If you know of a way for me to do that, I'd like to hear it. I think everyone would. We can, and I have, contributed to charities, which unfortunately do not solve the problem, but we have little influence over the system that creates malnutrition. If you really insist that Greg possesses the supernatural ability to predict specific outcomes, then the question becomes one not of Greg's choice, but of Greg's belief that he possesses divine powers. That's fine, we can look at it that way too. If Greg believes that he knows the exact outcome of either choice, does he also believe that he can assess the value of all the lives in the situation? Does he believe he knows that there is no Jonas Salk or Mahatma Gandhi among the five he believes he will kill in exchange for the 40 who he believes he knows contains no Caligulas or Hitlers? Does he believe he can value human life by counting? I don't think he can know those things any more that he can know specific outcomes, but if he believes he can, he's doing what most of Greek tragedy concerns itself with: having hubris. His belief in his omniscience will cause tragedy.So would it be fair to claim that we are responsible for the deaths of people starving in the developing world whom we could quite easily provide food and water for with no great cost to ourselves?
Maybe we couldn't solve it as individuals but as a society it's possible. We could demand our governments to spend more to help. It's estimated that it would take $30 billion a year, the US Government last year spent 3.3 trillion. It's a relatively small amount in comparison and it I'm sure over countries could contribute. "It's less than half of 1% of the world's combined gross domestic products, not an unreasonable sum to invest in ending the misery and degradation of hunger." Is the fact that we done insist this be done as a society making us responsible for their deaths? I think you're looking too much at the situation and not at the problem. I'll be presenting experiments with far less believable premises than this one, but that's not the point. It's merely a medium for one to analyse the essence of a problem and it doesn't matter if it's not technically possible, it's a hypothetical situation. He knows the results of his choices either way and that's just how it is. Greg has no personal affiliation to either group or individual within and knows nothing about them that may make them a positive or negative influence to the world in the past, present or future. I think that the point of number weighting is that it presents a possible motive for Greg to pull the lever and kill the lesser amount right from the get go, without much forethought. There's definitely no right or wrong answer, i'm just presenting these points to challenge your thinking.If you know of a way for me to do that, I'd like to hear it. I think everyone would. We can, and I have, contributed to charities, which unfortunately do not solve the problem, but we have no influence over the system that creates malnutrition.
If you really insist that Greg possesses the supernatural ability to predict specific outcomes, then the question becomes one not of Greg's choice, but of Greg's belief that he possesses divine powers.
That's fine, we can look at it that way too. If Greg believes that he knows the exact outcome of either choice, does he also believe that he can assess the value of all the lives in the situation? Does he believe he knows that there is no Jonas Salk or Mahatma Gandhi among the five he is certain he will kill in exchange for the 40 who he believes he knows contains no Caligulas or Hitlers? Does he believe he can value human life by counting?