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The Value of Life


Relic

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This is probably a stupid question. i guess ill have to live with the shame of asking it.

Say that you had to pick between your favorite dog, Smoochie, and a random Joe Schmo. One of them gets hit by a car and dies. The other one lives a long healthy life. Who do you pick?

Im pretty sure most humans would pick the other human. Most of us place more value on human life, fairly or unfairly. I saw my dog get hit and run on by a minivan when i was 13. She got hurled across the street and lay there whimpering as i looked on in horror as the minivan sped away. I think i would go thru that again to save a human life.

edit - seems some people are having problems with the hypothetical. ill try to make it easier.

you are locked in a room by aliens. there are two other lifeforms in the room with you. your dog, Sparky, who wags his tail at you lovingly or (your cat Lucifer), who purrs menacingly in your direction) and a random shrouded human. you pick one, the aliens flush the other out the airlock. you are not allowed to leave until you pick. if you dont pick in X amount of time they blow up the sun.

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I've never had a pet I was that close too, so maybe i'm not the best to answer, but definitely the human. I place more value in principal on human life than just about anything. (including, for example, the enviorment. I'm not against it, but don't see enviormentalism as an end in itself (aside from its importance to healthy human existence) as a worthwhile cause.)

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Guest thebadlady

Bandit was killed in front of my eyes by a car when I was 8-9. I'd still pick a huuuuman over her. You know there are going to be people who say that animals are just as important as humans. Mark them, mark them well and never be in a position where they need to choose between you and an animal. :P

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The human, no matter what. Animals are just animals. I barely make deep connections to people, I sure don't make them with animals.

I was 13 when out cat was hit by a car. Being the oldest, I had to scoop her up out of the road (with a shovel) and put her into a trash bag and then the trash can.

C'est la vie.

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This is probably a stupid question. i guess ill have to live with the shame of asking it.

Say that you had to pick between your favorite dog, Smoochie, and and random Joe Schmo. One of them gets hit by a car and dies. The other one lives a long healthy life. Who do you pick?

For me, there is no question. I would choose my Dog. The lives of Joe Schmo and all the occupants of the car (even if said car was a school bus) do not hold half the value to me that my Dog does.

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Definitely the human.

Think about random Joe Schmo and all the thought and dreams, all the ways that that person has touched other peoples lives. Even a beloved pet is not much more than a personal companion. The pet is not nearly as complicated a creature as Joe Schmo, and hasnt impacted nearly as many lives. You can get a new cocker spaniel, can't get a new Joe.

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Human of course.

I know a handful of people who would choose the animal. Worse, they would choose any animal, not just a beloved pet. I think that's a fascinatingly creepy projection of all their fucked up bitterness and inadequacies (omega male syndrome) onto animals over other humans.

Thankfully these people rarely ever rise to positions of any real power or influence (if they could, they wouldn't be reclusive, bitter, disaffected omega males to begin with). Keep this in mind next time GreenPeace or PETA ask for money or expect a free pass on expensive civil nuisance protests. They may have noble intentions, but they are also the hiding place for these kinds of people.

And just for drive-by trolling: if someone would choose an animal over a human because they are disconnected from society, how far is that person from the disaffected youth that is sought by terrorist organizations?

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Is there a point to this thread other than to coerce people into saying they'd pick the human anyday unless they want to risk a zillion angry boarders calling them a sociopath?

(No really...I swear this was the favorite thread of a forum I used to be a member of, and it always ended the same.)

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My knee jerk reaction was to say "Doggie!" but, then I thought about it, and would have to go with saving the person. I would could never forgive myself for causing the family of that person such heart ache. I would feel guilty about the dog, but not half as guilty for letting a person die.

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Is there a point to this thread other than to coerce people into saying they'd pick the human anyday unless they want to risk a zillion angry boarders calling them a sociopath?

No. That's exactly what i was going for. Like Scot starting an abortion thread, i just wanted to kick up some shit.

Anyway...

I personally think its an interesting question because im pretty sure there ARE people who would pick an animal. Just want to put it to a test. it's probably better if people hold back any negative responses tho.

Dragon dude, a school bus? Really? Even if you had to watch it happen?

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On the other hand, I'm having troubles thinking of any realistic situation in which I would have to actually make such a choice.

It's a hypothetical. the situation exists only in your imagination. But you already know that.

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Would anyone's response change if they knew that the person in question was a "bad" person. Not necessarily a mass murderer or "the worst person in the world", but maybe a petty criminal who had been lying about disability to get welfare and was a negligent parent (or whatever, make up whatever you think to be a bad but normal person). Is there ever an amount to which a person had done so many bad deeds that you'd think it was better to not try to save them?

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On the other hand, I'm having troubles thinking of any realistic situation in which I would have to actually make such a choice.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I basically can't say exactly how I'd react in a split-second decision like this. Is there a car barreling toward my cat and some random pedestrian, and I have to dive to save one of them? Are they both already hit, but I have to give CPR to one of them? I can't see myself giving CPR to a cat, but in the first situation I have no idea what I'd do at the spur of the moment, you know? Probably yell "WATCH OUT!" and shove the person out of the way. But of course, in other emergency situations, some other part of my brain has taken over. For instance, I didn't know that I knew how to drive a car that has lost control of its steering on a curve and crash it safely, and even if I had thought about that in advance I'm not sure I would have come to the same solution that I did at the time. :dunno:

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I actually had to think about this for a little while. My family's dog is awesome, he has so much personality its really hard to think of him as "just" an animal. Humans are animals too, and any differences between us and other species are simply differences of degree, not kind. Anyway, I would choose to save the random human, but it wasn't an automatic kneejerk assumption.

ETA1: Also, like Kat said above, I don't know how I'd react in an actual high-stress situation like that, so it depends on the details of the scenario.

ETA2:

Would anyone's response change if they knew that the person in question was a "bad" person. Not necessarily a mass murderer or "the worst person in the world", but maybe a petty criminal who had been lying about disability to get welfare and was a negligent parent (or whatever, make up whatever you think to be a bad but normal person). Is there ever an amount to which a person had done so many bad deeds that you'd think it was better to not try to save them?

I'd still save the human even if s/he was a mass-murderer or a rapist or somesuch. If I'm gonna save a human, I'm gonna save a human. It's not my place to pass a moral judgement regarding what level of wrongdoing counts as the cut-off point for rescue.

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