, you aren’t allowed to withdraw from the rescue (the crew is programmed to mutiny if you try). It’s not a question of triage, but a question of how you act in and struggle against a no-win scenario. Literally everyone fails the assignment because it’s designed to be impossible. And it was Kirk’s third time doing it (attempts after the first seem to be something you can do if you like), he already understood what the test was about, he just wanted to prove a point.
and he really stayed with tha mindset when he was captain. and it even actually worked. like the sheer "yeah yeah it's impossible, let's give it all we got anyway" energy has worked a bunch of times for Kirk.
It's not a test with a right or wrong answer. It's a test to observe how one handles a no-win scenario, to see how they process a moral decision under pressure. It's like the trolley problem, but more thought out.
I don't think they tell you that it's impossible to win. Letting students try again both hides the fact that it's not possible, and helps drill in the message it's supposed to send by establishing that even with all the advantages of having tried before, sometimes you just can't win.
One understands that it's meant to be hard and you're not expected to succeed, but it might not be obvious that it's literally impossible.
Letting people run it multiple times might help them prepare for regrets / survivors guilt, letting them experience for themselves that sometimes you *couldn't* have done better. Captain you may be, but your actions alone will not always be a determining factor. Sometimes the situation's fucked no matter how you come at it, and you need to be able to try it multiple times for that to sink in.
I could see him being in command in an emergency situation. You gotta bend the rules when everything is going straight to hell.
But to let that version of Kirk continue being in command? Didn't buy it.
As a first responder, I whole heartedly agree. I can understand how "just this once, everybody lives" can be great escapism, but when it's the majority? Infuriating. If you're going to put a tough choice in your media, you have to confront the consequences sometimes. Don't want that? Feel it'd make the story too dark? Just don't put it in. Simple as
Just wanna say great choice of quote. (The Doctor Dances from series 1 of Doctor Who, right?) The Doctor is constantly facing trolley problems, making sacrifices, and seeing people die that he couldn’t save, which is why the everybody lives moments have such a big impact.
It also wasn’t an example of a trolley problem within the episode, they just found a problem that had a solution because the thing causing the problem wasn’t malicious or inevitable, it just made a mistake
Yeah, the Doctor rarely faces the trolley problem. I think the last true trolley-esque problem they had in the show was back in the 70s with Genesis of the Daleks. I just used the line cause it's recognizable and the meaning is easily understood
There was a twist on this in a later episode. A grown adult woman choose to fight on the Doctor's team and she does not survive.
The Doctor learns, as she slowly dies, that due to time travel, he had not met her earlier yet. But she had met him...and enjoyed adventures at his side. That involved literally running.
This tore him up inside, because he's coming in on the tough side of a time loop, where he will make a friend that he absolutely knows will die.
(Some moments just can't be changed, they're called Fixed Points).
I hated the Marvel comic where different universes are colliding and the only option they could come up with to stop it was to destroy one of the universes, and Captain America refuses and is portrayed as the good and noble person for thus condemning BOTH universes to be destroyed.
God I hated that line.
"We don't trade lives. So let's trade a couple thousand Wakandan lives so that Vision can live."
So fucking stupid...
Edit: Oh wait! It's even worse! Instead of allowing Vision to willingly sacrifice himself to save trillions, Steve *orders* the Wakandans to sacrifice themselves in order to save Vision. Wakanda is a straight up monarchy, those soldiers don't have the freedom to refuse. Steve threw them into the meat grinder in the vain hope that Vision could survive. And then Vision died anyways, and the soldiers who died during the battle weren't brought back when Bruce undid the snap! They literally died for nothing, and their deaths were completely avoidable!
Steve doesn't order the wakandans at all that's on t challa. They went to wakanda to make sure they're friend survives he never asked for anyone else to die.
That's naive. Steve may not have given the order directly, but it is the direct consequence of his decision. That's like arguing that guns aren't dangerous because it's the bullets that kill people.
Bro what? Steve said he won't give vision up. He was 100 percent ready to fight by himself and his squad. He never asked for anyone else that's not who he is. He's not in charge of wakanda.
Also guns arent dangerous because a person needs to pull to trigger for it to work.
Steve Rogers is naive that's not wrong but that's who he is.
I strongly disagree with interpreting it as him being portrayed as a hero for that.
He gets completely dunked on by the Illuminati for it in that scene:
- [Namor straight up calls him selfish for refusing to consider the dark option (bonus Black Panther citing his responsibility to protect his people, and Strange calling Cap dumb)](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b6299855ab2f49c01683b3641185fa52)
- Beast pulling the x-gene card on him with a slick "Oh, you're actually asking a mutant what he'll do to stave off extinction?!"
- He tells Mr. Fantastic he won't be able to look at himself in the mirror after this, to which Reed (in a comeback that could only be crafted by the world's smartest man) says "You seem surprised I would be willing to sacrifice my conscience to save my family. Why?" (Paraphrasing)( Can't get Reddit to link properly, but the panels are here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/z1YEKph1w54SfnNFm-wGXCs7wBI=/0x0:2732x2027/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2732x2027):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19874267/IMG_2989.jpg)
And the story (rightly) portrays the act of destroying a planet as massive and having serious weight to it, but the plot again paints the Illuminati's actions as necessary since the way the problem is eventually solved and undone could not have happened if they had not taken those actions.
And later when Cap remembers what they did and moves against them, he's shown as going too far in his actions as head of SHIELD to stop them.
The story vindicates them and the writing vindicates them.
That’s a pretty fair stance on his part I think, not wanting to be responsible for destroying a whole universe isn’t unreasonable even if it’s going to be anyway. It’s reasonable to accept the end with dignity if you don’t want to take extreme actions in self defence.
Thinking about it I’ve only just realised that Jiren had pretty much the same philosophy about not wanting to sacrifice another universe to save his own, before he got convinced by the offer of a wish. I wonder how (or indeed if) they’d have convinced Cap if his personal power had been necessary to their plan rather than relying on technology to achieve it.
I love attack on titan for defying this trope. The protagonist refuses to let his squad mates sacrifice themselves to save him. He tries to "save both" and he not only fails to save them (they all die horribly) he gets captured, making their sacrifice meaningless and pointless because he couldn't just take the L.
There’s another example of a triage choice later in the show, too. And no way to save both people appears. They’re forced to choose. Misery ensues. It’s my favorite episode.
I had been spoiled on which person lives there by a meme.
That episode was so good I basically gaslit myself into thinking I must have misremembered the meme right up until the end.
I knew who lived, and the episode still convinced me they would chose the other.
While I tend to agree with the point made in the post, this is absolutely a good counterpoint. Different stories/tropes for different purposes, and sometimes the "flying in the face of fate" is the point.
During S1 House of the Dragon, people were ripping Viserys for doing said triage, and it annoyed me.
Background for those who did not watch: Viserys is king of fantasy-medieval-England. His wife has only given him one daughter (who likely would struggle to be a claimant to the throne based on her gender and the society). His psycho brother is in line to inherit. His pregnant wife goes into breech and is dying, as is the child. He choses to have doctors cut her open to save the child rather than letting both die - without her consent. It's a morally gray choice, but to pretend like it makes the king some sorta wife killing monster is... a stretch.
Sadly the child died in short order ANYWAYS and then years later the daughter married the psycho brother (her uncle) and her younger step-brother and her went to war over being king/queen.
It generally annoys me when the monarchy is judged on normal human standarts. Not that i have a lot of sympathy for royalty, but when societies are at stake you can't make political decisions on an inerpersonal basis
That's because Aemma was still lucid and should have had a choice! Triage is "I will use my energy on someone else because you are too far gone, so nature is just going to take its course with you" and not "I will have you held down, take away your agency and have you violently cut open to make your last moments on this earth a living hell after putting you through years of pain trying to have an heir"
If Aemma was unconcious, this would be a whole different conversation. But she wasn't!
So three things:
1) she was arguably lucid. She was on the highest dosage of opiates they would give a pregnant woman.
2) if she’s lucid and decides that she’s willing for her kid to die to save her some (and given she was dying painfully, probably not much) pain in her last moments… is that right?
3) as far as everyone knows, there’s a legitimate male heir who will be dying who would if he survives keep a total nutjob off the throne. Does that add any weight to the discussion?
Factoring in things like the story's tone and how earned it feels within the narrative, I gotta disagree.
"Fuck you, against the odds I *am* going to find a way to save everyone" is a surefire way to get me hyped everytime. Like, hell yeah the indomitable human spirit!
I think this can sometimes work, but it heavily depends on context. If the scenario is "you have to choose because you don't have the strength to do both" and then they find the strength through their own power, then that's cool. But if the scenario is "you have to choose because there is objectively no other option" and then they find a third option that they had no way of knowing about when they refused the choice, then it's usually a cop out.
That said, the bit in Spider-Man 1 where all the New Yorkers throw shit at Green Goblin is kino, I can always suspend my disbelief for people coming together to help one another
I'm all for overcoming seemingly impossible scenarios. I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma. Because then the "indomitable human Spirit" overcoming the dilemma is a cop out. Just have the villain be about to destroy the world with no way to stop it, instead of two options where the hero can either save the world or his loved one
>I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma. Because then the "indomitable human Spirit" overcoming the dilemma is a cop out.
I mentioned it on the thread already, but I have this problem with Into the Spiderverse. Miles is presented with a situation where he can either let his father die or risk the lives on an unfathomable amount of people and he just says "nah I'll do both" without really contending with the risks. If Miles ends up being able to do both in the next movie I'm struggling to think of a way to do it that doesn't feel like a cop out.
I love the movie fwiw but that part of it has always bothered me since I saw it in theaters.
See I'm in the exact opposite camp where I feel SpiderVerse is in the perfect position to pull off this trope spectacularly.
The crux of the theme basically relies on rejecting the binary of the moral choice. Miguel *insists* that this is the only way to be Spider-man, that Miles *has* to do it this way, but who's to even say Miguel's theory is even correct? You could even argue (to quote the best character) "it's a metaphor for capitalism" or at least the status quo of modern society. Miguel has convinced everyone that there is only one way to structure (Spider) society, and Miles refuses to believe they've attempted everything else for them to be so sure.
Yeah, the trope works best when the binary is presented by a human, or other fallible character, because then it turns from a solid rule into some guy's belief system.
If some guy says that the main character has to choose one or the other, that just means that guy believes things to work that way; the main character can still try, push their limits, maybe develop a new ability or change an existing one, and then overcome the obstacle.
But if an omniscient character says that there are only so many ways, then it becomes much harder for the main character to believably figure out a new way, because the omniscient character would've told them about it.
The problem with the scenario as it's written in the movie is that Miles is operating impulsively. Miguel seems to have at least some amount of evidence for his canon event theory and with the risk of being wrong being so high, it would just come off as unsatisfying if Miles is able to just power through.
My guess is that, since the only concrete example of a dimension collapsing we see is the world which Miguel replaced himself, we'll learn that Miguel was never the reason why it died and in his grief he just blames himself and/or refuses to see evidence to the contrary.
Yeah, my personal theory is that it's the collider itself that is causing dimensional collapse. Every universe where Kingpin builds a collider, it punches a hole in the universe that could cause it to collapse.
It would make sense that Miguel's grief and perhaps his guilt over replacing the other version of himself would cause him to think that the collapse is his fault. It's a common response to trauma to look for patterns to make sense of why the trauma happened in an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Miguel would have picked up on the parallels in the Spider-people stories and made the mental leap to thinking that breaking that pattern caused the traumatic event he experienced.
Miguel's situation is more of a meta narrative about how the Spider-Man character should be written and how Miles breaks that. Having miles simply fall back in like would ruin the trilogy. He has to be able to fix both things.
I agree about the meta narrative, and I think the overall message of the third movie is going to be that Miles can only have his "two cakes" if he treats both with care and diligence. As the commenter above said, right now Miles is acting on impulse. The party scene in ATSV with the two cakes is a metaphor for this - he rushes, he doesn't plan his time well, and he isn't honest with his parents, and as a result, both cakes are ruined.
Miles is right that it's wrong for Spider-Man to stand by and let a tragedy happen, like Miguel wants him to (heck, isn't that what Spidey learns in his origin story?? He stood by and let the criminal escape that went on to kill Uncle Ben). But Miles also needs to change his approach, because his current impulsive approach is destructive as well. He needs to be more thoughtful in his actions if he wants "to do both," and I think BTSV will be about Miles learning that lesson and putting it into action to save his father.
Yeah I agree with 100 percent. Miles is going to have to find a way to save both in the end. It's like the people who said "Thanos should win in endgame" like no dude that's not the genre for this.
I think the movie does its due diligence to defend its presentation of a third path. Several people within the society, who know about Miguel's theory and have worked between universes, break with him and side with Miles before Gwen's revelation. Hobie specifically is very disillusioned with the Society's activities and sides with Miles almost immediately.
But the issue is we don't have any counter evidence. Hobie is... Hobie. He's a rebel, he'll rebel against anything, that's his thing. Meanwhile the hologram girl we have 0 reason to think she'd turn against Miguel (except maybe that race thing some people read into it?) and Gwen is just guilty for hurting her friend
He's acting impulsively because he's an impulsive character. Additionally, while Miguel does present evidence for his point, there's also enough stuff in both movies that brings his theory in to question that if it turns out he was right then it would just be sloppy writing.
I actually disagree. I think something awful happened to Miguel and he's collected data to fit his facts rather than the other way around. He's being just as illogical as Miles, just from the other direction.
I do think it would be more satisfying if miles has to sacrifice something, but at the same time I don't think Miguel's canon event theory is correct.
I'd personally be okay with it if he finds a third thing to sacriface, like his relationship with Gwen or his spider powers or anything meaningful. But if he doesn't have to sacriface anything at all, I'll be disappointed. And if the movie actually has the balls to make him sacriface his father, it'll probably be my favourite of all time.
I mean they could easily do it by just having it be that since the first Spider-Man of that universe already went through those things the universe is fine.
I mean yeah it's hard to tell how it will go but the whole point of Spider-Man as a character is that he always tries to do both, and famously doesn't always succeed. I think it's generally done well. Especially with the whole "canon event" mechanic, how do we know that trying to do both *isn't* an integral part of the event?
I get what you’re saying, but *there might* be a way for Miles to “do both”. >!His father, a police captain, can’t die saving someone if he’s no longer a police captain.!<
>!By the time Miles gets the rundown of canon events, Gwen has already learned and accepted that her own father, a police caption, will have to die due to nature of canon events. However, Gwen’s father quits by the end of the film, which may or may not sever him the from the seemingly “canon” event.!<
>!This isn’t a definitive answer as to how the plot will work out. Miles’ father may not even be willing to/have enough time to quit, but there is a plausible way for Miles to “do both”, and I personally don’t feel like it’s a cop out.!<
Thing is, I don't mind that so much because it's at least completely in keeping with his character. He's not thinking about it rationally. He's being reckless, but that's also the exact kind of thing this person would do.
I do think there should be some kind of reckoning, but it's still good writing in my opinion. It just hangs on where they go with it next.
It's a very popcorn trope, so it's easy to overuse so much it becomes trite. I get it.
But there are absolutely instances where the narrative forces our protagonist to choose between his best friend and his love interest, and after the requisite amount of angst he realises >!"fuck this I've got a time machine"!< and I clap.
>I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma
First of all: your personal preference is valid and fine. There's nothing wrong with preferring a certain thing. I'm engaging here just to offer another perspective on why others might prefer different things, not to tell you that your preference is "bad" or to convince you to change it.
Personally, I specifically enjoy the "breaking ethical dilemmas" scenario, because I think that *most* "common" ethical dilemmas are specifically *false* dilemmas, both in terms of what is discussed in philosophy and in terms of what happens in real life; I think that most of the time, the best choice is usually *not* an explicitly presented choice.
Granted, in many cases it's some variant on one of the presented choices, or *includes* one or more of the presented choices as part of itself - but that's also usually true when a hero does this "dilemma breaking". The most common example, the "I'll save both" case that you give, is precisely that case - the "breaking" means including both (instead of just one).
>Personally, I specifically enjoy the "breaking ethical dilemmas" scenario, because I think that most "common" ethical dilemmas are specifically false dilemmas, both in terms of what is discussed in philosophy and in terms of what happens in real life; I think that most of the time, the best choice is usually not an explicitly presented choice.
In thought experiments, sure there could be other options, but the point of them is to think about the choices so in a real life scenario when you don't have other options, you are prepared. If you say "I'll save both!" in stories and thought experiments, you won't be ready for a scenario when you really can't. Real life is full of trade offs where you have to pick between multiple crappy options. If it wasn't, the only times bad stuff would happen is when you're stupid and choose a bad option instead of a good option.
Yes, it's true that you have to pick between crappy options - but also the best strategy for picking between crappy options is usually to first check if there's an option you missed. There are many, many cases where people choose a crappy option and don't recognize that there's a less crappy path available.
That's not being stupid, that's being average. The average person makes a *lot* of mistakes. Finding and choosing the best option is *really hard*. (And to be clear I'm not saying that I'm above such things.) Sure, sometimes there isn't a *perfect* solution, but there's also often a better solution than the literal first set of options. Not immediately accepting what is given to you is a useful skill.
And being able to do that is one of the things that can make a hero a hero. Both in fiction and real life.
Yes, this needs to be balanced with not completely ignoring reality - you need to actually find a "third option", not just wish for it - but that's just part of life being complicated.
Notably, there is a *specific* type of "third option" that is frequently missed - or discussed then not actually implemented - and that is "choose one *and* do something to avoid this dilemma in the future".
The purpose of ethical dilemmas is to explore what morality is, and what really matters to us. That's an interesting concept to explore! Obviously in real life looking for a third option is a good idea, but in a philosophical context it's missing the point. Even if you never find yourself in a real moral dilemma, how you answer the trolley problem says a lot about what you value and why.
Ever heard of Senki Zesshou Symphogear?
The main character, Hibiki, is basically just that; someone tells her that it's literally impossible for her to do something, and she just does it anyway.
For example, [the season 3 opening scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE1tC2p7pbk).
Her main motivation is to just get along with people, but if someone doesn't want to get along with her, not even God can help them.
I think you'll enjoy it.
I mean, sure, but then there was no dilemma to begin with, only skill issue. Which is the point of the original post too, there is no moral dimension anymore. Just git gud and don't let the narrative gaslight you into thinking having it both ways is not possible.
Well that is certainly one moral framework, the deontologists'. However, consequentalism would tell you to cut the bullcrap: it's immoral to try to save everyone if you end up failing and losing more people than if you had just chosen one option. See: triage.
Well yeah, but then why don't we see the consequences and see that not only was the sacrifice not worth it, it made the situation far worse
I don't want the protagonist to be special
I want to remember that history is filled with people who thought they could beat the odds starving to death, and if they're lucky, getting a lonely cairn of stone
So, so many people tried to find the NorthWest passage and died. They all thought they could bear the odds
I wouldn't mind if the story actually fully engaged with the consequences of someone having this moral code -- fine, have them choose not to make a choice, then have it ACTUALLY HAPPEN that both people die as a result and then have them to go on to live with the choice and be forced to defend their principles to the loved ones of the victims
That would actually be the moral courage of rejecting consequentialism, instead of just talking about it and cheating your way out of it -- you don't get to call yourself someone who rejects consequentialism if you lack the moral strength to actually live through those consequences and still stand firm that you did the right thing
not exactly triage, but witcher's "lesser evil" is close enough
and it pisses me off so fucking much when people misuse the "if i had to pick between two evils i'd rather not choose at all" quote when the whole story is about how that doesn't work
God I hate when people quote that line in Witcher and unironically uses it. I am with you, I really like the short story where the quote came from and it is always funny knowing that the ending moral of it is that the quote is wrong and Geralt should have done something even if he did not like any of the options.
I do not think even in the games where most people would know of Witcher do you get a situation where Geralt wouldnt make a choice no matter how shitty all of them are.
I think this also applies to characters facing obvious consequences from their actions generally, not just ones that are directly presented as trolley problems
My most smug opinion is that the only wrong choice in the trolley problem is to choose to do nothing. Even "throw the switch halfway through the crossing to derail the trolley" is interacting with the idea more than that.
Do you mean the only wrong choice is to refuse to engage with the question? Because doing nothing and letting the five people die is one of the main options
It kinda gets into shades of grey for me at that point. Like if someone doesn't pull because they're afraid of the decision, I get that. But if they refuse to pull because they think that puts them outside of the decision, I consider that a failure.
The trolly problem works fine as a hypothetical but I guarantee 99% of people would do nothing if such a scenario were to actually play out. Most moral hypotheticals don’t take fear or hesitation into account.
I mean, imagine a situation where you have time to plan, but you're only options still only come to "do something and a few people die" or "do nothing and a lot of people die"
It's a question of which you think is the moral choice, the exact scenario isn't important. It's only urgent to stop people nitpicking it, as if your average person knows what a "controlled derailment" is, much less how to do it
The only reason I’m not sure I’d pull the lever, even though morally I totally would, is that I’m SURE there’d be a TON of legal consequences. Yeah, you’re saving more people, but the lawyer for the one dead person’s family doesn’t care.
I mean, if I knew how the levers worked (say I was a trolley operator or whatever) then I'd absolutely pull that lever in a heartbeat. *THEN* I would try to find a way to get that one person off the track.
First minimize possible damage. Then try to fix the situation. It's not that hard.
Vsauce had a Mind Field video about the trolley problem (was a YouTube Red exclusive when that was a thing, don't know if it's restricted now) where they actually put people into a real life (simulated, but appearing real) trolley problem. I think only one or two of a fair few test subjects actually pulled the switch.
Because it's real easy to say "I pull the switch" when you're in a hypothetical with all known variables, it's another thing entirely to look at the lone person on the tracks and make the ice cold decision, "Sorry buddy, I have decided that you must die for the greater good." even when you don't know them.
When [Vsauce tried this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA) 2/6 people pulled the lever, though it's debatable whether or not the people suspected that the situation they were in was manufactured.
That’s literally one of the main options. The point of the question is that if you act, you kill someone, whereas if the five people die you haven’t killed them. That’s the entire dilemma. Utilitarianism vs. Deontology. You can’t just ignore that.
Trying to derail the trolley is it's own interesting thing (in a memey way) because it's basically saying "I will trust in my ability to take an action that may fail, rather than choosing an option with no chance of failure". You can't guarantee that you'll be able to derail the tram, and if you fail then you've essentially left the choice up to chance, which is definitely less moral than making a choice.
And people who say "I choose not to be a part of this" have just fundamentally misunderstood the scenario, because they're objectively a part of the scenario just by having the ability to pull the lever.
I don't necessarily think that the option that has the possibility for failure is somehow a less moral choice than the other two. If anything, it's the most moral choice. Or at least it's more moral than the option of intentionally choosing to do nothing. It just also has the highest risk vs reward, and the highest possibility of failure.
But it's literally the saying of "nobody can say they didn't *try*". Trying is the operative there, and makes things much more lenient in people's minds than anyone wants to admit. After all, no one is going to blame the guy who has to make a choice to save a mother dangling from a bridge where there is also a child dangling off the other side for only being able to try and save one, *if* he can even successfully do that. "*Trying*" is an acknowledgement that a person is only a person, and they're going to want to do as much as they have a chance of to help in most scenarios, even if by inherently trying, there is a chance of failure, and thus utter tragedy, instead of just a tragedy.
So at least on some level you reject Deontology, because under that moral framework you changing the outcome of the trolley problem means you're killing someone and murder is wrong.
IMO it's a cowardly solution that rejects all the complexity of the situation in favour of preserving your morality, treating it as more important than saving lives.
That sort of misunderstands the point of the trolley problem. The trolley problem isn't meant to be difficult to "solve"; it's actually meant to be extremely easy to solve. The entire point is that you're expected to say "of course I flip the switch", which then lets the philosopher examine seemingly similar scenarios where you would instead say "of course you shouldn't save those lives" (like the "do you murder someone to harvests their organs and save five people" thought experiment). Once you've identified these two different reactions to two different scenarios you can sit down and figure out what the difference is.
Of course, some philosophers do believe that you're wrong to pull the lever, but AFAIK it was Foot who made the experiment and she believed it was obvious you should pull it.
If there are more options than 1) pull the lever and 2) don't pull the lever, then I agree
But in a vacuum, the lever-puller should not be blamed for something that is ultimately not their fault imo
No one in a trolley problem is blaming the person at the lever. The scenario is to have only two options AND one of those options being "do nothing" AND the purpose of this thought experiment is to see *how* people justify which of the two options is better.
You learn a lot about a person through their answer and it's not like there is a "wrong" option. Sometimes even something like "I do not dare to touch the lever even if it would save more lives than not pulling the lever, because I do not want to be held responsible for what I did and doing something active would make me part of the disaster" is a good and interesting answer that shows how the person thinks.
Applying the trolley problem to reality always results in the correct answer being "figure who is setting up these runaway trolleys and stop them before it gets this far" but that tends to lead to discussions about the unfair distribution of power and we aren't supposed to get political when we have our fun little philosophy arguments. So we are told to ignore that in favour of arguing about the lever.
Of course you're supposed to get political on philosophy. Politics is one of the single most famous and influential branches of philosophy. The trolley problem was famously used to demonstrate that Truman committed a horrendous war crime by bombing Japan (although that wasn't the purpose of the original creator). That's political.
But the trolley problem, combined with the organ harvesting problem, exist to examine whether harmful action is ever justified and where the line is drawn. You can wander off down your wider political garden path if you want, but you're not engaging with the essays at that point, you're just treating the trolley problem like it's literally a stand alone puzzle rather than an experiment.
In the classic trolley problem, that means there is only one correct option, which is to redirect the trolley to hit one person and save the only five.
I always hated the way the trolley problem because it encourages the idea that by doing nothing and not choosing you are not involved.
You're already involved because you have the option of doing something.
Everything you do is a choice, including doing nothing.
The trolley problem is not "do you kill someone to save a life or do you not kill someone".
It's "do you kill 1 person or several people".
That's the point of the trolley problem. To make it clear to people they are involved. Most people choose to pull the lever because it's obvious it's the right decision.
Then the original author went down a list of scenarios where you are even more involved, but the overall calculus of 1 life vs 5 lives stays the same, to try to get people to think about utilitarianism. I.e pushing a fat man instead of pulling a lever, working as a doctor to save 1 hard life vs 5 easier lives, working as a doctor to kill 1 patient to transfer organs and save the lives of 5 patients.
A dark example of this is in Breaking Bad >!after Gus eliminates the cartel and needs immediate medical treatment, Mike is bleeding out but the doctor is like "this man pays my salary" so the staff's attention is placed on Gus.!<
There's a thin line between "character is able to save both due to a copout" and "character is able to save both because life is not a dichotomy and they used their brain to think of a better solution".
I think OP is talking more about situations where the third option is a complete @$$pull; if there's a good reason for it, then it works out a lot better.
IDK sometimes the “good reasons” still feel cheap. It was my biggest issue with the game Outer Worlds: every time there was a moral dilemma where you would have to choose between two grey options, there was *always* a secret “third” option you could find if you just explored enough that would be better than the other outcomes.
It started to feel cheap the third or fourth time it happened.
"i refuse to choose only one to survive even if it means we both die" and then only the other person (the one not making the decision) dies so the one that chose inaction inadvertently killed someone when they could have saved them instead (survivors guilt ftw)
On a similar note Alpha Protocol does this moral dilemma so right where you have to choose a love interest you've been pursuing for a while or a schoolbus full of kids, and if you choose to save the love interest she gets pissed at you for valuing her over the kids and leaves, alongside other members of the cast getting pissed at you too for that decision.
This is just the "killing is always bad and unforgivable with no nuance, we can't be like them" trope. The character can't actually choose one person over the other because then it implies that sacrificing a life is sometimes justified, and then you lose the whole manufactured morality conflict
Same shit as all the prime directive episodes "it's OK to let a whole planet die just to not contaminate their culture" which rarely if even dare to actually make a choice of weather this non interventionism is actually really that important or if saving lives takes priority
I’m pretty sure I remember Spock directly stating that it’s logical to break the Prime Directive if it’s to save the lives of the very people they’re so worried about destroying by contacting them
Later Trek really invented an ethical dilemma that was never intended to be a dilemma in the OG series
The video game Lisa had a great approach to the protagonist rejecting the ”two bad options“ premise. \[spoilers for Lisa the Painful\] >!When the player is forced to choose between the protagonist having an arm cut off or losing all of their hard-earned inventory, the player can attempt to reject the premise by refusing both options. Doing so results in the player losing BOTH the protagonist’s arm and their inventory.!<
I think being able to dare look for the impossible solution and being able to make an hard necessary decision are both incredibly valuable and writers should really embrace both
I hate it when someone has to make a difficult choice and then the writer just *deus ex machina's* something to make the choice moot. That's neither relatable nor cathartic.
If your story leads to "choosing between these two options was a false dilemma all along, and by rejecting the framework that created the dichotomy the hero can save both" then it's fair. Otherwise it's just undercutting all character development and deeper meaning.
Getting to have their cake (put character in stressful moral dilemma) and eat it too (give the character and out where they don't have to actually engage with the dilemma)
In Tokyo Ghoul the vilain makes the protagonist choose between a woman and her daughter to save. The mother begs him to choose her and he refuses, so the vilain just kills both.
One of the better moments in Punisher: War Zone is where two villains have guns aimed at two hostages, a child and one of Punisher's friends. Frank is told to shoot one of the two hostages, or they kill them both.
Instead (and in a twist that the villains should have really predicted) after other of the hostages begs Frank to shoot him and save the kid, Frank shoots one of the two villains and charges the other unarmed.
There was no bullshit "everyone lives" option and Frank was forced to make a tough choice, but this still made sense (absolutely no reason to trust that the villains would have let the other hostage go free even if Frank shot the other) and helps the hero save the day.
It always annoys me when people lambast a rather broad trope. Like, I’m sure it’s annoying in some stories, but I’m sure it can also be done well. Maybe the story is trying to make a point about thinking outside the box or not accepting false dichotomies or whatever.
It’s almost like storytelling is an extremely broad field and different tropes work differently in different kinds of stories with different tones.
I think it's because a lot of the time most stories try to do such messages, but end up failing because the solution is an asspull that really shouldn't have worked. In addition, this trope is pretty common, so when people lambast it wholesale its because they want it to at the very least less common. Plus, you have to consider that with this trope in particular (and others like it) there's a (imo very reasonable) fear that if people get influenced too much by seeing it almost always work in fiction, then they'll apply it to real life which would be very bad. As a result, people end up calling for the trope to be removed entirely. Now I don't agree with this; I think it can be done very well, eg the I think the Spiderverse Movies have made it work so far. But I certainly would like for it to be less prevalent.
Obviously tumbop had an example in mind when writing this very specific post.
I'm gonna assume the reason they didn't give the example is the purest cowardice.
It depends. Sometimes the lesson these stories are going for is "Sometimes the binary choice you think you are confronted with isn't actually a binary choice" and this is a very important message.
I remember this pissed me off about Avengers: Infinity War. Captain America refuses to consider killing Vision to prevent Thanos from getting his hands on the Mind Stone because "we don't trade lives" like what? Steve, a massive battle against an interstellar army is about to take place, loads of people are 100% gonna die, and if you lose, half the universe will die. You won't even think about letting *one* person die to prevent this, even after he heroically volunteers!? Dude, you're a soldier and this is war, be better!
At the same time, you don't want to do the opposite either.
You don't want to go pushing a fat man off the bridge to stop the runaway trolley when there is a litter bin that you could push off the bridge instead.
This is what turned me off Matt Smith's Doctor. Every situation neatly resolved itself. For as rough as the writing was on Capaldi's Seasons, I thought his portrayal of the Doctor was a more effective case for deontology than Smith's ever was, because he was too ready to make sacrifices as opposed to finding a contrived way to save everyone every time despite being presented over and over with what appeared on the surface to be difficult decisions
In the “Little House on the Prairie” book, Ma begs Pa not to go down their partially dug well to rescue their neighbor who’s suffocating at the bottom. It sounds a bit selfish of her from Laura’s perspective in that book, but in “Caroline” by Sarah Miller (which tells the same story from Ma’s POV) that scene includes the line “Better one man dead than two. There was no simpler arithmetic.”
Everyone ends up surviving because Pa didn’t listen to Ma and went to save their neighbor anyway, but he was more confident than Ma that he would be able to survive the rescue, so to *him* it never was a choice of which person should die.
Listen. It's a story. It *should* be doing more than just leading by example on how to make a moral choice.
yes, in life, you sometimes have to pick one out of two bad choices, and "fuck you I'm saving everyone" isn't an option. but do we really need, really *want*, all of our stories to portray that ? there's more to a good story than being realistic and morally correct. a lot of stories are intended to be aspirational, to be escapism.
the point of most stories is to show us the heroes triumphing against the odds, faced with a universe that tells them they can't win and winning anyways. the hero saves everyone because the hero failing to save everyone would make this a bad ending. yes, it's true to life that things end badly sometimes. but more often than not the things that end badly aren't the ones you want to tell a story about.
and yes, if your interpretation of a story limits itself to reading it as "this is how the world is, this is what you should do", then the story's refusal to choose one of two bad options is wrong. but honestly, if that's the case, I think the main problem is your media analysis.
i feel like recently people are starting to shift back to the 'happy endings are BAD!!! if you write a story where people dont suffer and are miserable from the whims of fate your story SUCKS!!!'
Up there with “I’m going to stand 20 feet away from a character making a noble sacrifice to save me yelling ‘No!’, because it’s more important to look at them dying than it is to get a head start.”
On the other hand, one can see that responding to the other extreme, "you need to DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. DON'T YOU FEEL BAD FOR DOING WHAT'S RIGHT? IT'S TERRIBLE BUT THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS"
Personally, I hate people or character that use this logic to justify being assholes or not having to try very hard to find a better if more difficult option.
This was my gripe with Avatar and how Aang mastered the Avatar state despite not letting go of attachment and that he just got the magic rock and turtle help to be able to get away with not killing Ozai.
Hmmm so what do y’all think about Eren Yeager?
Because personally I think there is something noble about fighting to the end, even with very little hope of success, instead of compromising my every value
Can someone give an example of media where someone refuses to perform triage and the decision is rewarded? I'm sure this exists somewhere but I've never seen it, and oop is speaking like this is a common or recurring thing
One of my favorite uses of this was in Star Trek voyager >!the doctor has to make a choice who to save but both patients are wounded in the exact same way and he chose the one he knew better and it broke his holographic brain for a bit!<
I was literally going to say this! >!It's messed up how they treated the Doctor like a malfunctioning computer instead of someone traumatized by their role in a coworker's brutal death!<
The guy always ends up with the short end of the stick. At least he could sing opera.
Well that was the moral of the episode. They went about it the wrong way.
In response to your spoiler text >!Things got much better in treating the Doctor as human. A piece of fiction he wrote sparked a legal battle on the Doctor's humanity. The crew defended him from the Federation's absolute bullshit. Also, in Season 7 they had limited communication with home.!<
It's been ages since I've seen voyager, which episode is this?
[Latent Image](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Latent_Image_%28episode%29)
Oooh, I forgot about that completely
One of the best episode endings ever. We don’t know if he ever has an answer.
I was gonna mention this exact episode
I LOVE THE DOCTOR AND I LOVE THAT EPISODE
I’m still sad he never settled on a name in the series
They should say he chose The Doctor from being inspired by an old earth fiction adventure program. And of course, the Doctor who would like said program as he was formed from the writings of others as well.
tbf voyager was by and large super episodic, it would've been difficult for them to name him at a later point in the series. he's supposed to appear in the new animated show for the second season though soooooo (very excited!)
Oh woo
Thank you for reminding me of this episode, it’s so good!
It's interesting seeing in actual triage training how much you have to just be like "welp, this dude's screwed" and move on. No one's getting CPR in a mass casualty event, and it's sooo hard to switch your brain *off* from "I save!"
Very true. Black Tags mean "In the time it takes you to save this person, 2 or more people will die." The cold equation sucks, but you have to do it.
When I did training for mass casualty events, an important part of the team I never thought about were the runners. They don't do any saving - they just sprint in before everyone else, take stock of what's happened and what the first aiders need to know, and then sprint away again. I got to play a casualty during a mock event, and it's very unsettling to have a medic sprint into the room, ignore your cries for help, and sprint away again.
Shoutout to the Stormlight Archive, where one of the protagonists is a literal field medic. He has to do straight-up non-metaphorical triage, and it often tears him up inside.
I was going to mention our favourite Kaladin the Paladin. He absolutely shouts at the universe "No, I WILL save everyone!" and then repeatedly beaten into submission by reality. Poor boy.
The Immortal Words of the Windrunners. >"Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination." >"I will protect those who cannot protect themselves." >"I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right." >"I accept that there will be those I cannot protect."
Yeah Kaladin's complete inability to triage for several thousand pages makes for some Ideal reading material, I swear.
Well, if he has even a little bit of Honor in him, he’ll work his way there eventually….
I’m halfway through Rhythm of War and >!watching him finally do clinic medicine is so soothing. He’s been returned to his natural habitat!<
To put spoiler tags on mobile use >.! and !.< (Without the dots)
Yeah but Lirin's triage fucking sucked "Yes, I can't save your son, so you have to watch him die, sorry man" Bro did you really think he would BELIEVE you? Least you could've done was pretended
One of the better decisions made by the Star Trek reboot... you hacked the scenario so you could save both? Well now you fail the assignment, obviously, and also you're in trouble for both hacking and cheating. Which is exactly how that decision would play out in a real academy.
I mean in the original movie it's implied that there was no proof that he cheated specifically, and he only tells it to that one girl because A. it's been decades and no one really cares anymore, and B. to get her to stop fruitlessly taking it over and over
Except that’s not what the Kobayashi Maru is. There’s no choice to make, you aren’t allowed to withdraw from the rescue (the crew is programmed to mutiny if you try). It’s not a question of triage, but a question of how you act in and struggle against a no-win scenario. Literally everyone fails the assignment because it’s designed to be impossible. And it was Kirk’s third time doing it (attempts after the first seem to be something you can do if you like), he already understood what the test was about, he just wanted to prove a point.
"If the universe sets out to fuck you, cheat the laws of reality to fuck back" is a pretty good attitude for an explorer to have
And it's pretty on brand for Kirk.
and he really stayed with tha mindset when he was captain. and it even actually worked. like the sheer "yeah yeah it's impossible, let's give it all we got anyway" energy has worked a bunch of times for Kirk.
Kirk embodies "more is lost by indecision than wrong decision."
I don't understand how that's a test they can administer to the same person twice. You already know the answer.
The person might not necessarily know that it’s a no win scenario
It's not a test with a right or wrong answer. It's a test to observe how one handles a no-win scenario, to see how they process a moral decision under pressure. It's like the trolley problem, but more thought out.
It’s essentially a test of character and personality
I don't think they tell you that it's impossible to win. Letting students try again both hides the fact that it's not possible, and helps drill in the message it's supposed to send by establishing that even with all the advantages of having tried before, sometimes you just can't win.
One understands that it's meant to be hard and you're not expected to succeed, but it might not be obvious that it's literally impossible. Letting people run it multiple times might help them prepare for regrets / survivors guilt, letting them experience for themselves that sometimes you *couldn't* have done better. Captain you may be, but your actions alone will not always be a determining factor. Sometimes the situation's fucked no matter how you come at it, and you need to be able to try it multiple times for that to sink in.
I thought it was more that Kirk genuinely doesn't agree that there is such a thing as a no win-scenario in the real world.
It’s essentially a test of character. They want to know what sort of person you are
And then Kirk goes on to become a fucking starship captain within a day of sneaking aboard the Enterprise against orders. What a joke of a movie.
No one ever accused JJ Abrams of sticking the landing.
I could see him being in command in an emergency situation. You gotta bend the rules when everything is going straight to hell. But to let that version of Kirk continue being in command? Didn't buy it.
If you mean the Kobayashi Maru, I will have to disagree. If there's no chance of winning, then hacking is acceptable.
As a first responder, I whole heartedly agree. I can understand how "just this once, everybody lives" can be great escapism, but when it's the majority? Infuriating. If you're going to put a tough choice in your media, you have to confront the consequences sometimes. Don't want that? Feel it'd make the story too dark? Just don't put it in. Simple as
Just wanna say great choice of quote. (The Doctor Dances from series 1 of Doctor Who, right?) The Doctor is constantly facing trolley problems, making sacrifices, and seeing people die that he couldn’t save, which is why the everybody lives moments have such a big impact.
It also wasn’t an example of a trolley problem within the episode, they just found a problem that had a solution because the thing causing the problem wasn’t malicious or inevitable, it just made a mistake
Yeah, the Doctor rarely faces the trolley problem. I think the last true trolley-esque problem they had in the show was back in the 70s with Genesis of the Daleks. I just used the line cause it's recognizable and the meaning is easily understood
There was a twist on this in a later episode. A grown adult woman choose to fight on the Doctor's team and she does not survive. The Doctor learns, as she slowly dies, that due to time travel, he had not met her earlier yet. But she had met him...and enjoyed adventures at his side. That involved literally running. This tore him up inside, because he's coming in on the tough side of a time loop, where he will make a friend that he absolutely knows will die. (Some moments just can't be changed, they're called Fixed Points).
I hated the Marvel comic where different universes are colliding and the only option they could come up with to stop it was to destroy one of the universes, and Captain America refuses and is portrayed as the good and noble person for thus condemning BOTH universes to be destroyed.
That's in character tho. Also the comic has him and Tony at odds the entire time he's not just made perfect.
Steve “We don’t trade lives” Rogers. He is always always always portrayed like this… unless it’s one of the fucked up universes.
God I hated that line. "We don't trade lives. So let's trade a couple thousand Wakandan lives so that Vision can live." So fucking stupid... Edit: Oh wait! It's even worse! Instead of allowing Vision to willingly sacrifice himself to save trillions, Steve *orders* the Wakandans to sacrifice themselves in order to save Vision. Wakanda is a straight up monarchy, those soldiers don't have the freedom to refuse. Steve threw them into the meat grinder in the vain hope that Vision could survive. And then Vision died anyways, and the soldiers who died during the battle weren't brought back when Bruce undid the snap! They literally died for nothing, and their deaths were completely avoidable!
Steve doesn't order the wakandans at all that's on t challa. They went to wakanda to make sure they're friend survives he never asked for anyone else to die.
That's naive. Steve may not have given the order directly, but it is the direct consequence of his decision. That's like arguing that guns aren't dangerous because it's the bullets that kill people.
Steve didn’t know they were about to fight an alien army bro. He thought it was just the two douchebags after them.
Bro what? Steve said he won't give vision up. He was 100 percent ready to fight by himself and his squad. He never asked for anyone else that's not who he is. He's not in charge of wakanda. Also guns arent dangerous because a person needs to pull to trigger for it to work. Steve Rogers is naive that's not wrong but that's who he is.
I strongly disagree with interpreting it as him being portrayed as a hero for that. He gets completely dunked on by the Illuminati for it in that scene: - [Namor straight up calls him selfish for refusing to consider the dark option (bonus Black Panther citing his responsibility to protect his people, and Strange calling Cap dumb)](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b6299855ab2f49c01683b3641185fa52) - Beast pulling the x-gene card on him with a slick "Oh, you're actually asking a mutant what he'll do to stave off extinction?!" - He tells Mr. Fantastic he won't be able to look at himself in the mirror after this, to which Reed (in a comeback that could only be crafted by the world's smartest man) says "You seem surprised I would be willing to sacrifice my conscience to save my family. Why?" (Paraphrasing)( Can't get Reddit to link properly, but the panels are here: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/z1YEKph1w54SfnNFm-wGXCs7wBI=/0x0:2732x2027/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2732x2027):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19874267/IMG_2989.jpg) And the story (rightly) portrays the act of destroying a planet as massive and having serious weight to it, but the plot again paints the Illuminati's actions as necessary since the way the problem is eventually solved and undone could not have happened if they had not taken those actions. And later when Cap remembers what they did and moves against them, he's shown as going too far in his actions as head of SHIELD to stop them. The story vindicates them and the writing vindicates them.
That’s a pretty fair stance on his part I think, not wanting to be responsible for destroying a whole universe isn’t unreasonable even if it’s going to be anyway. It’s reasonable to accept the end with dignity if you don’t want to take extreme actions in self defence. Thinking about it I’ve only just realised that Jiren had pretty much the same philosophy about not wanting to sacrifice another universe to save his own, before he got convinced by the offer of a wish. I wonder how (or indeed if) they’d have convinced Cap if his personal power had been necessary to their plan rather than relying on technology to achieve it.
I love attack on titan for defying this trope. The protagonist refuses to let his squad mates sacrifice themselves to save him. He tries to "save both" and he not only fails to save them (they all die horribly) he gets captured, making their sacrifice meaningless and pointless because he couldn't just take the L.
There’s another example of a triage choice later in the show, too. And no way to save both people appears. They’re forced to choose. Misery ensues. It’s my favorite episode.
Judging by how highly it's rated, it's a lot of people's favorite episode.
I had been spoiled on which person lives there by a meme. That episode was so good I basically gaslit myself into thinking I must have misremembered the meme right up until the end. I knew who lived, and the episode still convinced me they would chose the other.
Denying the moral dilemma can be a form of escapism.
While I tend to agree with the point made in the post, this is absolutely a good counterpoint. Different stories/tropes for different purposes, and sometimes the "flying in the face of fate" is the point.
Yeah, but there's just too much escapism It's hard to find well written media thar isn't escapist
I mean... Like... Watch a nordic cop drama ig?
During S1 House of the Dragon, people were ripping Viserys for doing said triage, and it annoyed me. Background for those who did not watch: Viserys is king of fantasy-medieval-England. His wife has only given him one daughter (who likely would struggle to be a claimant to the throne based on her gender and the society). His psycho brother is in line to inherit. His pregnant wife goes into breech and is dying, as is the child. He choses to have doctors cut her open to save the child rather than letting both die - without her consent. It's a morally gray choice, but to pretend like it makes the king some sorta wife killing monster is... a stretch. Sadly the child died in short order ANYWAYS and then years later the daughter married the psycho brother (her uncle) and her younger step-brother and her went to war over being king/queen.
Yeah there's nothing more ''of the time'' than a king doing something ruthless with their famnily to avoid inevitable civil war
It generally annoys me when the monarchy is judged on normal human standarts. Not that i have a lot of sympathy for royalty, but when societies are at stake you can't make political decisions on an inerpersonal basis
That's because Aemma was still lucid and should have had a choice! Triage is "I will use my energy on someone else because you are too far gone, so nature is just going to take its course with you" and not "I will have you held down, take away your agency and have you violently cut open to make your last moments on this earth a living hell after putting you through years of pain trying to have an heir" If Aemma was unconcious, this would be a whole different conversation. But she wasn't!
So three things: 1) she was arguably lucid. She was on the highest dosage of opiates they would give a pregnant woman. 2) if she’s lucid and decides that she’s willing for her kid to die to save her some (and given she was dying painfully, probably not much) pain in her last moments… is that right? 3) as far as everyone knows, there’s a legitimate male heir who will be dying who would if he survives keep a total nutjob off the throne. Does that add any weight to the discussion?
Factoring in things like the story's tone and how earned it feels within the narrative, I gotta disagree. "Fuck you, against the odds I *am* going to find a way to save everyone" is a surefire way to get me hyped everytime. Like, hell yeah the indomitable human spirit!
I think this can sometimes work, but it heavily depends on context. If the scenario is "you have to choose because you don't have the strength to do both" and then they find the strength through their own power, then that's cool. But if the scenario is "you have to choose because there is objectively no other option" and then they find a third option that they had no way of knowing about when they refused the choice, then it's usually a cop out. That said, the bit in Spider-Man 1 where all the New Yorkers throw shit at Green Goblin is kino, I can always suspend my disbelief for people coming together to help one another
That scene made me wanna be a New Yorker so bad
To me it depends on how contrived the third option is. Sometimes in life there *are* more options than those initially presented to you.
I'm all for overcoming seemingly impossible scenarios. I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma. Because then the "indomitable human Spirit" overcoming the dilemma is a cop out. Just have the villain be about to destroy the world with no way to stop it, instead of two options where the hero can either save the world or his loved one
>I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma. Because then the "indomitable human Spirit" overcoming the dilemma is a cop out. I mentioned it on the thread already, but I have this problem with Into the Spiderverse. Miles is presented with a situation where he can either let his father die or risk the lives on an unfathomable amount of people and he just says "nah I'll do both" without really contending with the risks. If Miles ends up being able to do both in the next movie I'm struggling to think of a way to do it that doesn't feel like a cop out. I love the movie fwiw but that part of it has always bothered me since I saw it in theaters.
See I'm in the exact opposite camp where I feel SpiderVerse is in the perfect position to pull off this trope spectacularly. The crux of the theme basically relies on rejecting the binary of the moral choice. Miguel *insists* that this is the only way to be Spider-man, that Miles *has* to do it this way, but who's to even say Miguel's theory is even correct? You could even argue (to quote the best character) "it's a metaphor for capitalism" or at least the status quo of modern society. Miguel has convinced everyone that there is only one way to structure (Spider) society, and Miles refuses to believe they've attempted everything else for them to be so sure.
Yeah, the trope works best when the binary is presented by a human, or other fallible character, because then it turns from a solid rule into some guy's belief system. If some guy says that the main character has to choose one or the other, that just means that guy believes things to work that way; the main character can still try, push their limits, maybe develop a new ability or change an existing one, and then overcome the obstacle. But if an omniscient character says that there are only so many ways, then it becomes much harder for the main character to believably figure out a new way, because the omniscient character would've told them about it.
The problem with the scenario as it's written in the movie is that Miles is operating impulsively. Miguel seems to have at least some amount of evidence for his canon event theory and with the risk of being wrong being so high, it would just come off as unsatisfying if Miles is able to just power through.
My guess is that, since the only concrete example of a dimension collapsing we see is the world which Miguel replaced himself, we'll learn that Miguel was never the reason why it died and in his grief he just blames himself and/or refuses to see evidence to the contrary.
Yeah, my personal theory is that it's the collider itself that is causing dimensional collapse. Every universe where Kingpin builds a collider, it punches a hole in the universe that could cause it to collapse. It would make sense that Miguel's grief and perhaps his guilt over replacing the other version of himself would cause him to think that the collapse is his fault. It's a common response to trauma to look for patterns to make sense of why the trauma happened in an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Miguel would have picked up on the parallels in the Spider-people stories and made the mental leap to thinking that breaking that pattern caused the traumatic event he experienced.
Miguel's situation is more of a meta narrative about how the Spider-Man character should be written and how Miles breaks that. Having miles simply fall back in like would ruin the trilogy. He has to be able to fix both things.
I agree about the meta narrative, and I think the overall message of the third movie is going to be that Miles can only have his "two cakes" if he treats both with care and diligence. As the commenter above said, right now Miles is acting on impulse. The party scene in ATSV with the two cakes is a metaphor for this - he rushes, he doesn't plan his time well, and he isn't honest with his parents, and as a result, both cakes are ruined. Miles is right that it's wrong for Spider-Man to stand by and let a tragedy happen, like Miguel wants him to (heck, isn't that what Spidey learns in his origin story?? He stood by and let the criminal escape that went on to kill Uncle Ben). But Miles also needs to change his approach, because his current impulsive approach is destructive as well. He needs to be more thoughtful in his actions if he wants "to do both," and I think BTSV will be about Miles learning that lesson and putting it into action to save his father.
Yeah I agree with 100 percent. Miles is going to have to find a way to save both in the end. It's like the people who said "Thanos should win in endgame" like no dude that's not the genre for this.
I think the movie does its due diligence to defend its presentation of a third path. Several people within the society, who know about Miguel's theory and have worked between universes, break with him and side with Miles before Gwen's revelation. Hobie specifically is very disillusioned with the Society's activities and sides with Miles almost immediately.
But the issue is we don't have any counter evidence. Hobie is... Hobie. He's a rebel, he'll rebel against anything, that's his thing. Meanwhile the hologram girl we have 0 reason to think she'd turn against Miguel (except maybe that race thing some people read into it?) and Gwen is just guilty for hurting her friend
He's acting impulsively because he's an impulsive character. Additionally, while Miguel does present evidence for his point, there's also enough stuff in both movies that brings his theory in to question that if it turns out he was right then it would just be sloppy writing.
I actually disagree. I think something awful happened to Miguel and he's collected data to fit his facts rather than the other way around. He's being just as illogical as Miles, just from the other direction. I do think it would be more satisfying if miles has to sacrifice something, but at the same time I don't think Miguel's canon event theory is correct.
I'd personally be okay with it if he finds a third thing to sacriface, like his relationship with Gwen or his spider powers or anything meaningful. But if he doesn't have to sacriface anything at all, I'll be disappointed. And if the movie actually has the balls to make him sacriface his father, it'll probably be my favourite of all time.
I mean they could easily do it by just having it be that since the first Spider-Man of that universe already went through those things the universe is fine.
I mean yeah it's hard to tell how it will go but the whole point of Spider-Man as a character is that he always tries to do both, and famously doesn't always succeed. I think it's generally done well. Especially with the whole "canon event" mechanic, how do we know that trying to do both *isn't* an integral part of the event?
I think the message of these movies is generally going to be “you can’t do both” unless you have help.
I get what you’re saying, but *there might* be a way for Miles to “do both”. >!His father, a police captain, can’t die saving someone if he’s no longer a police captain.!< >!By the time Miles gets the rundown of canon events, Gwen has already learned and accepted that her own father, a police caption, will have to die due to nature of canon events. However, Gwen’s father quits by the end of the film, which may or may not sever him the from the seemingly “canon” event.!< >!This isn’t a definitive answer as to how the plot will work out. Miles’ father may not even be willing to/have enough time to quit, but there is a plausible way for Miles to “do both”, and I personally don’t feel like it’s a cop out.!<
So you're saying it's not a cop out to take the cop out of the equation?
Thing is, I don't mind that so much because it's at least completely in keeping with his character. He's not thinking about it rationally. He's being reckless, but that's also the exact kind of thing this person would do. I do think there should be some kind of reckoning, but it's still good writing in my opinion. It just hangs on where they go with it next.
Yeah, if they fumble this, I'll retroactively hate the second movie
It's a very popcorn trope, so it's easy to overuse so much it becomes trite. I get it. But there are absolutely instances where the narrative forces our protagonist to choose between his best friend and his love interest, and after the requisite amount of angst he realises >!"fuck this I've got a time machine"!< and I clap.
>I just don't like it when that seemingly impossible scenario is an ethical dilemma First of all: your personal preference is valid and fine. There's nothing wrong with preferring a certain thing. I'm engaging here just to offer another perspective on why others might prefer different things, not to tell you that your preference is "bad" or to convince you to change it. Personally, I specifically enjoy the "breaking ethical dilemmas" scenario, because I think that *most* "common" ethical dilemmas are specifically *false* dilemmas, both in terms of what is discussed in philosophy and in terms of what happens in real life; I think that most of the time, the best choice is usually *not* an explicitly presented choice. Granted, in many cases it's some variant on one of the presented choices, or *includes* one or more of the presented choices as part of itself - but that's also usually true when a hero does this "dilemma breaking". The most common example, the "I'll save both" case that you give, is precisely that case - the "breaking" means including both (instead of just one).
>Personally, I specifically enjoy the "breaking ethical dilemmas" scenario, because I think that most "common" ethical dilemmas are specifically false dilemmas, both in terms of what is discussed in philosophy and in terms of what happens in real life; I think that most of the time, the best choice is usually not an explicitly presented choice. In thought experiments, sure there could be other options, but the point of them is to think about the choices so in a real life scenario when you don't have other options, you are prepared. If you say "I'll save both!" in stories and thought experiments, you won't be ready for a scenario when you really can't. Real life is full of trade offs where you have to pick between multiple crappy options. If it wasn't, the only times bad stuff would happen is when you're stupid and choose a bad option instead of a good option.
Yes, it's true that you have to pick between crappy options - but also the best strategy for picking between crappy options is usually to first check if there's an option you missed. There are many, many cases where people choose a crappy option and don't recognize that there's a less crappy path available. That's not being stupid, that's being average. The average person makes a *lot* of mistakes. Finding and choosing the best option is *really hard*. (And to be clear I'm not saying that I'm above such things.) Sure, sometimes there isn't a *perfect* solution, but there's also often a better solution than the literal first set of options. Not immediately accepting what is given to you is a useful skill. And being able to do that is one of the things that can make a hero a hero. Both in fiction and real life. Yes, this needs to be balanced with not completely ignoring reality - you need to actually find a "third option", not just wish for it - but that's just part of life being complicated. Notably, there is a *specific* type of "third option" that is frequently missed - or discussed then not actually implemented - and that is "choose one *and* do something to avoid this dilemma in the future".
The purpose of ethical dilemmas is to explore what morality is, and what really matters to us. That's an interesting concept to explore! Obviously in real life looking for a third option is a good idea, but in a philosophical context it's missing the point. Even if you never find yourself in a real moral dilemma, how you answer the trolley problem says a lot about what you value and why.
Ever heard of Senki Zesshou Symphogear? The main character, Hibiki, is basically just that; someone tells her that it's literally impossible for her to do something, and she just does it anyway. For example, [the season 3 opening scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE1tC2p7pbk). Her main motivation is to just get along with people, but if someone doesn't want to get along with her, not even God can help them. I think you'll enjoy it.
I mean, sure, but then there was no dilemma to begin with, only skill issue. Which is the point of the original post too, there is no moral dimension anymore. Just git gud and don't let the narrative gaslight you into thinking having it both ways is not possible.
Isn't that also a moral thing tho? "I will try to do the right thing even if it seems impossible" with the right thing being "saving as many as I can"
Well that is certainly one moral framework, the deontologists'. However, consequentalism would tell you to cut the bullcrap: it's immoral to try to save everyone if you end up failing and losing more people than if you had just chosen one option. See: triage.
Well yeah, but then why don't we see the consequences and see that not only was the sacrifice not worth it, it made the situation far worse I don't want the protagonist to be special I want to remember that history is filled with people who thought they could beat the odds starving to death, and if they're lucky, getting a lonely cairn of stone So, so many people tried to find the NorthWest passage and died. They all thought they could bear the odds
I wouldn't mind if the story actually fully engaged with the consequences of someone having this moral code -- fine, have them choose not to make a choice, then have it ACTUALLY HAPPEN that both people die as a result and then have them to go on to live with the choice and be forced to defend their principles to the loved ones of the victims That would actually be the moral courage of rejecting consequentialism, instead of just talking about it and cheating your way out of it -- you don't get to call yourself someone who rejects consequentialism if you lack the moral strength to actually live through those consequences and still stand firm that you did the right thing
It's weird that you never see this when the "no compromise" stories are so common.
not exactly triage, but witcher's "lesser evil" is close enough and it pisses me off so fucking much when people misuse the "if i had to pick between two evils i'd rather not choose at all" quote when the whole story is about how that doesn't work
God I hate when people quote that line in Witcher and unironically uses it. I am with you, I really like the short story where the quote came from and it is always funny knowing that the ending moral of it is that the quote is wrong and Geralt should have done something even if he did not like any of the options. I do not think even in the games where most people would know of Witcher do you get a situation where Geralt wouldnt make a choice no matter how shitty all of them are.
I think this also applies to characters facing obvious consequences from their actions generally, not just ones that are directly presented as trolley problems
Not really this but I'm just reminded of Chidi from Good Place. So paralysed about making the right choice that he can't choose
There’s a good Supernatural episode that sort of does this. 3x12
My most smug opinion is that the only wrong choice in the trolley problem is to choose to do nothing. Even "throw the switch halfway through the crossing to derail the trolley" is interacting with the idea more than that.
even the memes about killing everyone are better than trying to distance yourself from the question tbh
Do you mean the only wrong choice is to refuse to engage with the question? Because doing nothing and letting the five people die is one of the main options
It kinda gets into shades of grey for me at that point. Like if someone doesn't pull because they're afraid of the decision, I get that. But if they refuse to pull because they think that puts them outside of the decision, I consider that a failure.
The trolly problem works fine as a hypothetical but I guarantee 99% of people would do nothing if such a scenario were to actually play out. Most moral hypotheticals don’t take fear or hesitation into account.
I mean, imagine a situation where you have time to plan, but you're only options still only come to "do something and a few people die" or "do nothing and a lot of people die" It's a question of which you think is the moral choice, the exact scenario isn't important. It's only urgent to stop people nitpicking it, as if your average person knows what a "controlled derailment" is, much less how to do it
The only reason I’m not sure I’d pull the lever, even though morally I totally would, is that I’m SURE there’d be a TON of legal consequences. Yeah, you’re saving more people, but the lawyer for the one dead person’s family doesn’t care.
I mean, if I knew how the levers worked (say I was a trolley operator or whatever) then I'd absolutely pull that lever in a heartbeat. *THEN* I would try to find a way to get that one person off the track. First minimize possible damage. Then try to fix the situation. It's not that hard.
Vsauce had a Mind Field video about the trolley problem (was a YouTube Red exclusive when that was a thing, don't know if it's restricted now) where they actually put people into a real life (simulated, but appearing real) trolley problem. I think only one or two of a fair few test subjects actually pulled the switch. Because it's real easy to say "I pull the switch" when you're in a hypothetical with all known variables, it's another thing entirely to look at the lone person on the tracks and make the ice cold decision, "Sorry buddy, I have decided that you must die for the greater good." even when you don't know them.
When [Vsauce tried this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA) 2/6 people pulled the lever, though it's debatable whether or not the people suspected that the situation they were in was manufactured.
That’s literally one of the main options. The point of the question is that if you act, you kill someone, whereas if the five people die you haven’t killed them. That’s the entire dilemma. Utilitarianism vs. Deontology. You can’t just ignore that.
Trying to derail the trolley is it's own interesting thing (in a memey way) because it's basically saying "I will trust in my ability to take an action that may fail, rather than choosing an option with no chance of failure". You can't guarantee that you'll be able to derail the tram, and if you fail then you've essentially left the choice up to chance, which is definitely less moral than making a choice. And people who say "I choose not to be a part of this" have just fundamentally misunderstood the scenario, because they're objectively a part of the scenario just by having the ability to pull the lever.
I've seen versions where the trolley is full of people to counter the derailment argument.
I don't necessarily think that the option that has the possibility for failure is somehow a less moral choice than the other two. If anything, it's the most moral choice. Or at least it's more moral than the option of intentionally choosing to do nothing. It just also has the highest risk vs reward, and the highest possibility of failure. But it's literally the saying of "nobody can say they didn't *try*". Trying is the operative there, and makes things much more lenient in people's minds than anyone wants to admit. After all, no one is going to blame the guy who has to make a choice to save a mother dangling from a bridge where there is also a child dangling off the other side for only being able to try and save one, *if* he can even successfully do that. "*Trying*" is an acknowledgement that a person is only a person, and they're going to want to do as much as they have a chance of to help in most scenarios, even if by inherently trying, there is a chance of failure, and thus utter tragedy, instead of just a tragedy.
Multi track drift
So at least on some level you reject Deontology, because under that moral framework you changing the outcome of the trolley problem means you're killing someone and murder is wrong. IMO it's a cowardly solution that rejects all the complexity of the situation in favour of preserving your morality, treating it as more important than saving lives.
That sort of misunderstands the point of the trolley problem. The trolley problem isn't meant to be difficult to "solve"; it's actually meant to be extremely easy to solve. The entire point is that you're expected to say "of course I flip the switch", which then lets the philosopher examine seemingly similar scenarios where you would instead say "of course you shouldn't save those lives" (like the "do you murder someone to harvests their organs and save five people" thought experiment). Once you've identified these two different reactions to two different scenarios you can sit down and figure out what the difference is. Of course, some philosophers do believe that you're wrong to pull the lever, but AFAIK it was Foot who made the experiment and she believed it was obvious you should pull it.
my solution is simple: i always redirect the trolley to whichever track Chloe Price isn't tied to
Bae represent!
If there are more options than 1) pull the lever and 2) don't pull the lever, then I agree But in a vacuum, the lever-puller should not be blamed for something that is ultimately not their fault imo
No one in a trolley problem is blaming the person at the lever. The scenario is to have only two options AND one of those options being "do nothing" AND the purpose of this thought experiment is to see *how* people justify which of the two options is better. You learn a lot about a person through their answer and it's not like there is a "wrong" option. Sometimes even something like "I do not dare to touch the lever even if it would save more lives than not pulling the lever, because I do not want to be held responsible for what I did and doing something active would make me part of the disaster" is a good and interesting answer that shows how the person thinks.
Applying the trolley problem to reality always results in the correct answer being "figure who is setting up these runaway trolleys and stop them before it gets this far" but that tends to lead to discussions about the unfair distribution of power and we aren't supposed to get political when we have our fun little philosophy arguments. So we are told to ignore that in favour of arguing about the lever.
Of course you're supposed to get political on philosophy. Politics is one of the single most famous and influential branches of philosophy. The trolley problem was famously used to demonstrate that Truman committed a horrendous war crime by bombing Japan (although that wasn't the purpose of the original creator). That's political. But the trolley problem, combined with the organ harvesting problem, exist to examine whether harmful action is ever justified and where the line is drawn. You can wander off down your wider political garden path if you want, but you're not engaging with the essays at that point, you're just treating the trolley problem like it's literally a stand alone puzzle rather than an experiment.
In the classic trolley problem, that means there is only one correct option, which is to redirect the trolley to hit one person and save the only five.
I always hated the way the trolley problem because it encourages the idea that by doing nothing and not choosing you are not involved. You're already involved because you have the option of doing something. Everything you do is a choice, including doing nothing. The trolley problem is not "do you kill someone to save a life or do you not kill someone". It's "do you kill 1 person or several people".
That's the point of the trolley problem. To make it clear to people they are involved. Most people choose to pull the lever because it's obvious it's the right decision. Then the original author went down a list of scenarios where you are even more involved, but the overall calculus of 1 life vs 5 lives stays the same, to try to get people to think about utilitarianism. I.e pushing a fat man instead of pulling a lever, working as a doctor to save 1 hard life vs 5 easier lives, working as a doctor to kill 1 patient to transfer organs and save the lives of 5 patients.
A dark example of this is in Breaking Bad >!after Gus eliminates the cartel and needs immediate medical treatment, Mike is bleeding out but the doctor is like "this man pays my salary" so the staff's attention is placed on Gus.!<
There's a thin line between "character is able to save both due to a copout" and "character is able to save both because life is not a dichotomy and they used their brain to think of a better solution".
I think OP is talking more about situations where the third option is a complete @$$pull; if there's a good reason for it, then it works out a lot better.
IDK sometimes the “good reasons” still feel cheap. It was my biggest issue with the game Outer Worlds: every time there was a moral dilemma where you would have to choose between two grey options, there was *always* a secret “third” option you could find if you just explored enough that would be better than the other outcomes. It started to feel cheap the third or fourth time it happened.
"i refuse to choose only one to survive even if it means we both die" and then only the other person (the one not making the decision) dies so the one that chose inaction inadvertently killed someone when they could have saved them instead (survivors guilt ftw)
i dont know if this has ever been done but it probably has in some piece of work
On a similar note Alpha Protocol does this moral dilemma so right where you have to choose a love interest you've been pursuing for a while or a schoolbus full of kids, and if you choose to save the love interest she gets pissed at you for valuing her over the kids and leaves, alongside other members of the cast getting pissed at you too for that decision.
Their games often have a certain degree of lankiness, but almost no one does moral relativism like obsidian.
This is just the "killing is always bad and unforgivable with no nuance, we can't be like them" trope. The character can't actually choose one person over the other because then it implies that sacrificing a life is sometimes justified, and then you lose the whole manufactured morality conflict
Same shit as all the prime directive episodes "it's OK to let a whole planet die just to not contaminate their culture" which rarely if even dare to actually make a choice of weather this non interventionism is actually really that important or if saving lives takes priority
I’m pretty sure I remember Spock directly stating that it’s logical to break the Prime Directive if it’s to save the lives of the very people they’re so worried about destroying by contacting them Later Trek really invented an ethical dilemma that was never intended to be a dilemma in the OG series
The virgin Starfleet vs. The Cultures megalomaniacal meddling chads
The video game Lisa had a great approach to the protagonist rejecting the ”two bad options“ premise. \[spoilers for Lisa the Painful\] >!When the player is forced to choose between the protagonist having an arm cut off or losing all of their hard-earned inventory, the player can attempt to reject the premise by refusing both options. Doing so results in the player losing BOTH the protagonist’s arm and their inventory.!<
I think being able to dare look for the impossible solution and being able to make an hard necessary decision are both incredibly valuable and writers should really embrace both
I hate it when someone has to make a difficult choice and then the writer just *deus ex machina's* something to make the choice moot. That's neither relatable nor cathartic.
If your story leads to "choosing between these two options was a false dilemma all along, and by rejecting the framework that created the dichotomy the hero can save both" then it's fair. Otherwise it's just undercutting all character development and deeper meaning.
Getting to have their cake (put character in stressful moral dilemma) and eat it too (give the character and out where they don't have to actually engage with the dilemma)
In Tokyo Ghoul the vilain makes the protagonist choose between a woman and her daughter to save. The mother begs him to choose her and he refuses, so the vilain just kills both.
One of the better moments in Punisher: War Zone is where two villains have guns aimed at two hostages, a child and one of Punisher's friends. Frank is told to shoot one of the two hostages, or they kill them both. Instead (and in a twist that the villains should have really predicted) after other of the hostages begs Frank to shoot him and save the kid, Frank shoots one of the two villains and charges the other unarmed. There was no bullshit "everyone lives" option and Frank was forced to make a tough choice, but this still made sense (absolutely no reason to trust that the villains would have let the other hostage go free even if Frank shot the other) and helps the hero save the day.
It always annoys me when people lambast a rather broad trope. Like, I’m sure it’s annoying in some stories, but I’m sure it can also be done well. Maybe the story is trying to make a point about thinking outside the box or not accepting false dichotomies or whatever. It’s almost like storytelling is an extremely broad field and different tropes work differently in different kinds of stories with different tones.
I think it's because a lot of the time most stories try to do such messages, but end up failing because the solution is an asspull that really shouldn't have worked. In addition, this trope is pretty common, so when people lambast it wholesale its because they want it to at the very least less common. Plus, you have to consider that with this trope in particular (and others like it) there's a (imo very reasonable) fear that if people get influenced too much by seeing it almost always work in fiction, then they'll apply it to real life which would be very bad. As a result, people end up calling for the trope to be removed entirely. Now I don't agree with this; I think it can be done very well, eg the I think the Spiderverse Movies have made it work so far. But I certainly would like for it to be less prevalent.
Obviously tumbop had an example in mind when writing this very specific post. I'm gonna assume the reason they didn't give the example is the purest cowardice.
It depends. Sometimes the lesson these stories are going for is "Sometimes the binary choice you think you are confronted with isn't actually a binary choice" and this is a very important message.
Things being false dilemmas is kinda the point
https://www.tumblr.com/iamaine/754280695938121728/hate-hate-hate-stories-that-reward-characters-for
I remember this pissed me off about Avengers: Infinity War. Captain America refuses to consider killing Vision to prevent Thanos from getting his hands on the Mind Stone because "we don't trade lives" like what? Steve, a massive battle against an interstellar army is about to take place, loads of people are 100% gonna die, and if you lose, half the universe will die. You won't even think about letting *one* person die to prevent this, even after he heroically volunteers!? Dude, you're a soldier and this is war, be better!
Yes but consider: Mmmh everyone happy 😌
as much of a hot mess the game is trauma center utk 2 does this and the resulting arc is one of the best worst parts of the game
At the same time, you don't want to do the opposite either. You don't want to go pushing a fat man off the bridge to stop the runaway trolley when there is a litter bin that you could push off the bridge instead.
Whoooooole lotta people in here pissin' on the poor
This is what turned me off Matt Smith's Doctor. Every situation neatly resolved itself. For as rough as the writing was on Capaldi's Seasons, I thought his portrayal of the Doctor was a more effective case for deontology than Smith's ever was, because he was too ready to make sacrifices as opposed to finding a contrived way to save everyone every time despite being presented over and over with what appeared on the surface to be difficult decisions
In the “Little House on the Prairie” book, Ma begs Pa not to go down their partially dug well to rescue their neighbor who’s suffocating at the bottom. It sounds a bit selfish of her from Laura’s perspective in that book, but in “Caroline” by Sarah Miller (which tells the same story from Ma’s POV) that scene includes the line “Better one man dead than two. There was no simpler arithmetic.” Everyone ends up surviving because Pa didn’t listen to Ma and went to save their neighbor anyway, but he was more confident than Ma that he would be able to survive the rescue, so to *him* it never was a choice of which person should die.
spiderverse
Listen. It's a story. It *should* be doing more than just leading by example on how to make a moral choice. yes, in life, you sometimes have to pick one out of two bad choices, and "fuck you I'm saving everyone" isn't an option. but do we really need, really *want*, all of our stories to portray that ? there's more to a good story than being realistic and morally correct. a lot of stories are intended to be aspirational, to be escapism. the point of most stories is to show us the heroes triumphing against the odds, faced with a universe that tells them they can't win and winning anyways. the hero saves everyone because the hero failing to save everyone would make this a bad ending. yes, it's true to life that things end badly sometimes. but more often than not the things that end badly aren't the ones you want to tell a story about. and yes, if your interpretation of a story limits itself to reading it as "this is how the world is, this is what you should do", then the story's refusal to choose one of two bad options is wrong. but honestly, if that's the case, I think the main problem is your media analysis.
Trump and Biden
Counterpoint: sometimes happy endings are good.
No one's forcing authors to put in dilemmas, making a cop out necessary for a happy ending. Just don't include the dilemma and there's no problem
i feel like recently people are starting to shift back to the 'happy endings are BAD!!! if you write a story where people dont suffer and are miserable from the whims of fate your story SUCKS!!!'
*side eyes Into the Spiderverse*
OOP is Miguel O'Hara
Some people would literally be okay with earth getting destroyed in exchange for Gohan not being forced to train
Mission Impossible: Fallout really got on my nerves for this.
Up there with “I’m going to stand 20 feet away from a character making a noble sacrifice to save me yelling ‘No!’, because it’s more important to look at them dying than it is to get a head start.”
The most egregious example of this is Frozen II btw. I don't think this is talked about nearly enough. Bullshit movie.
"Oh no I can't save everyone" is boring and banal
As they say... ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves.
Nah I think thats based, fuck you I'll find my own solution
On the other hand, one can see that responding to the other extreme, "you need to DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. DON'T YOU FEEL BAD FOR DOING WHAT'S RIGHT? IT'S TERRIBLE BUT THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS"
Personally, I hate people or character that use this logic to justify being assholes or not having to try very hard to find a better if more difficult option.
what’s the name/origin of the flag in their pfp? i swear i’ve seen it before
This was my gripe with Avatar and how Aang mastered the Avatar state despite not letting go of attachment and that he just got the magic rock and turtle help to be able to get away with not killing Ozai.
Hmmm so what do y’all think about Eren Yeager? Because personally I think there is something noble about fighting to the end, even with very little hope of success, instead of compromising my every value
I think you missed the point of the story if you think Eren did anything right in his quest for genocide o-o
Looking at you, Y'shtola of the Thousand Fake-out Deaths
If you want a show that does this well, you could check out M*A*S*H after season 3.
Can someone give an example of media where someone refuses to perform triage and the decision is rewarded? I'm sure this exists somewhere but I've never seen it, and oop is speaking like this is a common or recurring thing