I hate ethics because what the hell is this.
Real slide in my real college level ethics class
I- what the fuck
How is this even a question. This is not troles problem level shit, this is just "will you save a child for 0 consequences or are you an asshole"
Because I see enough people saying this and being confused: that is, in fact, the point.
This slide is meant to be an extreme example to demonstrate where act utilitarianism falls apart. Act utilitarianism is ultimately measuring how much a given single act increases happiness/reduces suffering, and saying that the most ethical choice you can make for that action is the one where that increase/reduction is the highest. It's often used as a "man ethics is easy I got this shit solved, we don't have to talk about this"
So if, to assign an arbitrary number for the sake of example, saving a drowning child is a +100,000 Happiness Units, but giving a bunny a slight feeling of happiness is only +1, then of course you save the child. But if you're giving slight happiness to 100,001 bunnies, that brings more happiness than saving the child, and act utilitarianism says you should let the kid drown. Any evil can be the ethical choice given sufficient numbers of mildly pleased bunnies. This is, obviously, kinda insane. It's an example to show that while this kind of utilitarianism can work in most scenarios (the typical trolley problem, for example), there are times where it doesn't work, so it cannot function as a universal system of ethics.
oh I get it
