Would You Kill Baby Hitler? (And Other Psychopathic Musings, with Kevin Dutton)
Psychologist and psychopath expert Kevin Dutton sets up thorny moral dilemmas and speculates on the psychopathic, utilitarian tendencies of politicians.
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When we talk about the trolley problem, actually research has been done on the kinds of people who are willing to shove the fat guy over the rails. And what that research has uncovered is that these people tend to be utilitarian's in our society, okay. They tend to be people who are able to get the job done, who are less morally squeamish. Now I've actually presented a variation of this dilemma to various psychopaths. I'll give an example of what the variation of the dilemma is. Imagine that you are a transplant surgeon. And you have five patients all in need of a transplant, heart, lungs, whatever. Okay? And they're all gonna die if they don't get that transplant, but there are no matching donors available. Just by chance, a young traveler happens to walk past your surgery one...
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When we talk about the trolley problem, actually research has been done on the kinds of people who are willing to shove the fat guy over the rails. And what that research has uncovered is that these people tend to be utilitarian's in our society, okay. They tend to be people who are able to get the job done, who are less morally squeamish. Now I've actually presented a variation of this dilemma to various psychopaths. I'll give an example of what the variation of the dilemma is. Imagine that you are a transplant surgeon. And you have five patients all in need of a transplant, heart, lungs, whatever. Okay? And they're all gonna die if they don't get that transplant, but there are no matching donors available. Just by chance, a young traveler happens to walk past your surgery one...
