I know people already did the ethics of the sending-fears-to-other-worlds, but I have a good way of setting it up (hopefully it’s good!). This is honestly more for me to have something written out than anything else.

So, I think Martin is being very utilitarian about it, where you have to do the most good, and that is final. That is how you make decisions, always. That is why I’m gonna use utiles, which are basically Good Points, like in The Good Place. In this, I’m only counting people dying into it, as 1 utile. You don’t get more utiles for saving Adelaird Dekker than you do Jonah Magnus. (Which is also an interesting point about this idea.)

Martin’s plan

·      saves everyone in their world from torture and eventual, painful death

·      potentially hurts millions of others, especially if the other worlds have apocalypses

·      +7B utiles*, -1 utile (Jonah), potentially -2 utiles (at least Jon, if not Martin?), potentially uncountable negative utiles

Martin is not thinking about potentials here since he has a fairly black-and-white morality. So, his plan looks like this to him.

*I realize that technically they would die anyway no matter what, but that’s not really the point.

Martin’s plan, in his mind

·      saves everyone in their world from torture and eventual, painful death

·      kills Jonah (which is good!), might kill Jon??? (which is bad!)

·      so it comes out to +~7B utiles

And since Martin isn’t counting potentials into it, he thinks Jon’s plan looks like this:

Jon’s plan

·      condemns the Fears to one world, killing them eventually

·      will torture and kill the entire world eventually

·      -7B utiles

However, if they did absolutely nothing, everyone would still die. Therefore, Jon is thinking of his plan like this.

Jon’s plan, in his mind

·      will kill everyone eventually

·      but would certainly never hurt anyone in any other world

·      for net zero utiles

And Jon sees Martin’s plan, with its ‘potential uncountable negative utiles’, as coming out to, basically, negative utilitarian infinity. Any plan seems better than that.

I don’t know what that ethical idea is, or if there is an exact one; I haven’t gotten that far in my class yet. But it’s just interesting to have that way to know how they see each other’s plans.

I don’t really know which one I’d pick, honestly. I think I’d go with Martin’s plan, but I get why Jon did what he did.