Welcome to Steemit. Your writing is concise and clear and your questions intriguing. I think you'll do well here. This is exactly the type of quality content that I endorse. People need to think.
First off, I think it's a mistake to assign value to human life. At any given point in time, you cannot determine how the life in question will unfold.
In the car example, you could have offered a third option: drive off the road and be killed yourself, but you didn't.
Obviously, most of us would take out the old lady. You might be doing her a favor, quickly ending a painful life already lived that is destined to end soon anyway. That's the obvious choice. However, the girl might grow up to father a psychopathic dictator who kills many millions of people and the old woman might be a sage who hasn't yet disseminated her vast store of life experience, a Christ-like persona who would ultimately foster a kinder, gentler world. You just cannot know.
The second example deals with judgement. Few would argue that Albert Einstein was an evil man, but his contribution to knowledge ultimately led to the atom bomb which killed hundreds of thousands of people and will probably kill millions more.
Muammar Gaddafi was a brutal dictator who took Libya from the poorest nation in Africa to the richest, ending years of tribal warfare to foster peace and prosperity for his people his entire life, elevating the living standards of everyone within his sphere of influence. After his death, Libya has returned to perpetual war.
Even collectively, who are we to judge the value of any human life? That's a psychopathic trait. We cannot see the future. Neither can we avoid creating waves in the world. We're like pebbles dropped into a pond. There will be ripples that radiate outward from our landing point that will disappear over the horizon of our life's time span. It's the butterfly effect and we don't have much control over it.
Yes, we do what we can to make this a better world. I have a code of ethics that I rigidly adhere to. It's taken many years of trial and error to arrive at my code, but it's where I am now. My butterfly effect (hopefully) is to get people to stop reacting to their programming and to begin to think for themselves. I don't know if this will make the world a better place or a worse place or will have no effect whatsoever. I leave that to the people of the future who will reevaluate the past.
Followed, upvoted and resteemed. I'm looking forward to much more from you.
Thanks a lot for the warm welcome, support and resteem!
I agree that in reality it's impossible (especially due to our inability to foresee the future, as you pointed out well) and unwise to determine the value of a human life, but in some hypothetical cases we would simply have to make some decisions that would show what human life we consciously or unconsciously consider more valuable, and that's intriguing to me both as a philosophical and as a psychological topic.
"In the car example, you could have offered a third option: drive off the road and be killed yourself, but you didn't." - Wow, nice note, that would be an interesting addition! (and now I wonder: maybe I'm not altruistic enough to even consider that option, and that's why I haven't remembered to include it :/)
One fun fact about the unintentional damage done by inventors to millions of people: Ethan Zuckerman, the man who discovered pop-up advertisement, has publicly apologized a number of times for his annoying discovery. : )
"We're like pebbles dropped into a pond. There will be ripples that radiate outward from our landing point that will disappear over the horizon of our life's time span." - Nicely put! I think that your (hopeful) butterfly effect is something that can leave a positive impact on the society, go for it!
Cheers!