Kill one person, save ten other lives

The hypothetical situation is:

Would you be willing to save ten lives by killing one person?

then asked

Would you be willing to save one million lives by killing one hundred thousand people?

supposedly 25% of people who answer yes to the first question, answer no the the second. What I can't understand is why people would answer yes to the first question if they wouldn't be willing to do the second question.

I think it's the ratio that matters, numbers aren't' important. but that's just me. So if you are not willing to do the second question, you shouldn't do the first question.

You also have to think of the guilt factor and what you can live with.

It's a lot easier to think you can live with the death of one versus one hundred thousand.

Now break it up into a whole bunch of one dead for every ten saved, a person starts to lose track and can go for the second.

Also, killing one person? I could very well kill myself for those ten people. I'd do that, not so much someone else. Wording screws with the human mind man, and numbers (when counting people) do matter.

I can't kill anyone, no one life can be valued against another. Even if it saves, I couldn't do it, it's not my right to take a life.

Good point. The problem with hypothetical situations is that they are hypothetical, and can never be applied. There will never be a situation where you are guaranteed the safety of others in exchange for murder. I just found it shocking that people would be so hypocritical about answering differently for the 2 questions.

i would kill 10 ppl for the 4g iphone

I would Kill ten people if it meant Iphones would be wiped from the face of the earth FOREVER!

Questions like this kind of irritate me because they're not really relevant. In what situation would someone have to make that decision?

Of course If I had to choose between one person dying and ten people dying I'd choose one, but I wouldn't ever kill anyone. Unless they were about to kill me.

I wonder if you reworded the question so it asked if you could save the entire human population by killing 10% of them.

True, you'll never be in a situation the question puts you in, but sometimes people's logic are just illogical.

do we get to pick the people we would be killing?

The point of the question, though, isn't to give a realistic dilemma, it's meant to find out where our morals and limitations thereof lie when it comes to killing, and how we value life...

pintsogin wrote:

i would kill 10 ppl for the 4g iphone

I'd kill 20 people for a Klondike Bar

I've had a think about it, and figured out why I don't like these sort of questions.

If completely ignores everything that I love about humanity.

Where's the self sacrifice, the courage, the screw you I can save 11 people? Even if you can't.

im down with murder. kill a couple people to save a couple million more people..... WOW are we living WW2 over again?

ska_sean wrote:

im down with murder. kill a couple people to save a couple million more people..... WOW are we living WW2 over again?

I killed like 50 Nazi zombies yesterday, so I think so?

Mind I also had a creepy time of driving past a KKK meeting a month ago so Nazi zombies may not be much of an indicator.