Poll: Save One Or Save Many

[The Thinker]

I'll try anything once.

Can... barely... resist... tasteless... joke!

Well statistically they probably won't be. Calculating it with 5000 random people dying in the world, there's a 99.99% chance I won't know any of them if I know 100 people. Picked 100 for convenience in calculating it.

Apparently, you can only truly care about 150 people. That means there's about an x150/7,000,000,000 chance, for x victims, that one of them will be included, if this catastrophe is completely random.

 

[The Thinker]

Well I was calculating it as 6,999,999,900/7,000,000,000 chance one of the 100 would not get killed. Then putting that to the xth power to give the me the chances one of the 100 would not get killed in x selections.

Right. As in, we are both correct.
[facetiousness]But you obviously need to go meet 50 more people.[/facetiousness]

 

[LetalisK]

Anyone remember that movie where you press a button, someone you don't know dies, and you get money? I think there was meant to be some sort of emotional conflict in that film, I dunno. I'd be hammering that button.

I do remember that movie. I also remember what a painfully shitty movie it was. It's so bad it spawned its own meme of spoof videos.

 

[The Thinker]

Well actually our calculations would give different numbers. Can't just multiply x by 150/7,000,000,000. The proper chance that one will be selected is 150/7,000,000,000*(6,999,999,850/7,000,000,000)^(x-1). Or at least close to that, in actuality we'd need to keep decreasing that denominator with every multiplication. But at 7,000,000,000 that wouldn't matter much if x is only like 5k.

Pshaw! Who says you can't die twice?! It totally counts, too.

 

[AngleWyrm]

Scenario 1: A train full of people is headed for doom, and you can divert it by flipping a switch, but that will kill a maintenence worker on the side track. Do you flip the switch?

Most people would say yes.

Scenario 2: You and another person are on a bridge above the train full of people headed for doom; you can stop the crash by pushing the other person off the bridge into the way of the train. Do you push the other person off the bridge?

Oddly, most people would say no.

 

[default]

The loved one. Fuck the many, I'll never meet them again and they will never have any bearing on my life.

Selfish? For sure. Logical in relation to self? Also for sure.

 

[Rawne1980]

My wife, every time.

I love my wife and i'd do anything to keep her safe.

Bye bye the thousands.

 

[lacktheknack]

I wouldn't know until it happened.

Happily, it won't ever happen.

 

[Olas]

I have to go with the many.
Choosing to sacrifice countless others just to save one person close to me is, I think, selfish and borderline greedy. It might sound utilitarian but I really don't care, those "others" are people too, with loved ones who care just as much about them as I do to the people important to me.

 

[DanielBrown]

Most probably frozen up, but if I managed to get to my senses I would save the loved one.

 

[Smiley Face]

It depends on the specifics of the situation - what's the nature of the many I'm saving, what are their alternative options that give a probability of success, do the existing options have probabilities of failure, how does my loved one feel about what I should do, did I get a good night's sleep, etc.

 

[SwagLordYoloson]

Sacrifice both to get away even quicker. Build up a wall of doubt as to if they actually died or not and if it was my fault or not. Thus I would be able to continue on living as per usual.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I have a loyalty to the people that I love, and that loyalty obligates me to save them. So, if I had to make the choose that is what I would do, and I don't necessarily think it's the morally wrong choice. We all have are own moral codes that we live by, and mine happens to demand such a loyalty from myself.

 

[The Night Angel]

I think I'd probably choose the many, but I can't know that unless I'm ever actually put in that situation. Doubt I'd be able to live with myself after the decision one way or the other though.

 

[Master-Jedi]

So wait, one person for world peace,cancer cured, no hunger, etc.? Yeah, I would hope my wife would hate me if I saved her over all of that.

 

[shintakie10]

Anyone remember that movie where you press a button, someone you don't know dies, and you get money? I think there was meant to be some sort of emotional conflict in that film, I dunno. I'd be hammering that button.

So yeah, I'd absolutely save a loved one. Because I don't know the other people, fuck 'em.
The only drawback would be if that same loved one would then hate you for killing so many people.

That was a twilight zone episode, probably one of my favorites. A couple was presented with a simple choice, press a button and get a giant bag of cash. This cash would be enough to get you basically anythin you ever wanted and never have to want for anythin ever again. The downside? When you push that button a person in the world dies. You don't know this person at all, so the only knowledge you have of them is that you directly caused their death. The other option was to simply walk away. You get nothin from choosin this option other than the knowledge that you saved someones life or more literally chose to not take someones life.

The episode has them grapplin with the decision until they come to the conclusion that they want the money for a multitude of reasons and they reason that because they don't know the person they can live with the knowledge that they killed someone. After they hit the button they are presented with the money and then told who they just killed. The person that gets killed when you press the button is always the last person to have hit the button.

A great episode.

On topic! The many. Its kind of downplayin the significance of the choice by sayin that it would be an easy decision. It would be a painful decision that would probably haunt me to the day I die. I would most likely stall until the last moment and cry so very hard, but at the end of it all it is the many. It's not out of some form of wantin gratitude for what I did (if anythin anyone who thanked me would probably just upset me more because it'd remind me of what I lost), or expectin some form of reward. The thought process is basically this. I can not, will not be so selfish as to believe my wants and desires outweigh 1000 peoples wants, desires, and dreams.

Now, I should point out as the number gets closer to 1, I can definitely see myself bein selfish. Someone I love and care about against 2 people? Sorry 2 people, you're screwed. Against 10 people? I might have some qualms about it, but I'd still probably pick my loved one. Get up to the hundreds and it starts gettin to be very difficult not to choose the many. Any higher and it would always have to be the many.