The Pond
What's the actual difference between the two cases?
Level 2 · 2 / 20
The Pond
You're walking to work in good clothes. A small child is face down in a shallow pond, drowning. Nobody else is around. Wading in ruins your suit and shoes and makes you two hours late. Obviously you go in. Now: the same money that suit cost could, sent to the right place today, keep a child alive who you'll never meet.
What's the actual difference between the two cases?
Then ask
- Does distance matter morally, or does it just make it easier to ignore?
- If it doesn't matter, how much of your income should you be giving?
- What's the last thing you bought that you'd have skipped if the child were in front of you?
The classics and some new ones. A scenario, the question it forces, and the follow-ups that make it bite.