4chan archive /lit/ (index)
similar threads
2014-05-25 01:39 4931750 Anonymous (chart1.gif 600x450 23kB)
Would you rather lose your left hand, or 1000 people (in addition to the background rate) you don't know die/get a chronic disease? How do you justify your position to yourself, and how will keep from feeling bad?

2 min later 4931752 Anonymous
My left hand One only has the right to give people life, never to take life

3 min later 4931753 Anonymous
I wouldn't even spare a finger for a thousand strangers. Why? Because it's MY finger and I can shove it places.

4 min later 4931755 Anonymous
>>4931750 Lose the hand I don't want to kill a bunch of people, and I'm sure I can get some kind of pity out of only having 1 hand. Plus then I can get a fucking hook hand nigga.

8 min later 4931761 Anonymous
I'll hold on to that hand, thank you. >how will you keep from feeling bad I don't even know these people. lol

9 min later 4931765 Anonymous
I keep my hand. If I've never seen them they don't exist as far as my consciousness is concerned, millions of people are starving right now while my fridge is full yet I don't feel bad about it at all.

10 min later 4931767 Anonymous
Didn't know? I'd let 1000 people I DID know die to keep my hand.

11 min later 4931768 Anonymous
>>4931752 LEL

11 min later 4931771 Anonymous
>>4931752 >>4931755 Okay, but do you donate to certain charities? You have the power RIGHT NOW to save more than a thousand lives by funding the right organisations. There is no difference, you are just one step removed from the process. Your ethics are meaningless. Unless you do donate significant funds to charity, in which case move on.

12 min later 4931773 Anonymous
>>4931771 funding them with what

14 min later 4931777 Anonymous (stirner.gif 200x175 5kB)
Leave them to rot

14 min later 4931778 Anonymous
>>4931771 No money in the bank, but I did donate when I had money

15 min later 4931783 Anonymous
>>4931773 your body members

16 min later 4931784 Anonymous
>>4931771 You have quite a strange view of how effective charities are

16 min later 4931788 Anonymous
>>4931773 >>4931778 Oh yeah, I left that part out. My bad. I meant, 'if you had the money and weren't donating'.

20 min later 4931800 Anonymous
>>4931771 My left hand isn't going to get me a bomb-ass flatscreen

20 min later 4931801 Anonymous
>>4931750 >7.6h sleep Yea, right. But sure, left hand it is. It would suck but a small price for 1000 lifes. Though how I am supposed to change videos while fapping now? >>4931771 Funding them with what? Besides, it's a pain to actively look for the right organization while losing a hand is a rather passive.

22 min later 4931806 Anonymous
>>4931771 To save a similar amount of lives it would cost about 2 million

26 min later 4931816 Anonymous
>>4931806 Disagree. There is no guarantee of the ongoing safety of the people in OP's post. Say your donation of a thousand dollars gets two hundred people vaccinated against malaria. You have saved their lives in a way, but there is no guarantee that they won't be killed in next week's military coup or sacrificed to an alligator god. It's different, yes, but there are parallels.

29 min later 4931820 Anonymous
>>4931816 Disagree with what? I posted numbers buddy Against Malaria Foundation estimates that ~$3400 will save one childs life.

30 min later 4931824 Anonymous
The question has to be clarified, do people know I killed them or can I remain anonymous, if the latter I'd let them die.

31 min later 4931827 Anonymous
Keep hand >Why Because I don't know them and don't give a damn ;)

35 min later 4931833 Anonymous
>>4931820 Yeah but then that kid gets diphtheria and your $3400 was all for nought.

36 min later 4931834 Anonymous
>>4931827 >>4931765 >>4931761 epic

37 min later 4931836 Anonymous
>>4931833 And the other 999? And the money I don't have? Hand is patrician choice.

37 min later 4931838 Anonymous
>>4931750 >Would you rather lose your left hand, or 1000 people (in addition to the background rate) you don't know die/get a chronic disease? I honestly don't know. I'll be glad to never find out. Such an odd dichotomy.

38 min later 4931841 Anonymous
>>4931771 >There is no difference Actually there is In OP the decision is on you to lose hand or give 1000 people diseases. In the other scenario you are saving people from diseases they do not equate

40 min later 4931845 Anonymous
>all these disgusting nihilists on /lit/ It's like no one here read philosophy

41 min later 4931846 Anonymous
How many times am I allowed to kill a thousand people?

42 min later 4931849 Anonymous
>>4931846 Each time you kill them you must take a potato chip. and eat it.

43 min later 4931852 Anonymous
>>4931845 >m-muh Camus

44 min later 4931855 Anonymous
I'm left handed. I'd rather keep my left hand. If it were my right hand I'd probably choose the people. Then again, I wouldn't be able to do deadlifts with no right hand. I'll keep both. I value my quality of life over the living of others.

51 min later 4931882 Anonymous
>>4931750 Without any further information, I would let the 1000 people die. Lacking a distribution for the people, I will assume they are drawn without bias from the world population. While deontological arguments would generally dictate that I value human life in and of itself, I subscribe to utilitarianism. Specifically, with high likelihood, none of those people would be important for the future course of the human race, and thus do not have a very large utility to me. Conversely, I place a high utility on my own wellbeing. It would not be incorrect to label this choice of utility function as selfish. As there is no universal terminal utility, this choice is completely arbitrary and presented without further justification.

51 min later 4931883 Anonymous
I'll keep my hand, thank you. About 150.000 people die every day. Killing 1000 would barely add to it. Saving 1000 is an utterly insignificant attempt to make a world a better place. Instead of that I'd rather make my existence on this world a little better by not losing my fucking hand.

56 min later 4931891 Anonymous
>>4931882 >with high likelihood, none of those people would be important for the future course Yet the chance that any of them will be important is just as high as yours, for each of the 1000 people. Besides, you still keep living either way.

1 hours later 4931900 Anonymous
>>4931891 My comfort is more important to me than the lives of a thousand strangers.

1 hours later 4931906 Anonymous
>>4931900 So much about utilitarianism.

1 hours later 4931918 Anonymous
I'd rather keep my hand and I justify my choice by the fact that we may all be in the matrix anyway.

1 hours later 4931920 Anonymous
>>4931918 based

1 hours later 4931922 Anonymous
Keep hand. Objective reality is ultimately an illusion and therefor I am the only true entity inhabiting it because I can only experience my own perception.

1 hours later 4931927 Anonymous
>>4931918 >the matrix keeping humans alive actually has a net negative energy unless the machine felt sympathy

1 hours later 4931930 Anonymous
>>4931922 >keep hand because they are not me Got it, capt.

1 hours later 4931934 Anonymous
>>4931930 Pretty much. Ego above all.

1 hours later 4931938 Anonymous
>>4931934 disgusting

1 hours later 4931941 Anonymous
>>4931938 >implying there is anything outside the self

1 hours later 4931947 Anonymous
>>4931941 >I'll just pretend other people don't exist so I can justify my psychopathic behaviour Stirnerfags, everyone. I know you don't actually live like this in the outside world and that it's just your fedora's wet dream but still.

1 hours later 4931953 Anonymous
>>4931941 Ego and the self are not the same thing. Even a child knows this.

1 hours later 4931955 Anonymous
>>4931947 >I'll call him a fedora >Surely that'll justify how much of a pussy I am

1 hours later 4931957 Anonymous
>>4931891 >the chance that any of them will be important is just as high as yours Incorrect. Simply on the prior of educational attainment, a significant proportion of the 1000 would be illiterate, probably a majority (?) wouldn't have higher than secondary school education. >>4931906 >So much about utilitarianism Utilitarianism doesn't say anything about my *choice* of utility function. In fact, due to the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, utilitarianism is a completely general description of a ration agent subject to some quite reasonable axioms. I am free to choose whatever utility function I desire, without justification. As I am not *completely* selfish, the ultimate future course of the human race is a primary terminal utility of mine, but I can also have a bias towards self-preservation.

1 hours later 4931958 Anonymous
>>4931947 Because telling everyone you wouldn't give a shit if they died does have a negative effect on your social life. You lose a few battles but you win the war against idealism.

1 hours later 4931966 Anonymous
Given the state of world crowding/hunger and unemployment, killing 1000 random people may be a net positive. >inb4 edgy malthusian Suck my left hand. >feeling bad I made chinese peasants get cancer in order to build this pc for me. Guilt is impossible. None of us could ever feel sufficiently guilty, so it's a hopeless venture to try at all. I'll be here masturbating if anyone needs me.

1 hours later 4931973 Anonymous
>>4931820 >Against Malaria Foundation estimates that ~$3400 will save one childs life. So he can grow up, have eight kids, and you now need 8 doses of the malaria drug, not to mention food, shelter, clothes, and jobs, because god knows they aren't making any of it for themselves. Giving foreign aid is not a long term solution.

1 hours later 4931981 Anonymous
>>4931953 >Ego" is a Latin and Greek (???) word meaning "I", often used in English to mean the "self", "identity" or other related concepts. >It may also refer to: >Ego, one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche >Ego (religion), as defined in various religions in relationship to self, soul etc. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Next you'll tell me all books aren't literature.

1 hours later 4931990 Anonymous
>>4931973 >why don't we just like nuke the third world lol

1 hours later 4932000 Anonymous (00-kanye_west-my_beautiful_dark_twisted_fantasy-2010-1.jpg 1500x1500 258kB)
>>4931771 >be 3rd world jaded fuck >country gets hit by floods >government or anyone else with a bit of power is just as corrupt as it gets >people still get tricked into sending SMSes and donating to flood relief charities, even though out of all the money they donate maybe like 70-80% gets actually to the people that need it Not to mention that everyone nowadays posts on facebook how "I JUST DONATED X AMOUNT, I LIVE LIKE SHIT YET I CAN STILL DONATE, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?" 5028 likes 285 comments 329 shares Donating to "charity" nowadays is a social thing, and that when they're losing an argument about anything they can say "BUT YOU'RE A BAD PERSON BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO GIVE YOUR MONEY TO THESE RANDOM PEOPLE, I DO THEREFORE I WIN LOL". People do this shit for social gratification nowadays, and to feed their pseudo-superiority complex, since in these times of "turmoil" they can't differentiate themselves from others in any other way (no talent/no work ethics), so just post on facebook how you did a noble deed and fling shit at anyone who doesn't do what you do. Seriously, did it not cross anybody's mind that some people just inherently don't feel the need to help others? Granted, part of my reasoning is due to personal experiences as a kid when we didn't have social networks, but it still doesn't change the fact I don't give a fuck about giving anything of mine to people I don't know especially not through a 3rd party.

1 hours later 4932003 Anonymous
I'd keep my hand ofc, how is that even a choice.

1 hours later 4932013 Anonymous
>>4932000 >Seriously, did it not cross anybody's mind that some people just inherently don't feel the need to help others? Yes, we call that psychopathy. Besides, what with your bitching about people who want to help? Sure they do it because of selfish reasons but any human action is. They may don't have any other talent, work ethic or whatever else, it doesn't matter, hell it makes their deeds even more impressive.

1 hours later 4932031 Anonymous
>>4932013 They want to help but they also want to get some positive feedback (or on social media instant gratification in the form of likes). It's like that one guy who posts facebook statuses yet when he doesn't get a single like on a few of them in a row pauses for like 3-4 weeks because he knows no one gives a fuck. There's also people who donate to charity and they don't even broadcast it to anyone, offline or online. I'd rather be a psychopath than a tool who gives away his hard-earned money or an even more "social tool" that spends money to impress friends. I might as well hire a prostitute or something at that point.

1 hours later 4932035 Anonymous
>>4931955 psychopaths are very brave indeed >>4931958 why would you even have a social life as an egoist? also you obviously give a shit if they died because you already contemplated giving a shit. not giving a shit is not even reflecting on it. stirnerfags are retarded

1 hours later 4932037 Anonymous
>>4931990 Way to put words in my mouth, as otherwise you might find yourself lacking an argument. "Giving foreign aid is not a long term solution." Disprove that. Oh, wait, you can't. Poor countries need stability and infrastructure, and some damned education. Handouts don't fix the source of the problem. It's taking pain pills for your broken leg.

1 hours later 4932038 Anonymous
>>4932031 >I'd rather be a psychopath than a tool who gives away his hard-earned money or an even more "social tool" that spends money to impress friends. false dichotomy

1 hours later 4932040 Anonymous
>>4932037 >Poor countries need stability and infrastructure, and some damned education. charities provide this too. it's not like charities just throw money at africans hoping they are going to be alright in a few days. lots of charities help building schools, orphanages, plumbing for clean water etc.

1 hours later 4932046 Anonymous
>>4932035 >why would you even have a social life as an egoist? Have you even read Stirner?

1 hours later 4932050 Anonymous
>>4932046 yes. his ideas are inconsistent. he's a very sub-par philosopher, he writes for anxiety ridden pre-adults who think 'not giving a fuck about other people' will get them anywhere in life. Nietzsche is far superior

2 hours later 4932054 Anonymous
>>4932040 And when they need a new school built, or a pipe fixed, they have to come crawling to the charities. Unless they can get to the point of complete independence, it isn't going to fix it. And the charities do shit all about the political and religious situations. You have niggers killing other niggers because they came from the tribe thirty miles down the way and they braid their hair differently. You can build all the schools you want, but it doesn't matter if there's constant skirmishes.

2 hours later 4932055 Anonymous
>>4932050 >his ideas are inconsistent. >suggests nietzsche epic

2 hours later 4932059 Anonymous
>>4932031 >They want to help but they also want to get some positive feedback (or on social media instant gratification in the form of likes). I bet a kid who gets food cares if the people who financed it wanted facebook likes or not. Somebody doing something positive, even for shitty reasons is clearly better for humanity than somebody who doesn't do shit. Though enjoy your prostitute, Anon.

2 hours later 4932061 Anonymous
>>4932059 >humanity nice buzzword

3 hours later 4932225 Anonymous
>>4932061 Make it society then.

3 hours later 4932246 Anonymous
>>4932225 another spook

3 hours later 4932274 Anonymous
>>4931750 Left hand. I'm not killing a thousand people so I can type faster.

3 hours later 4932276 Anonymous
>>4931771 You seem very confused. The situations are not the same

3 hours later 4932279 Anonymous
>>4931955 Ohhh gross 1/10 get out of here please

3 hours later 4932281 Anonymous
I wonder what would a surgeon say

3 hours later 4932290 Anonymous
>>4932054 >thinking this I... Refuse to believe you can be this dumb. I don't believe it. I can't believe it. 1. Schools do not spontaneously explode, nor do pipes. For the most part, a newly constructed school stays that way for a while (a while being 50 years). 2. The media induced belief that Africans are in a perpetual state of spearing each other over beads and hair is grossly inaccurate. You've never been to Africa. Case closed. 3. Charities fund groups that directly help those involved. Charities fund groups that volunteer in hospitals. Charities fund vaccines. Charities give clean water. You can spout your meaningless 'but they gotta do it on they own those dum naggers' or you can exhibit an iota of compassion and HELP them without giving handouts (if you consider hospitals/vaccines handouts, we have no further argument here)

4 hours later 4932298 Anonymous
>>4932290 >if you consider hospitals/vaccines handouts WHY CAN'T THE STUPID NIGGERS REACH THE SAME LEVEL OF MEDICAL PROGRESS AS WE DID? It's not like we ever oppressed this savages or robbed their countries.

4 hours later 4932299 Anonymous
>>4932298 Yes we stole all their medical technology so now they're left with nothing.

4 hours later 4932304 Anonymous
>>4932299 More like never gave them any chance to develop theirs. But who cares about people living somewhere else anyway?

4 hours later 4932309 Anonymous
>>4932304 They've got access to the same technology as us right now, the problem is that they can't even feed themselves due to cultural retardation.

4 hours later 4932314 Anonymous
>>4932309 Yea, it's not like we still keep robbing them.

4 hours later 4932322 Anonymous (image.jpg 480x360 53kB)
>>4932309 >they've got the same access to technology

4 hours later 4932324 Anonymous
>>4932309 >They've got access to the same technology you sure about that, m8?

4 hours later 4932325 Anonymous
>>4932314 Not of anything they've got the brains to use themselves.

4 hours later 4932330 Anonymous
>>4932325 Agree, why letting the niggers use their own resources and get rich. All the shit belongs to us.

4 hours later 4932344 Anonymous
>>4932309 You know nothing about Africa. I suggest you read The Fate of Africa, by Martin Meredith. Please, please do not make statements like this because they make some semblance of sense in your head.

4 hours later 4932347 Anonymous
>>4931752 >One has the right to give people life Debatable.

4 hours later 4932352 Anonymous
>>4932347 How?

4 hours later 4932361 Anonymous
>>4932352 Anti-natalism

4 hours later 4932369 Anonymous
>>4932344 The U.S can send in tanks into a country, steal their opium and oil, yet they still have ten times the living standard of Africa, explain this.

4 hours later 4932379 Anonymous
>>4932369 >If A, then explain C. What you just said has absolutely no coherence. Living standard has nothing to do with capacity for war, or theft as you're putting it. And if I did, I still wouldn't understand what you're getting at with this. If anything, you've answered your own question, as a country with such a high living standard and large population as the United States would be arguably more prone to external aggression, which has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

4 hours later 4932391 Anonymous
>>4931922 >solipsism Then why are you even choosing? no one is gonna chop your hand off.

4 hours later 4932392 Anonymous
>>4932379 >theft of natural resources has nothing to do with the populations living standard >stop stealing from africa, it's our fault they're starving!!!!

4 hours later 4932425 Anonymous
>>4932369 What is there to explain? If I have the power to steal your dildos, you will end up with less dildos and therefore have a shittier living standard than me with all of your dildos.

5 hours later 4932441 Anonymous
lose the hand. The pain of guilt would drive me to suicide otherwise. Plus, when people ask how I lost my hand I can tell them by saving 1000 lives and thatd be pretty neat.

5 hours later 4932448 Anonymous
>>4932441 you can also add a good story to it in case "it was taken by a bad thought experiment" wasn't satisfying enough

5 hours later 4932453 Anonymous
Who says that I wouldn't be saving 1000 rapists and murderers? I'd only only give my hand if I was saving people who are worth saving.

5 hours later 4932504 Anonymous
I wouldn't give my left hand for anything. I don't have to justify my position to myself because I naturally care more for my own wellbeing than I do for the wellbeing of strangers. That's why I know that 1.6 million people die violently every year, but I don't lose a single day of sleep over it.

5 hours later 4932556 Anonymous
>>4931750 1000 people. They don't even exist for me, and who knows, they could be massive cunts.

5 hours later 4932563 Anonymous
>>4932556 is it ironic that you sound like a cunt?

6 hours later 4932624 Anonymous
>>4932563 yes, alanis

6 hours later 4932684 Anonymous
>>4932563 Why? Because I don't care for things that don't exist for me? Everyone in Asia, Africa, South and North America, and Eastern Europe could die right now, and I wouldn't care. Next to the implications it would bring with it, ofcourse. But those people simply do not exist for me. Doesn't mean I want them dead, just saying that they are nothing to me, so if they die, meh.

6 hours later 4932704 Anonymous
>>4932684 Now imagine where we would be if everybody would be like you.

6 hours later 4932774 Anonymous (1400104946609.jpg 1280x1280 312kB)
>>4931767 This Why is this even a question

6 hours later 4932780 Anonymous
>>4931849 Well played

6 hours later 4932781 Anonymous (squid.jpg 500x281 15kB)
>>4931752 >One only has the right After you use your left maybe.

6 hours later 4932785 Anonymous
>>4931947 > Going outside Hey guys, get a load of this pleb!

7 hours later 4932876 Anonymous
>>4932704 We would be exactly in the same place, because there has never been anyone in a situation as is posed in the OP. Like I said, I don't want them to die, but if you ask me my hand or 1000 random people I do not know, then I'd be surprised if anyone wouldn't actually choose 1000 random people.

7 hours later 4932890 Anonymous
>>4932624 That song is older than most 4chan users.

9 hours later 4933212 Anonymous
>>4932781 Cheeky. >>4932876 The situation isn't that hard to transfer in the real world, just replace hand with taking sacrifices of whatever nature. Or it's the personal sacrifice that bothers you the most? "Hey, why should we allow asylum seekers to entry out country? I don't know nor care about them and they will drain our resources."

12 hours later 4933792 Anonymous
>>4931771 peter singer plz go

15 hours later 4934533 Anonymous
>>4931750 Let 1000 people die, because this is a bullshit thought experiment that will never come true.

15 hours later 4934544 Anonymous
>>4931981 >Greek (???) Yes, εγο is a Greek word, learn to into basic Greek.

15 hours later 4934552 Anonymous (1393902552436s.png 250x234 107kB)
If I lose my hand, can I choose when, where, and how I lose it? Extremely important question

15 hours later 4934570 Anonymous
>>4931849 I just rewatched it with my brother some days ago and we spent an awful lot of time replaying that scene and laughing.

21 hours later 4935435 Anonymous
op i finally understand why the world is such a shit place yet we've been here so long if i asked this same qusetion to my friends they'd all say 1000 people saved...liars

22 hours later 4935491 Anonymous (who the nugget now.jpg 700x466 96kB)
>>4931771 >OP was unicef all along Nicely played.

3.794 0.139