Why "Would You . . ." Questions are All BS

[scorcher863]

I don't want to nitpick here but that second example doesn't apply to this thread. Seems to me like it relied more on quick reflexes than the conscious decision. ie. someone with slower reflexes put into the same situation might not be capable of making the catch, decision or indecision.

nitpickin aside, nice admirable anecdotes

[Bork]

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Since I believe there is no way they could know this no matter how resolutely they claim it, all their sureness indicates to me is that they claim an irrational position. If someone said he had an 8 foot vertical leap, I would think "Hmm, humans don't have the capacity for 8 foot vertical leaps, so I wonder why he would say that?" From there, it seems more likely to me that they claim this because they'd actually be less willing to help than because they'd be more willing to help. Agree/disagree/why?

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I don't understand why it seems more likely to you. I don't see the relevance of the example either. If humans can't jump eight feet then the person who claims that we will do it has an equal chance of doing it compared with those who claim they won't do it. If 1/100000000000 could through some mutation, I would think the person who claims that he will do it is still more likely to be able to jump 8 feet than those that claim the opposite. To be clear it's not more likely that they are correct in the claim, it is more likely that they would make the jump/ run-into building, etc.

If somebody claims a strong position and unjustifiably (all cases won't be unjustified) believes strongly they will do X in the future. It may not carry much weight in convincing you that their claim is true, but you would certainly expect that they are more likely to do X than those who claim they would not do it.

People sometimes strongly believe that they are good at poker for very weak irrational reasons. Does it follow that the people that claim to be good at poker are less likely to be good than those that say they are not good? This actually is a more interesting and probably irrelevant case because good poker players tend to not want everyone to know how good they are. You could imagine that the good players won't lie to cancel that out.

How about people who say they could withstand water boarding? Ignore the fence sitters. Who do you think is more likely to withstand it, the people who claim they would or the people who claim that they wouldn't. Now the people who claim they wouldn't would be correct at a much higher % and probably overall more rational people, but I don't think they would more likely to withstand it.

If your point is just that the definitely yes people are very likely irrational/mistaken/decieving themselves I agree. If you are claiming that the yes people are more likely making a false claim, again I agree. If you claim that the Nos are more likely to run into a building I am not swayed from thinking that is crazy and false.

[Mr_Moore]

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I suppose it depends on whether you truly know yourself. Most people who perform heroic deeds or are prone to heroism know it deep within themselves. I have known since I was a little boy that I would not hesitate to rescue or save someone if I could. I have saved three people in my lifetime, twice with little danger to myself and once with considerable danger. Even though I have never saved someone from a burning building I am quite confident I would try if I thought there was a reasonable chance of success.

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Share those stories with us, now, please.

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Ok, one.

When I was about 8 years old I was with a group of small kids and one adult. We were on a rock jetty along the shore of Lake Michigan. The rocks were very slippery and the waves were crashing up against them. A little girl got caught by a wave and fell off the rocks into the deep water. She was being pulled out deeper into the lake. No one was a good swimmer. I jumped in a swam to her. It was very hard swimming against the current but I got her back to the others. They had formed a line by holding each others hand and managed to get her back to shore. It was hard for me to get out because of the slippery algae on the rocks and the crashing waves. Eventually, I got out with the help of the others. It may not seem dangerous now but at the time it was.

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Wow. That sounds extremely dangerous. How could you as an eight year old manage to do this? Incredible.
Are you in contact with the girl that you saved today?
You don't want to share the other stories?

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I guess you are leveling me.

I am sure it does not seem brave now but at the time I was not a great swimmer. But I did not hesitate and that is the point. I don't even remember who the girl was.

I saved my sister once when I was about 12. We were driving and the side door opened. She fell out of the car at about 40 mph. I dove for her and caught her before she fell completely out of the car. Everyone then grabbed my legs to keep me from falling out of the car while I held onto my sister.

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I am not leveling you. Now, you have to give us the last one!
Must be a great feeling knowing you saved another person.
Do you sometimes wish that you would yet again be given the opportunity to save someone?

[Alex-db]

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I mean the "Would you run into a burning building to save a baby" type questions. I've asked my share of these. And they can be useful in examining your personal feelings on the pros and cons of various ethical/moral situations.

But anyone who says they definitely would do this or they certainly would do that under such and such circumstances is deluding themselves. You are not in that choice situation. You can say anything you like now in your swivel chair, but it has little bearing on what preferences or value scale you would actually demonstrate in the actual situation.

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The relevant data in these sorts of hypothetical cases (at least as they are usually employed in moral philosophy) is what the responder thinks they should appear to other people to be saying they should do in those circumstances, and not whether or not they are correct about what they would in fact do.

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[ALawPoker]

EDIT: I've emboldened some of my reply, not to be a tool, but because it was longer than it needed to be and I wanted to make sure the crux was not buried.

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It may not carry much weight in convincing you that their claim is true, but you would certainly expect that they are more likely to do X than those who claim they would not do it.

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I'm not talking about people who firmly say they wouldn't do it. I'm talking about people who say things like "I don't know," "Maybe," "Probably not," "It depends," and "If it seemed right to me at the time."

This is an important distinction, as I would probably think people who say "definitely no" are the least likely of all. (FWIW, I think it's way more possible that someone could be detached from society to a large enough degree to rightfully make that claim, so I'd be more likely to believe him, and up the odds that he indeed wouldn't consider helping. But, I don't think it's possible for one human's empathy to totally blow the average out of the water to the degree where he can reasonably claim he would definitely help based on a very loose hypothetical.)

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People sometimes strongly believe that they are good at poker for very weak irrational reasons. Does it follow that the people that claim to be good at poker are less likely to be good than those that say they are not good?

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No, because "being good at poker" is very possible. So if someone says it, while there is some chance he is just running his mouth and is actually bad at poker (and I'd certainly factor that in), there is also the very reasonable possibility that he is indeed good at poker!

If he told me he had 6 bracelets, and if I knew he didn't possibly have any bracelets, then I would say yes, he's probably more likely to be worse than (all else being equal) someone who says "eh, I'm decent."

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How about people who say they could withstand water boarding?

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I've never water boarded, but I assume my answer is exactly the same as the poker one. If withstanding water boarding is something that is reasonably plausible, then again, the analogy doesn't apply. If someone says they can do it then they probably can. If someone says they can actually walk on water and don't need the board, then I laugh it off and don't interpret his irrational claim in a way that makes me think he's more likely to be a good water boarder.

You seem to think that because it's possible to save a burning baby that it follows that it can be possible to KNOW FOR SURE that you would save the burning baby based on an abstract hypothetical. They are two very different things, and you're missing my major point -- that I think it is impossible to know how you would react. And so, when you claim a definite direction, your claim itself is empty. All that matters to me is why one would make such claim. Is it more likely that he's stated the impossible because he is more likely than the average person to help or because he is less likely? I think it's the latter, but there really is no way to prove it one way or the other beyond "that's just what makes sense to me."

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If your point is just that the definitely yes people are very likely irrational/mistaken/decieving themselves I agree.

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OK... it's more "~100% certainly" than "very likely," which might sound nitty but is actually a critical distinction.

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If you are claiming that the yes people are more likely making a false claim, again I agree.

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OK... again it's that I think the "definitely yes" people are "almost certainly" making an impossible claim.

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If you claim that the Nos are more likely to run into a building I am not swayed from thinking that is crazy and false.

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You say this (and really the entire post) as if I haven't even considered that on a very rudimentary level the claim that people who say they might not do something are actually more likely to do it is an odd position.

But then you've fumbled just about every argument. And actually, I am more sure now than I was when I originally made the claim that I am right.

Your analogies have nothing to do with my claim here (and for that matter, my vertical leap one wasn't perfect either). Really, they're way off. My claim lies on the assumption that most people would react roughly the same, because the decision is one that relies on our most basic of human instincts. Your examples deal with things that we can perceive some humans to be much better at than others, and where a very high percentage of the population doesn't even engage in the activity (so just by talking about it, you can assume that such person is already above average).

The whole point behind what I'm saying is that words are pretty meaningless to how the person would actually react in the baby situation. In poker (while sure, some people lie or are delusional) it's very possible to be sure about what your ability actually is. No one can reasonably be sure of what they would do in ultra high stress hypothetical X. NOTHING you could say to me could convince me that you are terribly more likely or less likely to save the baby. Your subconscious will drive you to one decision or the other, and you have to be in the moment to know which one it will be.

So, if someone does insist that they'd do it, I lend ~0 credence to this statement (not because I immediately dismiss any strong claim that comes at me, but because I consider this a near impossible position). I'll give him some 1/X chance that he actually would 100% help and somehow knows this. So on that front his likelihood goes up. To whatever extent the 1/X doesn't apply, I think it's slightly more likely that his claim indicates he would be less likely to help than someone who is not claiming an irrational position. I think this outweighs the minute 1/X chance that he is 100% to help.

Someone who says "I don't know" or even "I probably wouldn't" is offering what I believe to be the standard, rational, human response, so I am considering this person (since he too is a warm blooded human regardless of how callous he might sound on a message board) to have a "standard" likelihood of going into the building. You seem to think this claim lowers his likelihood, and that's the mistake you're making. I believe this person's likelihood is neither raised nor lowered by his honest response, and I believe the "100% yes" type of response to most likely not be raised or lowered either, but to whatever extent it is anything, I think it is actually lowered.

You seem to be confusing "irrational position" with "strong but perfectly plausible position" in your analogies.

[yukoncpa]

Well here I am reviving an old thread, so perhaps no one will read this, but I would like to add that there is another reason for introspection or asking yourself, “would you . . .” Extreme horrors come up perhaps rarely, if at all in many peoples lives. If your life happens to be unlucky enough where you actually find yourself in a situation where there is a burning baby in a building ( for example ), and you can risk your life to save the baby, then it helps if you’ve thought the situation out in advance.

Here’s my example: the My Lai Massacre

My Lai

Please take the time to read my reference as it is only a page or so long. However, here are some cliff notes.

U.S. Soldiers entered a village thought to be occupied by enemy combatants. As ordered, they entered the village aggressively ( no problem in my opinion with this, indeed, if they shot everything that moved when first entering the village, I wouldn’t have a problem given the intelligence they had). Once they secured the village, they found no draft age men. Only approximately 500 women and children and baby’s and old men. The lieutenant, began barking orders, even though there was a captain present that outranked him. The orders he instructed were to kill every man, woman, and child and animal and burn the village. The soldiers, who had rounded up the unarmed villagers, began by grabbing some young children and throwing them down a well, then tossing a grenade into the well. One soldier shot at an infant, missed, his companions laughed at him, he stepped 3 steps closer, shot again, missed, his companions laughed some more, then he got right up to the baby and shot it. The soldiers began machine gunning down the unarmed villagers. A baby tried to suck on his dead mothers tit and a soldier bayoneted it. The villagers were rounded up and forced into a ditch. The soldiers fired automatic weapons into the ditch but had a hard time killing everyone because the mothers fell on top of their children. However, the children that were old enough to walk, soon got up from underneath their mothers and began to walk around, at which time, the soldiers fired on them and killed them. All together, according to U.S. sources, the soldiers murdered over 300 unarmed civilians. According to Vietnamese sources, that name each victim, there were 504. An American soldier photographed the whole incident.


Now. What would you do if you were one of the soldiers? As Borodog pointed out, who knows. Many soldiers refused to participate, but would you have taken a more active role then just refusal to obey orders? Now that you know such a thing could happen, you can anticipate it by asking yourself the question . . . What would I do?

This whole story hit home to me even harder when I wiki’d the My Lai Massacre. Scroll down to the second picture. Most people probably have little empathy for babies because of their non-sentience. But look at the little girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old who is clutching at her mother. Look at the total horror registering on her face as she knows she is about to be murdered.

My lai wiki


Actually guys, this incident has always disturbed me. I didn’t know the proper venue for airing my angst, but Borodog’s question seemed as good as any.

[SNOWBALL]

Hey Yukon,

Thanks for putting in the effort to make this post. To answer your question, I think I would frag my commander, either before, or after My Lai took place. Just a simple grenade in his tent would do the trick.

There's a great line in the internationale
"Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!
Let us declare strikes in the armies,
Guns in the air, break their ranks!
If they insist, those cannibals,
On making heroes of us,
They will soon know that our bullets,
Are for our own generals."

More people should listen to that song.

[yukoncpa]

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Hey Yukon,

Thanks for putting in the effort to make this post. To answer your question, I think I would frag my commander, either before, or after My Lai took place. Just a simple grenade in his tent would do the trick.

There's a great line in the internationale
"Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!
Let us declare strikes in the armies,
Guns in the air, break their ranks!
If they insist, those cannibals,
On making heroes of us,
They will soon know that our bullets,
Are for our own generals.

More people should listen to that song.


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Thank you so much for reading my post. Your quote from the internationale - awesome song dude. I had to look International up and it looks like a communist or socialist orginization. Well, Borodog is going to fire me as his hero, but I would have certainly been a communist ( Viet cong) if I had personally gone through what those poor folks went through. Thanks again for reading my post.

[SNOWBALL]

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Hey Yukon,

Thanks for putting in the effort to make this post. To answer your question, I think I would frag my commander, either before, or after My Lai took place. Just a simple grenade in his tent would do the trick.

There's a great line in the internationale
"Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!
Let us declare strikes in the armies,
Guns in the air, break their ranks!
If they insist, those cannibals,
On making heroes of us,
They will soon know that our bullets,
Are for our own generals.

More people should listen to that song.


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Thank you so much for reading my post. Your quote from the internationale - awesome song dude. I had to look International up and it looks like a communist or socialist orginization. Well, Borodog is going to fire me as his hero, but I would have certainly been a communist ( Viet cong) if I had personally gone through what those poor folks went through. Thanks again for reading my post.

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I'd be surprised if borodog thought that killing someone for trying to force you enslave you and force you to kill someone else wasn't morally justifiable.

[tame_deuces]

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Well here I am reviving an old thread, so perhaps no one will read this, but I would like to add that there is another reason for introspection or asking yourself, “would you . . .” Extreme horrors come up perhaps rarely, if at all in many peoples lives. If your life happens to be unlucky enough where you actually find yourself in a situation where there is a burning baby in a building ( for example ), and you can risk your life to save the baby, then it helps if you’ve thought the situation out in advance.

Here’s my example: the My Lai Massacre

My Lai

Please take the time to read my reference as it is only a page or so long. However, here are some cliff notes.

U.S. Soldiers entered a village thought to be occupied by enemy combatants. As ordered, they entered the village aggressively ( no problem in my opinion with this, indeed, if they shot everything that moved when first entering the village, I wouldn’t have a problem given the intelligence they had). Once they secured the village, they found no draft age men. Only approximately 500 women and children and baby’s and old men. The lieutenant, began barking orders, even though there was a captain present that outranked him. The orders he instructed were to kill every man, woman, and child and animal and burn the village. The soldiers, who had rounded up the unarmed villagers, began by grabbing some young children and throwing them down a well, then tossing a grenade into the well. One soldier shot at an infant, missed, his companions laughed at him, he stepped 3 steps closer, shot again, missed, his companions laughed some more, then he got right up to the baby and shot it. The soldiers began machine gunning down the unarmed villagers. A baby tried to suck on his dead mothers tit and a soldier bayoneted it. The villagers were rounded up and forced into a ditch. The soldiers fired automatic weapons into the ditch but had a hard time killing everyone because the mothers fell on top of their children. However, the children that were old enough to walk, soon got up from underneath their mothers and began to walk around, at which time, the soldiers fired on them and killed them. All together, according to U.S. sources, the soldiers murdered over 300 unarmed civilians. According to Vietnamese sources, that name each victim, there were 504. An American soldier photographed the whole incident.


Now. What would you do if you were one of the soldiers? As Borodog pointed out, who knows. Many soldiers refused to participate, but would you have taken a more active role then just refusal to obey orders? Now that you know such a thing could happen, you can anticipate it by asking yourself the question . . . What would I do?

This whole story hit home to me even harder when I wiki’d the My Lai Massacre. Scroll down to the second picture. Most people probably have little empathy for babies because of their non-sentience. But look at the little girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old who is clutching at her mother. Look at the total horror registering on her face as she knows she is about to be murdered.

My lai wiki


Actually guys, this incident has always disturbed me. I didn’t know the proper venue for airing my angst, but Borodog’s question seemed as good as any.

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I mentioned them in another thread. The Milgram studies, inspired greatly by stories of war crimes, clearly show the majority of us would have participated in the massacre if we had been there.

Here is a wiki: clicky

The finding is replicated across a wide variety of cultures and genders, and seems to be a generalized trait in humans.

A very interesting debate that arises from this when looking at psychology in warfare is an increased look at the role of the officer/operative leader - if he can make men under his command violate their most base principles, then for all practical purposes his principles and authority are the most important ones.