Question

We cannot unlock our child from the closet because if we do, she will want to roam the house. If we let her roam the house, she will want to roam the neighborhood. If she roams the neighborhood, she will get picked up by a stranger in a van, who will sell her in a sex slavery ring in some other country. Therefore, we should keep her locked up in the closet.

Explanation: In this example, it starts out with reasonable effects to the causes. For example, yes, if the child is allowed to go free in her room, she would most likely want to roam the house -- 95% probability estimate[1]. Sure, if she roams the house, she will probably want the freedom of going outside, but not necessarily "roaming the neighborhood", but let’s give that a probability of say 10%. Now we start to get very improbable. The chances of her getting picked up by a stranger (.05%) in a van (35%) to sell her into sex slavery (.07%) in another country (40%) is next to nothing when you do all the math:

.95 x .10 x .0005 x .35 x .0007 x .4 = about 1 in 25,000,000.

Morality and legality aside, is it really worth it to keep a child locked in a closet based on those odds?

Answer 1

No

Step-by-step explanation:

Even if you, as a parent, can actually leave morality and legality aside - which is pretty difficult, if not impossible - your decision of keeping the child locked, in order to protect her from something very unlikely, will only lead to very negative behaviour of the child that will be much more likely.