Would you kill 1 person you love to save 100 strangers?

Phite

Argument Topic: Depends

Do I have to kill them with my bare hands, or do I get to choose the means?

doaa8168

You choose; the question doesn't specify or go into that much detail. @Phite

Phite

@doaa8168

Then, no.  I would keep the loved one and ditch the hundred.

doaa8168

What if your loved one didn't love you back? @Phite

Barnardot

@doaa8168 yes I wood do that. They killed Jesus to save a lot more people than a 100 and it seamed to work then. So then all your got to do is find some one who has a virgin mother and sure enough he will be the new messiah. Then your got to work out how to knock him off or hire a hit man so you don’t get court.

MayCaesar

I would never kill anyone to save anyone, as treating others' lives as currency goes against my core values. However, if you gave a machine with the button that, upon being pressed, kills the person I love, and if it is not pressed, then 100 strangers die - then I would take this machine and drop it into a volcano so no one can ever press that.

Strangers lives do not mean that much to me: I respect them, but I would never put them above lives of those who I care about. If you ask me how many strangers have to die before I choose to rather have my mother die, for example, then my answer is "infinity".

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;I would never kill anyone to save anyone, as treating others' lives as currency goes against my core 

If you ask me how many strangers have to die before I choose to rather have my mother die, for example, then my answer is "infinity".

Isn’t what you’re saying being contradickory? Any one would of course want to save there mom but isn’t that going to far because once your knocked off every stranger in in finity then the hole world will collapse and how on earth would you manage to kill so many people?

MayCaesar

@Barnardot

As I said, I would not kill anyone to save anyone - but if someone I care about and N strangers were all bound to die and I could choose whether to save that someone or the strangers, I would pick that someone every time regardless of what N is.

"10^15 intelligent beings across billions of galaxies are bound to die, and if you press this button, they all will be saved. If you do not press this button, the love of your life will be cured of cancer" - I will render the button non-functional in a femtosecond. Sorry, but I know none of those 10^15 beings, and if you did not tell me they were going to die, I would not even be aware of their existence. The love of my life? Well, the term is self-explanatory. I would give up my own life in a heartbeat to save her. If she had cancer and was bound to die in 2 years, and I could press the button and extend her life by 50, but get cancer myself and die in 2 years - the button would be pressed before you finished your explanation of what this button does.

I am a bit insane when it comes to romance; comes with the territory. Chaotic Good alignment forever!

Dee

The answer is unknowable, it's all very fine claiming one would do  this or that from the comfort of an armchair, the answers you get are pretty meaningless and will not bring any meaningful insights into human nature.