Jack's answers to moral dilemmas

There are many moral dilemmas of the form "given this unpalatable choice, how would you rate the choices?" Although I'm blessed with rarely facing such hard choices in real life (which does tend to give you a more pragmatic and less idealistic view) I find it interesting to track how my answers change over time.

A typical example would be: "A group of people from your village are hiding from insurgents who will slaughter you all if you're found. You're caring for a patient who has just become delirious and you can't shut them up and their cries are going to bring the soldiers. Do you keep him as quiet as possible and hope the soldiers somehow overlook the group? Or smother him and hope he somehow survives?"

There are many variations on this theme, for instance:

* Are you in a position of authority over the patient?
* Are you in a position of authority over the group?
* Is the dilemma horrendously contrived? (eg. "do you push person X onto the train track to stop a train full of people going over a cliff")
* Are the outcomes presented as certainties or high probabilities?
* Is the patient a volunteer or a soldier? An adult? A child? A baby?
* Does the patient stand a high chance of survival if you're caught? Any chance?

My responses now would generally be:

1. Death is bad.

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