Would you save your pet or a stranger's child?

[NotADailyMailJournalist]

Hello all

Slightly inspired by another thread where posters were surprised that people were more interested in someone's dog than their baby...

If you have a cat/dog and you could only save it or a stranger's child/baby, what would you choose?

For the purposes of this thread, no-one would ever find out you'd been given the choice, so you wouldn't face any consequences.

Thanks

Okay, well I value her more than a random human then. That human doesn't love me and likely never will. I also know nothing about them. As I've said previously who is to say they'll ever do anything good in their life?

Not to mention that I'd be sacrificing myself a lot. I'm not religious but if I were, I'd believe that me killing the only being who's ever loved me and saved my life potentially, more than once , would land me straight in hell. I don't think human life is especially special or valuable.

We do a lot of harm and cause a lot of pain and suffering from an informed, equipped and intelligent perspective, unlike any other. Sometimes just for fun, or to stroke our egos. We're scum from certain perspectives, and we're guests on this planet the same as any other animal is.

You are correct. The death of a child will cause more hurt to more people than the death of a dog. But that's not the point. The point is WHO it will hurt. I'd choose for the greater suffering to take place as long as it's not me /mine who suffer!

No, the point of the thread is who would people choose. Most people have chosen the child because to not choose the child is selfish.

You are happy to be selfish, that's fine. But your selfishness wasn't the point of the thread

or was it?

I'd rescue my pets over a strangers kid.

I'm a parent myself (and assessed as having sociopathic tendencies).

If I'd put/left my child in serious danger and didn't go and get it myself I wouldn't hold a stranger responsible for not doing that either and rescuing what was important to them.

My instant reaction is my pet. But with the aftermath of that decision in mind, I would have to choose the child.

This is actually a really interesting thread (made much more entertaining by MN's freakish love of dogs). With no more information provided, I'd save the kid, and I imagine most other people would as well. I suppose there's quite a lot of interesting, if tasteless, iterations of the question you could do (e.g somebody's life enhancing seeing-eye dog vs a terminally ill child who's only got a few weeks to live anyway) which might change the answer.

I'm not sure the rebuttal of "but you spend more on your pet than on starving children in the developing world" is particularly meaningful. I imagine most people spend more on their MOT then they give to WaterAid or malaria charities, but no one would call them virtue signalling if they said they'd save an unknown child rather than their Tesla from being pushed off a cliff.

Definitely my pet! Because I am responsible for my pet, not a stranger’s child. And because the death of a stranger’s child would not have any negative impact on me, but the death of a beloved pet would. 🤷‍♀️

It’s a hard one and there are no winners but I think I’d choose my dogs !
I have 5 kids .
I don’t really see humans as being more important than dogs .

We're getting some more honest opinions on this thread now (using you as an example rather than an exhaustive illustration).

It’s the Trolley Problem, isn’t it (and various combinations eg. a stranger, a strangers child, a child I know, my favourite child)

I think there is no right answer, which is why philosophers love talking about it.

It shouldn't even be a question. A child (not even my own) always, always, always over my pet.

And I remember answering the same question the same way both before and after I had both kids of my own, or pets frankly.

There's a fundamental horror in choosing an animal over a young human. Children are innocent and vulnerable and deserve as much protection as our own humanity can give them.

That being said, if you'd asked pet or say, Trump or Putin, the animal wins hands down.

What’s wrong with being selfish? Everyone else is, so if you aren’t then you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

My pet 100%

I think this thread is a wind up!

And how do you know said child wont grow up to be as bad if not worse, as either of those examples?
The answer is that you do not.

Stranger’s child. Could not choose to inflict that kind of grief on a fellow human if I had the power to prevent it.

Stranger's child, without hesitation

I think the crux of the trolley problem is that you're intervening, though, rather than remaining a bystander. So if the trolley is heading down one track where it kills five people, you switch the lever and it goes down another where it only kills one. So, technically, you've prevented five deaths but caused one by intervening, whereas if you had done nothing you wouldn't have caused any deaths but more people would be dead (I think you assume that the runaway trolley wasn't anything to do with you in the first place).

But I'd be very interested to see how various combinations played out on MN. Mostly I'm morbidly interested in what certain MNers would do to save a labradoodle.

I’d save my pet 100%. I think all sentient life is worth the same and I have a connection to my pet.

I definitely wouldn't save a labradoodle. My dog is genetically 12% wolf and a total mongrel .

Your question was a hard one to answer I am not going to lie!

Yes I have 2 children but my dog is special very special to me………because I got him at a time when I had just been diagnosed with a serious health condition and he has literally saved my life and my children’s when I lost my brother. My family all leave in the morning & its just us 2 all day everyday.

My first response was immediately my dog no question but then I am asking myself really you would choose your dog over a child?! A child?! Are you insane?! Your a mother how can your first answer not be the child!!!!

Deep down I know I would save the child but the loss of my dog would probably kill me.

To some it may sound really dramatic me saying that but my life has been turned on its head and this disability I now have feels like it is just destroying me. I am the opposite of ‘dramatic’. To look and talk to me no one can tell the pain I live with everyday as I don’t talk about how debilitating my condition is. People are too judgemental & opinionated.

No one knows the feeling when you are in so much pain and you just wish you were no longer here and he will come along sit in front of me and just stare at me. Sometimes it feels like he is able to see right through to my soul. At times it can be unnerving as he looks at me so intensely that I forget the pain and focus on him. I could be lying on the sofa in the living room and he will sit in the hallway waiting for the family to come home but will keep checking on me every half an hour. I once even timed him and it was so spooky how he came every half hour & yes I have a lot of time on my hands as I am medically retired. He is not an assistance dog but when it is just us at home he is always there by my side.

i have had dogs since I was little & back then it was all the fun and joy that goes with having a dog. The relationship I have with my dog now since I’ve been ill is nothing like before. He knows when I am in pain or when I am really down. I’ve been on a walk with him and the family and towards the end I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other and my Husband had begun to worry as it was still another 10-15 mins before we got to the car and I held his lead and I kid you not he pulled me all the while keeping an eye on my feet. I honestly do not know to this day how I managed it when my hips were on fire and my legs felt like they would just crumble but I totally zoned out and followed him. My family were totally speechless, they walked behind so as not to distract him. A couple of months ago when we were at home I was in a lot of pain and I couldn’t stand up straight. I was on the sofa downstairs & my husband had got up to help me upstairs. I am literally hobbling at this point whilst holding onto my husband and my dog was on the other side of me and when I cried out in pain he got distraught and stressed. I was having to reassure him whilst I was trying to walk to the hallway as i didn’t want him to get in front of me. I had my kids trying to call him thinking he might get in the way but he stayed by my side walked up the stairs with me until I got to my room. Once I was on the bed he watched me and then sat on the landing and stayed there until my meds had kicked in.

How the hell does anyone explain that?!

To see my family so shocked not once but twice at how in tune he is with me without ever receiving any training is just unbelievable. When I am unwell he is the most patient calm dog but when I can manage he’s getting all his toys out of his bed and bringing me his favourite toy for me to throw or he is doing zoomies all round downstairs. That’s my dog & that’s why I genuinely struggled answering this question.

Very different circumstances to me and far more severe, but I feel that my first post on this thread had a very similar feel to it.
I am so sorry you've been through (& go through) all of this.

What if you had to face the parents of the dead child? When it came out at the inquest what you had done could you handle the hostility of former friends and neighbours?

@WreninaDarkNook - I don't know. I don't even know if my own kids are going to turn in psychos and I look after them every day 🤷🏽‍♀️ what if I chose someone's dog and it viciously mauled a person to death the folllowing week? 🙄

A human child is an innocent that hasn't had a chance to live their life yet. My pet is my pet. Yes I love them, but they aren't my babies. I'd never not be able to look at the face of a suffering child and not see my own kids 🤷🏽‍♀️

And in my case I strongly suspect it wouldn't even be a choice, I would automatically rescue the child. The pet would only be considered once the child is safe.

Thought long and hard about it and I cannot think of a single defensible reason why anyone would even consider they would save a pet over a child.

As a dog owner and lover, I love my dog/cat is simply not good enough. They should be ashamed of themselves.