The murderer problem.

[grayson]

Imagine someone knocks on your door. What you know is that 2 hours ago, a higher being that knows about the future told you that in two up to four hours, a person will knock at your door and try to kill you. You have a gun in your hands and can shoot through the peephole. But you do not know if this is the person who will kill you or not. So, there are a few possibilities. Number one, you do not shoot, and they do not try to kill you. Number two, you do shoot but they are innocent, and you go to jail. Number three, you shoot, and they were trying to murder you, because as you shoot them you see a gun fall out of their pocket. Number four, you let them in, and they shoot you. Would you risk shooting, or risk in other ways not shooting? (Sorry if this is dark, but you are over there talking about a cat that has a chance of being dead, so idk if this is really the darkest thing ever).

[iNow]

Number Five: Open Ring app and tell them to go away from my phone without even getting up from my chair

[TheVat]

Number five, you don't shoot someone through a door who is not presently attacking you, because you are a sane person and have no wish to risk taking an innocent life.  If the person then escalates to breaking down the door or trying to breach a window, then you can more confidently assume they mean harm, and retreat through a back door, fire escape, or other means.  Retreat seems the more ethical option, unless there is also harm threatened to another housemate who cannot retreat, or other circumstance where you become cornered.  Retreat prevents both your being murdered, and you becoming a murderer - however justified it might feel, it is a life-altering and terrible thing to take a life.  So it should be the last resort.

Edited November 21, 2023 by TheVat
pbbblt

[CharonY]

Number 0, I am thinking of getting  a psych eval. Seeing and talking to higher beings is something that would be worry me quite a bit. Especially combined with thinking of shooting as the first action. 

[zapatos]

Soldiers deal with this issue all the time. They know there are foes out there heading in their direction who will try to kill them. They also know there are friends out there heading in their direction who will not try to kill them. I'm hopeful the soldiers are smart enough to identify their potential targets before pulling the trigger.

Edited November 21, 2023 by zapatos

[Sensei]

7 hours ago, iNow said:

Number Five: Open Ring app and tell them to go away from my phone without even getting up from my chair

Number six: get out of the house so the whole premise can't happen.

Number seven: you shoot yourself before two hours, so the whole premise can't happen.

8 hours ago, grayson said:

Imagine someone knocks on your door. What you know is that 2 hours ago, a higher being that knows about the future told you that in two up to four hours, a person will knock at your door and try to kill you.

There's a (forty year old) movie about it, but instead of a "being of superior knowledge" it's just a gypsy fairy....

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074251/

"Modest editor, has shipped his wife and kids for the weekend, and is trying to relax in his house at the outskirts of Warsaw. His quiet evening is only disturbed by the accidental forecast made by a Gypsy woman, that at evening time he will murder a mysterious brunet. He is trying to escape the destiny, but to no avail"

 

(it is a satirical comedy, you would love it)

 

[Ghideon]

9 hours ago, grayson said:

a higher being that knows about the future told you that in two up to four hours, a person will knock at your door and try to kill you.

The ethics of providing such a vague and potentially misleading prediction would be questionable, especially if the higher being has the power to foresee and influence events. So the ethical question is more about the higher being's role in potentially setting up a situation that could lead to violence.
Also the provided scenario mixes logical possibilities with ethical questions so that the ethical question gets obscured by the need to address logical issues.

[Sensei]

39 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

The ethics of providing such a vague and potentially misleading prediction would be questionable, especially if the higher being has the power to foresee and influence events.

Actually your post makes no logical sense to me. I can see the errors in the source code, so I can predict that sooner or later it will crash and under what circumstances (cumbersome for others to foresee, especially the "children of the debugger"). Telling another programmer that he/she made a mistake in line X is unethical?

If I tell "fix this or people will die because airplane or spacecraft will crash", somebody will tell "right" and simply ignore my advice, I foresaw this disaster and this happened. If programmers/engineers will fix it, then can tell "you foresaw nothing, as nothing happened, see? There was nothing to worry about!"..

People say so about the Y2K problem (although a spaceship was destroyed by a similar mistake!), and so now they say about COVID-19.. ("they scared us for nothing!")

 

[John Cuthber]

11 hours ago, grayson said:

What you know is that 2 hours ago, a higher being that knows about the future told you that in two up to four hours, a person will knock at your door and try to kill you.

At that point I called the local hospital and had myself admitted to diagnose the mental health issue.

[Sensei]

35 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

At that point I called the local hospital and had myself admitted to diagnose the mental health issue.

..finally we have explanation of many things.. thank you so much for sharing this with us..

[mistermack]

14 hours ago, grayson said:

What you know is that 2 hours ago, a higher being that knows about the future told you that in two up to four hours, a person will knock at your door and try to kill you.

This is a beautiful but stark warning against believing the voices in your head : 

 

 

[swansont]

Why isn’t “don’t let them in. Only shoot if they break in” an option?

(I think there’s a fundamental issue of trying to impose ethics of our universe on a scenario that takes place in a place where different natural laws apply.)

[TheVat]

I tried to ignore the logic contortions needed for the problem to make sense and treat it as the ethics problem apparently intended.  The logic is wobbly, as everyone noticed - why not just leave well before the predicted event? @Ghideon noted that the ethics problem is two-tiered, with one tier being the behavior of the higher being.  Might simplify the problem to just call it a mischievous demon, or an alien running a virtual world where it can simulate ethical conundra.  And further sharpen the dilemma by having the home be an apartment in some sort of home detention scenario where early departure or retreat by an exit is impossible.  Then the answer seems obvious: don't shoot unless they break in.  

[swansont]

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

I tried to ignore the logic contortions needed for the problem to make sense and treat it as the ethics problem apparently intended.  The logic is wobbly, as everyone noticed - why not just leave well before the predicted event? @Ghideon noted that the ethics problem is two-tiered, with one tier being the behavior of the higher being.  Might simplify the problem to just call it a mischievous demon, or an alien running a virtual world where it can simulate ethical conundra.  And further sharpen the dilemma by having the home be an apartment in some sort of home detention scenario where early departure or retreat by an exit is impossible. 

It can be as simple as somebody calling you, saying they’re coming over to your abode to kill you.

 

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

Then the answer seems obvious: don't shoot unless they break in.  

Yup. An overt act, and imminent danger.

[John Cuthber]

11 hours ago, Sensei said:

..finally we have explanation of many things.. thank you so much for sharing this with us..

Apparently the problem is that you don't understand a hypothetical situation.
But yes, it does explain a lot

[mistermack]

6 hours ago, TheVat said:

I tried to ignore the logic contortions needed for the problem to make sense

It takes a lot of ignoring. If this "higher being" knows the future, that means that the future is fixed. You cannot alter it. So what's the point in this internal debate, of what to do? Except that your internal thoughts, wondering what to do, are also fixed. You are not in control of anything. My instinct in those circumstances, if I believed it all, would be to do nothing that took any effort. Or just to be awkward, I'd remove the front door and burn it.