Comment Re:The problem is "beneficial" (Score 2) 197
I absolutely hate ethical thought problems. They're always presented with a limited number of actions, with no provision for doing anything different or in addition or anything like that. Give me an actual situation, and let me ask questions about it that aren't answered with "no, you can't do that".
They're done that way to distill a matter down to the essence. The same issues apply to complicated situations, but they are far more convoluted.
Is it OK to force people to pay taxes so that others can have free health insurance? If they refuse to pay their taxes is it OK to imprison them, again so that others can have free health insurance? Is it ethical to pay $200k to extend the life of somebody on their deathbed by a week when that same sum could allow a homeless person to live in a half-decent home for a decade? Does it make a difference if the person who will live a week longer is happy and healthy for that week? Is the lottery ethical?
Every one of these issues is controversial, and ethical thought problems try to distill them down to elementary values problems, in the hope of shedding light on how to handle real-world ones where there are many more possible outcomes.