But the ends only justify the means if it works out mathmatically.

Kill ten people to save a hundred. Now assuming there is no mitagating cirucumstances and assuming all hundred and ten people involved are all equally good people, doing that would still be a good thing if there was no way to save all 110.

So is it all for one or one for all?

But then Dolash in your scenario you must ask yourself: Why are you interested in saving people at all? To you this seems to be an assumed quantity. Yet the answer is important; it is because you adhere to a certain morale code.

If you are willing to violate said moral code for the sake of said moral code you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. If the code is so meaningless why are you acting to save anyone at all? Since after all in violating it you make possible future violations and destroy what you fight for by becoming what you fight against.

But if the ten didn't die then a hundred would.

And as I said, it's math. Save ten or a hundred? Logically, you should save a hundred.

Don't repeat yourself.

You didn't say "the ten die", you said "kill the ten". There is a difference. If you are so concerned about saving lives it is obviously because you hold life to be a sacred thing in your code of morality. But if you are killing in order to maintain that moral code what have you accomplished? You become the evil you fear. You break your moral code for the sake of your moral code.

Life is not a set of events isolated in bubbles. On principle you are wrong but in practice you are even more wrong. For instance, we can assume that you are a civil administrator of some sort in your scenario. What happens the next time the government is posed with a threat of this nature? Perhaps it will be less serious next time, but you have already set the precedent that the moral code you adhere to is flexible. It is a set of guidelines that you are permitted to decide when it is alright to break. So the next time the government kills ten more and wipes the threat out. Next time there is even a bomb threat from a disturbed but harmless individual the government sweeps in and kills the man's whole family because the ends justify the means.

...

Good point.

Where are those Merit Badges when you need'em.

"the ends justify the means", eh Dolash?

Well, I plan to cleanse humanity. You know, get rid of all evil and return us to that utopia, blah blah @#%$.

To this end, I will kill everyone on earth except for thirty females and thirty males.

Do the ends still justify the means?

Well, not really, because that didn't solve anything.

Unless you could prove that only by killing the entire human race except for a particular thirty males and a particular thirty females beyond a shadow of a doubt would lead to a utopian society in the future that could not be done any other way, and that otherwise humanity will become evil or wipe itself out. If you could prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt then yes, the ends would justify the means.

Ugh.

Drayson.