2013-03-28
Original: 2013-03-28 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (top, partially cut off):
Woman with dark wavy hair: ...computer. You're inside an out-of-control train. It's hurtling toward five people. You can do something so you can cause it to just one person. What's the right thing to do?
Panel 2:
Woman: I would remove the part of my brain that governs empathy, which is the source of ethics.
Panel 3:
Woman: The remainder of me is an inhuman computing machine, and therefore its behavior has no moral aspect. Any more than a computer determining a sum has a moral aspect.
Panel 4:
Woman: The inhuman computing machine makes a choice, which causes some number of deaths.
Panel 5:
Woman: If a person had made the choice, either option would have been immoral. Since the computing machine chose, it was merely amoral. Since the latter is preferable, I made the most ethical choice.
Panel 6:
Other person (off-panel / questioner): Wasn't it unethical when you removed the empathy part of your brain?
Woman: No, because it didn't alter the final outcome's level of morality.
Panel 7:
Questioner: Neuroethics is kind of disturbing, isn't it?
Woman: I wouldn't know! I removed the neuroethical part of my brain!
Votey:
A man: If there's a bad neuroethics joke, I haven't heard it!
Woman with dark wavy hair: ...computer. You're inside an out-of-control train. It's hurtling toward five people. You can do something so you can cause it to just one person. What's the right thing to do?
Panel 2:
Woman: I would remove the part of my brain that governs empathy, which is the source of ethics.
Panel 3:
Woman: The remainder of me is an inhuman computing machine, and therefore its behavior has no moral aspect. Any more than a computer determining a sum has a moral aspect.
Panel 4:
Woman: The inhuman computing machine makes a choice, which causes some number of deaths.
Panel 5:
Woman: If a person had made the choice, either option would have been immoral. Since the computing machine chose, it was merely amoral. Since the latter is preferable, I made the most ethical choice.
Panel 6:
Other person (off-panel / questioner): Wasn't it unethical when you removed the empathy part of your brain?
Woman: No, because it didn't alter the final outcome's level of morality.
Panel 7:
Questioner: Neuroethics is kind of disturbing, isn't it?
Woman: I wouldn't know! I removed the neuroethical part of my brain!
Votey:
A man: If there's a bad neuroethics joke, I haven't heard it!
Alt text
A tall multi-panel comic. Throughout, a woman with dark, flame-like wavy hair calmly explains her reasoning. In the first (partially cut-off) panel she is presented with a trolley-problem scenario: a runaway train headed toward five people, with the option to divert it toward one, and asked what the right thing to do is. She replies that she would remove the part of her brain that governs empathy, which she calls the source of ethics. She argues that the remainder of her is then an inhuman computing machine whose behavior has no moral aspect, like a computer adding a sum. That machine makes a choice causing some number of deaths. She reasons that if a person had chosen, either option would have been immoral, but because the computing machine chose, it was merely amoral, and since amoral is preferable to immoral, she made the most ethical choice. A questioner asks whether removing the empathy part of her brain was itself unethical; she says no, because it didn't alter the final outcome's level of morality. The questioner remarks that neuroethics is kind of disturbing, and she replies that she wouldn't know, because she removed the neuroethical part of her brain. In the bonus votey panel, a simply drawn man grins and declares, "If there's a bad neuroethics joke, I haven't heard it!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.