#ef46

(EF46) Collective Blindness: If you’re worried about the way society perceives you, then the wool is fully pulled over your eyes.

(EF46) Status No: What would your life be like if you spent it challenging the status quo?

(EF46) Imperfect: What if human fallibility is a feature, not a bug?

(EF46) Reverse Psychology: Many think that life naturally rewards noble actions and punishes evil actions; but that’s not how society works, is it?

(EF46) Unjust World: Society is like a set of broken scales that people constantly try to balance, even though it’s inherently impossible.

(EF46) Choices, Choices: Most have never been forced to choose which track to send the trolley. And even less have actually put themselves on a track.

EF46 (S2-E7): Empathetic Distortion: Rigging the Scales of Justice: Put in an impossible position early in her career, Mary Payne was forced to make a choice between saving a single identifiable victim or helping an entire community of nameless people. The decision haunts her entire life. Many years later in old age, Mary is faced with another trolley bearing down on her where she will once again be forced to make a difficult decision on which track to send it. But unlike before, this time her life sits in the balance on one of the tracks. In theories about a just society, good deeds are expected to be rewarded and bad deeds punished. But is it really so easy to define what is a good versus bad deed? Can empathy for one human being, and the reward that comes with it, blind you from the same effort being able to help many others instead? Using Paul Bloom’s theory of rational compassion, we will explore what means to be a good person and why genuine good can easily get prosecuted in an unjust society. What would you do with your hand on the switch and a trolley bearing down on two tracks, both with grave consequences? Is there any real possibility for a just world when some decisions have only bad outcomes? Or is life and society just inherently unfair?