To be clear, I’m not suggesting we do what I’m about to propose, I just think it’s an interesting ethical/moral thought experiment.
If we could find a lot of people who want to unalive themselves, and say to them: there’s been a disaster and there are a lot of people who are stuck (e.g. a mine collapse, or 9/11 or something like that) and it’s a dangerous situation for rescue workers to go into, since you don’t care if you die we’re gonna send you in… would it be an ethical or moral thing to do? To ask or make people who don’t care if they live or not, to go into a situation that there’s a known high risk that they won’t survive?
(Also, I not asking wether it is a good idea to send such people in or wether it would be effective — I’m only interested in the ethics/morality of such an idea)
Maybe I’m missing your point but I don’t think you quite understand mine: the replies that are saying it would be ineffective are also saying it’s unethical.
Whereas I focused on it being unethical because it’s cruel to the suicidal person, it is also an unethical practice because it means knowingly using people who are less effective at these tasks, which harms the people depending on the successful completion of the dangerous work.
Not at all. Hey, if you can link effectiveness to the ethics, fantastic. All I was saying was I was more focused on the ethics rather than the effectiveness, which I do think is a debate on its own. However, if you can make the case to justify the ethics in relation to the effectiveness, I’ll definitely read it.
That’s my entire case though: It is unethical to choose methods of rescue or other emergency responses that are less effective than the other available methods.
I know. It’s a fair point and I do agree: if you knew it would be less effective than something else, it would be unethical because you’re not doing the best you can, which would put more lives at danger when you could have a higher chance to save more