Archive for March, 2014

Do humans have the right to inhabit (and ruin?) another planet?

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In STRANDED, human qualities such as greed and hatred eventually lead to an Earth doomed by nuclear war. Six escaping astronauts, carrying their passengers, a database of stranded (digitized) humans, head for a habitable planet in hopes of resurrecting the human race. 

But someone on board feels that humans have no right to seed another planet with their destructive traits, and that person begins to systematically kill fellow crewmembers and delete the strands, hoping to extinguish the human race. Chief Scientific Officer Sandra Hapgood must race against time to save herself, the remaining strands, and the future of humanity. 

Would you kill a loved one to save humankind?

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In STRANDED, six astronauts, transporting a database of strands, or digitized humans, escape a doomed Earth, hoping to populate another planet. But someone, believing humans have no right to ruin another planet, begins deleting strands…and will soon target fellow crewmbers.

If you were one of those brave astronauts, and did not know the identity of the perpetrator, would you be
willing to arbitrarily kill your friends, even your lover, hoping to stop the one responsible?

‘The Trolley Problem’, the famous thought experiment in ethics, introduced in 1967 by Philippa Foot, ponders
something similar. It goes something like this:

A runaway trolley is barrelling down the tracks, heading straight for ten people that cannot move out of the way. It will definitely kill them. You, however, can switch the trolley to another track, killing only one person.