![]() The biggest part of your brain creates thousands of “duties and rules” for all types of potential actions, but (as in the Daniel Kahneman model) relatively slowly: “Let’s get this boat organized!”.I have simplified these “Big Four ethical brain models” (there are likely more) like this: The best way to understand why Lifeboat Ethics is a horrible model for thinking, let alone public policy, is to recognize that there is not just “one correct ethical decision,” rather our brains are simultaneously processing at least four different “decision projections” of future outcomes for the choices that we call “moral” or “ethical.” And these four “probability models” are always competing biologically to see which one wins over control of your actions. I am not a great fan of cruises anyway, but even my most rational self will not go on a cruise vacation where the illness of one passenger means that I may be sailing on the “Hotel California.” In other words, failure to get these passengers out of such a confined space is possibly a death sentence for a much larger “dice roll” of passengers.įrom the perspective of economics, this policy of quarantining entire cruise ships could be the death knell of the cruise industry if the economy crashes. Scientifically, one study suggests that the “basic reproduction number,” which is the average number of new “community spread” infections for each reported case of this virus, climbs from an estimated range of 1.7 to 7 in normal populations all the way up to 11 on a confined ship (shades of Spinal Tap! ). cases of COVID-19 low ( “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” he said).įailing to get the passengers off these ships and instead “isolated but unconfined” is bad ethics, bad economics, and bad policy. President Trump candidly admitted that his primary goal in keeping the Grand Princess from docking was to keep the reported number of U.S. How is your stress level doing?Ĭruise ships are notorious (though likely overstated) “Petri dishes” for infectious diseases in the best of times, such as the less serious but nasty norovirus. The rest of your life now depends on the moral maturity of Donald Trump and his “advisers,” and they have just raised their middle finger at you from on shore. Put yourself on that boat for a moment if you can. This containment strategy copies the Japanese government’s earlier action of keeping the smaller cruise ship Diamond Princess at sea for days off Yokohama Harbor. Of 46 people on the ship who were tested by March 7, 21 tested positive for the virus. When a passenger from a prior voyage on this ship died from the COVID-19 virus, the ship was denied entry into the United States. Classroom success!Īs of March 7, over 3500 passengers and crew were confined to the cruise ship Grand Princess off San Francisco. Students often get emotional over this discussion if you can gin up the fear, and tempers will likely flare. Inevitably, the discussion devolves into questions of which fellow passengers get heaved over the side first, or even whether we need to eat one of them in order to stay alive. If you can hang on for another week, rescue might be possible, but there are not enough resources available to keep you all alive for another week. Imagine you are on a lifeboat with twenty other people and the rescuers are not coming. The “lifeboat” class discussion typically goes something like this: The “thought experiment” of “Lifeboat Ethics” is usually credited to a 1974 Psychology Today article by Garrett Hardin entitled “Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor.” As you might surmise from the title, Hardin was a lifelong anti-immigration advocate and an alleged white supremacist. They both ask the wrong questions, and they lead the Stephen Millers of the world to invoke horrendous “Lord of the Flies” government policies like caging refugee children and confining 3500 people on a “virus percolator” cruise ship.įor more about the “Trolley Problem” in ethics, see my later note. In my years of teaching ethics, I never used either because I dislike them both. Before there was the “Trolley Problem,” ethics classes would commonly haul out “Lifeboat Ethics” scenarios to stimulate class discussion. ![]()
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