Don't know.
I might ask my mother if handing the ticket to the 20 year old would be OK, perhaps just because she's lived a lifetime, which the 20 year old hasn't.
So, I'd lean towards the younger person, which I then voted.
Or, I might panic and toss a die. :)
A variation of the trolley problem.

Defend your choice with your preferred ethical system. — Paul

The correct solution would be for me to give both my tickets to two children. If they wouldn't let me do that, I would refuse to go and tell them to give the tickets to someone else. That's what I say I would do and it would be the right thing to do, but we won't ever know what I'd really do.

Yes, I know I'm not playing by the rules you laid out. Like most such thought experiments made up by philosophers, this one is over-simplistic, unrealistic, and misleading. The correct answer is "none of the above."

And welcome to the forum.

My choice would be completely selfish.
My ethics would only kick in if the difference was really big, i.e save 1 million people or someone you love deeply.

I would save mom. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. I would think the other person would understand. I certainly would, if the roles were reversed. I think we could will this to be a universal maxim too, without too much trouble: in life or death situations, it's OK to save your family over strangers.

And welcome to the forum. — T Clark

This is Paul who ran old PF. He's been around (if you consider both forums) longer than any of us. Good to see you active again, @Paul.

I see this as a Sartrean-type dilemma where the ethical thing to do is to simply choose and take responsibility for our choice rather than try to justify it by any particular theory that would abstract us away from such responsibility and in any case could provide nothing more than arbitrary grounds for judgement when considered meta-ethically. Given that, if I couldn't talk to mum and ask her opinion I'd choose her, I suppose for selfish reasons to do with attachment. Just as, if a relative was dying of cancer and I had money to save them by paying their medical bills vs save ten strangers by giving it to charity, I'd save the relative. This highlights how we all choose selfishly every day based on proximity rather than ethics. As Peter Singer has pointed out, every time we spend money on luxuries rather than give to a charity where we can be reasonably sure it will save lives we are doing the theoretical equivalent of walking past.a drowning child because we don't want to jump in to save them and ruin our new expensive clothes. We see a huge difference because the child is not in front of us but in the abstract world of ethics there are few theories that would consider that difference valid. We are inescapably evil and selfish, unfortunately, and moralising serves more to obscure our real state from ourselves than to indicate any particular virtue.

Coming from a country where the authorities have planned and also constructed shelters for nuclear attacks in cities, the first question here is just how many people are left without a shelter?

Then I noted that in the question there was the fact that I was "important to the town" and so I had gotten a ticket. That role is actually very important. I do have some role after the disaster, hence I should think of that also.

Now as the positions are picked on "importance" to the town, I guess the obvious nepotism of choosing my mom could raise some frustrations from those that would have survived and had their families and friends left to die while being "not important" to the city. And yes, there would be those. Yet if I choose to leave behind my mother and choose the younger person, any idiot who accuses me and those of us that averted death by being in the shelter of just "saving our own asses and those that we love", I can say to them that I truly put the benefit of the people before my personal feelings.

And the obvious question here is, why should I make the choice? This would have to be something likely to be discussed with my mom and the 20-year old. Let them, my mom and the 20-year old, themselves carry the burden that someone else has died for them. It would be more likely that 80-year old mom would give her seat to a younger person.

Even if with this dilemma we want to approach moral/ethical and philosophical questions, we should remember that people actually are very logical. In fact, I would question the total asshole who in the first place that had this wonderful idea of the "important to the town"-people then picking up some seats of their own choosing. Fuck that guy! Put him or her on a place where the asshole has 0% of surviving the disaster. Besides, if everybody outside the shelter has zero chance of surviving, likely the people in the shelter have just a bit longer death waiting for them in the shelter turned into a coffin as nobody is around to dig them up from the rubble.

* * *

The classic event of having "children and women be rescued first" from a sinking ship is quite real: assuming if there is the time for people to organize an evacuation, that would be still the way. Helping the weakest person first is the most logical issue in a disaster. It is something that total strangers can understand and obey. Not so when the ship goes beneath the ways quickly: then it's about the just who can climb the quickest the maze where the walls have become the new walkways and freezing water is pouring in and make it to a life raft.

Not mom. 80 is about done with life. I'm 56 I would probably provide a spot for the 20 year-old. Depends how much I like them. It also depends on the nature of the disaster - I am not much interested in surviving in a post- apocalypse reality and I am not afraid of death. I don't subscribe to an ethical system, nor care to develop one, other than imprecise and common sense notions of fairness and that we ought to prevent suffering.

Like most such thought experiments made up by philosophers, this one is over-simplistic, unrealistic, and misleading. — T Clark

I agree that thought experiments are fairly dreadful.

I agree that thought experiments are fairly dreadful. — Tom Storm

That's what's good about them! They have the potential to expose us to certain false assumptions about ourselves by creating highly artificial scenarios we'll likely never have to deal with but that contain elements in common with our basic mode of self-judgement.

And welcome to the forum.
— T Clark

This is Paul who ran old PF. He's been around (if you consider both forums) longer than any of us. Good to see you active again, Paul. — Baden

Nice to meet you @Paul.

Hello, Paul. :cool:

"Mom."

The 20 year old has more of a chance, no matter how minute, outside the shelter than an 80 year old woman. I can live easier with the consequences of the 'young person for my old mother' trade off than I can with the alternative – the existentially decisive factor for me since 'sacrificing one life in order to save another life' is never, I think, ethically justifiable (thus, the dilemma).

The correct solution would be for me to give both my tickets to two children. — T Clark

That's exactly what I wanted to say!
I don't know what the world will be like after the emergency, but if it's much more of a mess than it is now, I couldn't cope with it anyway, so I'd stay with my 98-year-old mother and 78-year-old life partner to watch the end of our world.

That's exactly what I wanted to say! — Vera Mont

The correct solution would be for me to give both my tickets to two children.
— T Clark

That's exactly what I wanted to say! — Vera Mont

Me too! I think this shelter will be full of kids who will be surprised to be there!

I see this as a Sartrean-type dilemma where the ethical thing to do is to simply choose and take responsibility for our choice rather than try to justify it by any particular theory that would abstract us away from such responsibility and in any case could provide nothing more than arbitrary grounds for judgement when considered meta-ethically. — Baden

:up:

This highlights how we all choose selfishly every day based on proximity rather than ethics. — Baden

The only thing I disagree with is this opposition of "selfish" vs. "ethical." If you do as you say above - choose responsibly - that means you do what you think is the right thing to do (why else would you choose that course of action?) And that, by definition, is the ethical thing to do, theory or no theory. I don't see what selfishness has to do with that.

Hiya Paul!

Me too! I think this shelter will be full of kids who will be surprised to be there! — universeness

There will no doubt be a few selfish adults ready to put 'em to work as soon as the all-clear sounds.

Because you're important to the town, — Paul

Need more information. If places are being allocated by the town on the basis of importance, how come my friends and relations are also important, and my decisions about them are also important? There's a smell of nepotism about this that I do not want to be part of. I'm sending all the tickets back, until the allocation system is changed.

John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids goes into the way extinction threats change morality, though, and how some folks are slow to adjust. But "women and children first" is an old survival trope, but applies more to women of childbearing age and their offspring than to VIPs and their olds.

Unless mom decides she's willing to lay down her life for the 20 yo, it's going to be mom.

Upon deliberation I don't think it's much of an ethical dilemma, though.

Saving someone's life is a good thing, regardless of whose life you save. You're not responsible for the death of the person who dies, so it's hard to imagine how the chooser's moral fibre is at stake in any way.

Upon deliberation I don't think it's much of an ethical dilemma, though. — Tzeentch

For me, the dilemma - more pragmatic than ethical - might be in contemplation of the post-disaster quality of life. Who is best suited and prepared on the hardships and privations that are bound to follow? How many able-bodied young people will be available to take care of the children?
I know I'm not fit, and my mother certainly would not be. I would only be saving either of us for protracted suffering. In that case, I should stay and do what I can for the others left behind.

I see this as a Sartrean-type dilemma where the ethical thing to do is to simply choose and take responsibility for our choice rather than try to justify it by any particular theory that would abstract us away from such responsibility and in any case could provide nothing more than arbitrary grounds for judgement when considered meta-ethically. — Baden

It seems to me that sometimes taking responsibility requires providing justification, and then taking responsibility for that justification. A failure to provide justification could equally be seen as giving way to arbitrary grounds for judgement.

We see a huge difference because the child is not in front of us but in the abstract world of ethics there are few theories that would consider that difference valid. — Baden

I don't find Singer's argument persuasive, but the ethical principle at play here is subsidiarity, which says that we have a greater responsibility for our family than for our neighbors; for our neighbors than for our fellow citizens; for our fellow citizens than for non-citizens, etc. Responsibility moves outward in concentric circles, and each agent is a locus of responsibility for those around them.

---

Because you're important to the town, you've been allocated a shelter ticket along with a few +1s you can bring. — Paul

Probably my mom would be willing to sacrifice her life for the younger generations. If she were unwilling, I would take her. A lot of this depends on why I was granted a +1 in the first place.

I think each of us would save our respective mothers. Love and a sense of family belonging is stronger than "utilitarian" choices. Whenever our family - or loved ones - are at risk, our sense of "rationality" falls apart.
I personally think that there is not a dilemma at all. Option B is "A healthy 20 year old acquaintance who you generally like but you're not close to."
I, myself, interpret that the person of option B is just a stranger. I do not care if he is 20 years old and healthy. If it is not close to me, he will not be above my mother in terms of priority.

Does your choice change if B is a friend, or a stranger? Do they have to be a best friend? — Paul

No. It will not change my decision if my mother still be one of the options.

Would your choice actually involve any ethical considerations at all, or would it be a selfish decision which you'd attempt to invent a post hoc ethical justification for? — Paul

I must admit that involves selfish decision. I save my mother because of the familiar attachment. Maybe this is not so "ethical" and some can consider this as a pure act of selfishness.

A lot of this depends on why I was granted a +1 in the first place. — Leontiskos

Why would your decision depend on knowing that specific data?

I save mom. But, being a utilitarian, I also kill the stranger (they would've died anyways) harvest their organs (we might use those later), and head on over to the Winchester for a pint "until this whole thing blows over."

T Clark, we may stipulate that you are too important to the shelter society to sacrifice yourself (you're president or something like that). If you try to sacrifice yourself, the secret service knocks you unconscious and drags you to the shelter.

The 20-year-old because they are more likely to contribute to the survival of the entire group. Unless my mom has a very useful skills set for this sort of thing, she is going to lose out.

This is in the abstract. In concrete terms, my own mother has several times expressed that she has absolutely no desire to live in a post-apocalyptic world and would just accept her fate, so this makes it easy for me.

Plus, in concrete terms I don't need to choose. My parents live very far away, and even if they were visiting, I live in a rural area that wouldn't be a prime target for any military attack, have a large deal of grazing land around me, numerous cattle on my land, my neighbors have pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, etc., we have a garden, the woods are rife with deer and I have a bow and a stupid number of arrows because I lose them and find them again, and I have a stockpile of .30-06 and shells I inherited. Also, a pond stocked with bluegill, coy, and catfish that is fairly self-sustaining.

I don't love where I currently live, but it is quite good as far as apocalypses go.

The correct solution would be for me to give both my tickets to two children. If they wouldn't let me do that, I would refuse to go and tell them to give the tickets to someone else. That's what I say I would do and it would be the right thing to do, but we won't ever know what I'd really do

IDK, I don't think a bunker full of five-year-olds has good survival odds in the long term.

IDK, I don't think a bunker full of five-year-olds has good survival odds in the long term. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree.

This would involve a conversation with my mother. My own 80-year old mother, who I love dearly and is still in reasonable health, has made it clear that she’s ‘ready to go’ at this point in her life. While I could probably make a case for the importance of lived experience in rebuilding society, I would not choose the survival of my mother for my own selfish, short-term emotional reasons if she herself lacked the determination to live and interact.

These so called "dilemmas" aren't really dilemmas. Scarcity guarantees that someone will go without. That isn't a tragedy (to be avoided), it a reality, frankly an extremely common one. Folks go without, it's the norm. Any method (including flipping a coin) of distribution of limited resources will leave someone without.

Humans can label this or that distribution strategy as better or worse, but of course these relative descriptors are entirely subjective and completely dependant on perspective.

Folks go without, it's the norm. — LuckyR

It is the norm, yes. But the context gets serious when your mother is involved. You would not speak about "folks go without" because your sense of attachment to a beloved member would make you think otherwise or at least more seriously. I think this is the "dilemma" that @Paul proposed. The context changes fully when a mother is included.

If you try to sacrifice yourself, the secret service knocks you unconscious and drags you to the shelter. — NotAristotle

So be it. Then let them decide who the other person will be while I'm unconscious.

Why would your decision depend on knowing that specific data? — javi2541997

Because my own ticket is apparently based on some sort of mandate, as it derives from my importance within the town. Does that mandate extend to my +1's? Was I given +1's because I have good judgment about who should be saved, or perhaps only for my own personal comfort and well-being as someone whose future is tied to the town's future?