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

Not sure. I think a lot of people have no moral compass at all in this country.

I don't think you can assert that your choice is the moral one. A lot of people would say letting your child die is the worst thing you could possibly do. It's all subjective.

I'm a woman who loves males and thinks you have a weird attitude.

I would. I actually think the way it framed up thread in real terms is more entlighening Would you stop the state spending £1m on a treatment for cancer for a loved one if you knew the £1m would save 10,000 people in Africa from Malaria.

Yes you're right. The answers will be different I imagine. Albeit not reflected in voting choices.

Even more idiotic

I'm not sure answer would be different though

A better scenario, though it wouldn’t work for numbers is… if your child was ill with a deadly virus , would you keep them home and let them die or take them to hospital/in public to seek help?

You can see this with the anti vaxxers. They rely on everyone else doing the right thing and taking the tiny risk to create herd immunity. Sounds like a few posters on here think they are doing the right thing and rather clever about it too.

It's just a very anti-social way to live and the more people who do it the further the fabric of society breaks down.

And where would you draw the line? With even current transplant technology most of us could probably give up a child tomorrow to save 10 other sick children but I doubt many would. I certainly wouldn't.

Interesting that the roughly two-thirds of people on here who would commit mass-murder at the press of a button corresponds with the equivalent number who would torture a stranger to death at the behest of an authority figure, via the press of a button, in the Stanley Milgram experiment.

I would deem this significant majority those lacking a strong moral compass or backbone.

Och away you go

People saying they’ll do something on a daft internet chat are not comparable to people actually doing something IRL

That's a generous interpretation. Sounds more like clinical psychopathy to me. Or perhaps just "showing off" while hiding behind the internet. Though it seems strange thing to brag about.

I wonder if that's what he had in mind.

I’d say the detachment helps. It’s a button , you don’t have to witness anything, you don’t know any of those people etc.

You can help 10,000 people from another country and refuse at least some lifesaving but expensive treatments or services domestically or you can do the opposite. Someone is going to die in either situation and you have the power to choose who. You're actually choosing whether you press the button or not.

Why do you think that helping 10,000 people means lifesaving or expensive treatments will be curtailed ? 240,000 Ukrainians moved to the UK, are you suggesting that by helping them, people in the locality they moved to died as a result ?

No, but in the Stanley Milgram experiment(s), people were actually doing the thing. Or at least they thought they were, which is the important part.

I'd suggest reading about it if you haven't. It's very illuminating about human behaviour.

Kill ten thousand other peoples' children?

For me the answer is a firm no.
It is really an issue of ego and selfishness. I cannot consider myself or my family more important than those 10,000 who had to die.
And while there is an important discussion to be had around what that looks like in terms of overseas aid etc, it is not the same scenario at all, your question was directly killing people.

For me, I wonder how you could look you child in the eye as an adult and say 10,000 people died so you could be here. They would not want that. They would live with the guilt of that. It is not a decision that has no consequences for the person saved.

I would not want someone to do that for me either.
But I am not afraid of death. I don't think living at all costs is the goal.

And as a result, a lot of the participants suffered severe distress and negative emotional responses. What does that tell you?

I imagine these groups exactly the other way round- I find the idea of someone who could kill their own child on some sort of utilitarian calculation of greater happiness for the greater number absolutely chilling, and I'm confident that that person would be far more likely to torture a stranger to death at the behest of an authority figure- doing the "right thing" when every human impulse is to do the opposite.

(FWIW Milgram's work has been thoroughly discredited- the original experiment was full of flaws (including the fact that large numbers of the people who carried on "torturing" were aware that the set up was fake) and the results have not been replicated.)

No of course I wouldn't, it would be completely morally repugnant. My children would be horrified and disgusted.

What sort of people are you that would do this. Actually I don't believe you.

I would happily sacrifice myself for my children, me and DH have had this discussion. But kill other peoples children. No.

To save my children. Yes.

Why do people even give brain space to stupid questions like this? It's morbid and depressing. Live in the present in the real world!

Not to pick on you specifically, but these answers are so unbearably cringe.

Like @nomas said, yours and nobody else’s kids are worth 10,000 other people dying. This is such a stupid hypothetical scenario, but even so, it’s insanely selfish. Other innocent men, women, children, babies. Bonus points for anyone who has ‘no qualms’ about it either, I mean fgs.

Saying you’d do this doesn't mean you love your kids so much more than anyone else.