Existential Comics | Website
Alt Text
“At the heart of Batman’s being, like all theater kids, is a boundless narcissism that eats away at his core.”
Explanation
Many versions of Batman have a strict “no killing” rule, which is exactly the kind of intuition the Trolley Problem is attacking. Why is it different to actively kill someone vs passively letting five people die? In particular, Batman’s version seems to be a sort of “honor code”, which something close to a moral system, but it is entirely inward looking. In other words, fulfilling the honor system doesn’t do good for the world, it elevates the status of the honorable man. In a sense it’s the worst possible way to answer a moral question, “I want to kill the five people because I personally would lose something (my honor)”. Also its pretty showy to dress up as a bat. One might even call him a weirdo.
Transcript
8 Panel Comic
Panel 1: The Riddler stands at the lever explaining his setup of the classic Trolley Problem. Tied to one track are 5 people, and tied to the diverted track is 1 person. A trolley is prepared to mow down the 5 people unless the lever is pulled, diverting it to the path with one person.
Riddler: Alright Batman riddle me this. A trolley is moving down this track and is going to kill five people, but if you switch tracks it will only kill one, do you pull the lever?
Panel 2: Batman shakes his fist at the Riddler
Batman: Curse your implausible games, Riddler!
Panel 3: Batman hesitates in front of the lever, his hand shaking.
Batman: The right thing to do is save five people, but I have sworn to my code of ethics to never kill!
Panel 4: The Riddler exults in the devious dilemma delaying Batman’s decision.
Batman: I cannot do it! I cannot be the one to kill directly!
Riddler: Looks like the Batman has failed Philosophy 101! HAHAHAHAHA!
Panel 5: Batman watches as the trolley splatters 5 people across the track as the Riddler continues in his exultations.
Panel 6: Batman now sits in his Batcave as his Alfred arrives with his dinner on a covered tray.
Alfred: But what I don’t understand Sir, is how upholding your moral code can have more value than their lives?
Panel 7: Batman smoking a cigarette puts on his best grizzled and hard boiled face.
Batman: Because I’m a narcissist, Alfred. I value my own ego above everything, and I didn’t want to lose the “no killing” thing, because I like bragging about it. That’s all.
Panel 8: Alfred is shocked at Batman’s response.
Alfred: Really, I never thought so…
Batman: I dress up as a bat to fight crime. Of course I’m a narcissist. Your kind of a moron, Alfred, honestly.
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Jason Todd was right about Batman and the Joker. For the graveyards that Joker has filled, and his tendency to keep escaping, Joker should just fucking die.
Problem is, Todd didn’t do it. Instead he tried proving a point to Wayne and got his ass kicked.
Yeah, batman should really get in the habit of doing extrajudicial executions. Bypass this psychopath’s right to due process under the law and just kill him. And why stop at the Joker? Every masked supervillain should just get executed. Hell, why stop at the masks? Their henchmen knew what they signed up for, why not kill them too? Wouldn’t the world be so much nicer if we simply killed everyone who threatened to kill people?
In the trolley problem you need to also know if the trolley has passengers. If not, switch the track while it’s on there to make it derail and save both sides.
Alternatively, maybe a derailment is more survival than getting squashed.so derailling is the best solution. But no sources on that
The extreme of this is Cheng Xin from “Death’s End”.
“I will sacrifice everything that exists to protect the purity of my conscience. Even betray people doing exactly what I told them acting under my explicit instructions.”
Hot take: the instinct to not pull the lever is the entire basis for modern right-libertarianism.
For those who don’t know: the idea is that active coercion is bad and unjust, while passively allowing social structures to be coercive is not (or at least isn’t relevant to politics). In fact, “unjust” can not be an emergent property of a society - per definition! A society where no individual transactions are coercive, will always be a just society.
The only way I can make sense of that, is to point to that instinct as the only relevant moral intuition.
A moral code is something that you adopt because, in calm reflection and rational analysis, you have determined that it’s the best approach to producing desirable outcomes. The reason for having a code instead of just evaluating things in the moment is because of the recognition that your judgement can be compromised, by being tempted, by being angry, by not having time in the heat of the moment, etc.
Personally, I’d say that every rule has exceptions and that you should be willing to break a rule in extraordinary circumstances. For a recovering alcoholic, “don’t drink” is a good rule to have, but if there’s some convoluted hypothetical with a serial killer holding hostages demanding that you take a shot, then you can make an exception. But that exception does not invalidate the rule, which is generally a good thing to follow. And you should be extremely cautious about whether the exception is actually valid, or whether it’s just your brain inventing excuses.
I don’t think that being too rigid in upholding a code is “narcissistic” or “egotistical.” In fact, it’s often just the opposite. It may be precisely because Batman is aware of his own flaws that he doesn’t trust himself to break the rule, without his judgement becoming compromised.
I’ve had a code like this but the simpler version is “Avoid the words ‘always’ and ‘never’.”
But by being unwilling to adapt his judgment is already compromised.
Superman wouldn’t have this problem
I think this problem fits really well for Batman. How many times has Batman maimed or injured dozens on dozens of henchmen, but refuses to kill Joker, just to satisfy his personal code?
but refuses to kill Joker, just to satisfy his personal code?
I’m not big into Batman, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Batman’s whole deal isn’t “I can’t kill because it’s always inherently wrong”, but that he’s afraid he’ll completely lose control if he crosses that line and become even more dangerous than the people he holds himself back from killing.
Sure, he doesn’t act as judge, jury, and executioner (except in some dark spins), but he also hands out serious life long debilitating injuries like candy to henchmen, because they’re just henchmen.
I wonder how many of them die ‘off camera’, too. Head injuries are no joke, and he has no qualms about administering blows to the head. I bet he’s killed plenty even if he doesn’t acknowledge it.
That real world logic just doesn’t apply in most fiction settings. In movies blows to the head are not dangerous at all, and they are administered lightly even to friends and family when there’s a need to take them out momentarily, with consequences not worse than a couple-pint hangover.
Hah, yeah. Good life lesson. Your buddy being a little too loud during the stealth mission? Just crack him on the head hard enough to render him instantly unconscious. This won’t have any lasting effects and you’ll all have a good laugh about it later.
Wayne Enterprises has a very efficient private ambulance fleet to deal with the surprisingly-frequent head traumas that occur around Gotham City. It’s a free service paid for by the Martha Wayne Foundation.
There’s no way anyone actually survived those takedowns in the Arkham games. You can always see they still have a heart rate, but surely they’re at least in a coma or fully paralysed.
I’ve seen a lot of arguments about this and information but I still don’t know if I buy the premise that pulling the lever makes you the killer of the one which this hinges on entirely. Riddler is already the killer, you just have reduce the harm by steering him to kill the one instead of the five (assuming Batman didn’t have a gadget that could have saved everyone blah blah blah).
I keep meaning to dig into analysis of the trolley problem using different ethical frameworks. One of these days.
I remember being met with this dilemma in the game Infamous. Your girlfriend is suspended from a building, a bunch of doctors from another. The city is quarantined so they are vital. You only have enough time to save one. If you go to aave your girlfriend it’s not her and she’s with the doctors, if you go to save the doctors she’s the solo girl. There is a reason for this I won’t spoil.
Batman is a responsible for someone’s death no matter what in this situation.
If I remember right based on secondhand description, there was a Star Trek episode in which a sociopath gave the Enterprise a trolley problem to kill one or the other people.
They saved everyone by refusing to answer, and making very clear it was the sociopath that was performing the killing, with no one’s “aid”.
Was this a Q episode? This sounds like a Q episode.
Ok, so then extrapolate further. What if the other person wasn’t tied to the tracks and instead the switched train just barrels through one child’s bedroom. Still moral?
Extrapolate even further. Suppose three different people are dying because they each need different organ transplants. Is it moral to kill one person and save those three? What if someone else kidnapped the victim but asked you to do the deed - is that person the killer? If your line isn’t at “My actions resulted in this death that otherwise wouldn’t have happened,” then where is it?
That line of questioning seems to imply action and inaction are different but again I’ve seen no evidence they are. Choosing to stand by and not throw the lever is an action.
… and then you use that reasoning to answer the questions.
It’s true, if your main concern just who is the “killer,” which is valid. It’s just that there seems to be some responsibility conferred to our actions in the trolley problem, as we have the ability to change its outcome, 5 dead or 1. Many people side with utilitarianism here, but its a deep moral dilemma that is very helpful in exploring the nuances of ethical reasoning.
And basically, it has a different answer for essentially every ethical framework you apply to it 😆. At least in the moral justification. When you do look in to it, try writing down your personal feelings and reasoning, then check out the modified trolley problem with the large man and the bridge and see of your answers change. Interesting stuff.
Oh I was going to take notes and then replay The Trolley Solution to test my thoughts.
As a first pass not having looked at it as much though, I’ve always considered throwing the fat man to be immoral and murder due to the active participation needed to put him into harms way vs the passiveness of the trolley problem.
That game looks awesome, I’m definitely going to check it out.
Active participation and violation of personal autonomy are big factors in that version. It usually is enough to change the answer of people who took a more utilitarian view in the first iteration. But, they dont have any bearing on utilitarianism, so people who argue for killing the one in the first iteration are somewhat compelled to do the same in the second in order to achieve logical consistency. Otherwise there seems to be something questionable about how they reached their first answer.
It sounds like you may be more on the libertarian, Kantian side of the reasoning when it comes to human life, which I think is generally a safer place to be. But that’s the beauty of ethics, it’s all about the exploration and trying to see different viewpoints.
I’ve always viewed myself as a utilitarianist but feel it’s hard to determine a correct utilitarian choice at the small personal scale like the fat man trolley problem so I revert to a more deontological/humanist framework. Like with the fat man trolley problem a lot of people might just focus on the six people involved, but I start thinking about the news headlines, the impacted families who lost whoever, and spiral. Where do you cut it off? That’s why I feel utilitarian falls apart small scale because it’s never actually small scale.
That is the hard part with the different viewpoints is that ultimately you can arrive at the same conclusion from very different starting points so does that make them both correct or does it hint at a universal truth since both arrive at the same answer? Aaaaand where off to the depths of philosophy and why it’s still a thing lol.
The real batman would’ve anticipated this and had a plan to save all the people, and arrest the riddler. Psh
He would wait for the spiky things to appear above above the train and hit Y
Can a narcissist admit to being a narcissist? As in, wouldn’t their brain simply prevent them from being able to understand the notion let alone say it.
Related point: Once a therapist asked me if I was a perfectionist and my brain locked up. I have perfectionist tendencies. Perfectionism is generally considered a negative trait. Perfectionism thus prevented me from admitting perfectionist tendencies, but I was required by perfectionism to answer the question perfectly.
segfault in brain (core dumped).I feel the same circle of negativity towards the word “Glorious”. Although it doesn’t mean evil, I only associate it with evil people because of the virtues it expresses. It’s like a single-word oxymoron.
One of the diagnostic methods to determine whether somebody is a narcissist is to ask them whether they are a narcissist. They usually just admit it on the spot, at least in a therapy setting.
Narcissists often think their narcissism is a positive trait. And the ones who don’t may be seeing a therapist because they recognize their narcissism and want to address it.
Actually, your example with perfectionism is similar. I suspect that people usually admit to their perfectionism, and that’s why your therapist asked you plainly.
But the trolly problem doesn’t have a correct answer.
in my opinion It does so long as you keep additional information away. If you start to ask questions about the people on the tracks then everything gets messy.
5 people are going to die. Or 1 person will die. Up to you.
Two boats are sinking. You only have time to save one. Do you save the boat with more people or the boat with less?
It doesn’t have a correct answer because it’s a thought problem, to get you thinking about morality. No one is responsible for the 5 deaths, but you would be for 1 if you pulled the lever. On the other hand 5 lives vs 1.
Does your answer change if the 1 person is a child, someone you know, or any other changes. It’s a way to show everyone has different ethical and moral beliefs.
Is it ethical for a doctor to kill one healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five people in need of a transplant?
A doctor can kill whoever they want. But only for science, of course.
I’m not sure I’d want to live in that world.
But what if there are 3 sinking boats, 1 has a person you must save but the other 2 boats only have a goat on board, and you don’t know which is which. You chose 1, and it’s revealed that one of the other 2 has a goat. Do you stick to the boat you chose hoping that it has the person, or do you change to the other unknown boat?
You always switch for reasons I forget. Stupid fucking doors.
It is a math thing.
It starts with a 1/3 chance and they only show you the door if it is the wrong answer. So your first choice was 1/3 and stays that way but the other door becomes a 2/3 chance.
I still think it is weird that it works that way, but that is how it goes.
You kill one to save five.
It’s the same reason we vaccinate. The risk from vaccination is possible but statistically tiny. So everyone vaccinates so that 1 dies and 100 million are saved.
What are you even talking about. Vaccinations don’t kill people. Unless you are counting severe allergic reactions. Which can happen from any medication.
Yes a severe allergic reaction. And yes it can happen from any medicine. That other medicine could also cause death doesn’t change the argument.
These are definitely not analogous arguments, but your conclusions do both fall under a utilitarian moral umbrella. By this reasoning every individual is morally required, like the other commenter says, to do whatever is necessary to bring about the greater good for the greater number. Sounds nice on paper until you start visualizing the actual implications of the theory. Take a look at the “no rest” problem that utilitarianism leads to.
The trolley problem itself is designed to have no specifically correct answer, merely to be a vehicle (pardon my pun) for evaluating various moral frameworks, such as utilitarianism.
Ya know, if we butcher you for spare parts, we can save a few people on the donor waiting list.
What the hell are you waiting for? Seven pounds yourself.
That’s not the trolley problem. That’s Batman jumping in front of the train to save 5.
How many situations have there been in actual Batman media[1] where Batman refuses to kill someone knowing that doing so will directly cause the imminent deaths of innocent people? Not some theoretical future harm based on an assumption that a criminal will escape and kill again, a situation where subduing a criminal is not enough to prevent them from killing someone and the only way to save a life is by killing the bad guy first.[2]
The argument always seems to be that Batman should kill the Joker instead of capturing him because the Joker will escape again and thus will kill again. Of course, in-universe the Joker’s escape is not inevitable. We only know he will always escape because he is a popular villain that the writers will keep bringing back. Batman can’t know that. And even with that knowledge the argument falls apart because killing Joker won’t stop him anymore than arresting him would.
But beyond that, why is it Batman’s job to play judge, jury and executioner? And exactly how do we decide when someone is so evil and dangerous that they should be killed even if they could instead be captured and imprisoned? The whole argument starts looking a lot shakier when we take away the costumes and start applying the same logic to normal people in the real world. I suspect most of us would be uncomfortable with a cop just shooting someone instead of arresting them because they figured they’d end up back on the street at some point, or a paramedic letting an unconscious murder suspect bleed out because they might kill again.
Also, we already have Batman but he kills people. He’s called the Punisher. Somehow, despite decades of waging a much more literal war on crime, all those innocent people don’t seem to be any safer. Funny how that works.[3]
Excluding the ones that ignore the no killing rule, obviously ↩︎
The closest I can recall is a cartoon where he and several other heroes had the opportunity to kill Granny Goodness, and then later he had the opportunity to blow up Apokolips and take out Darkseid and all of his minions. The former is a somewhat questionable decision because she can’t be arrested and imprisoned, it was a choice between killing her and letting go and the harm she would inflict afterwards is predictable if not immediate. The latter is a more impactful decision, but it’s a lot harder to argue that getting everyone out alive and ending the immediate conflict is obviously morally inferior to killing an entire planet full of people (including yourself, your team and the people you came to rescue) just to take out its leaders. ↩︎
Yes, I know, this is applying meta logic again, but that’s half the point. No course of action the hero takes will ever succeed if doing so would completely undermine the core concept of an ongoing series. And without being able to rely on some out-of-universe justification to claim that the consequences will be better, it’s pretty fucking hard to argue that the Punisher’s methods are morally superior from an in-universe perspective. ↩︎
Love it. Virtue ethics vs consequentialism, arguing that virtue ethics is about moral superiority and control
Definitely feels like a straw man of virtue ethics to me. Especially as virtues ethics is less likely to have rigidly consistent actions as its result than something like natural law or kantianism. This feels like someone wrapped up all the thing they didn’t like about deontological ethics and made a cartoon about it 😄
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