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

It's impossible to imagine a real life scenario where that is the case though. Working out the real life consequences of ones actions/government spending to that extent is horribly complicated to the point that making exact predictions isn't possible (chaos theory). It could as easily work out that not spending money on disease prevention in Africa winds up killing your own child in the long run through some unpredictable falling of dominos. (This is also why effective altruism was always a con).

A better, real life scenario would be if your child was dying and needed a viral organ transplant to save them and none could be procured from legal donors, would you commission someone to find and kill a healthy child for their organ? It's a sick idea but it's more of a "realistic" dilemma. And faced with that I would honestly have to say no, even though when the question was more dramatic (10,000 children) and vague I hesitated.

No. But I would gladly kill myself to save them.

Okay if you want to get technical manually hun.

No, I'm not a psychopath

For my children? I would kill every last man, woman and child on this earth.

They would probably never forgive me (well, ds wouldn't. Dd is like me so would probably just say thanks) but I wouldn't care, they would be alive.

Sometimes humanity makes me wish I was a better person. And sometimes it makes me wish the Thanos inifinity gauntlet was real.

This thread is bringing out the lunatics

of course not and I’m genuinely horrified so many people have voted yanbu. no wonder the uk is so easy to lead into illegal wars if we attach so little moral judgement to killing others the moment we face any potential threat to ourselves.

Yes.
I have thought about this before and I would definitely do it.

Yep, no problem.

My people are my people.

out of curiosity would you also be the sort of parent to cover up their son’s crime if he kills a girl?

i was reading about a mum that did that the other day but i can’t remember the details. she washed the blood off his clothes and got a small amount of prison time for it.

Of course I would.

According to Google an estimated 150,000 people die each day. I don't know them and it doesn't really bother me if I'm honest!

It's sad when you hear any individual story, but if we're honest none of us are losing sleep over the 150,000 people we don't know who died today.

No loved one of mine would want me to. I don’t love the kind of people that would expect or want that of me. I wouldn’t. My loved ones’ lives aren’t worth more than anyone else’s. The sort of people who would without compunction give me pause for thought. I only hope that the people they love would be good enough people to talk them out of it.

I think people dying and actively murdering people are very much different things.

Yes, certainly.

Agree.

The logical part of me knows that the worth of thousands of people is more than any one person. But in reality if I could save dh and the dc by killing a million other people, I'd still do it. You don't and can't think entirely analytically when it's so personal.

I'm staunchly against the death penalty for instance. For any crime. But if it was my family member that was killed, i'd press the button myself.

Me too OP.

True, but pressing a button and not having to ever see the result of that button press isn't really the same as actively murdering people either.

Wishing revenge on the murderer of a loved one isn't really the same as murdering an innocent person.

Unhinged.

Of course I would. In a heartbeat and I will sleep well afterwards.

Y'all need Jesus

People who think this makes them sound so cool and nonchalant.

Tbf his Dad was big into killing people.

Yes, they would which is grim

Er, how long would they be alive for if everyone else is dead? Do they not have friends or extended family they may miss? if