how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

I think this question is kinda dumb. The human moral sense is not adapted to deal with this, and so I think a lot of what we spit out on the subject is just garbage.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

What a silly question. Except for my wife, there is no one on the face of this Earth I'd save before my kids. So, I guess the answer is 6 billion or so.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

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I think for most parents, the answer is, "as many as it takes."

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

I would have to go with zero. I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered. Obviously if i was there on the spot and my kid was screaming and yelling and about to die I might change my mind. But in the general case, I don't feel qualified to make the judgment as to when X is a high or low enough number to be OK.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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I would have to go with zero. I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered.

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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I would have to go with zero. I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered.

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

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If I knew the billion dollars was going to be compiled by randomly stealing it from other people, no.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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I would have to go with zero. I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered.

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

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If I knew the billion dollars was going to be compiled by randomly stealing it from other people, no.

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it's conjured out of thin air.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

Well, I'm not sure how many, but you would certainly be first on the list.

pokervintage

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

Do I have to stop pushing after my child is saved?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

Impossible to answer until you face the question, but I would guess it would be either 0 or ~6billion.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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Do I have to stop pushing after my child is saved?

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haha

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

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Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

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why doesn't this have to do with reality? how am i advocating murder?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

2.73 or 6 or 24.548 or maybe 7.438. Also I guess collateral damage would need to be considered so take the square root of each number and multiply by 3.11116 and divide by .92413.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

It depends.

If I'm an African with 14 children, one really doesn't matter.

Ehh....

The Rwandan's didn't really give a [censored] a few years ago..

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

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why doesn't this have to do with reality?

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A machine once built that tries to murder your child unless it murders a random number of other people and you are somehow in control of the number generator?

And you are seriously asking me what this does not have to do with reality?


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how am i advocating murder?

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1. Make people believe that life is about kill or be killed; and leave this assumption unquestioned.

2. Portray aggression as self-defense.



It's a standard collectivist tool.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

why doesn't this have to do with reality?

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A machine once built that tries to murder your child unless it murders a random number of other people and you are somehow in control of the number generator?

And you are seriously asking me what this does not have to do with reality?


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how am i advocating murder?

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1. Make people believe that life is about kill or be killed; and leave this assumption unquestioned.

2. Portray aggression as self-defense.



It's a standard collectivist tool.

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Dude, you are seriously a lunatic. It's called a throught experiment, of course it isn't set in "reality". You pick the dumbest times to be a nit.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

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If I knew the billion dollars was going to be compiled by randomly stealing it from other people, no.

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it's conjured out of thin air.

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well then i would go for the $1B. what moral trap did i just step into? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered.

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How does the second follow from the first?

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

6 billion +/1 500 million

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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Dude, you are seriously a lunatic. It's called a throught experiment, of course it isn't set in "reality". You pick the dumbest times to be a nit.

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It's a pretty dumb thought experiment. Moral thought experiments that correspond poorly to reality seem worthless, because what can you learn from them? As your own reply suggested, it's near impossible to know what you'd do when presented with this silly situation, considered abstractly. So leaving emotional content out of it obviously affects things.

Further, the only relevance thought experiments like this can have is if there is some way to eventually tie them in to more realistic scenarios. But any realistic scenario that involves you killing X people to save your child is obviously going to have a ton of mitigating circumstances that will be very significant to determining what the proper course of action is.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

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If I knew the billion dollars was going to be compiled by randomly stealing it from other people, no.

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it's conjured out of thin air.

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well then i would go for the $1B. what moral trap did i just step into? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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well you didn't push the other button "because you didn't want other people pushing it." i would have expected you to not want other people pushing a button that gave them a billion dollars cash either.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

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why doesn't this have to do with reality?

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A machine once built that tries to murder your child unless it murders a random number of other people and you are somehow in control of the number generator?

And you are seriously asking me what this does not have to do with reality?


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how am i advocating murder?

[/ QUOTE ]

1. Make people believe that life is about kill or be killed; and leave this assumption unquestioned.

2. Portray aggression as self-defense.



It's a standard collectivist tool.

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Dude, you are seriously a lunatic. It's called a throught experiment, of course it isn't set in "reality". You pick the dumbest times to be a nit.

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If I were to judge, it seemed like an obvious attempt to move the discussion over to something else.

And I find these little ethical puzzles interesting, because seen objectively the obvious answer would have to be 0 (well if we disregard a 'random' person's suspected quality of life > child's quality and other purely calculative equations etc.), because killing one person without due cause is no better than killing another one. But these little puzzles reveal that killing is far from unthinkable.

I believe most people are more than capable of killing to save themselves, their own and their (atleast the necessary) property, and some are more than capable at killing for less. I'm not some freudian mudslinger who we have 'violent instincts' buried deep in our minds either - I think it is fairly out in the open.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

why doesn't this have to do with reality?

[/ QUOTE ]

A machine once built that tries to murder your child unless it murders a random number of other people and you are somehow in control of the number generator?

And you are seriously asking me what this does not have to do with reality?


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how am i advocating murder?

[/ QUOTE ]

1. Make people believe that life is about kill or be killed; and leave this assumption unquestioned.

2. Portray aggression as self-defense.



It's a standard collectivist tool.

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Dude, you are seriously a lunatic. It's called a throught experiment, of course it isn't set in "reality". You pick the dumbest times to be a nit.

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If you believe I am a lunatic then there would be no sense in communicating with me. Yet you do, so you do not believe I am a lunatic and so your intentions are perverse.

You are now on ignore.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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i think this thread might have been done before, but not in this forum. You can push a button and it will kill a bunch of random or your child dies. What is the highest number of people you would kill to save your child?

[/ QUOTE ]


Stop advocating murder through insane plots that have nothing to do with reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

why doesn't this have to do with reality?

[/ QUOTE ]

A machine once built that tries to murder your child unless it murders a random number of other people and you are somehow in control of the number generator?

And you are seriously asking me what this does not have to do with reality?


[ QUOTE ]
how am i advocating murder?

[/ QUOTE ]

1. Make people believe that life is about kill or be killed; and leave this assumption unquestioned.

2. Portray aggression as self-defense.



It's a standard collectivist tool.

[/ QUOTE ]
Dude, you are seriously a lunatic. It's called a throught experiment, of course it isn't set in "reality". You pick the dumbest times to be a nit.

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If you believe I am a lunatic then there would be no sense in communicating with me. Yet you do, so you do not believe I am a lunatic and so your intentions are perverse.

You are now on ignore.

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This is terrible logic. If you think it is terrible logic you will breathe air, so if you breathe air it is terrible logic and your motives are perverse.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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This is terrible logic. If you think it is terrible logic you will breathe air, so if you breathe air it is terrible logic and your motives are perverse.

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What

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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This is terrible logic. If you think it is terrible logic you will breathe air, so if you breathe air it is terrible logic and your motives are perverse.

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What

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Objectionable premises (if you believe I am a lunatic you wouldnt converse with me) and then a non sequitur "and so your intentions are perverse." Actually, even the "so you do not believe I am a lunatic" conclusion does not follow from the premises, since unsupported premise #1 just said there would be no SENSE in arguing with you, not that it would be impossible or that he would never do it.

So like I said terrible logic.

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

as many as i had to..

Re: how many people would you kill to save your child\'s life?
 

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I would have to go with zero. I would not want other people pushing buttons that could randomly kill me and my family, so I won't push the same button when offered.

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sidetrack: would you push a button that gives you a billion dollars cash?

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If I knew the billion dollars was going to be compiled by randomly stealing it from other people, no.

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it's conjured out of thin air.

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This is technically counterfeit money and pretty much equivalent to the question "if you had an infallible counterfeiting machine and no chance of getting caught would you use it?" Maybe this was obvious, just an observation. It is stealing in the sense that it contributes to inflation, devaluing the money of others.