Hypothetical choice

[Belize]

Kill the criminals, two birds with one very large stone...

Hey I'm a dictator I do what I want.

[Letmesleep]

That's the thing. I have no issues with harsh punishments, and I am usually the first guy to complain whenever a rapist gets away with a single-digit prison sentence. BUT after that sentence is served, I consider all his debt to society to be paid. Therefore, I wouldn't heap extra punishment on criminals.

Right, just random, innocent, and productive members of society. Regardless of your views on justice, you'd be punishing people who haven't done anything wrong instead of people who have. You're also making the scenario accommodate the condition that they've already served their sentence. Finally, I don't agree that any amount of time in prison pays off the social debt of mass murder.

[Kerath]

Talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I guess given the options, 10,000 murderers, rapists and molesters are getting carted off by the men in white coats.
Bleurgh. Why anyone would want absolute power is beyond me.

[Wikiy]

Assuming 10,000 people have to die, what's the point of killing 10,000 people who haven't done anything instead of killing 10,000 people who have intentionally and repeatedly broken the social contract in the worst possible ways? How is that a morally superior choice? I'm interested to hear your rationale.

The rationale is that everyone has the equal right to life, no matter what they've done in their life (in my opinion obviously, i can understand why some people don't agree with this). When you weigh that against the fact that killing off 10 000 prisoners rather than 10 000 random people is a lesser evil for society... well, i don't know, i guess the moral option wins for me rather than the practical one.

Finally, I don't agree that any amount of time in prison pays off the social debt of mass murder.

There is no social debt in my opinion.

But then again i consider all criminals as either mentally or morally ill (problematic ,whatever you want to call it), and therefor not deserving of any punishment in the form of prison or the like. I consider the main point of prisons (or what it should be) to protect society from criminals, not to punish criminals.

But yeah, anyways, in my book, this choice is completely equivalent to killing off 10 000 mentally ill people or 10 000 random people. And in that situation, i don't think it would be justified to take the former choice just because the latter serve society more. Perhaps I'd /roll 1-2 and let chance decide.

[PizzaSHARK]

Talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I guess given the options, 10,000 murderers, rapists and molesters are getting carted off by the men in white coats.
Bleurgh. Why anyone would want absolute power is beyond me.

Nah, you want to be the right-hand man for the person in power. You can be the power behind the power, but without having to deal with all the day to day bullshit being the head honcho inevitably requires.

[Lolretadin]

Honestly? Probably the 10,000 people from a poor country. If I am already doing shady shit like killing thousands of people, I'll have use for the people in my nation. Criminals could be better put to work doing dangerous manual labor for no pay. Also, people that are not citizens of my country are not my responsibility. Easier to cover up the deaths of thousands when they never existed in my country.

[Skizo]

I would never make an active choice to kill anyone

[PizzaSHARK]

I would never make an active choice to kill anyone

Instead you're actively choosing to continue letting many, many more people die.

[Neetz]

Instead you're actively choosing to continue letting many, many more people die.

I look at this comment and all I thought was 'The Cups Half Full'. To you it may seem that Skizo is choosing to let more people die, but by deciding not to use humans for testing, he/she is actually choosing to not kill also. This is a very sensitive subject for some people. I think that life is a beautiful thing and nobody should have the right to take it away from you. Death is something that comes to us all wether it be too soon, unexpected or tragic. I've lost people close to me with cancer but I would never cause suffering, pain and death to another human being to save another. With my beliefs on the 'afterlife' I don't fear death at all and I think we should spend the time here on the living side trying to be at peace and to be nice to one another, and then embrace death when it comes, because it will - instead of trying to ignore it.

[Annoying]

First: There's no cure for cancer. It's not a singular thing to be cured. It's a superset of diseases that differ to wild degrees. They all share a common behavior, sure, but the biological mechanics of what they are and how they came to be are vastly different.

Now: Hypothetically, I understand the statement. As you said, it's not about what we're curing, but about the problem at hand. I'm not going to vote in this, but I'll lay out exactly what you're looking at:

Option 1: People who've violated the "Social Contract" of modern society. "Each of us owes a social debt to all." These are people society has deemed unfit to remain in society and has thus "exiled" into prison. Society sees no impact from losing them, but that doesn't invalidate their human right to live.

Option 2: Eugenics. Those who are tested on and killed are those least likely or least fit to survive regardless of the test, and are deemed least important to the advancement of mankind's genome. Either they've already committed their genetic worth to society (the old), or they're not fit to commit their genetics to society (the crippled/sick). I'm not sure why you put "poor" people in this category, as it really doesn't fit, in my opinion.

Option 3: The "fair" option. Choosing this option shows that you want to express that you believe 10,000 "sacrifices" are worth millions of future lives, but don't believe that socioeconomic norms should decide those sacrifices.

Option 4: The social Darwinism option. This is where option 2's poor fit in, IMO. These are the people least likely to contribute usefully to society. Rather than choosing them for their physical inability, you choose them for their social or economic inability.

Option 5: The "no one has the right to kill any other person" option.

OR

Option 5: The "I'm bad at math" option. 580k people died in the US this year from cancer. That's 0.2% of the population. Take this to the whole world and you see an estimated 14M people died this year. 14 million. This year. That's above 7B deaths in 500 years. Way above, because that number assumes the world population suddenly stops growing exponentially. That's saving 700,000 lives per person sacrificed. You may still think no one has the right to kill any other person, but I just want you to think of the numbers first.

EDIT: If you really want my vote: I'd find 10,000 people dying of cancer. I'm sure many of them would gladly give the small fraction of time that they have left to prevent anyone from going through what they and their families went through.

[Deleted]

The people who download illegally are breaking laws aren't they? That does in fact make them lawbreakers and criminals. My point however was virtually everybody breaks laws at some point in their lives, and as such probably should be less willing to so easily throw people under the proverbial bus for breaking laws because they personally don't like what they did. Just because someone broke a law doesn't mean they no longer have human rights, which is something you should be grateful for if you've ever done something illegal.

Backpedaling with 'well some laws are worse than others to break' is problematic. It ceases to become an issue of law and becomes one of simple personal opinion. What if the murderer is in prison for murdering a child molester? The vast majority of people in prison have a reason for what they did and a long chain of circumstances that got them to that point, many flat out need mental health care, there are not vast numbers of mentally stable mass murders and mass rapists who did those things just because they're bad people just sitting around (my country of 30 million people currently has exactly two of those type imprisoned that I can think of), and even if there were those people are still entitled to human rights.

What happens in your scenario when we run out of those type of people to test on? Do we then move on to illegal downloaders because they too are criminals? Where's a line to define that which is not entirely arbitrary?

Yes, but I specifically said in the OP that I was talking about mass rapists, serial killers and greed and fanatical killers. I can't fit that in the poll. Not my problem some people don't bother to read.

Yes, someone who is fanatical or greedy or a mass rapist or child molester had a chain of circumstances for what they did. Let's see:
1. Greed kills. They like money, but you have some they can take. So they'll kill you.
2. Fanatical kills. They don't like that you were born somehow or that you like something different then them. So they'll kill you.
3. Mass rapists/mass child molesters. They like women/children, but women and children don't like them back. So they force themselves on them.

What about someone who kills a mass child molester? Good question! Let's see... who abuses their children or other children? Animals. How much does someone get for killing an animals in prison? Well, between a fee and 5 years, depending on how close to extinction the animal is. So, the person who killed a mass child molester can get 5 years. Because he killed an animal, not a human being. In fact it's even worse, since most animals can't understand the consequences of their actions, but humans, besides those with mental conditions that make them violent and such (who should be treated and helped) can. So a mass child molester is actually worse then an animal, since they can understand what they did. So I think 2-5 years is ok.

Am I barbaric for saying this? Who knows? But I know the actions of serial killers, mass rapists, mass child molesters and as such are worse.

And last, since my scenario is hypothetical, you don't run out of people. You have 10000 serial killers, mass rapists, mass child molesters, fanatical and greed killers. How do you have so many of those? I don't know. You're ruling over India or China, there.

Firstly. Yes I understand the premise I was just making a general observation about the views of some of the posters regarding this issue in the real world.
Secondly, and this is where I will probably have a major disagreement with many people, If a serial killer, mass rapist or mass child molester doesn't become what they are through circumstance then you must say they chose that road. I don't think anybody rationally chooses to do that kinda stuff.

And here I can't agree with you. You'd be surprised how many chose that road.

Isn't this from Civ4?

No. You have such choices in there? Maybe I should play that game.

Talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I guess given the options, 10,000 murderers, rapists and molesters are getting carted off by the men in white coats.
Bleurgh. Why anyone would want absolute power is beyond me.

Yup, I tried to make the choices so no choice is fully "good".
And to the question, for power or to help others.
In this case, it's to help others, for if you stepped down the evil military leader would take your place. So you're better then that.

First: There's no cure for cancer. It's not a singular thing to be cured. It's a superset of diseases that differ to wild degrees. They all share a common behavior, sure, but the biological mechanics of what they are and how they came to be are vastly different.

Now: Hypothetically, I understand the statement. As you said, it's not about what we're curing, but about the problem at hand. I'm not going to vote in this, but I'll lay out exactly what you're looking at:

Option 1: People who've violated the "Social Contract" of modern society. "Each of us owes a social debt to all." These are people society has deemed unfit to remain in society and has thus "exiled" into prison. Society sees no impact from losing them, but that doesn't invalidate their human right to live.

Option 2: Eugenics. Those who are tested on and killed are those least likely or least fit to survive regardless of the test, and are deemed least important to the advancement of mankind's genome. Either they've already committed their genetic worth to society (the old), or they're not fit to commit their genetics to society (the crippled/sick). I'm not sure why you put "poor" people in this category, as it really doesn't fit, in my opinion.

Option 3: The "fair" option. Choosing this option shows that you want to express that you believe 10,000 "sacrifices" are worth millions of future lives, but don't believe that socioeconomic norms should decide those sacrifices.

Option 4: The social Darwinism option. This is where option 2's poor fit in, IMO. These are the people least likely to contribute usefully to society. Rather than choosing them for their physical inability, you choose them for their social or economic inability.

Option 5: The "no one has the right to kill any other person" option.

OR

Option 5: The "I'm bad at math" option. 580k people died in the US this year from cancer. That's 0.2% of the population. Take this to the whole world and you see an estimated 14M people died this year. 14 million. This year. That's above 7B deaths in 500 years. Way above, because that number assumes the world population suddenly stops growing exponentially. That's saving 700,000 lives per person sacrificed. You may still think no one has the right to kill any other person, but I just want you to think of the numbers first.

EDIT: If you really want my vote: I'd find 10,000 people dying of cancer. I'm sure many of them would gladly give the small fraction of time that they have left to prevent anyone from going through what they and their families went through.

Good, you did manage to find how the thinking could go both ways for each section so well done
As for poor people, I put them there since I knew some people consider extremly poor people to be more leeches to society and not contributing in any way. So I felt it needed to be there since it would make an interesting choice in the question if people would throw them in with the people that aren't as useful to society as perfectly healthy humans (crippled) and people who've served their use mostly (really old people).

[Deleted]

Option 5 or 6.

I'd ask for the people themselves to sacrifice for greater good (providing monetary benefits to them/their family). I probably wouldn't go along with it, so I don't have the right to force them. All of the other options would mean that I'm a murderer, even if for the good cause. With option 5, disease kills them, not me.

[Letmesleep]

The rationale is that everyone has the equal right to life, no matter what they've done in their life (in my opinion obviously, i can understand why some people don't agree with this). When you weigh that against the fact that killing off 10 000 prisoners rather than 10 000 random people is a lesser evil for society... well, i don't know, i guess the moral option wins for me rather than the practical one.

I can understand the philosophy of "right to life", but I find many people aren't terribly consistent with it. Some think criminals should live, some think babies should die, and some think animals should be wearing crowns on their heads. I think there's a lot of hypocrisy that's spewed when people discuss the sanctity of life, but that doesn't mean I think everyone is worthless. Far from that, actually, and I place a high value on relieving suffering.

Coming back to the scenario proposed in Arnorie's OP, I still would probably contend that if killing people is always wrong, then making the most practical choice about who should and shouldn't live would still remain the most advantageous for society as a whole. Breaking it down to a choice between killing one of two individuals, one person who just came from a fundraising event for terminal diseases and one who just got done blowing up a school full of children, I think the most rational choice would be to kill the person who just blew up a school. One person has shown a clear indication of wanting to better society while one has violated every social rule in the book and is probably more likely to do so again. Either way one is going to die, so I'd argue that rolling the dice doesn't make the choice less immoral, it just makes it less logical. In other words, if each choice is equally immoral, than choosing the most beneficial one has the clear advantage. I did happen to enjoy the /roll reference.

There is no social debt in my opinion.

But then again i consider all criminals as either mentally or morally ill (problematic ,whatever you want to call it), and therefor not deserving of any punishment in the form of prison or the like. I consider the main point of prisons (or what it should be) to protect society from criminals, not to punish criminals.

But yeah, anyways, in my book, this choice is completely equivalent to killing off 10 000 mentally ill people or 10 000 random people. And in that situation, i don't think it would be justified to take the former choice just because the latter serve society more. Perhaps I'd /roll 1-2 and let chance decide.

It was my mistake to bring up the nature of justice; we already get plenty of those threads already. I'm glad you at least have a reason you support what you do even if we don't see eye to eye on it.