View Poll Results: Which event would you prevent from happening?

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  • Save your best friend from being killed in a car crash.

    5 35.71%
  • Save an airplane of a few hundred people from crashing in the ocean.

    2 14.29%
  • Stop an earthquake in Peru from destroying a town of a few thousand.

    7 50.00%
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Thread: You can prevent one event from happening. Which do you choose.

  1. #1
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    • Former Cid's Knight

    Question You can prevent one event from happening. Which do you choose.

    A moral choice question poised to me when back in college when I was studying psychology. There is no right answer, but I would love if people actually explained why they made their choice.

  2. #2
    Trial by Wombat Bubba's Avatar
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    • Former Cid's Knight

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    I don't understand how this is a difficult choice. Of course, you save the maximum amount of people. Even if my best friend was given these choices, I would expect him to choose the last one even though it would mean I would die.

  3. #3

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    I would certainly want to save my friend over the others, but they would probably be resentful about me choosing them over others.

    "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."



  4. #4
    Huh? Flower?! What the hell?! Administrator Psychotic's Avatar
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    My first thought was save my best friend. I am selfish and I am putting my own interests at heart, who cares about some strangers? Then I had a thought - whenever there is a catastrophe, so a plane crash, a terrorist attack, anything like that, you always end up hearing about the victims afterwards. You read about them, and their lives, and the sadness their family is suffering, and it is hard not to find it soul destroying as it is - I shudder to think of how I would carry that weight if I could've stopped it. I think that would outweigh my sadness at my own personal loss.

    As Peru has the most amount of deaths, that would be the most amount of suffering, so I voted for it... except... how often do you actually hear about the victims of natural disasters in countries outside of the western world? You would hear a lot more about the couple hundred western lives lost in a plane crash (I'm assuming it's a western plane here) than you would about thousands of lives lost in Peru. I'm not saying that's the right way for us to focus our attention, I'm just saying that's how it is. I have no idea who died in the Mexico earthquakes; I know a lot about the lives of people who died in Las Vegas.

    Don't take this the wrong way, I am not saying in any way a western life is worth more than anyone else's. In fact, let's clarify: all lives are equal. As far as a greater good scenario goes, Peru is the clear winner and that's why I voted for it. But I think the plane crash and the exposure to all of the victims and their families through the media would have the most profound impact on me, even if there were fewer deaths.

  5. #5
     Master of the Fork Cid's Knight Freya's Avatar
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    I'd save the most people I can.

    While losing my best friend would wreck me, thousands of people losing their best friends would be horrendous. I have personal attachment to one person but all those thousands who died also had people just like me who were attached to them. I couldn't live with myself to cause such strife on so many people. Sorry Justy

  6. #6
    Steve Steve Steve Steve Iceglow's Avatar
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    I'm not going to lie, this wasn't even difficult for me. I would unequivocably and without hesitation save my best friend. The reason why is simple:

    I am selfish and the value I would put on my best friend's life compared to those of strangers is immeasurable. You could stack the numbers of strangers as high as you like but my best friend, would outweigh them all.

    Now if the situation of this thread were to be a reality and the life of my best friend cost approximately 3000 people (considering a couple of thousand is 2000 (approx) and the plane would for dramatic purposes be a 747 or bigger which means 4 - 700 people depending on the configuration of the plane then I have to say it would be a bargain in my opinion. I would feel some sadness for those people in the plane or town but frankly as they do not hold a personal connection to me I would still have been more sad at the loss of my best friend than all of them. After all, horrible as it is, this is exactly what Stalin meant by the phrase "The death of 1 is a tragedy, the death of a Million merely a statistic."

  7. #7

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    Good lord, not this again.

    Choose what you want. There is no true way. Only a "true way in a specific context". One context has no priority over the other when it comes to the choice of contextes here. Only those who say "this choice is the universally true one", preferrably come with some truely inhuman ways of thinking like justifying this "truth" with utilitarism or making math out of that thus actually thinking even more inhuman than the options themselves are, yes, only those have the problems here. One wants to save beloved ones, fine. One doesn't, have it your way.

    I will always go with the Chloes, the Ellies, the Yonah Replicants, my own beloved ones. Also - not that this is saying people in this thread are lying - in a true cataclysmic event the behaviour of people will very well be different from what they think. And the most of them will always think about themselves. Psychological survival exists just as physical one does.
    Last edited by Sephiroth; 10-05-2017 at 08:48 PM.

  8. #8
    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    While I feel it's healthy to delve into a moral quagmire such as this question, there is actual a simple idea behind it. As I said in the original post, there is no right answer, and some of you might be overthinking this or missing the point.

  9. #9
    Skyblade's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    I don't understand how this is a difficult choice. Of course, you save the maximum amount of people. Even if my best friend was given these choices, I would expect him to choose the last one even though it would mean I would die.
    The destruction of the town might not involve the most deaths. In the airplane crash, everyone is likely to die. The town could be destroyed with theoretically no deaths at all. It wouldn't be the first time.
    My friend Delzethin is currently running a GoFundMe account to pay for some extended medical troubles he's had. He's had chronic issues and lifetime troubles that have really crippled his career opportunities, and he's trying to get enough funding to get back to a stable medical situation. If you like his content, please support his GoFundMe, or even just contribute to his Patreon.

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    Memento Mori Site Contributor Wolf Kanno's Avatar
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    • Former Cid's Knight

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    Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    I don't understand how this is a difficult choice. Of course, you save the maximum amount of people. Even if my best friend was given these choices, I would expect him to choose the last one even though it would mean I would die.
    The destruction of the town might not involve the most deaths. In the airplane crash, everyone is likely to die. The town could be destroyed with theoretically no deaths at all. It wouldn't be the first time.
    Oh no, all victims will die in all three scenarios.

  11. #11
    disc jockey to your heart krissy's Avatar
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  12. #12
    Ray "Bloody" Purchase! Crop's Avatar
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    I would no doubt pick option 3, but I do have a question. I can understand the difference between the first one and the second two, but if all victims are going to die in both scenarios, why would anyone pick option 2 over option 3? It makes no sense.

  13. #13
    Famine Wolf Recognized Member Sephex's Avatar
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    I'm not against engaging in these discussions (in fact, I wish people would actually discuss things more often), but I feel these kind of hypothetical scenarios are inherently flawed. It's one thing to say what you would do, but it becomes a different ball game when people are faced with a real choice. Yes, it would require very extraordinary circumstances to be thrust into this exact position, but my point is more along the lines of never knowing what people would truly do because it is far easier to say what one thinks is right.

  14. #14
    Trial by Wombat Bubba's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sephex View Post
    I'm not against engaging in these discussions (in fact, I wish people would actually discuss things more often), but I feel these kind of hypothetical scenarios are inherently flawed. It's one thing to say what you would do, but it becomes a different ball game when people are faced with a real choice. Yes, it would require very extraordinary circumstances to be thrust into this exact position, but my point is more along the lines of never knowing what people would truly do because it is far easier to say what one thinks is right.
    You have a point. I'll just say I'd like to think I'd be brave enough to choose option three.

  15. #15
     Master of the Fork Cid's Knight Freya's Avatar
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    Well that could be said about any hypothetical situation. You can't ever know until it happens. But reminding everyone of that kinda ruins the fun of interaction of these questions. If you wont ever actually know then what's the point of asking? So people answering what they think they'd do is the closest you'll get to a real answer.

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