You are in a room with three people. You must make a choice; which of these two?

Personally, I’d kill myself; to me, my own life matters far less than those of innocent people, whether I love or hate them. They’d just have to deal with any grief I caused them.

That depends on the situation. If we are trying to reach the top of mt. everest, and someone falls behind or they get in trouble, then im going with ‘A’. however if its just a normal day and an accident happens, them im likely to go with ‘B’.

Honestly, I’m a leave-no-man-behind kinda person so I’d take everyone with me, regardless of how I felt about them. If it became apparent that not all of us could survive, I’d try to be objective and compare the survival abilities of all four of us.

Depending on the setup of the scenario, this isn’t so difficult to resolve, really.

If I’m the Captain of the group or if it’s my family, then I order them to go and leave me behind, and to come back with a rescue party if and when possible. It’s a direct order, and they can’t disobey—not in my group, anyway. In some other military-type situation with another commander, I would expect exactly the same resolution.

If it’s a debating society like Fluther, then we’ll all die discussing the vagaries of hypothetical situations and moral imperatives.

If you can find a version of Stan Rogers’ ”Flowers of Bermuda” he sings about it much better than I can describe.

I’ll take my chances with choice B for I know this
XD

I’ll take my chances with all of them.

I’ll take choice B so that my wife, I, and our friend survive.
For the sake of my own self-absolution, I’ll pretend that the guy we’re leaving behind is the guy that killed Dominique Dunne.

kill them all and eat them

choice B. sorry. just being honest :)

Where’s CW’s machine?

I suspect I’d choose B. I was never very good at choosing between people.

@ragingloli Tactically speaking, you really don’t have a lot to loose by taking all of them along. If times get hard you can always eat the guy you don’t like later. In the mean time, it might be nice to have an extra pair of hands to carry stuff.

yeah… like the jerky you made out of the first person.

I’m taking everyone. What if the person I dislike has the key to get us into the safe room?

I’m going to go with B. After all, We all stand together! Win or lose, sink or swim…..tum tee tum tee tum tum :¬D

Choice B. Although given my physical competence the net result would probably be exactly the same as if I volunteered to let the other three go anyway.

If I hate one of the people there then you better bet that I’ll do choice ‘A’ and leave there ass behind!

Choice B. I’d probably be the one that didn’t survive cause I always put others first, even my enemies. My best friend is also most one of my least favorite people sometimes… Just cause someone isn’t pleasant, or I don’t like them, doesn’t mean I’d leave them to die.. To me that’s just like murdering them.

Pfff, so much disregard for life here.

Considering the absolute risks, why would anyone swap down THREE people’s chances of survival from “CERTAIN” to “EXTREMELY SLIM”, to swap another person’s chances from “LIKELY TO DIE” to “EXTREMELY SLIM” ...?

You’re basically throwing away three people’s lives, to spend a bit more time with someone else, whose chances of survival are extremely slim either way!?

I mean, you see one of your party fall down a ravine, and you’d have the other two people and yourself jump down it as well, just so you can die together?

So, you’d all really make two people follow you on a mission, almost certainly resulting in death, to stay with a fourth person, who is almost certain to die anyway?

Idiotic waste of life.

Your own life is yours to throw away, but how can you justify doing that to the other two people?

This is how it’s done.

@CyanoticWasp Ah – those were the days of manly men! (Like your taste in music.)

@janbb It’s what a mother would do; it’s what a captain should do. No thinking involved; it’s the duty that comes with the authority.

What, someone gets swept overboard in a terrible storm, so you order two other people to join you in diving recklessly into the merciless, roiling ocean to near-certain doom?

On this score I agree with that Marine motto…“No man (or woman) left behind!” I’m sorry but I’d be taking the slim to none odds with everyone going along for the ride. Now move it out troops and buckle up your bonnets cause it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!

“Buckle up your bonnets, ‘cause I’m leading you to your unnecessary deaths!”

I would join @ragingloli for dinner.

This is one of those moral paradox questions. It’s the same one as where they have a single track splitting into two under a control tower where only you can determine which track the train proceeds along. They change up whats on the track in front of you and tell you that you must choose one track or the other. People’s answers change dependant on who is on the track.
So what if the other people were all children? Who would you leave behind then? What if they were all over 80 and you were the youngest member at 50? What if it was a female parent and child, and another complete stranger to you…male? Every answer gives clues to someone’s phenomenological mapping and people answer differently because of both that and other societal norms.
In my own view…slim amounts to the potential of success and so I don’t choose to discriminate one from another. Everyone goes. If someone offers to stay that’s one thing…but to force someone to stay behind is to me the ultimate in exclusion and bullying and differentiation when it comes to some other living thing or person. Why is my life worth more than someone elses? It isn’t. That’s an illusion. Some people also tend to live with possibility in terms of Kant’s thesis and other people live with limitation. As you probably have already figured out I weigh in on the possibility side. Some people will tell you things can’t be done. Those people often get proven wrong. Thus my choice of the slim odds and potential survival for all.

“Why is my life worth more than someone elses?”
Relevance?

The question is asking whether “three certain & one extremely slim” chances of survival is worth more than “four extremely slim” chances of survival, which it obviously is.

It’s basically, do you sentence one person to almost certain death, or four?

Hmmm, seeing as I value life due to genetic predispositions, I chose ONE.

@Joybird are you really saying that treating people exactly equally is more important than saving three lives for sure? So if there were 4 people in a burning building, and you could only rescue 3, you’d leave them all to almost certain death? In the name of fairness!?

Nice principles guys õ.O

Seriously, let’s just level our heads and draw the fucking straws.

Before I decide, I have a question: why do I hate the third person? Something general about just disliking his personality? Or something specific like he killed a nun, molested my daughter, stole my money, has a goat fetish, etc…

I have to know why I hate him before I make any sort of decision about his life.

B. I could not live with myself knowing I left someone behind to die.

@SuperMouse But you wouldn’t mind killing two more people, if you get to die along with them?

WTF is up with you people!?

@The_Idler at least I would have made the attempt to save us all. Walking away with doing nothing is unacceptable to me. The question says that, while it is slim, there is a chance of survival.

You’re not doing nothing in A, you’re saving 3 people for sure!

You’re doing nothing in B! three people are much more likely to die, and even the guy you would’ve left behind is no better off!

in A he has low chances of survival, and in B everyone has low chances of survival!

The only difference for person 4 is that he dies with company!
You think taking two people and yourself to near certain death is worth it, just to give a guy some company, who is almost certainly going to die either way?

What’s the point?

Seriously, I can’t see how this question is anything but a no-brainer for A,
save 3 people vs save nobody? ummmm

Sounds a lot like Sartre’s No Exit.
Whoooooaahhaahaahaa

@anartist . . . it sounds like the movie Cube

If we’re approaching this mathematically—which some people seem to be doing (I think the saving fewer people for certain is better than everyone dying is a math argument) then it would really be useful to have probability estimates so we could calculate expected values for number of lives saved.

He wasn’t that good a friend, and I hate the other guy because she cheated on me with him. Fuck ‘em all—I’m outta here.

@CyanoticWasp

Yep, everyone dies debating. hahahaha

Perfect answer! lol