So I was musing last night about how I have a tendency to avoid actions where I know that the consequence of messing up are more than I am comfortable with. This led me to the following philosophic quandary:
Suppose you have a coin. Someone in front of you is literally seconds from death with no chance of an external force saving them. You however can flip this coin, and if you get heads they will be instantly healed. If you were to flip tails however, you would both die (you from losing the flip, them from succumbing to their injuries). Would you flip the coin?
Expanding on that, what if the game was to flip two coins, and they would be saved if at least one of them was heads? What if you had to roll a D20 and just had to score anything but a one? At what point would the risk of death be small enough for you to play the game to try to save this person? Would knowing this person make a difference?
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
Suppose you have a coin. Someone in front of you is literally seconds from death with no chance of an external force saving them. You however can flip this coin, and if you get heads they will be instantly healed. If you were to flip tails however, you would both die (you from losing the flip, them from succumbing to their injuries). Would you flip the coin?
Yes.
Now, truth be told, my initial answer to this question was, "No I wouldn't."
But if I had an actual person right in front of me, dying of injuries, and I knew I could save them? Yeah. I'd flip it. At least I hope I would. It's the right thing to do.
So I was musing last night about how I have a tendency to avoid actions where I know that the consequence of messing up are more than I am comfortable with. This led me to the following philosophic quandary:
Suppose you have a coin. Someone in front of you is literally seconds from death with no chance of an external force saving them. You however can flip this coin, and if you get heads they will be instantly healed. If you were to flip tails however, you would both die (you from losing the flip, them from succumbing to their injuries). Would you flip the coin?
Expanding on that, what if the game was to flip two coins, and they would be saved if at least one of them was heads? What if you had to roll a D20 and just had to score anything but a one? At what point would the risk of death be small enough for you to play the game to try to save this person? Would knowing this person make a difference?
I would probably do it at 75%. Also, as a D&D player I can assure you that 1s are much more likely than any other number on d20s.
I would. Not much else to say without sounding emo, but I would.
Would knowing this person make a difference?
Yeah. Obviously, I'd hesistate hesistate less if it were someone I loved, more if it weren't, and I'd probably outright refuse if the person were, say, a suicide bomber who happened not instantly die after blowing up a bus of orphans.
Wow, we're a more altruistic bunch than I expected (no offense meant, I just didn't expect it to be so unanimous). I'd also like to think that I would be able to, but from a purely hypothetical standpoint it sort of terrifies me to think that my entire life would come down to a random coin flip/dice roll. I know that's a little silly given that many of our actions in life involve similar risks (whether we recognize them at the time or not), but yeah...for me it feels like it'd be a bit harder, especially if I didn't know the person.
Highroller raised a good point about actually seeing the person dying probably making the decision easier.
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
Random stranger? No, I don't think so. I've got a lot to live for (wife, kid on the way, other close family) and couldn't take that risk. Now if I was 80 instead of 30 I would probably have a different view. I think the odds of me dying would have to get really low, like the D20 scenario, for me to consider it.
In the stranger scenario it would probably also depend on why the person was dying. Are they completely innocent in terms of the cause of their own death? Or am I going to see something that causes me to believe that they were at least partially at fault (i.e. smoker/obese/alcoholic with related health issue). Not saying it is necessarily right to base my decision on that kind of thinking, but I am pretty sure it would matter to me in the moment.
Immediate close family member? Wife and little brother, absolutely. Parents probably. Beyond that maybe, but definitely yes as the odds get better than 50-50.
Anyone doing this for a random stranger is not thinking it through. You're not saving anyone's life as much as you're risking another. Flipping the coin means you value a random person life's more then your own, which is wrong in my opinion. I would either need some horribly bad selfstem to think a random is better alive then me or have some huge hero vanity to satisfy by having my name immortalized.
I would also ponder my age and my family. I'm not leaving my wife and my father behind for anyone, specially someone i don't even know. My commitment to then are far greater to the commitment I have to the rest and moral says I should honor that. If I was pretty much alone in this world or had a terminal disease I would go for it. I also would go for it for the people I know and highly value. Probably with horrible chances.
The most interesting question here is which is the probability you would be indifferent between flipping and not flipping. For a total stranger I wouldn't risk 10%. I still think 5% is a non deal but close.
The funny thing is, the real number will never come up unless someone puts up a real experiment (could be the theme of the next jigsaw movie). Intuitively I think we're pretending to flip the coin more then what we actually would.
This depends a lot on how they will die. If they slump over on the ground, seemingly asleep but never to awake, this is not too traumatic for me. If they explode, shooting blood, brain tissue, stomach contents, and so on toward nearby people at a high velocity, that would be quite a more dramatic loss of utility for me.
In the first case, I will probably not risk a 1% chance of death for a strange but would go as high as perhaps 45% for a 2 year-old I know (As italofoca points out 50% would imply that I value their life above my own which is not currently true for anyone but likely would be for a spouse and/or kids).
In the second case, the break even point is probably something a little under 10% for me.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
Everyone wants to be the person to flip the coin and be a hero but no one will. Bystander effect.
Someone else will do it. I don't have the ability to change the situation. It's outside my control.
We think these, then move on.
This character you have created reminds me Two-Face from the Batman comics.
I dont think it matters how many coins you flip or what dice you roll. The problem is (I think), will you take a chance to save someone else at the risk of hurting yourself. The answer is no.
Now that you know that, maybe you will act differently in the future. Assuming of course that you have free will.
edit: pardons if I killed any warm fuzzies you sheep
Here's the thing for me; Everyone of us is already dead. Be it via accident, murder, old age, disease, hell, even for the poor souls who self inflict, every single one of us is dead in the grand scheme of things. We have no control over this, we have no possible way of knowing when/how Scythe and Cloak will come for us.
But you're telling me that you are going to give me the ability to not only decide my own fate, but possibly cheat another person out of theirs? Hand me that coin.
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
All actions carry some risk however negligible. For me to act, the risk has to be negligible enough. I'm not sure I'd do it with a D20 but perhaps and D500 or D1000 for a stranger. I'd go down to D20 for a family member.
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Suppose you have a coin. Someone in front of you is literally seconds from death with no chance of an external force saving them. You however can flip this coin, and if you get heads they will be instantly healed. If you were to flip tails however, you would both die (you from losing the flip, them from succumbing to their injuries). Would you flip the coin?
Expanding on that, what if the game was to flip two coins, and they would be saved if at least one of them was heads? What if you had to roll a D20 and just had to score anything but a one? At what point would the risk of death be small enough for you to play the game to try to save this person? Would knowing this person make a difference?
Now, truth be told, my initial answer to this question was, "No I wouldn't."
But if I had an actual person right in front of me, dying of injuries, and I knew I could save them? Yeah. I'd flip it. At least I hope I would. It's the right thing to do.
I would probably do it at 75%. Also, as a D&D player I can assure you that 1s are much more likely than any other number on d20s.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Yeah. Obviously, I'd hesistate hesistate less if it were someone I loved, more if it weren't, and I'd probably outright refuse if the person were, say, a suicide bomber who happened not instantly die after blowing up a bus of orphans.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Highroller raised a good point about actually seeing the person dying probably making the decision easier.
In the stranger scenario it would probably also depend on why the person was dying. Are they completely innocent in terms of the cause of their own death? Or am I going to see something that causes me to believe that they were at least partially at fault (i.e. smoker/obese/alcoholic with related health issue). Not saying it is necessarily right to base my decision on that kind of thinking, but I am pretty sure it would matter to me in the moment.
Immediate close family member? Wife and little brother, absolutely. Parents probably. Beyond that maybe, but definitely yes as the odds get better than 50-50.
I would also ponder my age and my family. I'm not leaving my wife and my father behind for anyone, specially someone i don't even know. My commitment to then are far greater to the commitment I have to the rest and moral says I should honor that. If I was pretty much alone in this world or had a terminal disease I would go for it. I also would go for it for the people I know and highly value. Probably with horrible chances.
The most interesting question here is which is the probability you would be indifferent between flipping and not flipping. For a total stranger I wouldn't risk 10%. I still think 5% is a non deal but close.
The funny thing is, the real number will never come up unless someone puts up a real experiment (could be the theme of the next jigsaw movie). Intuitively I think we're pretending to flip the coin more then what we actually would.
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In the first case, I will probably not risk a 1% chance of death for a strange but would go as high as perhaps 45% for a 2 year-old I know (As italofoca points out 50% would imply that I value their life above my own which is not currently true for anyone but likely would be for a spouse and/or kids).
In the second case, the break even point is probably something a little under 10% for me.
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Someone else will do it. I don't have the ability to change the situation. It's outside my control.
We think these, then move on.
Here's a link if you want to read more about the bystander effect:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect
This character you have created reminds me Two-Face from the Batman comics.
I dont think it matters how many coins you flip or what dice you roll. The problem is (I think), will you take a chance to save someone else at the risk of hurting yourself. The answer is no.
Now that you know that, maybe you will act differently in the future. Assuming of course that you have free will.
edit: pardons if I killed any warm fuzzies you sheep
But you're telling me that you are going to give me the ability to not only decide my own fate, but possibly cheat another person out of theirs? Hand me that coin.