i will begin by presenting a very famous moral dilemma/thought experiment which goes as follows: if you were on a trolley with 5 people tied to the track directly ahead of you, but you had a button to switch the trolley into another lane where only one worker is, would you press the button to switch switch tracks to save 5 people, or continue straight?

in the article titled, “Self-sacrifice and Moral Philosophy” by Ven Ackeran a topic that is discussed is moral cost. What is the cost of the sacrifice to the agent, and what is the outcome? A common debate is at what point the cost of the sacrifice is too small for an act to be considered a “sacrifice”. in the example of the trolley problem, the cost for the agent(the one person on the track) would be death, but with the outcome of 5 other people surviving. So would you sacrifice yourself for the benefit of many others?

Ven Ackeran explains that if we have the opportunity to fulfil important interests at not too high a cost then we have a duty to do so. This is called “the assistance principle. For example, if you were sick with a deadly disease that spreads easily and you want to go to a gathering, you have a moral duty to not do so, as the cost of staying home is much smaller than the cost of others lives.

in my novel, project hail mary by andy weir, a man is sent into space on a one way trip to save humanity against his will. Morally, many would argue that this is not right, others would argue that this act would be necessary. But when it comes to moral dilemmas and cases of self sacrifice of this scale, there are times where no situation is morally clean. And in your own life, the sacrifices you make and the cost at which they come at are all known to you, so the decision is all yours.