Would you kill 10000 people to save the person you love most?

[CurdinHenry]

Context -

You would just have to press a button and you wouldn't have to see it happen

You would be guaranteed not to know any of them beforehand

No one would know it was you unless you confessed

Yanbu yes
Yabu no

Yes and wish I could do it right now, but I can't.

Yes but only for my children.

You wish you could kill 10,000 people right now?

May I suggest therapy?

You have no idea what someone is going through.

I would have typed the same and meant it with all my heart while sitting next to my ds incubator in NICU. Have a bit of compassion.

Have some compassion -hah! What if someone else could have saved their DC by turning off the incubator? Where does it end? Who decides who gets compassion and who doesn't?

Oh for Christs sake. You don’t know what that poster is going through right now to post that response.

Wheras you, the mind-reader, know exactly what I am or am not going through.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? No one has suggested you need therapy after you have posted something which shows you are probably struggling right now.

I don’t know what you are going though, and if it is something awful, then maybe understand that the poster may be in a very upsetting place themselves to have written that and doesn’t need someone sniping at them about therapy.

Presumably in that situation you could understand the motivations of both, and even extend grace to both?

It’s a hypothetical, not actual reality. No one is hovering over a button that will wipe out 10,000 people, so I’m failing to see the point in your moral outrage. In actual reality, that poster may be sat right now with their critically ill child. No shit they would take that all away if they could.

Yes, they'd kill my child to do it. Sorry if that doesn't sit right with me.

Do you ordinarily make other people’s trauma about you?

Yes, a lot of people would sacrifice strangers to save their own loved ones. They’d probably elect to kill me to do it too, and?

I think instinct would probably take over so it's not a decision most people would make rationally.

You seem to be getting quite het up about something that is, as you have pointed out, a hypothetical.

Mmhmm. I’m not the one taking it personally.

You've accused me of making other people's trauma about me. No-one actually said that they have trauma; you, InterIgnis, defender of the right to kill, are the one who has intuited trauma.
If the hypothetical means this much to you, perhaps you should <deep breath> go to therapy?

Yes, I think I would for my children. I'd spend the rest of my life racked with guilt, but presented with the option, I think I'd have to press the button.

Yes. It's weird to think that you'd apparently prefer your child died, than to go to the bother of pressing a button that (as far as you know) kills 10,000 totally random people.

I think it’s weird that you would kill 10,000 people. What do you mean by “random”. They are human beings just like your child.

If :

• they weren't random (lets say you got a list of names, and they were all from your town)
• they were all under the age or 3
• you actually had to kill them violently (think baseball bat)

Would this affect your decision? For all the kill-happy mumsnetters, I'm really interested to see if there's a line they won't hypothetically cross or if it's anything goes when my DC's life is at stake.

I don't know them, I don't love them, and I probably wouldn't like most of them. Some of them would likely be awful people or criminals, statistically. On top of that, preserving your child's life is supposed to be a biological imperative.

If you'd freely choose to save the lives of 10,000 strangers over saving your own child, I think there's something deeply wrong with you.

There aren't 10,000 people in my town, I don't know anyone in my town beyond a passing greeting, and that would take quite a long time if you had to do it personally.

I'm not 'kill happy', I just value my children's lives more than anyone else's. And no, I'm not sure there's a line I wouldn't cross if my children never found out. It would probably ruin me, but if I could save their lives then I couldn't do anything else. I'm surprised that others would just choose to let their children die (in effect, choosing to kill them).

No I think I was just raised with values and morales which you seem to be lacking.

Well this is all getting a bit daft now.

But here we go:

My child is hooked up to a machine, by a maniac, who tells me, “you see that big red button? Push that, and your child’s life is spared. It will kill 10,000 random people, but your child will live. If you don’t push it, I push this one, and your child dies.”

Child: “Please mummy, save me!”

Me: “Nah, sorry love. I was raised with values and morals. See ya.”

I'm sure, in this hypothetical, your self-righteousness over morals and values will be a great comfort to you when you've actively chosen to (unnecessarily) let your children die. I'm sure they'd appreciate that you valued your morals over their lives too, except that they'd be dead, so...

Simply pressing a button is one thing. You’re not confronted with the reality, plenty of people would do that because you disassociate from it.

IMO anyone saying they’d do ‘anything’, including killing (or worse?) to other people’s children, ridiculous and dishonest at best, and a bit scary if they’re being sincere.