@Tom McCabe:
I would have answered “yes”; eg., I would have set off a bomb in Hitler’s car in 1942, even if Hitler was surrounded by babies. This doesn’t seem to be a case of corruption by unethical hardware; the benefit to me from setting off such a bomb is quite negative, as it greatly increases my chance of being tortured to death by the SS.
It’s easy to talk now about it, harder if you actually lived in Germany at that time and had to really fear the SS. Are you american? If yes did you consider the fact that the actual political situation in the states has a lot of similarities with Nazi-Germany?
As for killing Hitler you have a few hidden assumptions in there like:
-killing him would actually stop the war and/or the killing of the jews.
For me it seems you have fallen for the simplification that Hitler is the personification of evil and so you failed to understand the complexity of the political situation at that time.
There probably was a time when killing Hitler had a significant chance of ending the war by enabling peace talks (allowing some high-ranking German generals/politicians to seize power while plausibly denying having wanted this outcome). The window might have been short, and probably a bit after ’42, though. I’d guess any time between the Battle of Stalingrad (where Germany stopped winning) and the Battle of Kursk (which made Soviet victory inevitable) should’ve worked—everyone involved should rationally prefer white peace to the very real possibility of a bloody stalemate. Before, Germany would not accept. Afterwards, the Soviets wouldn’t.
It’s also worth noting that “I would set off a bomb if it would avert or shorten the Holocaust even if it would kill a bunch of babies” would still answer the question…
…or maybe it wouldn’t, because the whole point of the question is that you might be wrong that it would end the war. See for comparison “I would set off a bomb and kill a bunch of innocent Americans if it would end American imperialism”, which has a surprising tendency to not end American imperialism and in fact make it worse.
Overall I think if everyone followed a heuristic of “never kill babies”, the world would be better on average. However you could get a problem if only the carefully moral people follow that rule and the less-careful don’t and end up winning. For a consequentialist, a good rule would be “any ethical injunction which causes itself to be defeated cannot be used”.
At the very least, the heuristic of “don’t violate Geneva Convention-like agreements restricting war to make it less horrible which the other side has stuck to” seems reasonable, although it’s less clear for cases like where a few enemy soldiers individually violate it, or where being the first to violate it gives a major advantage and you’re worried the other side might do so.
It’s easy to talk now about it, harder if you actually lived in Germany at that time and had to really fear the SS.
Indeed. I remember an IT project manager telling me the German people should have stood up to Hitler and stopped him. I pointed out that she was not even prepared to tell her manager the truth about the state of her project (running later than advertised of course).
All she had at stake was the size of her end of year bonus.
I remember reading about a man who voted against Hitler in the referendum to make him dictator. He was severely beaten, his house was burned down, and he wife and daughter were gang-raped.
The penalty for telling the truth about the state of your project is less than the penalty for defying Hitler, but the good done by telling the truth about the state of your project is also less than the good done by defying Hitler.
The penalty for telling the truth about the state of your project is less than the penalty for defying Hitler, but the good done by telling the truth about the state of your project is also less than the good done by defying Hitler.
For most people the good done by defying Hitler isn’t that great. One individual more or less doesn’t make a huge difference.
That is true. Whether higher stakes* would give her more courage, I doubt, but it is possible.
( * It was not entirely clear until it was too late, if you look at the people who had nice things to say about Hitler early on. The number of people int he resistance during the war (as opposed to after the war, in retrospect) was not very high. I am not suggesting I would have been one of those who took arms against him).
Anthony Beevor’s book Dresden has a good description of what happened to people who opposed Hitler.
@Tom McCabe: I would have answered “yes”; eg., I would have set off a bomb in Hitler’s car in 1942, even if Hitler was surrounded by babies. This doesn’t seem to be a case of corruption by unethical hardware; the benefit to me from setting off such a bomb is quite negative, as it greatly increases my chance of being tortured to death by the SS.
It’s easy to talk now about it, harder if you actually lived in Germany at that time and had to really fear the SS. Are you american? If yes did you consider the fact that the actual political situation in the states has a lot of similarities with Nazi-Germany?
As for killing Hitler you have a few hidden assumptions in there like: -killing him would actually stop the war and/or the killing of the jews.
For me it seems you have fallen for the simplification that Hitler is the personification of evil and so you failed to understand the complexity of the political situation at that time.
There probably was a time when killing Hitler had a significant chance of ending the war by enabling peace talks (allowing some high-ranking German generals/politicians to seize power while plausibly denying having wanted this outcome). The window might have been short, and probably a bit after ’42, though. I’d guess any time between the Battle of Stalingrad (where Germany stopped winning) and the Battle of Kursk (which made Soviet victory inevitable) should’ve worked—everyone involved should rationally prefer white peace to the very real possibility of a bloody stalemate. Before, Germany would not accept. Afterwards, the Soviets wouldn’t.
It’s also worth noting that “I would set off a bomb if it would avert or shorten the Holocaust even if it would kill a bunch of babies” would still answer the question… …or maybe it wouldn’t, because the whole point of the question is that you might be wrong that it would end the war. See for comparison “I would set off a bomb and kill a bunch of innocent Americans if it would end American imperialism”, which has a surprising tendency to not end American imperialism and in fact make it worse.
Overall I think if everyone followed a heuristic of “never kill babies”, the world would be better on average. However you could get a problem if only the carefully moral people follow that rule and the less-careful don’t and end up winning. For a consequentialist, a good rule would be “any ethical injunction which causes itself to be defeated cannot be used”. At the very least, the heuristic of “don’t violate Geneva Convention-like agreements restricting war to make it less horrible which the other side has stuck to” seems reasonable, although it’s less clear for cases like where a few enemy soldiers individually violate it, or where being the first to violate it gives a major advantage and you’re worried the other side might do so.
Indeed. I remember an IT project manager telling me the German people should have stood up to Hitler and stopped him. I pointed out that she was not even prepared to tell her manager the truth about the state of her project (running later than advertised of course).
All she had at stake was the size of her end of year bonus.
I remember reading about a man who voted against Hitler in the referendum to make him dictator. He was severely beaten, his house was burned down, and he wife and daughter were gang-raped.
The penalty for telling the truth about the state of your project is less than the penalty for defying Hitler, but the good done by telling the truth about the state of your project is also less than the good done by defying Hitler.
For most people the good done by defying Hitler isn’t that great. One individual more or less doesn’t make a huge difference.
That is true. Whether higher stakes* would give her more courage, I doubt, but it is possible.
( * It was not entirely clear until it was too late, if you look at the people who had nice things to say about Hitler early on. The number of people int he resistance during the war (as opposed to after the war, in retrospect) was not very high. I am not suggesting I would have been one of those who took arms against him).
Anthony Beevor’s book Dresden has a good description of what happened to people who opposed Hitler.