The situation in The Dark Knight where the two ferry ships, one carrying criminals and the other carried normal people, both wired with explosives, was flawed in terms of game theory, in my opinion.
*
“You must blow up the other boat within X amount of minutes, or I will blow both up.”
There was no incentive, mathematically, *not *to blow the other side up. The threat implied 100% guarantee of explosion if nobody pressed a button. What’s to be gained from *not *pushing the button when the only alternative is certain death?
Of course, even still, in the movie, nobody pushed that button. But a more logical dilemma thing for the Joker to say would be, “If nobody has pushed a button by midnight, I will select one ship at random and blow that one up.” Would that not make more sense?
Also, this is the Joker we’re talking about. Who’s to say turning the detonator wouldn’t blow up their own ship(and serve them right in doing so) or both of them(why waste good explosives after you’ve going to the trouble of planting and arming them)?
It wouldn’t make sense for the Joker to blow up the ships anyway, or to blow up the ship that pressed the button first. If he just wanted to blow up a ship, or two ships, he could blow up a ship. That’s just an everyday terrorist bombing.
What he wants instead is to prove that when pushed to the wall, people will kill innocents to save themselves. A ship full of people willing to kill the other guys, who die when they press the button because it was really connected to their ship all along? That just creates a traditional morality play, where the Joker punishes bad people for being bad, they die because they deserved to die. That just makes him a vigilante enforcing justice. That’s not what he wants. He wants a bunch of regular people to press the button and blow up the other ferry full of criminals and then go home and have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
Note also that, when the Joker’s detonator is taken away from him, he doesn’t much care. He probably expected that to happen, but didn’t think it’d make any difference, because hey, the people will take care of it for him. Except that they didn’t.
The scenario as presented was a flawed game theory problem, but part of morality is in realizing that there’s always more to the situation than is presented.
But by creating a situation that, in theory, will result in the death of both ships’ passengers, the Joker has actually **reduced **the emotional burden that the ship of regular people would live with for the rest of their lives. They can tell themselves, “If we didn’t do it, we’d be 100% guaranteed dead. We did what we had to.”
Whereas, if the Joker said, “If there’s no explosion, I’ll blow up one ship selected at random,” then the regular people would, for the rest of their lives, agonize, “Was it *really *necessary for us to blow the crooks up? Perhaps they’re the ones whom the Joker would have selected to blow up after all.”
Not only that, the others would be dead too. If we assume that the other boat doesn’t press the button, then it doesn’t matter what you do, they die in any case. And then I would actually say that it’s the more moral choice to press the button, so that at least the people on your boat survives, and can go home to their families.
If on the other hand the people on the other hand want to press the button, you can as well press it also. If someone says (in effect) “I’m either going to kill you or a random other person”, then there is no moral rule that you have to choose yourself.
Actually, after a shower’s thought, even the OPs suggestion doesn’t work. It’s still not immoral to push the button. Why would it be? Not pushing it just means that there is a chance that you + x people die instead of x +1 people. And since you didn’t create the scenario, there is no moral reason to assume higher value for this 1 expected person than for you.
Maybe if there were three ships. If they push a button, the two other explode. If they don’t, one of the three explode at random at midnight.
It’s immoral because the only reason the Joker has the reach he does is because people knowingly cooperate with an evil psychopath. Excuses like “He threatened to kill me if I didn’t!” don’t change the fact that you are willing to kill hundreds because a serial killer told you to do so with the right words.
The Joker’s entire power base rests on his ability to recruit cats-paws who he uses to recruit more cats-paws. The ferries just boil this down to its simplest and most absurd form, with each boat used to keep the other in line.
It was the worst part of the film for me too. For one very, very simple reason. It is completely, utterly, unbelievably ridiculous to even consider any other outcome than the prisoners killing the civilians. Almost instantly. Convicted felons are scumbags who would bash you over the head to get whatever they wanted without a second thought. The idea that they would magically become self-redeeming wise sages all of a sudden is such an overwhelming movie cliche. The instant they understood what was happening, the button on the prisoner ship would have been pressed in about five seconds. Anyone who tried to prevent it would have been stabbed, beaten, whatever it took. !10% guaranteed. Every time.
Every single movie about or with prisoners in it always does this. The guards are evil sadistic villains and the prisoners, if not outright wrongly convicted, are still made to be somehow misunderstood and sympathetic. It’s a cliche that really needs to end. People in prison belong there.
I was decreasingly engaged with the Joker’s utterly ridiculous Rube Goldberg plans. It was getting to the point that an actual 9/11 conspiracy looked relatively plausible.
But it’s not really that Im cooperating. I’m merely doing one of two things in a scenario he fully controls.
If it was a scenario where I actually cooperated with the joker to help him achieve some goal that would possible be a different thing, but that was not what this was.
Yes, and I’d add that what the Joker is testing is the evil inherent in self-justification.
The test is (using “you” non-personally): are you the kind of person who will push the button and say “I had no choice; I had to do it”…?
Because there IS a choice. Claiming that there is no choice is pure rationalization.
You had a choice, and you chose to kill innocent people. That was your choice. And here’s the point: it’s immoral to pretend–to yourself and/or to those to whom you’re explaining yourself–that it wasn’t your choice or that you were forced to do it* or that you are innocent of murder.
*In the movie scenario the characters were forced to make a choice–but they were not forced to choose either particular option. That choice was theirs.