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Originally Posted by archpaladin
What stops a person from taking that kind of mentality and taking it to the extreme - saying something like "because it is ok to kill one individual to save the lives of five others, then it is now ok to go out killing many for the sake of my own advancement"?
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Slippery slope argument: just because one believes that there are some instances in which [killing people, lying, cheating, torture, etc.] is acceptable does not mean that one would then be free to engage in those behaviors at any time. This inference is clearly fallacious.
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Originally Posted by archpaladin
While we may assume that some reactions by the madman are likely, in truth the person being woken up in the middle of the night has no idea what the madman will do regardless of the answer given, and thus you cannot present cause-effect scenarios as options to pick from. For example, the person might tell the truth as to where the children are, and the madman may respond with "Good. I'll be sure to avoid that room later," and never actually enter it.
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Are you trying to argue that because there is an extremely remote possibility that the madman would
not murder your children, you are justified in telling him where they are? Isn't this a bit like playing Russian roulette when you don't know how many bullets are in the revolver? Not smart, in my book.