/life/sabbatical/Update and Morals
A friend sent me a link to a New York Times article called The Moral Instinct (free reg req'd.) Fairly interesting, though it contains one of my pet peeves:
On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says "yes."
Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so, by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don't see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can't come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven't had an easy time coming up with a relevant difference, either.
I hate these so-called utilitarian questions. I wouldn't throw the fat man, and I'll tell you why: it might not work. In fact, my aim with a fat man throwing off a bridge is less than 20% likely to work. Plus he might resist, and I might get hurt, or he might just slow me down until it's too late. Plus he might be about to discover the cure for cancer, or otherwise save lives (though that's true of the single man on the spur as well). There are so many practical distinctions between these so-called "moral equivalents", I don't understand how they're an accepted technique for experimentation. Even in the first one: is that really the only way you can intervene? Really? Are you sure none of the men know it's coming? I'm not sure I'd throw the switch even in that case, though I'd certainly try to do something. In fact, wouldn't the men hear the trolley coming and jump out of their way on their own?
My philosophy textbook had one about (as I recall -- it was old writing) someone saying they were going to kill 20 Indians unless you shot one of them yourself, then the other 19 could go free. Again: how do I know he's telling the truth? It certainly sounds implausible. If it's true for 20, it's true for 2, and if that happens, I'm doing half the "immoral work" for this mysteriously murderous man. I have no reason to believe him.
These are cases of over-analysis of an intuitive decision, without properly trying to understand the intuition.
In other news:
- Mouse: still there. Still only one, I think. We thought he was gone, but I've seen him recently. He either doesn't go into the trap, or can get back out again (I think the former, but I'm not sure.) I really don't want to get a sticky trap, but I might have to get the snappy kind. I sat one night trying to wait for him to come out, but that didn't work either.
- Pembina work: Good. Working on something substantial, doing some web work and some research and some good discussions.
- Ants (did I mention we had some ants?): seemingly gone.
- Clare's mum's visit: victorious.
- Trip to Montreal: great. better than I expected. weeeird modern dance thing. nice churches. fairly good food. looks like Europe.
New Albums from the Gallery
/life/Man vs. Nature
This morning at about 3am, I went to the kitchen to grab a snack, and saw a little furry quadruped skitter across the counter and down behind the couch. "Something must be done!" I thought to myself, and then went to bed.
Today, I've put together a humane mouse trap from instructions
I found on the internet. Mine is a little simpler -- instead of the wooden board for stability and weight, I just
wedged it into a corner. I used twist-ties instead of heavy-gauge wire, a Chris
Tindal pin and a Bic pen instead of a drill, and a knife on my bike tool
(which I once accidentally brought through airport security — oops!) instead of an exacto blade, and
oil-on-a-paper-towel to slick things up. I'm a little skeptical that the original hole is big enough for a mouse, but
I'm sure I'm wrong.
Speaking of "vs", I wrote a little webapp using Google App Engine that mimics a game we used to play on the whiteboard, and it's called "versus". At the risk of nerding out, I can't really explain how excited I am about GAE — it's definitely the coolest thing Google's done since Google Maps, and possibly even cooler. The time to develop a reasonably sophisticated app, and be able to nearly "deploy and forget", not having to worry about rotting servers, overloaded MySQL databases, etc, is incredibly powerful. It probably divided by 3 or 4 the time to get that app running, and over the next year it will probably divide the time to keep it running by 10 or 100. (Note that "versus" is mostly a proof-of-concept and learning tool, and not actually that exciting of an app.)
Don't worry, dear reader, I'll be sure to let you know the result of the epic struggle of man against nature.
/life/sabbatical/Visits, Kayaking, and a quarter of leave
I updated my Objectives for Leave with scores, comments, and the goals for next three months, most of which are carry-overs. Comments welcome. Especially on how to have more self-discipline. :-)
I tried to go kayaking with my friend Jeff. We got all packed up and ready to go, then drove up to Port Severn, unloaded, and got going. Three hours and about three kilometers later, our hands were cold (no gloves, but socks were making it livable) and the waves were picking up. We pulled into a little unsheltered nook to decide whether to continue. I pulled up alongside some rocks (shown at 0:16 in the movie) in a feet of stupidity, and then started getting pushed up onto them by the waves. It was all pretty scary, and I seemed to be getting pushed up higher with every wave. Eventually, I managed to figure out how to ride the waves down the rocks, instead of up, got myself off, paddled frantically to a more sane docking place. By the time I got there, Jeff was up and out of his kayak and on his way around to where I nearly tipped. It was pretty exciting and scary — tipping's never fun, and rocks and frigid water make it less so — but it all worked out in the end.
New photos are up from when I visited Halifax, and some random ones from around Toronto. I "lost" my camera (in the recycling pile, as it turned out) for while my whole famiy was gathered in Orillia, so no photos from that.
