Survey:
Should you be sleeping with one eye open?
In "The Joker Was an Ethicist," the boat situation is presented as an example of a moral dilemma. Like the Joker, we too wanted to carry out a little social experiment (albeit a more benign one). We asked students in all of the Harvard Houses to tell us what they would do if they were stuck in the "Dark Knight-mare."
In turns out that freshmen were most likely to choose to die along with the convicts, suggesting that the long-cited myth of naïve, optimistic freshmen may in fact be true. Out of their older, more jaded colleagues, Dunster and Winthrop residents proved themselves to be most empathetic, with just over 50% opting to perish with the convicts.
In general, students found it easier to empathize with civilians than with convicts; 19% of respondents, on average, changed their answers to "don't kill" when the other boat was filled with civilians and not convicts. But don't wait for us to tell you; check out the results yourself. And for those of you in Adams and Quincy, well, you may want to check your locks. At the very least, you'll know who not to turn to for help.
