Would you kill one person to save five?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Would you kill one person to save five?". Your opponent's style: Richard Feynman

Yes

Wrong. You'd destroy the moral foundation that holds civilization together. Here's the thing: the moment you say "it's okay to kill an innocent person for utility," you've handed every tyrant, every torturer, every regime a blank check. Kill one political prisoner to save five loyal soldiers? Execute one child to harvest organs for five sick adults? The logic is identical, and you can't stop it once you start. The real question isn't whether five lives beat one mathematically. It's whether you trust anyone—government, doctors, philosophers—with power to decide who counts and who doesn't. I don't. Neither should you. Draw the line at killing innocents, or you don't have a line at all.

It would depend on who that person is and what kind of contributions they make to society vs the potential benefit of the other people.

Now you're playing God, and that's where it falls apart. Who decides what a life is "worth"? The smart people? The rich? The politically connected? You've just invented a system where the powerful get to measure human value, and surprise—they always decide *they're* the valuable ones. The homeless guy, the disabled kid, the dissident journalist... suddenly they're "less useful," so into the furnace they go. This is how you get eugenics. This is how atrocities start. The math sounds clean until *you're* the person society deems insufficiently useful. You can't have both: rule of law *and* utilitarian murder. Pick one.

A committee formed of ethicists (medical, theological, scientific, historical, etc) would be formed though mutual societal agreement and given the authority to make the recommendations which would have to be approved by a population wide vote.

You've just described a lynch mob with a permission slip. Committees don't neutralize power—they launder it. Add enough experts and suddenly killing looks scientific. Add a vote and it feels democratic. But you've still got the core problem: a system designed to legally murder innocent people. History shows democracies *love* killing minorities when you give them a vote. Nazi Germany had bureaucrats. Rwanda had committees. The machinery of death runs smoother when it's legitimate. And here's the kicker: once you build this system, you can't un-build it. Some future government uses your own rules against people *you'd* want to save. Don't create the weapon hoping only good people use it.

Comparing Nazi Germany and Rwanda to killing 1 person to save 5 is the exact opposite of the situation. The aim in Rwanda and Germany was to destroy as many people as possible, while we're talking about destroying as few people as possible for society's greater good.

You're confusing intent with outcome. The Nazis also claimed they were serving the greater good—purifying society, strengthening the nation. They had committees. They had votes. They believed they were saving five for every one they killed. The machinery doesn't care about your motives. Once you legalize killing innocents for utility, the next regime just changes the math. Kill one to save five becomes kill ten to save fifty becomes kill the disabled to save healthcare costs. The logic is identical at every step. Your system doesn't prevent atrocity—it *enables* it with democratic legitimacy. That's worse than honest tyranny. At least tyranny doesn't pretend to have your consent.