You are the captain of Mallory 7, an interstellar cargo transport. On the way to the New Lindley Spaceport, you receive a distress call.
There is an explosion on Telic 12 and its passengers are running out of oxygen.
When you set a course to intervene, you check the Telic 12 manifest.
It is currently transporting 30 middle-aged people from one of the poorest districts on Earth to a labor center in New Lindley, where they will be assigned jobs at the spaceport.
But as soon as you reach Telic 12, you receive another distress call. A luxury space cruiser named Prieto has lost a thruster, leaving them looking toward the asteroid belt.
Without your help, 20 college students who went on vacation on Pareto are all doomed. So with only enough time to save one ship, which should you choose?
This dilemma is an example of a broader class of problems where a life-saving resource — such as a donated organ or vaccine — is in short supply.
There are many schools of thought on how to deal with these problems
and one of the most influential is utilitarianism, an ethical theory first systematically developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
With that in mind, you should choose the process that promises the greatest amount of happiness. However, how to define and measure happiness is a difficult question.
For example, hedonists would suggest that a happy life involves the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of suffering. Others may say that this is the life where your desires are most fulfilled.
Although happiness is defined, most people would agree that saving 30 lives has the potential to generate more happiness than saving 20.
But is it enough to consider how many lives will be saved?
Or you also think how many years of life will be?
Assuming a life expectancy of 80,
saving the lives of students with an average age of 20 years saves 1,200 life years, while workers with an average age of 45 years saves 1,050.
All things being equal, a long life should promise more happiness than a short life. So maybe saving the little ship actually has the potential to produce the most joy.
If all these calculations feel a little cold, you might want to consider a different approach. Philosopher Derek Parfitt argues that we should prioritize the worse off, because the benefits of these groups are more important than the equivalent benefits of prosperity.
In this view, it is more important to help those whose basic needs are not met, even if it is harder to help them, than those who are thriving.
But often, determining which group is truly worse can become increasingly complex. In our case, the land still suffers from severe inequalities in wealth and opportunity.
And those who can afford to vacation on New Lindley and travel on a luxury cruiser are without a doubt some of the most affluent people on the planet.
In contrast, workers are among the most marginalized,
traveling months away from home to perform service work.
With fewer resources and opportunities, it's likely that they've faced more hardship in their lives than vacationers, so perhaps they're more deserving of rescue?
On the other hand, students have experienced less life overall—so maybe they're worse off?
Or maybe none of these variables influence our decision. Philosopher John Turck famously argued that in these kinds of cases, numbers don't count.
Everyone deserves equal concern and respect,
so the best way to decide which passengers to save is to flip a coin.
Although this may seem arbitrary at first, this method treats all parties equally, giving each person an equal chance to be saved.
Can a passenger argue that they are being treated unfairly by flipping the coin? It's hard to say. But how they — and you — feel about the outcome can be another dilemma.
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