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What proportion of medical students said it is "appropriate" to "sacrifice" a fatally-injured CHILD and EAT HIS REMAINS in order to allow you and another adult to live?
Up to 60%?!
The rate of these so-called "utilitarian" responses was half (or less) among people who spent 20-30 minutes in #stress-inducing conditions (compared to browsing a biology textbook): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.07.017
Similar to anecdotal responses to Peter Singer's generelization of the drowning child thought experiment, I bet these med. students saw the appropriateness as exceptional rather than generalizable.
That is, I'd expect fewer people to say "yes" to the following: “would it be appropriate to sacrifice and eat a nearly dead child *every time* doing so would save a greater number of people with many years of life left?”
Have people already tested my expectation?
@ByrdNick I also wonder how much professionalization courtesy of med school had set in by then with the participants.
Indeed, @gpage. I’d expect (and hope?) emergency workers and medical professionals are trained (and perhaps selected) for mitigating overall harm, directing resources to where they can do the most good, etc., even when it means making difficult decisions that many other people might find too repellant.