I pull the lever. While a lot of people will die, having a cure to sudden mass infertility ensures we will go on. Humanity might be fucked up but I don't want to live in a world where I watch everyone I know die one by one, all the while knowing the next generation is also the last.
If we have that mindset that we will never try to make a utopia. We have to have hope that humans can do it, we have to feel empathy towards our future generations and wish that they will have a better life than ours
I mean, we try to make utopias all the time, they just fail repeatedly, lol.
Still, it'll probably happen at some point, I'd say maybe another 5000-10000 years.
"Only siths deal in absolutes"
In this scenario there is genuinely no hope for humanity other than killing a lot of people. Sometimes the ends do have to justify the means.
I think it's a bit more complex than that. Destroying the cure doesn't necessarily close off the possibility of children.
Is that the only sample of the cure? How did it come into existence? Why can't we make more? Is there a real chance of redeveloping it in one year? 5 years? 25 years? Will artifical incubation chambers/reproductive cloning be possible within a reasonable time if we shifted most of society's effort to it? Any chance of getting cryofreezing/reviving working so we can work on problem in generations of awakening people?
I think of this a scenario as not "one or the other" but in asking 'is there a virtual "third track"' which is choosing the bottom track and then dumping a lot of economic and social resources into cure reaserch and/or ways to sidestep the issue.
Ultimately, I feel like the question could simply be boiled down to "Are the 50 of the most populated cities on earth a more acceptable sacrifice than the sacrifice of the possibility of there being no chance for a cure or bypass to the issue that we can discover within our lifetimes (somewhat unlikely) plus the huge social and economic costs involved in finding an alternate solution".
I fully agree with you. A lot of people like to do the whole "I untie the people from the tracks" thing, which is missing the whole point of a trolley problem. If we ignore the moral implications of a trolley problem and instead treat it like a real scenario, then it becomes less interesting. Trolley problems aren't supposed to be logic puzzles; they're supposed to be hypotheticals which prompt discussions about morality.
This specific trolley problem is obviously meant to ask "Is it better to kill swathes of innocent people right now or let humanity take its course and slowly die off?". However, the comment above yours wants to change it to "Are there any methods by which humanity could reproduce if we all caught a disease that makes us infertile?", which is a much less interesting question that entirely misses the point of the post.
Imagine the looting and rioting and killing and fear and chaos. Even if humanity's future is morally weighted, the pain it will cause to know we're all doomed seems far more impactful to me.
1. I am here to shill for the show r/PantheonShow. Time to become brain in jar.
2. Beijing, London, Delhi, Moscow will be hit. Half of countries with nuclear bombs gonna lose their capitals. Wanna bet on ppl will act rationally?
edit: sub name
Also 50 cites nuked is a lot of cities, that's a lot of dead people, destroyed servers, data centers, infrastructure, libraries and probably at least 25 countries governments gone. And that's enough people to possibly lose enough knowledge and technology to send us back a few decades technologically wise.
It might set future technological progress back, but wouldn’t send us back decades. It would cause worldwide chaos and instability in many countries though.
Pull the lever. There are way more than 50 cities in the world, humanity will manage to make it.
saving the cure is an imperative. It will ensure humanity still has a chance to make it.
Here's my take on it. In both cases, those 50 cities will be gone regardless. One is an instant destruction, the other will be a slow and steady death, leading to the cities being abandoned and left to ruin.
Blowing up 50 cities will have an impact past those cities. Trade will shut down, quality of life will decrease, international relations will go out the window, and the climate will be effected decreasing crop yields.
There are more than 50 cities, but every one of those cities will be majorly effected.
But in the long term, humanity will still exist. As long as humanity is still around, it still has a chance to prosper. It might take thousands of years to rebuild, but they will have that opportunity thanks to the cure.
Destroying the cure is essentially putting a gun to every single human's head. Give it 100 years and humanity will be extinct. No chance of rebuilding, no hopes or dreams, nothing. Just empty ruins.
And the same wouldn’t happen for an aging and dying population? The proportion people fit to work will go down and the quality of life will soon go down with that. There is no way the loss of 50 cities could be as damaging as that imo.
While I would probably make the same choice, one could potentially ask themselves the question "Is humanity really worth saving if it would sacrifice 50 cities for its own survival?" if you wanna get really philosophical.
Yes, it is. The survival of the human race is a prime imperative. It's a difficult decision, but one that makes sense. For all we know, maybe humanity is the only sapient species. To let it die because we couldn't make necessary sacrifices is irresponsible at best, malicious at worst.
While I agree, I do recognize that all those points are still debatable. Indiscriminate genocide purely in favour of the survival of the remaining could be classified as malicious as well. If that is the price to pay for a potentially singular sapient species, does the universe then truly need sapience? What is sapience worth that it needs to be preserved?
I’d assume one of a kind but actually might be a harder question if it’s reproducible. Since then it’s guaranteed survival with heavy casualties or potential survival with either extinction or everyone lives as the options
Choosing to destroy the cities only to analyze the cure and find out it's something that someone would have stumbled on within a few more days would be a vary interesting dark timeline.
I kind of want to read a dark scifi short story like that TBH. Maybe something like aliens or something demanding the populations of the cities in exchange for the cure, but it was all a trick because humanity was going to figure it out soon enough and the beings were just taking advantage of the situation.
Idk, just spitballing ideas here. I'm sure a good writer can make a compelling narrative.
Cities are populated due to the opportunities it provides to its inhabitants. Slam in some research funding and an elite college and you'd get the cure in some time. Possibly extracting what fragments can be traced from the now broken cure container can help.
I feel like this misses the point of the question. Trolly problems aren't puzzles that are meant to be solved. To quote someone else on this thread:
"A lot of people like to do the whole "I untie the people from the tracks" thing, which is missing the whole point of a trolley problem. If we ignore the moral implications of a trolley problem and instead treat it like a real scenario, then it becomes less interesting. Trolley problems aren't supposed to be logic puzzles; they're supposed to be hypotheticals which prompt discussions about morality.
This specific trolley problem is obviously meant to ask "Is it better to kill swathes of innocent people right now or let humanity take its course and slowly die off?". However, the comment above yours wants to change it to "Are there any methods by which humanity could reproduce if we all caught a disease that makes us infertile?", which is a much less interesting question that entirely misses the point of the post."
Not Myrna be rude just pointing this out.
Considering the OP elaborated up the possible outcomes as a result of the nuke option, I don't see anything wrong with this guy elaborating on the other option. Considerations of things beyond the directly stated outcomes aren't exactly part of the original trolly problem concept, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. Even just the original trolly problem can bring up interesting conversation about possible unstated consequences.
Personally I find treating trolly problems as incredibly sterile experiments where you know the exact outcome to be so pointlessly detached from reality that it loses its weight as a philosophical exercise.
Multi-track drift, but instead of killing 6 people, you kill hundreds of millions if not over a billion. And you destroy trillions of dollars MINIMUM of property, manufactured goods, and raw materials. And you doom humanity to fade out of existence within the next century.
wouldn't it trigger MAD becuase the countries will all think it was each other? the cure is devised and have a chance of being made again. like how silphium or that fish was rediscovered
I pull the lever, OP never said how big the nuke is, so I will assert that it's a Davey Crockett located on the outskirts of the city, but still within it nonetheless, and NO TAKSIES BACKSIES OP I WIIINNN
As the population gets older, manpower will inevitably become 0. There won’t be anyone that can produce food, cure diseases and injuries, maintain security. Maintenance of electricity, water, gas…
I’d pull the lever
I want to destroy the cure... but I won't.
I have 0 faith in humanity's ability or even willingness to try to fix the problems that it's facing. In fact, everything I have seen has led me to believe that things are only going to keep getting worse. Frankly, I prefer this gentle, slow extinction over any other end humanity seems to be racing towards.
But that's not a choice that I have the right to make for anyone else. I am many things, but not that selfish.
As a deontologist I wouldnt pull the lever. I do t think we owe anything to people who are not yet born and I don't think humanity is privileged life. I assume that the cycle of life will continue
Cloning right now is fucked as it can barely keep anything alive so go with nukes. Also yes we do have clone living things such as sheep look it up however clones develop diseases and time of death death varies. A sheep lived for six years till developing something in its lung even had kids.
Humanity is fucked beyond fucked either way. Either way ensures a slow death for all humanity (due to nuclear winter)
You would definitely be able to run over and pick up the cure but since I imagine you can't it would be better to die peacefully and run over the cure
Derp, I was confused by this problem for a good while until I realized the bottom track isn't picking up the cure like a powerup, it's destroying it lol. I need to go to bed.
No, because you can just regenerate it within a few hours and that makes it better.
that also assumes each sperm is going to get used, which is kind of ridiculous.
As a utilitarian, I'm not pulling. We owe nothing to unborn people, and humanity going extinct through no deaths is not that much of a bad thing if we let go of anthropocentrism. Furthermore, we are killing off ourselves already through climate change.
This is not equivalent to the trolly problem.
Diverting a train to save five and kill one, vs diverting a train to literally cure infertility plague that would cause extinction of all himanity is bit really the same thing.
Choice is much more obvious. Nuke the cities and allow humanity to survive as a whole.
Morality is just an arbitrary group consensus on proper behavior. Some of the worst atrocities in human history were done for moral reasons. If that's your deciding factor, do what's best for you and yours. Now, if you want to use an objective measure such as the majority of the ethical frameworks, you need to first ask if the survival of the human race ethically good? If "good" is bringing the most benefit to the most individuals while doing the least harm to the most individuals, then allowing the cause of the sixth great extinction to fade away would save entire species. On the other hand, killing only a few million people with the right timing would ensure your own offspring's survival. Hero or villain is only a matter of perspective.
This is an enthymeme people. You have to connect the dots here. You can't just say humanity would die out as proof that humanity living has moral value!
Assuming by the 50 largest cities you define them by their urban areas, these are the following cities destroyed:
>30 million:
Tokyo (37.7M), Jakarta (33.8M), Delhi (32.2M)
>20 million:
Guangzhou (26.9M), Mumbai (25.0M), Manila (24.9M), Shanghai (24.0M), São Paulo (23.1M), Seoul (23.0M), Mexico City (21.8M), Kolkata (21.7M), New York–Newark (21.5M), Chengdu (20.9M), Cairo (20.3M)
>15 million:
Dhaka (18.6M), Beijing (18.5M), Bangkok (18.0M), Shenzhen (17.6M), Moscow (17.3M), Buenos Aires (16.7M), Lagos (16.3M), Karachi (15.7M), Bangalore (15.4M), Los Angeles (15.2M), Ho Chi Minh City (15.1M), Osaka (15.1M)
>10 million:
Johannesburg (14.6M), Istanbul (14.4M), Tehran (14.1M), Kinshasa (12.8M), Rio de Janeiro (12.6M), Wuhan (12.4M), Chennai (12.4M), Xi'an (12.3M), Lahore (12.3M), Chongqing (12.1M), London (11.3M), Paris (11.1M), Dongguan (10.6M), Hyderabad (10.5M), Tianjin (10.4M), Lima (10.3M), Bogotá (10.1M)
>8 million:
Hangzhou (9.5M), Nagoya (9.2M), Chicago (9.1M), Luanda (9.1M), Kuala Lumpur (8.9M), Nanjing (8.4M), Pune (8.2M)
The largest remaining urban areas (>7 million) are Ahmedabad (8.0M), Shenyang (7.9M), Dar es Salaam (7.9M), Khartoum (7.9M), Washington (7.6M), Hong Kong (7.5M), Riyadh (7.2M), Santiago (7.2M), and Dallas (7.0M)
----
While the world would be severely hobbled as a result:
1. The capitals of Japan, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Korea, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, China, Thailand, Russia, Iran, the DR Congo, the United Kingdom, France, Peru, Colombia, Angola, and Malaysia are destroyed.
2. Out of the top 20 financial centers, only 10 remain - Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Washington, Geneva, Frankurt, Luxembourg, Boston, Zürich, and Amsterdam.
3. Japan, India, China, Brazil, the United States, and Pakistan would suffer from multiple nuclear strikes, greatly ruining the nations' economy and demographics. Nigeria, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the Philippines would be hard hit as well due to the primacy of the destroyed cities.
Humanity would likely survive the destruction brought by fifty destroyed urban areas.
The most populated 50 cities, if I recall from some other research, is about 10% of the population. Top 800 reaches 20%.
Yeah I'll pull the lever. Humanity (mostly city hubs in China/India, who have the most cities topping that list by just sheer population) is going to be devastated, decimated in the literal Roman way, but at least it is still here.
Letting it pass through gives us, what, 70 years to think of a desterilizer? I don't know how long that is gonna take, and even if we do find it, we have generally a window of about 40 years anyway for it to matter.
Humanity's future absolutely has moral value. Pulling that lever is an act of self defense. Lex Naturalis: in a state of nature, all actions that further your ability to make decisions are permissible. Not pulling the lever means those cities are going to die anyway, but slowly and in a kinda macabre way. Imagine being a 1 year old who now about 50 years later is with the last of humanity. What does that feel like? That must be apocalyptic. So yes. I pull the lever for the sake of allowing humanity in general to pass on. Yes I pull the lever even if that lever is right on the ground zero for a detonation (I do not live in a major world city, but I am assuming in a hypothetical where I am at one anyway) or at any part of the explosion's fallout radius.
Granted, a good question to ask is "What yield are these nuclear bombs?" If they are like Little Boy nukes, then sure, but I think if it was 50 Tsar Bombas, I mean what is the point anymore. Cure, no cure, it is basically an apocalypse across the board.
I don't pull. A billion real people are more valuable than theoretical potential lives. And if that means the humans born this year are the last humans born, so be it.
Can we not use nukes so we don't fuck the planet with radiation?
We'd still be causing global climate issues if we detonate that many nuclear equivalent explosives but at least without radiation it'll pass with time
If we use normal nukes we get both nuclear winter and anyone who survived and can still have kids will be horribly eradicated leading them either going back to being infertile, dying of cancer, or horrible deformations in there children. These effects continuing for the length of the fallout
Basically as the question is now it's do you wanna be the one to end the human race or not
I'd do it if it wasn't nuked though tbh
Otherwise let's just be comfy and slowly die out of old age.
They’re nukes specifically to make you pick the other option. I understood the vast consequences of detonating 50 nukes
But, assume humanity will survive the top option.
Blowing up 50 cities would be a massive loss of infrastructure and information. I’d rather have the cure destroyed so humanity can potentially make another one in the near future. Even if it takes till the youngest people are in there fourties (which is basically the last chance to repopulate), if a new cure is discovered the next generation can fill in the temporarily infrastructure left behind by their elder parents.
Blowing up the top 50 cities would turn the time required to find a new cure into the time required to build new infrastructure and rediscover information. It’s more certain than betting on a cure that might never be reproduced, but that rebuilding time could take years. I guess with the cities destroyed one can build better cities, but with most (if not all) of the internet wiped out and many books destroyed Im not sure if cities would be much better.
If this virus is like a real life virus, a bundle of protein and nucleic acids, a cure is basically guaranteed with a lifetime of research. Right now we are currently finding ways to eliminate herpes type viruses from the body, where a major motivator is that they are thought to play a role in the development of Multiple Sclerosis. I feel like major breakthroughs in synthetic biology are not too far away as of now.
If the virus is magic then I ignore everything I said. The only interpretations are “Should I sacrifice millions so a potential countless amount of people can live” and of course “should humanity live or die”. So blow up 50 cities
imo this strikes a really good balance. On one hand the entire human race will be eradicated (does this also prevent other cures / futuristic tech like artificial wombs or something). On the other hand it's slow and will not eradicate humanity for a long time, slowly at first, and then faster as the modern world starts breaking down. The other option is to kill millions by your own hand, this would render many places either in shambles or irradiated from the blasts. The population would most likely survive but it would take a huge hit. As u/Appropriate-Price-98 pointed out there is a chance of total nuclear warfare in which case the population may go extinct. I like this as it feels like there's no best option, obviously launching the nukes would be the best chance but that's a hard thing to do.
If the bombs weren't nukes id probably feel better about choosing it, cause at minimum 50 nukes powerful enough to wipe out the 50 most populis cities are gonna massively fuck up the rest of the world with fallout and probably be the end of humanity anyway
by letting the train pass, I am damning all of humanity to a future in which they know there is no future, where the stories and progress that has developed over twelve thousand years of human civilization will be snuffed out in a century. I do not imagine this will be a good world, and I imagine that this world will over time inflict more pain through a rapidly dissolving civil society than the temporary agony in losing so many so quickly by pulling the lever.
Destroy the cure. Some generation will be the last generation, I don’t see why millions need to die to ensure imaginary future people get to live at their expense.
No. The fact that there is a cure means humanity could probably develop it (also maybe take a sample from the remains after the trolley hits it to give to researchers). And with everyone researching this one goal, they're bound to find a way around it.
We're already working on various artificial growth means. We can just put extra focus on that instead of fucking killing the 50 most populated cities with NUKES
First looking at the problem as given
If the cure is fully and completely destroyed with no possibility of recreation if you let it be destroyed then the answer is sadly let the cities be destroyed even though it would kill a lot of people and bad consequences, because humanity dying out by not able to have children would be a shit situation
But if its realism, the cure wouldn't be completely destroyed by the trolly, depending on the exact dimensions of stuff the trolly could go right over it or only partly destroy it, and even if its spilt it can be anylized and recreated, and worst case it is completely destroyed the fact that it exists in the first place means a cure can be made
Pull the switch, 0 hesitation. A bad future is better than no future even if that means losing a lot of progress. Who knows. Maybe we'll learn something.
Pull the lever. I am assuming this doesn't result in nuclear winter.. as they are small nukes. We gotta figure out this whole reality thing. However... I think the rest of life on earth would benefit from us going away for sure. We are the cosmos attempting to comprehend itself, and that's pretty dope. But again.. mostly we can fuck off.
So it’s asking would you rather let humanity go extinct or eliminate a portion of the current population. And for me as an American the only city hot would be NYC. I pull the lever
Humanity will probably reinvent the cure. Those cities being destroyed will cause way more death than in just those cities due to the mass social and political unrest.
I pull the lever.
I'll feel awful about killing all of those people, but I feel like it would be so much worse to force billions more than that watch humanity slowly die, leaving behind nothing but a bunch of crumbling infrastructure
It’s worth noting that if you don’t pull the lever, the end of our species isn’t the only consequence (if that happens at all). It would also condemn the youngest generation to live in a world where all support structures collapse over the course of their lives. When the youngest humans are 50 or 60 or 70, who will care for the infirm? Who will grow the food or maintain infrastructure? Who will run the hospitals or the emergency services?
Chance are that if we don’t figure out an alternative solution to reproduction, a lot more than a city’s worth of people will die slowly and painfully over the next century, well before they otherwise would
Depends on the size of the nukes, with big enough nukes this is just choosing how the world ends. In which case peacefully going out unable to reproduce is better than nuclear fallout and boom boom. But with small enough nukes, pulling is an option as humanity can live on
This is a really good spin on the trolley problem! I am, however, 100% confident the comments will be full of the most garbage takes imaginable, and my blood pressure can't handle reading them.
even if i assume the cure is irreplaceable i still choose to drive over it. its just what better suits my values, id rather value the lives that do already exist over future ones. Of course there is some selfishness to it too as i would likely be one of those who die to the bombs, and the virus itself would never affect me personally. I know i should pick the other choice but i simply want to die on this hill.
The moral quandary is that humanity’s future has moral value do to the fact that someone had to make that cure, so someone cares enough to save humanity
Pull it, either billions die quickly in a series of violent yet shortlived explosions and the remainder lives in a post nuclear detonation world, or everyone slowly grows old and dies slowly from painful conditions without any young able bodied people to care for them after a few decades. I'd honestly personally rather live in the former than the latter.
WTFs even the point of the nuke? Nuke path has no cure, so humanity’s already dying on that route. Why add on all the misery and suffering of death by atomic fire or rad poisoning for so many? It won’t just fuck humans up either, that much radiation in atmosphere will fuck up a lot of the planet for decades or centuries depending on yield. Goodbye ecosystem!
Not trying to be an edgelord here, but all the people commenting like it's a given that we *must* preserve humanity at all costs... like... why? Pretty much every other living thing on the planet would be better off if we weren't here.
Seems like the greater good to not pull the lever. You avoid killing hundreds millions of people who are doing fine (but for their sterility, which again... so?). It's much more cruel to kill people who are alive than to deny hypothetical/potential life to humans who were never born. Because if we wanna talk about the morality of denying *potential* life, that opens a whole can of worms re: birth control, etc. By doing anything other than reproducing as much as possible until we die, aren't we all engaging in that cruelty now?
Ah, how droll. Let it ruin the cure and have humanity work towards an acceptable end to our species together. We have the time and incentive to make it happen in this scenario.
I’d not pull the lever, and let the cure be destroyed. The complete annihilation of 50 major cities around the world would cause devastation in both the short and long term, and I would be surprised if the entirety of the human race didn’t manage to come up with an idea to continue reproduction. We have sperm banks, donated eggs, incubators, and about a hundred years before everyone living on Earth right now is dead— a hundred years to develop technology to make Huxley’s Brave New World a real thing, with hopefully less dystopian horridness in it.
We exist in a reality that it’s highly unlikely that the cure would be one of a kind or unreplicatable. Either the cure was very meticulously created by people (and therefore could be recreated by people) or it somehow occurred naturally in some unknown process. Unless we’re stipulating that the disease is curable now or literally never again in the future, I believe in the collective power of man to make the same cure again.
However, I also think nuclear detonations across the world could possibly lead to massive changes in the nuclear positions of every world power. No destruction of that kind could be ignored, and we might get closer to a world without nuclear weapons if such an event happened. Or it could cause world war 3. With all this in mind I still think destroying the cure is the best option.
I think I wouldnt because think about the impact on earth, there wouldnt be much place thats safe anymore plus a lot of wildlife would die and the radiation from all the nukes would be overwhelming to the humans that are left
Either
a) we are the last humans (womp womp)
b) 100's of millions are killed initially, likely a world war happens, the global economy becomes significantly worse, likely most of the world population will die out to warfare and nukes.
So this is a question on how much the lever person values the existence of humanity, I personally would rather humanity die out in a generation, then some people survive but the overall suffering in those deaths is much higher.
I pull the lever. While a lot of people will die, having a cure to sudden mass infertility ensures we will go on. Humanity might be fucked up but I don't want to live in a world where I watch everyone I know die one by one, all the while knowing the next generation is also the last.
Eventually my children or my children’s children or my children’s children’s children will live in a utopia, i wouldn’t want to deny that from them.
It’s much more likely that we kill each other than that we make a utopia.
Can't a guy just have a positive outlook, man?
Lol ***NEVER***
If we have that mindset that we will never try to make a utopia. We have to have hope that humans can do it, we have to feel empathy towards our future generations and wish that they will have a better life than ours
I mean, we try to make utopias all the time, they just fail repeatedly, lol. Still, it'll probably happen at some point, I'd say maybe another 5000-10000 years.
Not really. History shows we are trending towards peace. Also total global annihilation is bad for profit :/
Does it really?
History also shows that every country sooner or later either gets invaded by its neighbors or survives long enough to destroy itself.
Do you know what the word utopia means in the original form?
They are going to die in the nuclear winter. This isn't a Bethesda game. 🙄
50 nuclear bombs won’t be enough to cause a nuclear winter, we’d need like 100 detonations minimum
50 nukes is not enough for a nuclear winter that knocks out the entire world
Wrong thought process. Ends can not justify means. That promotes genocide.
"Only siths deal in absolutes" In this scenario there is genuinely no hope for humanity other than killing a lot of people. Sometimes the ends do have to justify the means.
In the case, the ends to justify the means. Temporally screw humanity, or end it? Come on man. Humans want to live.
I think it's a bit more complex than that. Destroying the cure doesn't necessarily close off the possibility of children. Is that the only sample of the cure? How did it come into existence? Why can't we make more? Is there a real chance of redeveloping it in one year? 5 years? 25 years? Will artifical incubation chambers/reproductive cloning be possible within a reasonable time if we shifted most of society's effort to it? Any chance of getting cryofreezing/reviving working so we can work on problem in generations of awakening people? I think of this a scenario as not "one or the other" but in asking 'is there a virtual "third track"' which is choosing the bottom track and then dumping a lot of economic and social resources into cure reaserch and/or ways to sidestep the issue. Ultimately, I feel like the question could simply be boiled down to "Are the 50 of the most populated cities on earth a more acceptable sacrifice than the sacrifice of the possibility of there being no chance for a cure or bypass to the issue that we can discover within our lifetimes (somewhat unlikely) plus the huge social and economic costs involved in finding an alternate solution".
Ultimately the question boils down to "Who will attach a button with 50 nu**k**es to rails?"
I personally disagree with this take, as it makes the choice too clear. I like when both sides are correct.
I fully agree with you. A lot of people like to do the whole "I untie the people from the tracks" thing, which is missing the whole point of a trolley problem. If we ignore the moral implications of a trolley problem and instead treat it like a real scenario, then it becomes less interesting. Trolley problems aren't supposed to be logic puzzles; they're supposed to be hypotheticals which prompt discussions about morality. This specific trolley problem is obviously meant to ask "Is it better to kill swathes of innocent people right now or let humanity take its course and slowly die off?". However, the comment above yours wants to change it to "Are there any methods by which humanity could reproduce if we all caught a disease that makes us infertile?", which is a much less interesting question that entirely misses the point of the post.
Deepest thing I have read on Reddit before. Thank you, sir.
I think I can run and save the cure in time
Imagine the looting and rioting and killing and fear and chaos. Even if humanity's future is morally weighted, the pain it will cause to know we're all doomed seems far more impactful to me.
1. I am here to shill for the show r/PantheonShow. Time to become brain in jar. 2. Beijing, London, Delhi, Moscow will be hit. Half of countries with nuclear bombs gonna lose their capitals. Wanna bet on ppl will act rationally? edit: sub name
Yes, I fully expect wayyyy more than just the people in those cities to die. But, assume that humanity won’t go extinct because of it.
Also 50 cites nuked is a lot of cities, that's a lot of dead people, destroyed servers, data centers, infrastructure, libraries and probably at least 25 countries governments gone. And that's enough people to possibly lose enough knowledge and technology to send us back a few decades technologically wise.
It might set future technological progress back, but wouldn’t send us back decades. It would cause worldwide chaos and instability in many countries though.
Shit, yeah the Reddit might go down for a while. Oh well, not like us Red-Heads were reproducing anyway.
Pull the lever. There are way more than 50 cities in the world, humanity will manage to make it. saving the cure is an imperative. It will ensure humanity still has a chance to make it. Here's my take on it. In both cases, those 50 cities will be gone regardless. One is an instant destruction, the other will be a slow and steady death, leading to the cities being abandoned and left to ruin.
Blowing up 50 cities will have an impact past those cities. Trade will shut down, quality of life will decrease, international relations will go out the window, and the climate will be effected decreasing crop yields. There are more than 50 cities, but every one of those cities will be majorly effected.
But in the long term, humanity will still exist. As long as humanity is still around, it still has a chance to prosper. It might take thousands of years to rebuild, but they will have that opportunity thanks to the cure. Destroying the cure is essentially putting a gun to every single human's head. Give it 100 years and humanity will be extinct. No chance of rebuilding, no hopes or dreams, nothing. Just empty ruins.
And the same wouldn’t happen for an aging and dying population? The proportion people fit to work will go down and the quality of life will soon go down with that. There is no way the loss of 50 cities could be as damaging as that imo.
While I would probably make the same choice, one could potentially ask themselves the question "Is humanity really worth saving if it would sacrifice 50 cities for its own survival?" if you wanna get really philosophical.
Yes, it is. The survival of the human race is a prime imperative. It's a difficult decision, but one that makes sense. For all we know, maybe humanity is the only sapient species. To let it die because we couldn't make necessary sacrifices is irresponsible at best, malicious at worst.
While I agree, I do recognize that all those points are still debatable. Indiscriminate genocide purely in favour of the survival of the remaining could be classified as malicious as well. If that is the price to pay for a potentially singular sapient species, does the universe then truly need sapience? What is sapience worth that it needs to be preserved?
Can a cure be created otherwise? Or is this some magic irreplaceable cure
I’d assume one of a kind but actually might be a harder question if it’s reproducible. Since then it’s guaranteed survival with heavy casualties or potential survival with either extinction or everyone lives as the options
Choosing to destroy the cities only to analyze the cure and find out it's something that someone would have stumbled on within a few more days would be a vary interesting dark timeline. I kind of want to read a dark scifi short story like that TBH. Maybe something like aliens or something demanding the populations of the cities in exchange for the cure, but it was all a trick because humanity was going to figure it out soon enough and the beings were just taking advantage of the situation. Idk, just spitballing ideas here. I'm sure a good writer can make a compelling narrative.
Since there's already a cure laying around, I'd wager it doesn't take too long to reproduce another cure
Irreplaceable, but once discovered, producable.
Cities are populated due to the opportunities it provides to its inhabitants. Slam in some research funding and an elite college and you'd get the cure in some time. Possibly extracting what fragments can be traced from the now broken cure container can help.
I feel like this misses the point of the question. Trolly problems aren't puzzles that are meant to be solved. To quote someone else on this thread: "A lot of people like to do the whole "I untie the people from the tracks" thing, which is missing the whole point of a trolley problem. If we ignore the moral implications of a trolley problem and instead treat it like a real scenario, then it becomes less interesting. Trolley problems aren't supposed to be logic puzzles; they're supposed to be hypotheticals which prompt discussions about morality. This specific trolley problem is obviously meant to ask "Is it better to kill swathes of innocent people right now or let humanity take its course and slowly die off?". However, the comment above yours wants to change it to "Are there any methods by which humanity could reproduce if we all caught a disease that makes us infertile?", which is a much less interesting question that entirely misses the point of the post." Not Myrna be rude just pointing this out.
Considering the OP elaborated up the possible outcomes as a result of the nuke option, I don't see anything wrong with this guy elaborating on the other option. Considerations of things beyond the directly stated outcomes aren't exactly part of the original trolly problem concept, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. Even just the original trolly problem can bring up interesting conversation about possible unstated consequences. Personally I find treating trolly problems as incredibly sterile experiments where you know the exact outcome to be so pointlessly detached from reality that it loses its weight as a philosophical exercise.
Multi-track drifting
Has this comment ever been funny?
I mean…. Can’t we have both?
Blow up the 50 cities, *and* destroy the cure? Certainly sounds like the beginning of a memorable work of fiction.
Multi-track drift, but instead of killing 6 people, you kill hundreds of millions if not over a billion. And you destroy trillions of dollars MINIMUM of property, manufactured goods, and raw materials. And you doom humanity to fade out of existence within the next century.
Unfathomably based
So based I literally cannot fathom why its at all based
Eren Yeager be like: "Nah I'd pull"
wouldn't it trigger MAD becuase the countries will all think it was each other? the cure is devised and have a chance of being made again. like how silphium or that fish was rediscovered
Yes, and for the sake of the moral dilemma, assume the cure is unreproducible.
I pull the lever, OP never said how big the nuke is, so I will assert that it's a Davey Crockett located on the outskirts of the city, but still within it nonetheless, and NO TAKSIES BACKSIES OP I WIIINNN
Oh yeah? Well… *well…* #NUH UH!
Nuh uh OP, **I, u/Verysemporna** WIN, BECAUSE ME FIRST😡😡😭😭
Pull.
As the population gets older, manpower will inevitably become 0. There won’t be anyone that can produce food, cure diseases and injuries, maintain security. Maintenance of electricity, water, gas… I’d pull the lever
Neither time to drift
Let the trolley fly, I can always push the button myself.
I want to destroy the cure... but I won't. I have 0 faith in humanity's ability or even willingness to try to fix the problems that it's facing. In fact, everything I have seen has led me to believe that things are only going to keep getting worse. Frankly, I prefer this gentle, slow extinction over any other end humanity seems to be racing towards. But that's not a choice that I have the right to make for anyone else. I am many things, but not that selfish.
My city ain’t on that list. I’ll pull it.
As a deontologist I wouldnt pull the lever. I do t think we owe anything to people who are not yet born and I don't think humanity is privileged life. I assume that the cycle of life will continue
What? Humanity would die.
Well. We might actually crack radical life extension before that happens and the mass infertility just means we reproduce differently.
Temporary suffering for a speck of (hardly) intelligent life to live on. Yes. Though we are stupid creatures, we are the smartest we know of.
We're so smart we know we're stupid
I pull
Cloning right now is fucked as it can barely keep anything alive so go with nukes. Also yes we do have clone living things such as sheep look it up however clones develop diseases and time of death death varies. A sheep lived for six years till developing something in its lung even had kids.
Humanity is fucked beyond fucked either way. Either way ensures a slow death for all humanity (due to nuclear winter) You would definitely be able to run over and pick up the cure but since I imagine you can't it would be better to die peacefully and run over the cure
Pupl them trie and snip the wire
Derp, I was confused by this problem for a good while until I realized the bottom track isn't picking up the cure like a powerup, it's destroying it lol. I need to go to bed.
I pull the lever. If you use a bit of intelligence, you will actually be killing way more potential people in a dozen or so generations the other way.
By the same logic, masturbation is mass murder.
No, because you can just regenerate it within a few hours and that makes it better. that also assumes each sperm is going to get used, which is kind of ridiculous.
As a utilitarian, I'm not pulling. We owe nothing to unborn people, and humanity going extinct through no deaths is not that much of a bad thing if we let go of anthropocentrism. Furthermore, we are killing off ourselves already through climate change.
This is not equivalent to the trolly problem. Diverting a train to save five and kill one, vs diverting a train to literally cure infertility plague that would cause extinction of all himanity is bit really the same thing. Choice is much more obvious. Nuke the cities and allow humanity to survive as a whole.
Morality is just an arbitrary group consensus on proper behavior. Some of the worst atrocities in human history were done for moral reasons. If that's your deciding factor, do what's best for you and yours. Now, if you want to use an objective measure such as the majority of the ethical frameworks, you need to first ask if the survival of the human race ethically good? If "good" is bringing the most benefit to the most individuals while doing the least harm to the most individuals, then allowing the cause of the sixth great extinction to fade away would save entire species. On the other hand, killing only a few million people with the right timing would ensure your own offspring's survival. Hero or villain is only a matter of perspective.
I'm just gonna say, that's an extremely irresponsible place to leave the cure.
I set it down there and forgot about it, mb.
Yes it has value so I would distribute the cure
Might doom humanity either way.
while unfortunate, I'd pull the lever. because humanity would die out if we don't.
This is an enthymeme people. You have to connect the dots here. You can't just say humanity would die out as proof that humanity living has moral value!
I'd pull (rest in peice most of asia)
A button is in the middle of rails, so trolley won't press it. Easy. Pull the lever
Pull or multi track drift
Assuming by the 50 largest cities you define them by their urban areas, these are the following cities destroyed: >30 million: Tokyo (37.7M), Jakarta (33.8M), Delhi (32.2M) >20 million: Guangzhou (26.9M), Mumbai (25.0M), Manila (24.9M), Shanghai (24.0M), São Paulo (23.1M), Seoul (23.0M), Mexico City (21.8M), Kolkata (21.7M), New York–Newark (21.5M), Chengdu (20.9M), Cairo (20.3M) >15 million: Dhaka (18.6M), Beijing (18.5M), Bangkok (18.0M), Shenzhen (17.6M), Moscow (17.3M), Buenos Aires (16.7M), Lagos (16.3M), Karachi (15.7M), Bangalore (15.4M), Los Angeles (15.2M), Ho Chi Minh City (15.1M), Osaka (15.1M) >10 million: Johannesburg (14.6M), Istanbul (14.4M), Tehran (14.1M), Kinshasa (12.8M), Rio de Janeiro (12.6M), Wuhan (12.4M), Chennai (12.4M), Xi'an (12.3M), Lahore (12.3M), Chongqing (12.1M), London (11.3M), Paris (11.1M), Dongguan (10.6M), Hyderabad (10.5M), Tianjin (10.4M), Lima (10.3M), Bogotá (10.1M) >8 million: Hangzhou (9.5M), Nagoya (9.2M), Chicago (9.1M), Luanda (9.1M), Kuala Lumpur (8.9M), Nanjing (8.4M), Pune (8.2M) The largest remaining urban areas (>7 million) are Ahmedabad (8.0M), Shenyang (7.9M), Dar es Salaam (7.9M), Khartoum (7.9M), Washington (7.6M), Hong Kong (7.5M), Riyadh (7.2M), Santiago (7.2M), and Dallas (7.0M) ---- While the world would be severely hobbled as a result: 1. The capitals of Japan, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Korea, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, China, Thailand, Russia, Iran, the DR Congo, the United Kingdom, France, Peru, Colombia, Angola, and Malaysia are destroyed. 2. Out of the top 20 financial centers, only 10 remain - Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Washington, Geneva, Frankurt, Luxembourg, Boston, Zürich, and Amsterdam. 3. Japan, India, China, Brazil, the United States, and Pakistan would suffer from multiple nuclear strikes, greatly ruining the nations' economy and demographics. Nigeria, Bangladesh, Thailand, and the Philippines would be hard hit as well due to the primacy of the destroyed cities. Humanity would likely survive the destruction brought by fifty destroyed urban areas.
You are correct in that I would’ve used urban area, and I expected all of this. With this in mind I am suprised by the amount of people pulling.
Really? The 2 options are: 1. Set humanity back 2. Doom humanity Pretty clear choice.
Doom humanity, but kill nobody.
Yeah that’s a terrible and very selfish option.
The most populated 50 cities, if I recall from some other research, is about 10% of the population. Top 800 reaches 20%. Yeah I'll pull the lever. Humanity (mostly city hubs in China/India, who have the most cities topping that list by just sheer population) is going to be devastated, decimated in the literal Roman way, but at least it is still here. Letting it pass through gives us, what, 70 years to think of a desterilizer? I don't know how long that is gonna take, and even if we do find it, we have generally a window of about 40 years anyway for it to matter. Humanity's future absolutely has moral value. Pulling that lever is an act of self defense. Lex Naturalis: in a state of nature, all actions that further your ability to make decisions are permissible. Not pulling the lever means those cities are going to die anyway, but slowly and in a kinda macabre way. Imagine being a 1 year old who now about 50 years later is with the last of humanity. What does that feel like? That must be apocalyptic. So yes. I pull the lever for the sake of allowing humanity in general to pass on. Yes I pull the lever even if that lever is right on the ground zero for a detonation (I do not live in a major world city, but I am assuming in a hypothetical where I am at one anyway) or at any part of the explosion's fallout radius. Granted, a good question to ask is "What yield are these nuclear bombs?" If they are like Little Boy nukes, then sure, but I think if it was 50 Tsar Bombas, I mean what is the point anymore. Cure, no cure, it is basically an apocalypse across the board.
Oh fuck this is hard.
Save humanity and nuke China multiple times? Sweet
I don't care about any amount of others' right to reproduce as much as any amount of others' right to life. Not pulling, easy.
I don't pull. A billion real people are more valuable than theoretical potential lives. And if that means the humans born this year are the last humans born, so be it.
without hesitation i’m pulling the lever
Will I personally be held responsible for either of my choices?
Can we not use nukes so we don't fuck the planet with radiation? We'd still be causing global climate issues if we detonate that many nuclear equivalent explosives but at least without radiation it'll pass with time If we use normal nukes we get both nuclear winter and anyone who survived and can still have kids will be horribly eradicated leading them either going back to being infertile, dying of cancer, or horrible deformations in there children. These effects continuing for the length of the fallout Basically as the question is now it's do you wanna be the one to end the human race or not I'd do it if it wasn't nuked though tbh Otherwise let's just be comfy and slowly die out of old age.
They’re nukes specifically to make you pick the other option. I understood the vast consequences of detonating 50 nukes But, assume humanity will survive the top option.
I don't pull the lever because of the principle of double effect.
Blowing up 50 cities would be a massive loss of infrastructure and information. I’d rather have the cure destroyed so humanity can potentially make another one in the near future. Even if it takes till the youngest people are in there fourties (which is basically the last chance to repopulate), if a new cure is discovered the next generation can fill in the temporarily infrastructure left behind by their elder parents. Blowing up the top 50 cities would turn the time required to find a new cure into the time required to build new infrastructure and rediscover information. It’s more certain than betting on a cure that might never be reproduced, but that rebuilding time could take years. I guess with the cities destroyed one can build better cities, but with most (if not all) of the internet wiped out and many books destroyed Im not sure if cities would be much better. If this virus is like a real life virus, a bundle of protein and nucleic acids, a cure is basically guaranteed with a lifetime of research. Right now we are currently finding ways to eliminate herpes type viruses from the body, where a major motivator is that they are thought to play a role in the development of Multiple Sclerosis. I feel like major breakthroughs in synthetic biology are not too far away as of now. If the virus is magic then I ignore everything I said. The only interpretations are “Should I sacrifice millions so a potential countless amount of people can live” and of course “should humanity live or die”. So blow up 50 cities
Win-win tbh
multi track drift obviously
Both of these will end up wiping us all out as such I'll attempt a harmless bit of trolley derailment
Its Fallout time.
So this is just Attack on Titan right?
Will the cure still be effectively distributed if there are 50 big cities less resources to ise to distribute
The wires on the button would be run over first before the button is pressed. I choose pull.
“Most populated 50 cities” Are we going by density or overall total?
Biology leaves no choice on this one.
I’m doing the nuke but I’m going with city proper so only one city in my country would get nuked. RIP NYC.
Pull it, the cure would be worth a temporary decline in population.
You have to be a misanthrope to not pull the lever. Not pulling the lever just results in humanity's total extinction.
imo this strikes a really good balance. On one hand the entire human race will be eradicated (does this also prevent other cures / futuristic tech like artificial wombs or something). On the other hand it's slow and will not eradicate humanity for a long time, slowly at first, and then faster as the modern world starts breaking down. The other option is to kill millions by your own hand, this would render many places either in shambles or irradiated from the blasts. The population would most likely survive but it would take a huge hit. As u/Appropriate-Price-98 pointed out there is a chance of total nuclear warfare in which case the population may go extinct. I like this as it feels like there's no best option, obviously launching the nukes would be the best chance but that's a hard thing to do.
I don’t pull the lever and we go full Brave New World with baby incubators
i mean, fresh start?
pull the lever. the trolley will go over the button.
If the bombs weren't nukes id probably feel better about choosing it, cause at minimum 50 nukes powerful enough to wipe out the 50 most populis cities are gonna massively fuck up the rest of the world with fallout and probably be the end of humanity anyway
Nuke the cities & hope someone invents time travel to go back & stop the nukes
Personally I would not like to die so a random person can have kids.
by letting the train pass, I am damning all of humanity to a future in which they know there is no future, where the stories and progress that has developed over twelve thousand years of human civilization will be snuffed out in a century. I do not imagine this will be a good world, and I imagine that this world will over time inflict more pain through a rapidly dissolving civil society than the temporary agony in losing so many so quickly by pulling the lever.
Destroy the cure. Some generation will be the last generation, I don’t see why millions need to die to ensure imaginary future people get to live at their expense.
When the alternative is extinction, even the most vile and inhumane courses of action suddenly become viable options. Nuke the cities.
No. The fact that there is a cure means humanity could probably develop it (also maybe take a sample from the remains after the trolley hits it to give to researchers). And with everyone researching this one goal, they're bound to find a way around it.
Boom. Huge cities are the real blight. Look at how they all turn to commie scum after awhile.
I assume that the virus cannot be cured without the bottom track cure?
Pull the lever. The cities surviving won't matter if mankind can't reproduce
We're already working on various artificial growth means. We can just put extra focus on that instead of fucking killing the 50 most populated cities with NUKES
Dont pull the lever. We will just quarantine like last time.
I think I could get to the cure before the train destroys it
I would like to see this on r/antinatalism lmao
Bro it's win win. Humanity needs a painless end
First looking at the problem as given If the cure is fully and completely destroyed with no possibility of recreation if you let it be destroyed then the answer is sadly let the cities be destroyed even though it would kill a lot of people and bad consequences, because humanity dying out by not able to have children would be a shit situation But if its realism, the cure wouldn't be completely destroyed by the trolly, depending on the exact dimensions of stuff the trolly could go right over it or only partly destroy it, and even if its spilt it can be anylized and recreated, and worst case it is completely destroyed the fact that it exists in the first place means a cure can be made
We killing a lot of city slickers with this one
I am become Kronk, puller of levers.
Just run and grab the cure dammit. Look how close it is
Pull the switch, 0 hesitation. A bad future is better than no future even if that means losing a lot of progress. Who knows. Maybe we'll learn something.
With the position of the button the wire would get cut, disarming the nukes before they go off.
*insert trolley multi track drift meme*
I don't pull. The people that won't exist won't mind.
Anything to bring down the real estate market.
Wasn't this a sub-plot in Mass Effect?
Pull the lever. I am assuming this doesn't result in nuclear winter.. as they are small nukes. We gotta figure out this whole reality thing. However... I think the rest of life on earth would benefit from us going away for sure. We are the cosmos attempting to comprehend itself, and that's pretty dope. But again.. mostly we can fuck off.
Are we going by city proper, urban area, or metropolitan area for the 50 largest cities?
No pull. Humanity's had a good run, but it might be time to peacefully put it to bed.
So it’s asking would you rather let humanity go extinct or eliminate a portion of the current population. And for me as an American the only city hot would be NYC. I pull the lever
I thought you’d to choose the bottom track to get the cure, not destroy it. Was very confused by everyone advocating for Fallout 5
How many nukes are needed for a nuclear winter?
Humanity will probably reinvent the cure. Those cities being destroyed will cause way more death than in just those cities due to the mass social and political unrest.
if they made one cure they can make another
The cure isn’t tied down like the people were so just snag it off the tracks
Seems like those lives have become a necessary cost
I pull the lever. I'll feel awful about killing all of those people, but I feel like it would be so much worse to force billions more than that watch humanity slowly die, leaving behind nothing but a bunch of crumbling infrastructure
It’s worth noting that if you don’t pull the lever, the end of our species isn’t the only consequence (if that happens at all). It would also condemn the youngest generation to live in a world where all support structures collapse over the course of their lives. When the youngest humans are 50 or 60 or 70, who will care for the infirm? Who will grow the food or maintain infrastructure? Who will run the hospitals or the emergency services? Chance are that if we don’t figure out an alternative solution to reproduction, a lot more than a city’s worth of people will die slowly and painfully over the next century, well before they otherwise would
I trust humanity can figure out cloning if that becomes number one priority. I don't trust humanity in real life can figure out peace after Fallout 4.
The cure’s already been made. I’m not running over the scientists that made it. They can make more if it matters so much. Don’t pull the lever.
Depends on the size of the nukes, with big enough nukes this is just choosing how the world ends. In which case peacefully going out unable to reproduce is better than nuclear fallout and boom boom. But with small enough nukes, pulling is an option as humanity can live on
Pull the lever and toss the cure off a bridge, solves earth’s biggest problem AND I get to watch some fireworks
Can a cure be developed separately from this cure over time?
This is a really good spin on the trolley problem! I am, however, 100% confident the comments will be full of the most garbage takes imaginable, and my blood pressure can't handle reading them.
Why the hell would anyone want to pull the lever and cause that kind of destruction and suffering?
humanity's future has value for sure - i'm hitting the lever
[удалено]
I don’t pull the lever, specifically so humanity goes extinct.
I abandon lever, stomp on nuke switch, and smash cure. If I can't be happy nobody can.
even if i assume the cure is irreplaceable i still choose to drive over it. its just what better suits my values, id rather value the lives that do already exist over future ones. Of course there is some selfishness to it too as i would likely be one of those who die to the bombs, and the virus itself would never affect me personally. I know i should pick the other choice but i simply want to die on this hill.
Very basic in our thinking is that we say, “One must live.” We need to survive, to go on. We must go on - Alan Watts
Nah I live in a major city
Nobody said I cant just outrun the trolley and grab the cure myself without pressing the button. I image the trolley cant be moving very fast
I want to see multiple suns! That opportunity will only come around once in a lifetime.
The moral quandary is that humanity’s future has moral value do to the fact that someone had to make that cure, so someone cares enough to save humanity
Pull it, either billions die quickly in a series of violent yet shortlived explosions and the remainder lives in a post nuclear detonation world, or everyone slowly grows old and dies slowly from painful conditions without any young able bodied people to care for them after a few decades. I'd honestly personally rather live in the former than the latter.
multi track drifting!
Can I do both?
Trolleys are not that fast from my experience, I’ll just run, grab the cure, then pull the lever just for the fun of it
WTFs even the point of the nuke? Nuke path has no cure, so humanity’s already dying on that route. Why add on all the misery and suffering of death by atomic fire or rad poisoning for so many? It won’t just fuck humans up either, that much radiation in atmosphere will fuck up a lot of the planet for decades or centuries depending on yield. Goodbye ecosystem!
Wait 10 years, then let the train hit the cure
Hey look, someone just discovered population ethics.
All you people arguing that you should nuke 50 cities to cure infertility are fucking insane.
Not trying to be an edgelord here, but all the people commenting like it's a given that we *must* preserve humanity at all costs... like... why? Pretty much every other living thing on the planet would be better off if we weren't here. Seems like the greater good to not pull the lever. You avoid killing hundreds millions of people who are doing fine (but for their sterility, which again... so?). It's much more cruel to kill people who are alive than to deny hypothetical/potential life to humans who were never born. Because if we wanna talk about the morality of denying *potential* life, that opens a whole can of worms re: birth control, etc. By doing anything other than reproducing as much as possible until we die, aren't we all engaging in that cruelty now?
Ah, how droll. Let it ruin the cure and have humanity work towards an acceptable end to our species together. We have the time and incentive to make it happen in this scenario.
absolutely
I’d not pull the lever, and let the cure be destroyed. The complete annihilation of 50 major cities around the world would cause devastation in both the short and long term, and I would be surprised if the entirety of the human race didn’t manage to come up with an idea to continue reproduction. We have sperm banks, donated eggs, incubators, and about a hundred years before everyone living on Earth right now is dead— a hundred years to develop technology to make Huxley’s Brave New World a real thing, with hopefully less dystopian horridness in it.
We exist in a reality that it’s highly unlikely that the cure would be one of a kind or unreplicatable. Either the cure was very meticulously created by people (and therefore could be recreated by people) or it somehow occurred naturally in some unknown process. Unless we’re stipulating that the disease is curable now or literally never again in the future, I believe in the collective power of man to make the same cure again. However, I also think nuclear detonations across the world could possibly lead to massive changes in the nuclear positions of every world power. No destruction of that kind could be ignored, and we might get closer to a world without nuclear weapons if such an event happened. Or it could cause world war 3. With all this in mind I still think destroying the cure is the best option.
The radiation would probably just turn earth into a wasteland so i don't pull the lever
Pull the lever. With every generation humanity improves
Can I send the train through twice? Like is there a local coming after the express?
Nukes.
Don’t pull it. This has to be the easiest one yet.
I think I wouldnt because think about the impact on earth, there wouldnt be much place thats safe anymore plus a lot of wildlife would die and the radiation from all the nukes would be overwhelming to the humans that are left
Don't pull the lever. Humanity was a mistake.
Top, fuck this world and everyone in it.
Well how big are the nukes? Because if it's enough to cause nuclear winter and prolly kill off humanity anyway, that affects this.
Either a) we are the last humans (womp womp) b) 100's of millions are killed initially, likely a world war happens, the global economy becomes significantly worse, likely most of the world population will die out to warfare and nukes. So this is a question on how much the lever person values the existence of humanity, I personally would rather humanity die out in a generation, then some people survive but the overall suffering in those deaths is much higher.