In Which the Ethics of the Lifeboat Exercise Is Trash

[lydy]

mrissa has a really lovely essay about lifeboats over at Uncanny, and you should read it.  Beware the Lifeboat - Uncanny Magazinehttps://uncannymagazine.com/article/beware-the-lifeboat/


Seventh grade was when I was first exposed to the lifeboat thought experiment.  Thirteen of us were assigned roles, and told to decide who to toss out, because the lifeboat could only hold twelve.  I do not remember what role I was assigned, but I do remember being completely unable to find a reason not to toss out the disabled twelve year old girl, which is what we eventually did.  I didn't find it all that traumatic, but it nagged at me afterwards.  

I think it must have actually bothered me a great deal more than I recognized at the time, because when I found out that the parameters of the lifeboat problem were a cheat, I felt furious and betrayed.  In real lifeboats, the parameters are not clean and hard.  A boat that is rated for ten can usually carry more, maybe many more, depending on the people.  The water is only a limiting factor if it doesn't rain, and there's no knowing if it will.  Food, too, is not a limiting factor in the way it was represented to me.  Over and above rationing, the waste from a lifeboat draws fish and birds, and lots of cast aways have used this to supplement the food on the boat.  Finally, rescue is neither certain nor predictable.  You do not know if there will ever be a rescue, nor do you know when it will be.  It could be in an hour, or a day, or never.  Everything about the problem was a cheat.  In looking at that, and the trolley problem, and the other thought experiments in this genre, my conclusion is that, whatever the intent, the effect of having people engage with the problem is not an exercise in getting them to examine their underlying ethical structures, but rather a way to force people to act unethically.  I think it desensitizes and damages our understanding of ourselves and our world, rather than exposing or exploring anything.

I do not know if this would be more informative or ethical, but I'd like to see some psychology department try this.  Set up the scenario the same way it was presented to me in seventh grade.  Give people roles, tell them to decide who to sacrifice.  Have them play it out.  When the finally decide who goes over the side, have the proctor describe the death in some reasonable amount of detail.  The goal here is not to traumatize, but to give everyone a chance to have second thoughts.  See if anyone jumps in to save the drowning person, and how the rest react.  Then have the proctor say, "As you stare at the surface of the ocean, at the space where the drowning person last rose, you hear a voice from a megaphone telling you to remain still, the ship will be there to rescue you.  After you are taken on board, cleaned and cared for, and asked how you are, and what you did while you waited for rescue."  Then, have the proctor ask each participant to re-visit their choice of sacrificing one of their own.  Ask them why they did it, if they would change their mind.  Guide them to seeing all the questions and possibilities they didn't consider when they decided on the sacrifice.  

Would this be a better framework for getting people to examine their underlying ethical structures, or is this just me still being angry 40 years later?  I am not sure.  But it would certainly be more interesting than what they put me through when I was 13, I tell you what.

Comments

[lydy]

I have only been subjected to a very few "team building" exercises. They were uniformly horrific. They confirmed my opinion that the people I worked with were horrible human beings with whom I wished to have as little to do as possible, and that my management was deeply incompetent.

The one I remember best was where we were told a parable. A baroness, while the baron was away, invited a strapping young man to do her dirty. Her husband, hearing of her infidelity, rode directly home to kill the strapping young man. The young man, in fear for his life, and unarmed because peasant, fled, but was stopped by the river which he could not cross. He begged the ferry man to take him across the river, but the ferryman refused, because the strapping young man could not pay the fare. This enabled the baron to catch up to said strapping young man, and kill him. Our task, as a team, was to decide who was guilty for the poor boy's murder: the baron, the baroness, or the ferryman.

One of my team mates was a very serious fundamentalist Christian, who blamed the murder entirely upon the baroness. I blamed the baron entirely. Other people had other opinions, don't remember what they were. But there was no compromise, nor could there be. And, honestly, how is this an appropriate topic to be talking about at work? Dear gods, what a nightmare that was. Our facilitator was tearing out her hair, trying to get Heidi and myself to see each other's points of view. I told the facilitator that I could see Heidi's point of view, and that it was wrong, evil and immoral and I wanted to have nothing to do with it. Heidi said much the same about me. We weren't on speaking terms for the rest of the time I was with the company, actually.

[quadong]

Jesus.

In retrospect, would "I refuse to answer the question on the grounds that it will unbuild this team" have flown?

[lydy]

I was much younger, more confrontational and more rules-bound, antithetical though those two are. These days, I think I would just keep my head down, and just get through the damn thing saying as little as possible. What I should have done is what most of the "team" did, which was to kind agree with anyone with a strong opinion without volunteering one of their own.

[calimac]

Good lord. Yes, this is a way to bring out fundamental moral divergences, not to develop respect for varying points of view.

Had I been there, I hope I would have had the nerve to point out that the baron placed the blame for his wife's infidelity upon the young man and not upon the baroness. Not that he should have murdered either of them, of course, but there's more than one question of blame in this parable.

[lydy]

I gotta say, one of the things that really drives me spare about the way the story just ignores the class issues, and how no one in my "team" wanted to talk about them. I mean, seriously, what would have happened to Matty Groves if he'd refused Lord Donald's wife? Do you think it would have ended well for him? And exactly why was Lord Donald's wife casting her eye about? What was her home life like and what opportunities diid she have to change it? If a kiss from dead Matty's lips was better than Lord Donald in all his finery, I'm thinking her home life wasn't all that great.

Honestly, the question of blame is just...the guy committed a goddamn murder. I'm happy to stop there. You don't get to kill people. Full stop. As for any of the other mitigating circumstances, we are not given any information, so how can we possibly assess blame?

[hrj]

I tend to suspect that some of my co-workers have come to unfortunate conclusions about *me* during team building exercises. But I'm very upfront about my issues. "This exercise is designed to have a specific 'win condition'. I've played this one before. If you put me in charge, we have our best chance of working together as a team to win. If you're more interested in the discussion process, go ahead, but I'm not likely to be very invested."

I've also annoyed the facilitators on occasion by responding to the question of "what have we learned from this exercise" with answers like, "Don't bother to take ownership of your process because the bosses will just change the rules of the game on the next go-round and all the process improvements you implemented will become obsolete." or "The process is designed to undermine your self-confidence and demonstrate that success is impossible. The lesson is not to get too invested in success."

[lydy]

Heh. I would love you to pieces in those scenarios. Back when such things happened to me on the regular, I was both too cowardly to tackle things head on, and a little too slow on the uptake to catch the gotchas until I'd been got. I would so have appreciated somebody just telling the truth.