The death of a total stranger for enough money to find a cure for AIDS.

[Bloodshadow]

A magical being gives you an offer. He can give you an absurd amount of money. But if you accept this money, a random stranger on the planet will die.

The amount of money offered to you is obscene. You can do whatever you want with it, but you know for sure that with that much money, you will be able to find a cure for AIDS, or any other incurable disease in existence. Do not question or debate about the validity of this point, since this thread is not intended for it. Should you use the money for AIDS research, the chance of finding a cure is 100%.

Will you accept the money?

EDIT: This thread is not intended to debate on the possibility that the magical being might trick you. Assume that it is completely trustworthy.

[EvaRia]

If you accept the money, since it's magical, inflation will follow


More seriously, as much as it pains me to say so, there's no way I could care about some random stranger enough to put off that kind offer.
At the same time however, I'm that the kind of person who would tie myself to the destiny of curing aids, so I doubt I would accept his offer anyhow.

[The_Mormegil]

This kind of offer screws you badly for plot reasons. Refuse, unless you know EVERYTHING about that being, and even then, hesitate. No being of such power can possibly be honest and straightforward: he's going to trick you.

[YoungSot]

So "do the ends justify the means"?

I'm gonna say no.

[Camoninja]

What if that one random stranger was just about to discover the cure for AIDS anyway?
One thing I learned from all the stories is that you never trust a djinni, and you never trust a gift that comes to you for no reason.
For those two reasons I would refuse.

[Rutarete]

I wouldn't accept it. Not because I care about some random stranger more than AIDS, but because of the technicalities.
HOW LONG would it cure people?

HOW MANY people would it cure?
It could just end up being a one-time, one-person cure. I doubt it would be a worldwide cure.

[Thalas]

No being of such power can possibly be honest and straightforward: he's going to trick you.
What if that one random stranger was just about to discover the cure for AIDS anyway?
One thing I learned from all the stories is that you never trust a djinni, and you never trust a gift that comes to you for no reason.
HOW LONG would it cure people?
HOW MANY people would it cure?

This isn't about if it would cure all the people or if he would trick you or something else.

The question is if you would kill 1 person to save 33.2 mil people

So "do the ends justify the means"?

I'm gonna say no.

For example if you were crane operator in the crane, building some house when rope holding paino which weights 10 tons ( Huge piano) on the crane started snapping.
Now you have following option : Drop piano on 3 men or on 1 man

You can't do anything else (shout at them, drop it on the house or anything else), age, family, personality, deeds of the men don't matter. They/he dies if drop the piano on them/him, they/he can't survive
We know that you think that the ends don't justify the means but how would you act? 

[OldTrees]

I follow Deontological ethics and believe that people have a Negative right from being murdered. I believe this right originates from a negative right from theft. Thus killing without consent (theft/vandalism of life) would be murder. A random person cannot give consent. Therefore choosing to kill the random person would be killing them without their consent and thus murder. Since people have a negative right from being murdered, it would be immoral to choose to kill the random person.

Knowing one of the options is immoral is not sufficient. An immoral choice implies the existence of a moral choice. (Ought implies can)

The other option is letting many people die. (deontological ethics would deem that the word many is irrelevant because the rights of the many are the same as the rights of the one) Here is where we discuss whether letting someone die when you could have delayed that death is immoral. (death is inevitable hence a negative right from being murdered instead of a positive right to life) I believe that it is not immoral to let someone die but it is morally praiseworthy to delay that death. If it were immoral to let someone die when you could have delayed that death then choosing to allocate scarce resources among myriad problems would be a choice without a permissible option. (Ought implies can implies such a scenario cannot exist.)

So the choice as I see it is commit a pair of actions (one morally prohibited, one morally praiseworthy) or do nothing (morally permissible but not morally praiseworthy). Here I believe abstaining from morally prohibited actions is more important that doing morally praiseworthy actions.

[YoungSot]

So "do the ends justify the means"?

I'm gonna say no.

For example if you were crane operator in the crane, building some house when rope holding paino which weights 10 tons ( Huge piano) on the crane started snapping.
Now you have following option : Drop piano on 3 men or on 1 man

You can't do anything else (shout at them, drop it on the house or anything else), age, family, personality, deeds of the men don't matter. They/he dies if drop the piano on them/him, they/he can't survive
We know that you think that the ends don't justify the means but how would you act?

I would try to minimize the casualties of course. But it's a different situation than the original post (in addition to being impossibly black and white).

[OldTrees]

So "do the ends justify the means"?

I'm gonna say no.

For example if you were crane operator in the crane, building some house when rope holding paino which weights 10 tons ( Huge piano) on the crane started snapping.
Now you have following option : Drop piano on 3 men or on 1 man

You can't do anything else (shout at them, drop it on the house or anything else), age, family, personality, deeds of the men don't matter. They/he dies if drop the piano on them/him, they/he can't survive
We know that you think that the ends don't justify the means but how would you act?

I would try to minimize the casualties of course. But it's a different situation than the original post (in addition to being impossibly black and white).

What if the choice was: Drop the piano on 1 man or let it fall on 3 men?

[The_Mormegil]

I follow Deontological ethics and believe that people have a Negative right from being murdered. I believe this right originates from a negative right from theft. Thus killing without consent (theft/vandalism of life) would be murder. A random person cannot give consent. Therefore choosing to kill the random person would be killing them without their consent and thus murder. Since people have a negative right from being murdered, it would be immoral to choose to kill the random person.

Knowing one of the options is immoral is not sufficient. An immoral choice implies the existence of a moral choice. (Ought implies can)

The other option is letting many people die. (deontological ethics would deem that the word many is irrelevant because the rights of the many are the same as the rights of the one) Here is where we discuss whether letting someone die when you could have delayed that death is immoral. (death is inevitable hence a negative right from being murdered instead of a positive right to life) I believe that it is not immoral to let someone die but it is morally praiseworthy to delay that death. If it were immoral to let someone die when you could have delayed that death then choosing to allocate scarce resources among myriad problems would be a choice without a permissible option. (Ought implies can implies such a scenario cannot exist.)

So the choice as I see it is commit a pair of actions (one morally prohibited, one morally praiseworthy) or do nothing (morally permissible but not morally praiseworthy). Here I believe abstaining from morally prohibited actions is more important that doing morally praiseworthy actions.

Your argument is, if I'm correct, as follows:
1) Killing a random person is morally incorrect.
2) Death is inevitable.
3) Delaying death is morally praiseworthy, but not delaying it is not morally incorrect.
4) Finding a cure for a person is delaying its death.
5) The rights of many are as the rights of one.
6) Finding a cure for many people is morally praiseworthy, killing one random person is morally prohibited. Not finding a cure is not morally incorrect, not killing is morally correct.
7) Answer no.

May I require a further explanation as to point 5?

Also, this reasoning has a major flaw in my opinion, in that it doesn't take into consideration consequences of your action.
Let us think that the random stranger is TRULY a random stranger, not "that one random stranger that will save the world if you don't kill him". What are the consequences of his death? Grief and suffering, possibly negative consequences on a certain number of people. On average, not that many people. What are the consequences of finding a cure for AIDS? Extending the life of millions of people, letting them live a better and more satisfying life, possibly for the better of the world population. Incidentally, screwing with the medic industry and with monopolies.

Now, since your action has consequences, those consequences fall under the morality of your action. This is to avoid the "I didn't kill him, the bullet did" syndrome. Are we capable of understanding the full extension of the consequences? Of course not, we aren't capable of understanding the consequences of ANY action, not to the fullest. But, we can make an estimation. Negating the fact that we can make an estimation and act upon that negates our possibility to understand how to live, therefore questions all of our ethical analyses (unless of course this analyses in based on facts only, without consequences... but see above). Can we make a good estimation of what consequences will have such a vast act? It is, by the law of great numbers, about the same - possibly a bit better - as letting people live without interfering: now, is the direction the people we let live (we may or may not want to consider also WHICH people those are, as AIDS has a specific subset of targets, and some issues may or may not arise depending on our view on some other subjects - i.e. racism, morality of sex with unknown partner etc.) is that direction positive or negative? If the answer is "positive", by letting them live you are acting against the betterment of society as a whole, even if you are acting against a single person. I believe the problem can be reduced to this due to the above analyses. I also believe the answer to be strictly positive, therefore if these are the possibilities I would say the right answer is to accept.

One other thing: is murder ever allowed? This includes war, self-defense, euthanasia, abortion as possible cases.

[OldTrees]

@The Mormegil
Deontological ethics is Action based ethics not Consequence based ethics nor Intent based ethics.
Consequence based Ethics would look at the consequences of a random death + cure AIDS vs the consequences of not doing so.
Intent based ethics would ask for the intent of the actor (the way the problem is phrased most Intent based philosophers would have two equally permissible options because they intend to do the right thing)

#5) 100 identical moral imperatives can be simplified to 1 moral imperative. Any moral rights of the group (if any exist) are also moral rights of each member.

You have most of my outline accurate however you skipped and oversimplified parts. The only part that I think is relevant (due to our Actions vs Consequences differences) is the question of "Do both Morally Prohibited and Morally Praiseworthy actions or do neither action?" I choose inaction in this case due to an aversion to Morally Prohibited actions.