You are the train driver

There are a couple of things that i want to blog. I have reduced the file size of my spainish photos and put them onto flickr. so i could blog about my spanish holiday with v which i have been trying to for weeks. but i haven't ordered them sequentially and not described them sufficiently so think that will come later. maybe this weekend.

I attended 2 weddings in as many weeks. and in the more recent one, i noticed something which i saw again in a wedding footage found in the movie Mr and Mrs Smith. It's this wedding veil kink that will inadvertably form when the groom unveils the bride. I wanted to blog and name it. like I had previously name certain unsavoury female actions in Singapore Fashion Faux Pas. It'll be a short entry though. will do it soon as well.

I just finished the book Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and it evoked a couple of emotions and thought that i thought i should blog about it as well....but....i'll need some time to articulate them through words.

And so I shall blog about this discussion I had had with my ceo, weo, xo and v throughout different periods of time today.

was having lunch today at the wardroom. overlooking the balcony. looking into temasek fairway.

was talking about child sex tours and paedophiles and questions on the function of law and governance. should law be a function system to protect the innoncent or to punish the wrongdoers?

pretty heavy stuff for lunch.

then it got even more interesting.........

weo: imagine you are a train driver. you come to this junction. to the left is an abandoned track and there's a kid playing by himself on it.

ceo/me: uh huh. (bored look)

weo: and to the right is the track you are suppose to take and there's a group of kids playing on it. which way would you turn?

me: so is the abandoned track still safe for use? cause if it isn't, i will turn right cause i cannot put the rest of the passengers in the train in jeopardy. there are passengers in the train right?

weo: the abandoned track is safe and it will get you to your destination.

me: ok. i'll turn left.

ceo: yah, left too. save more lives.

me: yah, save more lives.

weo: ok. so both of you turn left. but did you realise that by turning left and killing the lone kid, you would have killed the lone kid who was doing no wrong by playing on the abandoned track. it was abandoned anyway. but the group of kids were in the wrong cause they were playing on the track to the right which was a track that was in service.

me: woah.....I never thought of that. but then, I would still have turn left. my bottomline doesn't change. to save more lives.

ceo: In this case i might use the right track. (i cannot for the life of me remember what he said. i better put this disclaimer in cause he reads this some of the time. so this is not verbatim)

me: this is actually a very interesting parable. can we apply it to any real world situation? where we kill off the lone person who is right to save the majority who are wrong? or vice versa, kill the wrong majority to save the lone person who is right? so weo, which would you choose?

weo: the right track. cause i will not want to kill the innocent kid who was probably disciplined enough to not play on a railway track. the other kids shouldn't playing on the operational railway track.

ceo: if there are passengers on the train and the disused track was unsafe, the question would have an easier and more obvious answer. but turning left, i could put the passengers in danger. but then the question would not longer be as challenging.

weo: so would you still go left then?

me: my bottomline remains the same. save more lives. if the disused track is safe, i will kill the lone child. but if the disused track is unsafe or i am unsure about it, the passengers come into play (pun not intended) and I will choose right. so depending on the situation and information that i have, my decision changes although my bottomline remains the same. save more lives.

weo: i will keep right no matter what because it is the right way and the route I was suppose to take anyway. the passengers will not be put into harm's way.

xo joins in and we ask him the same question.

xo: turn left. shocking bad luck for the lone kid. (we can tell xo is a realist)

weo: but the kid wasn't doing anything wrong.

xo: shocking bad luck.

weo: i would go right cause that is what i was told to do. it's the taught way.

xo: so you will follow an SOP even if it will obviously harm more people because it is " the taught way"? You will not be fliexible enough to exercise your judgment?

(we, being military people, were very much into SOP/directives/commander's instructions)

I think in the end we agree that there is not right or wrong. the lives were all innocent no matter which track they were playing on and no kid or kids were more deserving to die than another.

which was a chicken shit way out.

in the real world, there isn't a chicken shit way out. you choose one of the track and you pray like hell you got it right. you stick by your decision and never waver.

we tried putting this parable into our workplace and this was what we came up with.

currently the specs have some form of ranking assessment and those who are deemed worthy will see their contracts being lengthened. (i am simplifying things here) and those who get their contracts lengthened usually excel in their secondary job appointments. meaning, if we get one lone person who thoroughly ensure that his primary job is completed to the required level, we migth not lengthened his contract simply because he was performing in the wrong sphere. we would rather promote and offer longer contracts to those who may not be shit hot in their primary job scope but are often in the limelight or take on alot of secondary jobs, hence neglecting their primary job.

i discussed with v over dinner. she heard of this story before. apparently it is on the net and was passed around as an email attachment as well. what's right isn't always popular
v choose to kill the group of kids because they were in the wrong.
v described this as a reflection of a case where pilots were sacked from their jobs because they were following the control tower instructions as well as the directional lights that were guiding them. the 2 pilots were sacked although they were doing the right thing. i pushed my rational of "bottomlines" which was to "save more lives". what the airline did was to curb the possible image loss and repurcussions could be loss of revenue and loss of the precious image of being a safe premier airline. these twin losses could trigger a chain reaction that eventually lead to a crumbling airline and possibly retrenchment etc etc...I knew I was pushing it.....

again the answer was terrible to find.
there cannot be a case where we should be happy either ways because we would have skirted the conundrum of being in a "damn if you do and damn if you don't" situation. which can never be right in the real world.

this blog entry sounds rather morbid.

i dunno why i thought so much about this. wonder what is the common answer to this question.