What would you do in the face of the unwinable?

[Brovo]

Where there is no truly right answer: Just different, painful consequences. Take for example, this classic scenario.

A train is hurdling down the tracks. Your friend is tied down on the right track, and ten strangers are tied down on the left track. You can only change which track the train is going down: What do you choose to do, and why?

Note: Choosing not to choose still results in someone dying. You just chose to abdicate the responsibility. Just to clarify that.

 

[Minerva]

Just throw a Nokia W3310 on the tracks, the train trails straight off.

You just derailed a train carrying a bunch of deadly airborne and waterborne diseases. The train derails, and the diseases seep into groundwater and a nearby stream, which runs into a river, which runs into the ocean. Everyone living becomes infected by the airborne diseases, and you spread those around as well. The spread of the diseases are rampant and catastrophic. All of humanity is wiped out in three years time, including you, your friend, and the ten people you saved. The end of humanity has come, all because you decided to derail the train.

Honestly, here's the thing: save your friend, they might never talk to you again, because TEN PEOPLE were killed, and you decided to save your friend. Though, that depends on your friend. Even if it were my girlfriend, I would still choose the ten people. They'd be grateful, and I'd have just saved ten people. The family of my friends would understand that it was necessary, hopefully, and you might lose them, but you still have the families of the ten people as well as the ten themselves.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Save the 10.

It would hurt, a lot.
But it would be selfish, cruel and dare I say evil for me to allow many others to die, and many more people to suffer their loss just because I was too concerned about my own feelings.

 

[Dervish]

You just derailed a train carrying a bunch of deadly airborne and waterborne diseases. The train derails, and the diseases seep into groundwater and a nearby stream, which runs into a river, which runs into the ocean. Everyone living becomes infected by the airborne diseases, and you spread those around as well. The spread of the diseases are rampant and catastrophic. All of humanity is wiped out in three years time, including you, your friend, and the ten people you saved. The end of humanity has come, all because you decided to derail the train.

I think what you meant to say was, "roll for initiative."

 

[Brovo]

Frankly I'd save my friend because I don't know those ten people. Their lives have no real meaning to me beyond that they're humans like I am.

"What about their families?"
What about my friend's family?

"But you're hurting ten families as opposed to one!"
So be it. I'm not going to try and measure pain. Pain is abstract, pain is personal. I don't know how their families will deal with it: Well or poorly, it's irrelevant. I know none of them, and they don't know me. If the positions were reversed, would they choose me over one of their own?

Loyalty is a valuable trait. It's a trait I hold as personally core. I couldn't choose to value the life of someone I do not know, over someone I know. Especially since, in the future, even if nobody else would, I would have to live with the fact that I would betray those who trust me, because I would want to avoid the personal responsibility and guilt associated with aiding them in their darkest hours, in the darkest choices.

It would take some seriously cataclysmic fatality figures for me to be given pause, and only if I felt that choosing my friend would put them in a world that would be sincerely, vastly weaker than it had been before.

I would rather live with the responsibility of saving my friend at the cost of others I do not know, than to choose those I do not know over my friend because of cold numbers games. The one is worth more than the many.

 

[Dervish]

Frankly I'd save my friend because I don't know those ten people. Their lives have no real meaning to me beyond that they're humans like I am.

"What about their families?"
What about my friend's family?

"But you're hurting ten families as opposed to one!"
So be it. I'm not going to try and measure pain. Pain is abstract, pain is personal. I don't know how their families will deal with it: Well or poorly, it's irrelevant. I know none of them, and they don't know me. If the positions were reversed, would they choose me over one of their own?

Loyalty is a valuable trait. It's a trait I hold as personally core. I couldn't choose to value the life of someone I do not know, over someone I know. Especially since, in the future, even if nobody else would, I would have to live with the fact that I would betray those who trust me, because I would want to avoid the personal responsibility and guilt associated with aiding them in their darkest hours, in the darkest choices.

It would take some seriously cataclysmic fatality figures for me to be given pause, and only if I felt that choosing my friend would put them in a world that would be sincerely, vastly weaker than it had been before.

I would rather live with the responsibility of saving my friend at the cost of others I do not know, than to choose those I do not know over my friend because of cold numbers games. The one is worth more than the many.

Hey now.

Don't kink murder shame.

Rude.

 

[Brovo]

Hey now.

Don't kink murder shame.

Rude.

I'll do what I want!

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

kink murder shame.

Kink? :P

So in the Bedroom it's now sexy for me to shame murderers? XD

 

[Ser K+]

Unless they pull some Until Dawn shit and the trolley/train kills your friend anyway no matter what you choose. But it turns out he's the one who set up the train and kidnapped those people..

And there happens to be wendingos for whatever reason.








I'd derail the train.
I know how to derail a train.

 

[Legens Legentis]

Friends are expendable. For all I know, one of the ten strangers is a millionaire that would shower me with praise and little gold coins.
That and I don't think I could live with my reputation tarnished for selfishly saving one person over many.