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The Last of Us (HBO Spoilers)


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Even if you're not talking about the doom of the entire species you're still talking about avoiding a whole lot of human deaths down the road. Given that infected don't actually appear to be that hideously dangerous to take on - 2 preteens kill one, and a pregnant woman kills another, and neither took anything more than a bite - there are a large amount of avoidable deaths. That those infections then endanger others is even worse. 

So this becomes a trolley problem with a potential value of killing thousands or millions of humans down the road. How much is one person's life worth in that scheme?

And again, this completely ignores the other aspect, which is that it is what Ellie wants. My wife pointed out that the ending would be significantly more powerful if Joel asked her directly or Ellie told Joel directly at some point in the past that this is what she wanted - that if given the chance she would sacrifice anything to stop the infection. And Joel just...does what he does anyway. That is basically what is the case anyway save that Ellie doesn't say it right to his face - but we know. And we know Joel knows. This isn't some infant child that you're sacrificing; this is a person with actual thoughts and feelings and experiences and is entirely ignored because Joel can't deal with losing someone again. 

It's also an interesting parallel. Joel has lost so much and cannot bear to lose again; Ellie has lost so much and will do anything to prevent anyone else losing like she did. 

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The trolley problem presents as inevitable the death of two sets of people. The point here is that Ellie's death is not inevitable, they are putting her on the tracks and aiming the trolley at her. It's immoral. 

As I said, Joel lying to Ellie is wrong. That said, the Fireflies murdering her is more wrong. His saving her is morally and ethically correct.

Arguably, if Ellie willingly agreed to die for the chance of saving people, then yes, preventing that would be wrong. That said, doctors today won't take a kidney from a person who has only one to save someone else, or unleash a chain of kidney donations that could conceivably save dozens., even if the person volunteers to do so. "Do no harm" is part of what doctors are supposed to very much believe, so the doctor in The Last of Us was himself acting unethically within the gamut of what his profession actually entails.

It would have been good to have a scene where Ellie said she was willing to die if it meant saving humanity, though, I'll give you that. But still, the Fireflies not giving her the choice was unethical and Joel was right to stop them.

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30 minutes ago, Ran said:

The trolley problem presents as inevitable the death of two sets of people. The point here is that Ellie's death is not inevitable, they are putting her on the tracks and aiming the trolley at her. It's immoral. 

Except by not having a cure that does, actually, doom a whole lot of people. Maybe not right that second, but it certainly does. 

30 minutes ago, Ran said:

As I said, Joel lying to Ellie is wrong. That said, the Fireflies murdering her is more wrong. His saving her is morally and ethically correct.

Despite her wishes? Despite it actually having the chance to save millions of lives? I don't see this remotely as as cut and dried as you do, and it's certainly clear that is not the intent of the creators nor was it particularly accurate with respect to how people received it. Joel isn't just lying to Ellie, he is deliberately circumventing her wishes - and he is doing so with the goal of saving her life when she doesn't want it to be saved. Even if no additional lives were to be saved this would be a gross violation of someone else's wishes. Are you okay with ignoring people's DNR requests then? 

30 minutes ago, Ran said:

Arguably, if Ellie willingly agreed to die for the chance of saving people, then yes, preventing that would be wrong. That said, doctors today won't take a kidney from a person who has only one to save someone else, or unleash a chain of kidney donations that could conceivably save dozens., even if the person volunteers to do so. "Do no harm" is part of what doctors are supposed to very much believe, so the doctor in The Last of Us was himself acting unethically within the gamut of what his profession actually entails.

 

It would have been good to have a scene where Ellie said she was willing to die if it meant saving humanity, though, I'll give you that. But still, the Fireflies not giving her the choice was unethical and Joel was right to stop them.

I think that the hippocratic oath here is a bit less relevant than you might expect given requirements in combat and emergency medicine. I'm also pretty sure there's no medical board of ethics that exists to enforce it. Basing your decisions on rules set in a non-apocalyptic setting is an obvious appeal to authority fallacy. 

The fireflies are certainly acting unethically too - but that doesn't mean what Joel did was right. And it ABSOLUTELY doesn't mean that what he did was right with Marlene at the end - where after rescuing Ellie from immediate harm he still makes the choice to execute her despite there being no actual immediate threat. At the point where she's out of immediate danger any ethical value he was performing stops, and it just becomes him being selfish. 

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27 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Except by not having a cure that does, actually, doom a whole lot of people. Maybe not right that second, but it certainly does. 

They do not know that she is the cure. They do not know that the cure requires her death. They do not know anything about what they are going to do. They have a certain belief that they are dead set on following this path despite there being no particular urgency in not fully exploring their options.

And then they are choosing to put her on the tracks. She is not some random victim, she is their victim. That makes it immoral.

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Despite her wishes? '

Her wishes were not asked by the Fireflies. It is clear from what Marlene says that Ellie does not know what's going to happen to her. It's clear from the conversation when she wakes up that she did not know what they intended. This is a reflection of the scene with the little girl in the first episode, except Ellie is certainly old enough to give informed consent, but they deny that to her.

It may in fact be true that if she had been asked, she would have volunteered anyways. But they did not know it, and could not know it. Hence Joel was right to stop them. They should have asked her.

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I think that the hippocratic oath here is a bit less relevant than you might expect given requirements in combat and emergency medicine. 

Triage is the trolley problem. But this is not the trolley problem. Triage is not murdering people, it's saying that the reality is you have a limited resource and you have to decide whose hurts you will not contend with and whose hurts you will. You are not doing harm, you are deciding whom to refuse help to, which is a different thing. You're choosing inaction, not active harm.

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Just now, Ran said:

They do not know that she is the cure. They do not know that the cure requires her death. They do not know anything about what they are going to do.

And then they are choosing to put her on the tracks. She is not some random victim, she is their victim. That makes it immoral.

Sure! But that doesn't make what Joel does moral. I'm 100% in agreement that what the fireflies are doing is not moral. I do not concur that this implies opposing it (especially as Joel actually does) is therefore moral. 

Just now, Ran said:

Her wishes were not asked by the Fireflies. It is clear from what Marlene says that Ellie does not know what's going to happen to her. It's clear from the conversation when she wakes up that she did not know what they intended.

It may in fact be true that if she had been asked, she would have volunteered anyways. But they did not know it, and could not know it. Hence Joel was right to stop them. They should have asked her.

And once Joel does stop the immediate threat any moral value he has gained is lost. He has the opportunity to ask her at that point. He has the opportunity to let Marlene talk with her at that point. He chooses not to. 

Just now, Ran said:

Triage is the trolley problem. But this is not the trolley problem. Triage is not murdering people, it's saying that the reality is you have a limited resource and you have to decide whose hurts you will not contend with and whose hurts you will. You are not doing harm, you are deciding whom to refuse help to, which is a different thing. You're choosing inaction, not active harm.

The limited resource is obviously Ellie's life; I think this is just deliberately obtuse. And in this case, the 'murdering Ellie' is not the goal - it is simply that without killing her you cannot save the others.

That said, the gamey thing sucks here more than anything else. There is no real reason that they should need to start with this level of urgency and lack of caution. At least not without a lot more passport scenes telling us that this is the only way. As it stands we get Joel knocked out for an hour and then right to the open brain vivisection. It adds this bizarre artificial urgency that serves only to (vaguely) justify Joel's emergent action. I guess that's fair - people are stupid that way sometimes - but given they have basically one shot at this if they kill Ellie then it seems really dumb to be so abrupt. And if they're going to be that abrupt they should just kill Joel instead of doing any fucking around and letting him go.

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I get why people are debating ethics, but at the end of the day, doubt Joel was thinking about any of that.  There was no debate for him.  Like Kal said -

2 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

he begins and ends with his family and the people he loves, and his inability to say goodbye to them.

Its not like he was taking the time to go back and forth and weigh the pros and cons of different paths.  He wasn't going to lose her, end of discussion for him.

Also -

2 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

But the problem with all of this is that Joel is not doing it for Ellie; he's doing it for himself. . . .

for him there is no choice. He is not going to lose Ellie, even if it is what Ellie wants.

I guess where we differ is that, while I know that robbing Ellie of her choice is probably wrong and unfair to her, I also understand Joel and think I would have done the same thing as him if it was one of my kids. 

I don't know, its pretty complex.  In the end, he's both the hero in some ways and the villain in others.  All I can say is that I get why he did it, and my inclination would be to do the same, regardless of the consequences.

2 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

The show inadvertently jumps into an even more poignant morally relevant story because of this. 

Curious what you mean here.  I don't think it was inadvertent - seems pretty intentional.

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18 minutes ago, Ran said:

Triage is the trolley problem. But this is not the trolley problem. Triage is not murdering people, it's saying that the reality is you have a limited resource and you have to decide whose hurts you will not contend with and whose hurts you will. You are not doing harm, you are deciding whom to refuse help to, which is a different thing. You're choosing inaction, not active harm.

One of the sequence of scenarios in the trolley problem involves pushing a rotund individual off a bridge to stop the trolley in its tracks - murdering the rotund individual to save five other individuals.

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1 minute ago, Whiskeyjack said:

Also -

I guess where we differ is that, while I know that robbing Ellie of her choice is probably wrong and unfair to her, I also understand Joel and think I would have done the same thing as him if it was one of my kids. 

I don't know, its pretty complex.  In the end, he's both the hero in some ways and the villain in others.  All I can say is that I get why he did it, and my inclination would be to do the same, regardless of the consequences.

I think this is one of the best things that the story does. I can 100% disagree with Joel's choice and also 100% understand why Joel, specifically, made that choice. He is doing the wrong thing, IMO, and it is entirely correct for Joel to do so. He would not let Ellie die no matter the cost.

The inarguably bad thing, IMO, is treating Ellie like an object instead of like a person and not remotely respecting her wishes. 

1 minute ago, Whiskeyjack said:

Curious what you mean here.  I don't think it was inadvertent - seems pretty intentional.

I mean since Dobbs the idea of a person losing their right to choose is a lot more directly meaningful than it was when the game came out in 2013. Ignoring what Ellie wants was always going to be an issue, and putting the burden on her of potentially being the savior or damnation of the human race without any actual choice in the matter is bad - but it hits even harder given current events, at least in the US. 

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7 minutes ago, IFR said:

One of the sequence of scenarios in the trolley problem involves pushing a rotund individual off a bridge to stop the trolley in its tracks - murdering the rotund individual to save five other individuals.

That's definitely much more obviously immoral. If you want to jump off the bridge to try and save them with your body, that's okay, but using other people as instruments is unquestionably immoral in that scenario. 

 

18 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

The limited resource is obviously Ellie's life; I think this is just deliberately obtuse. And in this case, the 'murdering Ellie' is not the goal - it is simply that without killing her you cannot save the others.

She is not an instrument! She is a person. A doctor may be a resource or may have have a limited resource that is inanimate and has no will -- a life-saving medicine, -- and has a responsibility to try and decide its use in a moral way. But they cannot decide how to use someone else in a moral way. That person has to be able to give informed consent, and this was denied to Ellie, presumably because they would never allow her to not consent and didn't see the point of asking.

Joel slaughtering the Fireflies and getting Ellie out was simply, clearly, morally right. His refusing to allow a person who had lied to Ellie to try and weasel her way out of the situation is at best arguable, but I sure the hell wouldn't have trusted Marlene given how she treated Joel and Ellie. (I gather the game is even worse in its treatment of Joel, as Marlene allows him to leave... without any equipment at all, which is basically a death sentence in itself.)

So for me, the point where Joel is in the wrong is when he lies to Ellie, and doubles down on it. He should tell her. But prior to that, he is morally in the right. Utilitarianism in its extremes simply encourages evil.

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I think the TV show also made a worldbuilding choice early on that makes the situation somewhat nonsensical versus the game. In the game you can get infected by fungal spores, which can crop up almost anywhere. Humanity can constantly be reinfected even if every fungi-zombie was killed. Defending against the spores is quite difficult.

In the show they decided to eliminate the spore issue, apparently as they found it logistically cumbersome in the storytelling and having to put everyone in masks and it'd also be kinda vague if we were supposed to be worrying about spores at one point or another. At that point it's a logistical zombie-management issue, and a weakness of most zombie fiction is that once humanity, with all its inventiveness, gets over the initial shock of the zombie outbreak, it quickly can get its shit together and manage the zombie problem and eventually reduce it to a very manageable level (i.e. The Walking Dead eventually restoring civilisation, kind of).

From that POV, the fungi problem is nowhere near as omnipresent and ongoing as it is in the game. If anything, that change should have made the whole situation nowhere near as bad as it appears, but I don't think they really thought through the ramifications of that.

7 hours ago, IFR said:

But overall the strengths of the show made me overlook some of the sillier elements. Of the recent shows, I think House of the Dragon - despite its flaws - was a better series. Better Call Saul and Andor remain the clear winners as the top seasons of the last 12 months.

Yup, this was a very decent show but we've had those two shows plus Reservation Dogs' second season (even better than the first) and the last season - almost the last two seasons - of Atlanta, which have all been stronger in the last year.

It is the best live-action video game adaptation to date (I would rank Arcane as a stronger show in animation, but it's arguable if that's even an adaptation given the lack of narrative in the game), easily, and a very solid B-tier HBO show. Not troubling The Wire or Deadwood or The Sopranos but certainly proud to stand alongside House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones-on-average.

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I'd also say Edgerunners was a stronger adaptation than Last of Us as far as video games to shows go. 

Last of Us is probably the best live-action adaptation, though again the source material and the shot-for-shot remaking did not make that particularly hard. 

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9 minutes ago, Ran said:

She is not an instrument! She is a person. A doctor may have a limited resource that is inanimate and has no will -- a life-saving medicine, their own skill -- and has a responsibility to try and decide its use in a moral way. But they cannot decide how to use someone else in a moral way.

I disagree, especially when you're talking about that person consenting. Otherwise you can't justify things like organ donations or bone marrow transplants - all of them have some risk to the person. 

It's also a very narrow definition of morality and ethics based solely on current working conditions. AND it ignores scale; every action is either moral or immoral without any consideration. It's a very limited moral framework. Chidi would not be pleased.

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

Joel slaughtering the Fireflies and getting Ellie was right. His refusing to allow a person who had lied to Ellie to try and weasel her way out of the situation is at best arguable, but I sure the hell wouldn't have trusted Marlene given how she treated Joel and Ellie.

So for me, the point where Joel is in the wrong is when he lies to Ellie, and doubles down on it.

When did Marlene and the fireflies lie to Ellie? The best thing I can think is that she lied by omission, but my understanding is that Marlene didn't know about what it would do to Ellie until she got there and they started talking about it. It certainly isn't clear that Marlene knew about this in Boston.

Side note - why send Joel with Ellie when Marlene can apparently conjure up 5 random people to drive her out to Reno or wherever they were anyway? That whole basis seems flawed. IIRC she sent Joel because she expected he'd only be going to the other place outside of Boston and it'd be quick, but it seems given how important it is that she didn't do a great job prioritizing. 

Side side note: I continue to think keeping Marlene alive and not actually present at the end would have set things up a lot better down the road. Especially as a future antagonist. 

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7 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I'd also say Edgerunners was a stronger adaptation than Last of Us as far as video games to shows go. 

Last of Us is probably the best live-action adaptation, though again the source material and the shot-for-shot remaking did not make that particularly hard. 

Edgerunners isn't an adaptation of the game, although it does use a lot of its locations. The story is completely different, and the video game itself is an adaptation of the tabletop game (and the anime gives a huge-font credit to Mike Pondsmith over the video game).

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3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Edgerunners isn't an adaptation of the game, although it does use a lot of its locations. The story is completely different, and the video game itself is an adaptation of the tabletop game (and the anime gives a huge-font credit to Mike Pondsmith over the video game).

I mean, it kind of is? Guess it depends on what you mean by adaptation; I think it's at least as much an adaptation as Arcane is. Is the Mario movie that's coming up an adaptation? Is Sonic? 

Especially for something like Cyberpunk 2077, where the characters are not as important as the setting, theme, the major players and the like. 

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23 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I mean, it kind of is? Guess it depends on what you mean by adaptation; I think it's at least as much an adaptation as Arcane is. Is the Mario movie that's coming up an adaptation? Is Sonic? 

Especially for something like Cyberpunk 2077, where the characters are not as important as the setting, theme, the major players and the like. 

After they retconned a few references and quests in, I think the best way of describing it is that Edgerunners is a (non-essential) prequel to Cyberpunk 2077.

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Watched a couple of episodes there, but why on earth should anyone really bother with a show where nutjob prepper Nazis live the good life post-apocalypse, discover they are gay and find 'true love'?

I mean, seriously, why would I care?

Also, of course, the shithead societal setting? 20+ years after the fact and people still live in ruined cities, eating canned stuff that should be unediable for the most part by then?

The one realistic scenario is the fort-like commune where Joel's brother lives - anything else is just nonsense. Survivors would not live in ruins where the monsters could easily hide, they would move to empty areas that are easily defendable.

And, of course, nobody on earth would bother with a place like fucking Boston if they are at the coast. They would move to an island off the coast, clean it of the Infected, and then rebuild from there. A fascist regime in a society where there is effectively a lot of space and resources for everyone also makes not the slightest sense. Neither do evil raiders and stuff, considering the danger the Infected pose. People would work together and cooperate. And troublemakers would quickly learn the cost of messing things up.

The most ridiculous aspect was the portrayal of the revolutionaries in Kansas City ... and the notion that the FEDRA folks there somehow were able to drive the Infected underground ... but could somehow not kill them. How could that possibly work?

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

They do not know that she is the cure. They do not know that the cure requires her death. They do not know anything about what they are going to do. They have a certain belief that they are dead set on following this path despite there being no particular urgency in not fully exploring their options.

I wouldn't say there's no urgency.  They live in a highly dangerous world where life is cheap, and they're currently occupying a hospital with working power and, presumably, medicine.  They'd be an obvious target, and that's not even getting into the constant threat that the infected pose, even to Ellie.  She may not turn if they bite her, but as they said early on, that won't stop an infected from tearing her apart.  Every day they hold off on doing what they feel they need to do in order to manufacture a cure is a day that their surgeon may be killed or Ellie may die.

That, of course, doesn't mean they had to kill her the same day.  I just think it's false to say there's no urgency here.  They've likely been working on a cure for close to twenty years and this is the closest they've come.

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1 minute ago, briantw said:

I wouldn't say there's no urgency.  They live in a highly dangerous world where life is cheap, and they're currently occupying a hospital with working power and, presumably, medicine.  They'd be an obvious target, and that's not even getting into the constant threat that the infected pose, even to Ellie.  She may not turn if they bite her, but as they said early on, that won't stop an infected from tearing her apart.  Every day they hold off on doing what they feel they need to do in order to manufacture a cure is a day that their surgeon may be killed or Ellie may die.

That, of course, doesn't mean they had to kill her the same day.  I just think it's false to say there's no urgency here.  They've likely been working on a cure for close to twenty years and this is the closest they've come.

Eh. That's vaguely reasonable but also Ellie is the most valuable thing on the planet as far as they're concerned. It is exceptionally risky to do the most dangerous and unrepeatable procedure first before doing literally anything else.

And it doesn't jive with keeping Joel alive either; they can't both be so worried about time that they must rush to eviscerate someone's brain AND also be totes cool with releasing a ridiculously dangerous man out in the wild after telling him they're killing his adoptive daughter he's spent trauma bonding the last year with. 

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3 minutes ago, briantw said:

That, of course, doesn't mean they had to kill her the same day.  I just think it's false to say there's no urgency here.  They've likely been working on a cure for close to twenty years and this is the closest they've come.

Which would make taking all proper time with her far more important rather than rushing in and botching it. I's genuinely dumb that they don' first propose some sort of biopsy to collect a bit of brain-and-fungus and use that for their research. I don't understand in what universe they somehow need the whole brain to do anything useful.

 

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