Week 3 Readings

Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill

You know, my first thought when they got to the ethical dilllema was that honestly, if I were involved in a car accident and I killed 10 people, I'd have a pretty hard time living with that, unless the situation was extreme like I'd had a heart attack or seizure or something while driving. I honest to God think it'd just rather be me. And if it were an accident caused by something like texting and driving or if I were drunk or under an influence or some such and I'd be facing an enormous legal ramification on top of that...seriously I'd rather it be me than the 10 people. I'd have a real hard time living with that.

Another spin though — F it, I’ll self-disclose: I live with treatment-resistant Major Depressive Disorder, which means that traditional antidepressants offer no relief, and I really don’t live a “normal" life. It started to affect my ability to work and live with something relative to normalcy about 8 years ago.

There’s something that’s not FDA approved yet that *might* help, but I haven’t been able to get into a trial. One of the few doctors in the US that does it anyway is in Mid-Cities, it’s about $15k at starting price that insurance won’t help with, and the risk is that it simply won’t work. So for now I medicate and do a bunch of other stuff to help it but have a strange mix of chemicals in my body that of course cause a strage mix of side effects I could live without. (I'll probably wind up spending the $15k though because I mean, I've spent more on a car in my past so I figure my mental health is worth at least trying.)

Now, wiithin the mental health community is a divide amongst people who suffer who believe that those with a debilitating mental illness should be able to qualify for physician-assisted suicide. 

The side against it argues that if you’re mentally ill that you aren’t mentally fit to make such a decision. These people are themselves ill, but have been able to medicate to a more successful degree in general.

On the pro side — which has had arguably more problems finding relief in their overall treatment — is trouble with the thought that their lives are simply an existence, and are just sort of waiting out a clock. They don’t feel a normal range of human emotions, they’re aware that they exist and may have at one point felt them, but as the body ages so does the brain, and the brain is not an infallible organ. Your symptoms can worsen with age. They could be looking at 40-50 more years of existing in this state.

That’s sort of my situation, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the self-driving car that kills the driver sorta gives me an “out” potentially. I don’t have suicidal ideation but that’s primarily logistical — I’m not interested in doing it myself, mostly because I’m fairly certain I’d do it WRONG and wind up with even more problems that way. LOL. And also because there MAY be something in the horizon with my specific illness that *could* be FDA approved and mainstream in the next 10 years or so. For me there is still some sort of semblance of hope, others aren’t quite as lucky.

So I don’t know…this kind of feels like something that could potentially be used by a community of people as that “out” of sorts, and an altruistic one that they may even feel good about. 

Even if they didn’t turn into rolling suicide machines for the mentally ill, it might give someone — even regular John Doe — comfort in knowing that maybe their life expectancy would be shortened 20 or 30 of those 50 years ahead, and save other people in the process. It might not even be someone with an illness of any sort, it might just be someone who, like, hates their life or whatever it is that makes healthy people want to die.

I’m trying to figure out if I’m viewing it through that lens here with all that considered, and if I were healthy if I’d have the same viewpoint. I think I probably would, but that’s almost impossible to tell. I can usually see both sides of a coin to an issue but this might be one too near and dear to me to know if I’d feel the same way if my life’s circumstances weren’t different.

(Please now, nobody call the cops or anything LOL. I’m nowhere near desiring to harm myself.)

Buzzfeed: 9 Moral Dilemmas that will Break your Brain

Interestingly, I got through about half of these thinking that I wanted to answer with a third answer that included the logistics of insurance that banks hold, what I know from watching Law & Order about the law and accidentally killing a pedestrian in that crash, what I know about currents and being a lifeguard, and what I know about the Hippocratic Oath from House. But by the end I went ahead and suspended that logic and went back and chose answers based on the dilemma as presented.

The ones that I felt I still needed a third choice for were the ones about the cheating spouse and the cheating groom. You know, I don't think there's any way to win that dilemma that doesn't involve simply keeping it to yourself. Aside from shooting the messenger, as our social mores change, I've learned that there's a bizarre number of relationships in which the cheating either might not be a deal-breaker, OR in which the other party knows about the cheating but either

1) has some other reasons for wanting to get married anyway, which might just include the act of getting married (I'm single and 35, I'll probably be dying alone with several cats so I don't understand this one, but it seems to exist.)

or

2) The couple, in the case of the married one and whether or not I'd risk my job, might even have an agreement and awareness such is happening. Nevermind being dumb enough to use company email for such things, the "unsuspecting" spouse may indeed suspect, but have other reasons that they value more to help keep the marriage intact, and those frankly are none of my business or up for my own personal moral judgement. Let's say the other spouse knows about the cheating but it's more important morally for them to say, keep a family with small children in tact until their adults, then my telling them would not only put my job at risk, but it would likely embarrass them, put our friendship at risk, and put their plans at risk. That's too much risk for me.

I knew a girl who married her high school sweetheart, and the entire neighborhood knew he was constantly cheating on her. He acted single and even rented a bachelor pad with a roommate, in order to have a place to take women. The couple had a child she had just after graduation.

I wondered for years why she chose to stay, because she is extremely intelligent and is actually now a doctor, working in internal medicine at a very reputible hospital in another city. I've never bothered to ask her, because besides it not being my business, she obviously knew so I figure they must have had a reason to be married as long as they were. It could have been a million reasons. Perhaps he feared custody ramifications, and his parents were very attached to the child. Perhaps he payed the bills while she was in school. Perhaps they were just waiting it out until the child was old enough to understand what divorce meant. I'll never know, but I do know that these situations happen and whether or not they line up with what I think would be ethically sound doesn't, well, in my opinion apply in an ethical sense to what lines up with what THEY believe is ethically sound.

Was surprised there were no questions about vaccincations, and my first thought about the car accident was that they wouldn't be in this dilemma if they'd simply had self-driving cars. Haha.