Chidi VS Ethics | The Good Place

0:00 I say we just lie low and hope that they don't notice me.

0:03 I'm sorry.

0:03 I don't think I can help you.

0:04 I just don't like being dishonest and I can't advise you to be dishonest either.

0:09 Come on.

0:10 I'm just asking you to fudge a little bit.

0:12 You must have told a few white lies in your life.

0:14 I mean, what was your job?

0:16 I was a professor of ethics and moral philosophy.

0:19 Mother forker.

0:20 Give me a chance.

0:22 Let me earn my place here.

0:24 Let me be your ethical guinea pig.

0:27 Hey guys.

0:28 Uh, emergency neighborhood meeting now.

0:31 We'll be right there, Michael.

0:32 If I walk out of here in these clothes, I'm toast.

0:35 My soul is in your hands, soulmate.

0:38 What's it going to be?

0:43 Oh, stomach ache.

0:45 So, you're going to help me figure out how to stay, right?

0:48 Well, that is a really tough question.

0:50 Most great philosophers would say helping you is pointless.

0:53 That you can't try to be good,

0:55 especially when your motivations are so obviously corrupt.

0:58 Yeah, but what do most great philosophers know?

1:00 On the other hand, Aristotle thought that moral

1:02 virtue is something that you could get better at.

1:04 He he compared it to playing the flute.

1:06 The more you practice, the more you improve.

1:09 Aristotle, that's my boy right there.

1:11 He was the best.

1:12 I mean, most people agree he was the best one.

1:14 So, it sounds to me like you are on board the help Eleanor train.

1:19 Well, I've narrowed it down to two possibilities.

1:21 Yes and no.

1:23 Well, no worries.

1:24 Just hit me up when you're done weighing my life in your hands.

1:28 I'll just keep doing what I do best.

1:30 Being super considerate and selfless.

1:33 You cannot kill Janet.

1:35 Killing is one of the most famous moral nos.

1:41 Janet is a nonhuman object who was sent here to help us.

1:44 And the way she can help us is if we kill her.

1:47 We're doing one small murdery thing for a bigger better reason.

1:50 The ends justify the means.

1:53 Do you know who said that?

1:54 Was it someone nice and great like Oprah?

1:57 It was Machaveli, a very non Oprahike figure.

2:01 And what happens after we kill her?

2:02 We'll have to lie to everyone about what we did.

2:07 Dude, why?

2:08 Janet is fine.

2:09 We didn't harm her at all.

2:11 We didn't?

2:12 Hey, Janet.

2:14 Hello.

2:15 Hello.

2:17 Hello,

2:16 Janet.

2:16 Would you please recite the English alphabet?

2:20 A B Janet.

2:22 Chin knows AB Janets.

2:24 No, she literally knew everything in the universe.

2:26 And now she's a baby.

2:28 And even if she were okay,

2:29 it would be too painful for me to live with these lies.

2:32 What are you talking about?

2:34 It is so easy to live with a lie.

2:37 I once pretended to have a terminal illness

2:39 to meet Scott Wolf at a sunglass hut.

2:42 The victimless crime.

2:45 Fine.

2:46 I won't say anything because I promised to help you.

2:49 And the moral implications of everything that we've done

2:52 are so complicated that I may never untangle them.

2:55 But I hate lying.

2:56 I always have.

2:58 And this is going to eat me up inside forever.

3:01 You might be able to shrug this off and forget about it, but I never will.

3:07 What are you reading?

3:08 The metaphysics of morals by Emanuel Kant.

3:11 It's a treatise on the aesthetic

3:12 preconditions of the mind's receptivity to duty.

3:16 A book on how to act good.

3:18 Oh, great.

3:19 So, you've decided to help me.

3:20 I don't know.

3:21 There's a thousand questions.

3:23 Is there a moral imperative to help you?

3:26 Do I have a greater obligation to my community?

3:28 Are you taking someone else's spot?

3:30 Someone who deserves to be here.

3:32 Ooh.

3:32 On that question, I honestly think I was just

3:35 put here by mistake because Michael called me Ellaner Shellstrop.

3:39 So, he knows I'm me.

3:40 He's just wrong about my overall quality level.

3:45 Please help me, man.

3:46 I swear I am worth it.

3:49 I have spent my entire life in pursuit of fundamental truths about

3:53 the universe and now we can actually learn about them together as soulmates.

4:00 It's overwhelming.

4:02 So the concept of the self is a [music] key subject for a lot of great thinkers.

4:07 In the da ching lsu wrote knowing others

4:12 is wisdom but knowing the self is enlightenment.

4:16 Ah knowing yourself is he talking about what I think he's talking about?

4:22 No.

4:22 Eleanor once again none of these philosophers

4:25 is ever talking about masturbation.

4:28 Let's uh move on to this week's main event.

4:31 David Humes a treatise of human nature.

4:34 You read this, right?

4:35 I did.

4:36 Well, I tried to Well, I tried to want to.

4:39 Um, actually, could we postpone this lesson?

4:42 I've befriended Gianu from Next Door, and I thought I could learn from him.

4:47 That's a great idea.

4:48 Hume's bundle theory of the self is fairly close to Buddhism.

4:52 Yeah, no dur.

4:54 That's why I'm doing it.

4:56 Come on, Cheaty.

4:57 Pick someone.

4:58 Don't pressure me, Uzo.

4:59 I have to consider all the factors.

5:01 athletic strategies, the fragile egos of my classmates, and gender politics.

5:06 Should I pick a girl as a gesture towards women's equality,

5:09 or or is that pandering,

5:10 or do I think it's pandering because of my limited male point of view?

5:14 I'm vexed, so vexed.

5:16 You're always vexed.

5:18 Just pick.

5:19 Okay, fine.

5:20 I I choose Tacumbo.

5:23 You can't drop the teacher.

5:25 Pick a kid.

5:31 Come on.

5:33 Congratulations, Chitty.

5:34 You filibuster recess.

5:41 Why?

5:41 Why would I tell Henry that I liked his boots?

5:43 I don't like his boots.

5:44 I hate his boots.

5:46 Yes, I know.

5:46 You've talked about it for the last two days.

5:49 I lied to him.

5:50 You wrote your thesis on Kant.

5:51 He believed that lying is always morally wrong.

5:54 No exceptions.

5:56 Yes.

5:56 Well, Kant was a lonely, obsessive hermit with zero friends.

6:00 Sometimes we do things just to be polite.

6:02 But if you really feel that strongly about it, tell him the truth.

6:06 Also, I don't care cuz it's the middle of the night.

6:11 [sighs and gasps] This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.

6:17 They do.

6:18 The correct choice is the one that causes the most

6:20 good or pleasure and the least pain and suffering.

6:24 I like this one.

6:25 It's simple.

6:26 Gh.

6:27 Screw all the other complicated theories.

6:29 Why didn't you start with this one?

6:30 Ah, but here's the problem.

6:32 If all that matters is the sum total of goodness,

6:35 then you can justify any number of bad actions,

6:37 like torturing one innocent person to save a hundred or preemptive war.

6:41 Oh, dip.

6:42 I get it.

6:43 It's like I knew this girl, Sheila.

6:45 She was a black market alligator dealer with a pierced jawbone.

6:49 Um, okay.

6:50 What?

6:51 Sheila was going to get married to my boy

6:52 Donkey Doug and make a move to Sarasota.

6:55 It would have broken up my whole break dancing

6:57 crew and Donkey Doug was our best popping locker.

7:00 So, I hit a bunch of stolen boogie

7:02 boards in Sheila's garage and called the cops.

7:05 I framed one innocent gator dealer to save a 60 person dance crew.

7:10 Shockingly, that is a relevant example of the utilitarian dilemma.

7:14 Well done.

7:15 Thanks.

7:16 Um,

7:18 all right.

7:18 Yes, John.

7:19 Can I be excused?

7:20 Donnie's doing a brunch party and I want

7:22 to get there before all the mini waffles run out.

7:24 Go ahead, man.

7:28 Yes,

7:28 Elanor and I would love to help.

7:31 Yay, dude.

7:33 You want to prove you're not selfish?

7:34 Here's the perfect test.

7:35 There's something fun that you want to do,

7:37 and then there's something less fun that people are doing for the common good.

7:40 Which do you choose?

7:41 Now, you got a long way to go to pull this off.

7:44 It will take hours and hours of studying ethics and moral philosophy.

7:50 We're going to have assignments and quizzes and papers.

7:54 It's going to be so much fun.

7:56 Remind me what I'm getting out of this again.

7:58 You get to avoid eternal damnation.

8:00 Oh, yeah.

8:01 Right.

8:02 Imagine a group of reasonable people are coming

8:05 up with the rules for a new society.

8:07 Like if your Uber driver talks to you, the ride should be free.

8:10 Sure.

8:11 But anyone can veto any rule that they think is unfair.

8:15 So if you said we should be

8:16 able to break our promises without any repercussions,

8:20 someone would veto that rule.

8:23 Well, my first rule would be that no one can veto my rules.

8:26 Well, that's called tyranny, and it's generally frowned upon.

8:29 If you make a promise to someone, you should do it,

8:32 just like I promised to help you and still am, despite your constant mockery.

8:40 Whatever.

8:40 You love it.

8:41 What do you think about writing a rap musical about Kirkagard?

8:45 I think that's a terrible idea.

8:48 Cool.

8:50 Michael's not going to learn how to be a good person overnight.

8:53 He's not even a person.

8:54 He's just a bunch of evil shoved up the butt of an evil mannequin.

8:58 You know, teaching him to be good.

9:00 It's like teaching me how to be not hot.

9:03 How would you even do it?

9:04 You'd have me hunch or something and and stand there

9:07 and say gerp gerp gerp or I don't even know.

9:12 I can't even picture it because I've been hot my whole life.

9:15 I'm sorry.

9:15 Who is this conversation for again?

9:17 It's for you.

9:18 I believe in you, nerd boy.

9:20 If you can teach me and Jason ethics, you can teach anybody.

9:25 Thanks.

9:26 But definitely a no on the rap musical.

9:30 I mean, if you really My name is Kagard and my writing is impeccable.

9:33 Check out my teological suspension of the ethical.

9:37 No.

9:36 No.

9:36 Right.

9:37 I felt like I know when I was doing it.

9:40 Imagine being retired.

9:43 Everyone else is here but you.

9:44 Poof.

9:45 Gone.

9:46 Nothingness.

9:47 Inky black void.

9:48 Done.

9:50 Okay, I'll think about that.

10:00 Huh?

10:00 So [music] you're saying I would be no me.

10:23 Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

10:27 This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.

10:31 I'm on your side here, dude.

10:32 But he is not wrong.

10:34 Michael's wrong.

10:34 He's not the problem.

10:36 Well, Michael did bring me here,

10:38 which was the mistake that led to all the other problems.

10:41 So, in that sense, he is the real problem.

10:44 H how do you like them ethics?

10:47 I just ethics you in the face, cheaty.

10:49 It doesn't change the fact that we weren't truthful.

10:52 There's an old Chinese proverb.

10:54 Lies are like tigers.

10:56 They are bad.

10:57 That's it.

10:58 It's more poetic in Mandarin.

11:00 Okay, here's where I am on this.

11:01 We got to kill Derek.

11:03 Now, think about it.

11:04 What if Vicki calls for Janet and Derek shows up, too?

11:09 She's got to have a lot of questions that we can't answer.

11:11 But Derek does seem to be helping Janet get over Jason, right?

11:15 No earthquakes since he showed up.

11:17 If we get rid of Derek, then maybe Janet will start glitching again.

11:21 Okay, if we can't kill Derek, then we got to break up Jason into Hani.

11:25 If that relationship ends, then Janet won't feel sad anymore.

11:28 And maybe she'll get rid of Derek herself.

11:31 Girl, you are a messy bench who loves drama, and I'm into it.

11:34 I'm sorry, Michael, but that's also ethically kind of dicey.

11:38 Here comes the egg cat.

11:39 Well, look, Jason and Tahani are happy together,

11:40 and telling them that he was once married to Janet might cause them harm.

11:44 It's not permissible to to ruin their happiness to save ourselves.

11:47 Wait, but isn't keeping a secret from someone basically like lying, though?

11:51 No.

11:52 No.

11:52 It's okay to keep a secret as long as that secret isn't harming anyone.

11:55 And telling them that secret might cause harm.

11:59 Nice.

11:59 Cool.

11:59 Good point, Eggghhead.

12:00 I'll tell you what else would cause them harm.

12:03 Getting caught and being sent to the real bad place to be tortured for eternity,

12:07 which will happen if Derek blows our cover.

12:10 I know.

12:10 But we'll also be sent to the real bad place if we do bad things.

12:14 I know [music] it's tempting to take a shortcut,

12:16 but moral strength is defined by how we behave in times of stress.

12:21 Has anyone ever told you what a drag you are?

12:24 Everyone constantly.

12:27 This is an exciting day.

12:29 We are going to tackle the trolley problem.

12:31 Is this a game?

12:32 I I go first.

12:33 I call blue.

12:34 There's no This is No, this is a thought experiment first introduced

12:40 by British philosopher Philip Aoot in 1967.

12:44 You are driving a trolley when the brakes fail and on the track

12:49 ahead of you are five workmen that you will run over.

12:53 Now you can steer to another track,

12:56 but on that track is one person you would kill instead of the five.

13:01 What do you do?

13:02 Do we know anything about the people?

13:04 Like is one of them an ex-boyfriend or that snoody

13:07 girl from Raid who was always silently judging my purchases?

13:10 It's like yeah chicky a baby Ruth and birth control.

13:13 I see the irony.

13:14 Keep a swiping.

13:15 You don't know any of the workers.

13:17 Okay, well then that's easy.

13:18 I switch tracks, kill one person instead of five.

13:21 But this is hard cuz the only trolley

13:22 I've ever been on is James Franco's ironic trolley.

13:25 It travels backwards from his penguin grotto to his garage

13:27 of adult tricycles and kill one say five.

13:32 Good.

13:32 But there's a lot of other versions of this.

13:34 Like what if you knew one of the people?

13:36 Does that change the equation?

13:38 Or what if you're not the driver, you're just a bystander?

13:41 Or let's throw the trolley out.

13:42 altogether.

13:43 Let's say you're a doctor and you can save five patients,

13:48 but you have to kill one healthy person and use his organs to do it.

13:53 But that's not the same thing.

13:55 Why not?

13:56 It's still choosing to kill one person to save five, isn't it?

14:01 Michael, you've been kind of quiet.

14:03 What do you think about all this?

14:04 Well, obviously the dilemma is clear.

14:07 How do you kill all six people?

14:10 So, I would dangle a sharp blade out the window to slice the neck

14:13 of the guy on the other track as we smoosh our five main guys.

14:20 Oh, I did the thing again, didn't I?

14:23 Yep.

14:23 10 more, buddy.

14:24 People good.

14:26 People good.

14:26 Why is that so hard to remember?

14:28 People.

14:30 What is it?

14:31 Good.

14:31 Good.

14:33 Oh, God.

14:35 Michael, what did you do?

14:36 I made the trolley problem real so we

14:39 could see how the ethics would actually play out.

14:42 There are five workers on this track and one over there.

14:45 Here are the levers to switch the tracks.

14:47 Make a choice.

14:48 The thing is, I mean, ETHICALLY SPEAKING, NO TIME, DUDE.

14:51 MAKE A DECISION.

14:51 WELL, IT'S TRICKY.

14:52 I MEAN, ON THE ONE HAND, IF YOU ASCRIBE to a purely utilitarian wrong view, you

15:01 Okay, so what did we learn?

15:08 Oh, good.

15:09 You're back.

15:10 Hey, I uh I know we're short on time,

15:11 but I need your help with [music] a personal dilemma.

15:15 This is about fake Ellaner and real Ellen.

15:18 Yes.

15:19 Which person is my soulmate?

15:20 Real Ellener.

15:21 That's what the system determined.

15:25 Okay.

15:24 Of course, the system did screw up by letting fake Ellanar in.

15:29 You know, it's interesting.

15:31 Fake Elellaner being selected accidentally and then you

15:33 bonding with her could have shifted the formula.

15:37 But it's one of those two people.

15:39 Well, I I don't know.

15:41 I mean, the system might be so screwed up

15:42 at this point that maybe you don't belong to either Ellaner.

15:49 Here we've got your soulmate options.

15:51 Elellaner, real Ellen, and a theoretical third person.

15:56 Let's call her strawberry mango twist.

15:59 Okay, close your eyes.

16:01 Think about each of the women.

16:03 [snorts] Open your eyes.

16:06 The answer is real.

16:07 Elellanar, how do you know?

16:09 I don't.

16:09 But the minute I said that, you knew instinctively whether it felt right.

16:13 Well, hang on.

16:14 Let me think about that because it

16:16 No, no more thinking.

16:17 Chey, just do something.

16:19 According to the system,

16:21 either Pedro or Cheety could be

16:24 matched perfectly with either Angelique or Pavita.

16:26 So, figure it out.

16:28 Should be fun.

16:31 Cool.

16:32 Beans.

16:32 One second, guys.

16:33 Um, so so so yeah, so making decisions isn't necessarily my strong suit.

16:40 I know that, buddy.

16:41 You You once had a panic attack at a make your own Sunday bar.

16:44 There were too many toppings and very early in the process,

16:47 you had to commit to a chocolate palette or a fruit palette.

16:50 And if you couldn't decide, you wound up with kiwi,

16:52 junior mint, raisin, and just ruins everyone's night.

16:55 Judy, I am so sorry.

16:56 I literally cannot choose for you.

16:59 This has to be your decision.

17:01 Buddy, you got to trust me.

17:04 I would never place you in a painful situation.

17:10 You ready, Chey?

17:13 Here you go, cheaty.

17:14 One slice of Hawaiian straight out the oven for you.

17:17 I'm Denise.

17:18 Welcome to my pizza place.

17:19 Thanks, Denise.

17:20 And here's one for you.

17:21 Have a nice day.

17:23 It's interesting that Hawaiian pizza is so popular here.

17:26 Yeah, I guess a lot of the residents here love it.

17:28 Kind of makes you wonder what type of pizza they have in the bad place, huh?

17:31 [laughter]

17:33 So, I can't believe you studied in Brisbane.

17:35 We must have just missed each other.

17:37 What was your thesis on?

17:38 Oh gosh, it was so boring.

17:40 It was called Cultural Relativism and Moral Absolutism,

17:44 an exploration of values as seen through the works of Ela Loy Lock.

17:47 Lock and Emanuel K.

17:49 Shut up.

17:50 You read it?

17:51 No, but that pairing is the most obvious

17:53 pairing to employ in a paper with that title, and I want to read it so bad.

17:57 [laughter] What about Morocco?

18:00 You ever traveled [music] there?

18:07 No.

18:08 What about anywhere else?

18:09 You You've been anywhere else?

18:12 No.

18:14 So, first impressions?

18:16 Anyone?

18:18 I kind of want to hear what Cheety thinks.

18:20 Well, um I mean you're both brilliant,

18:24 accomplished, uh women, and Pedro, you're great, too.

18:27 Just amazing people.

18:28 I'm surrounded.

18:30 But if I had to say who I sort of immediately bonded to on a gut level,

18:38 I think I would say that I kind

18:42 of feel like my soulmate is UNIQUE in the calculations.

18:51 We had a 4-hour time gap in your profiles on May 10th, 2003.

18:55 I corrected that day's events for all of you and ran the numbers again.

18:59 And the final result proves definitively

19:02 that Pedro is Angelique soulmate and cheaty, your soulmate is Pavita.

19:09 That was close.

19:12 Hey, you guys hadn't made a decision yet, had you?

19:14 No, we did not.

19:15 No one No one said anything.

19:16 I didn't hear anything, and I certainly didn't say anything.

19:18 That's for darn sure.

19:20 [laughter]

19:23 Let's try again.

19:25 Oh, I I I thought maybe we would have a discussion.

19:28 No, the whole point is to play out the scenario in real time.

19:31 WAIT, JUDY, WHAT'S YOUR DECISION?

19:33 OKAY.

19:33 OKAY, I can do this.

19:34 I am choosing to switch tracks so that way I only kill one person.

19:39 Oh, I forgot to tell you this is

19:41 the scenario where you actually know one of the people.

19:44 It's your friend Henry there.

19:46 Cheaty, how are you, mate?

19:48 Henry, move.

19:49 Oh, nice trolley.

19:51 Get out of the way.

19:51 I can't cheat.

19:52 My boots are stuck in the trash.

19:55 Anyway, LONG TIME NO.

19:58 Oh my god.

19:59 [screaming] Again, just a simulation.

20:03 An almost impossibly lifelike simulation.

20:07 Would someone's foot really fly off their body like that?

20:10 That was kind of cool.

20:12 Ethically speaking,

20:14 this is your ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the center of decision-making.

20:19 This is where the magic happens.

20:21 Do you see how it's all lit up?

20:23 That's a flurry of activity that occurred when

20:24 I asked you to choose between red and blue, and you almost passed out.

20:27 Is it too late to pick blue instead?

20:30 It is.

20:31 Yeah.

20:31 Point is, at first glance, your brain is very healthy.

20:35 Oh, there are actual answers here.

20:38 Data you can observe and learn from.

20:40 Yeah, man.

20:41 Science is all about getting answers.

20:43 You philosophers can spend your entire life mulling over a single question.

20:47 [music] That's why everyone hates moral philosophy professors.

20:50 Not a fantasy.

20:51 No, nothing taken.

20:52 We suck.

20:52 Yeah.

20:53 [laughter]

21:02 Jatie, one blueberry muffin, please.

21:03 So, why do it then?

21:04 [music] Why choose to be good every day?

21:07 I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people.

21:11 [music] Simply put, we are not in this alone.

21:15 Thank you.

21:17 [applause] Wow.

21:19 Gi, you chose that muffin in less than a minute.

21:23 That beats your old record by 59 minutes.

21:26 Henry, I feel amazing.

21:28 I am 100 pages into my new thesis,

21:30 and it is some of the best writing that I have ever done.

21:32 I haven't been this happy since Oh, wow.

21:37 I've never been happy, huh?

21:40 Bad.

21:41 I'm proud of you, mate.

21:42 Must be really nice to live that way.

21:44 Well, that's the beauty of it.

21:45 Anyone can live this way.

21:46 just decide to be more decisive.

21:49 Like what's something that you've always wanted to do?

21:51 I mean, I have been putting off getting in shape.

21:54 Then make the decision to wake up tomorrow morning and get in shape.

21:58 It is that easy.

22:00 Okay, maybe I will.

22:01 Wait, what have you got to lose?

22:04 Nothing.

22:05 Henry, what happened to you?

22:07 Well, I was using the leg press at the gym,

22:09 and you know how your legs bend a certain way?

22:13 My legs bend the other way now.

22:15 Oh, no.

22:15 All the tendons in my legs snapped like violin strings and then my foot

22:19 flew forwards and I kicked myself in the face which gave me a concussion.

22:23 This is all my fault.

22:25 I did this to you.

22:26 Uh muffins.

22:27 I brought blueberry muffins.

22:30 Oh no.

22:30 You shouldn't eat blueberries anymore.

22:32 Read an article.

22:32 The migrant workers who pick them are horribly mistreated.

22:41 Dude, what the These five people all need organ transplants or they will die.

22:45 Elellanar's perfectly healthy.

22:47 Cheaty, do you want to slice her open

22:49 and use her organs to save the five sick people?

22:51 Cheaty.

22:51 Cheaty.

22:52 Think about this.

22:52 I'm your hottest friend.

22:54 No, Tahani.

22:55 I'm your nicest f.

22:56 No, Jason.

22:57 I'm your friend.

22:58 I I won't do it.

23:00 [music] As a doctor, I have taken the hypocratic oath to do no harm.

23:03 And although five people will die,

23:04 I cannot harm one innocent person to save them and forsake my oath.

23:08 It's unethical.

23:11 Okay, tell their families what?

23:17 Dr.

23:17 Chy, my daddy needed a heart transplant.

23:21 Did you save his life?

23:23 He was working.

23:24 Then a really bad man ran him over with the trolley.

23:28 Oh, come on.

23:30 I hate this.

23:31 And [music] I'm sorry.

23:34 And And did I did I say that I hate this?

23:35 Because I hate this.

23:36 You don't need to apologize for making

23:38 a huge sacrifice to save [music] your friends.

23:42 This is why people love moral philosophy professors.

23:44 [music]