Philosophy Now Forum

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Who says the dinosaurs were dominant? Just because they are big. Is that your argument?
Tell that to the bacteria that have more species, variations, and numbers; can be found in more habitats than any other living thing and can adapt to the most extreme conditions.

Not all dinosaurs were big. But I agree, it's silly to call them 'dominant'--it means nothing in that context.

I thought your question was about saving the human race, not bacteria and amoebae, which are quite compatible with both dinosaur and human. I thought the contest for dominance - dominance being the ability to appropriate territory and resources - was between animals that actually compete, rather than ones that will parasitize the winner and loser equally. My misunderstanding.

BTW the dinosaur reference was entirely facetious. In the context.

Dinosaurs dominated mammalians at the time. Had they not gone extinct, there would have been no age of mammals, and no humans.

Well, so, if you could have saved the Jurassic world by killing one pterodactyl, would you have?



(In a heartbeat! But I'd have to wait until noon.)

I'd rather kill the world to save one person...

Skip wrote:Well, so, if you could have saved the Jurassic world by killing one pterodactyl, would you have?



(In a heartbeat! But I'd have to wait until noon.)

I'd do it too, if only to screw the mammals lol!

ncrbrts wrote:I'd rather kill the world to save one person...

Please press this button, Nicola.

I have a deep anxiety regarding sudden human extinction: all those animals in cages, crates, aquaria, pens, barns, paddocks, coops, enclosures and locked apartments.

Slow it is. There's the dial.

Dalek Prime wrote:

ncrbrts wrote:I'd rather kill the world to save one person...

Please press this button, Nicola.

Do we ever seem to think alike.

I don't know if I could actually do that. I think that I will say no.

Button is way too facile. Some of us would do it on a whim, or out of pique, or contrariness or remorse (I just the other day saw a documentary about manatees that wakes me up in a cold sweat - We really are horrible!) or just to see what happens. The real process is slow, hard, messy and unpredictable. Fortunately, there are always plenty of humans willing to do the dirty work.

I'd rather kill the world to save one person...

And where would you keep the saved person?

Philosophy Explorer wrote:A special case of does the end justify the means? I favor it to preserve humanity (a case that arose recently in a milder form is isolating those that may have contracted Ebola).

What do you think?

PhilX

Haven't you guys heard or read of the Trolley Problem? This question is not capable of being interpreted with justice for any position. Evolution itself is both a product of 'unfairness' as it is to our 'fairness'. Any fairness perceived by one requires something at least unfair to another for it to be true.

By the way, for an entertaining view of this, check out the movie, "Looper". Although this is about time travel, the lesson in the end relates to this dilemma in that the character must recognize that the only way he can stop this illicit time travel and the problems it creates is by opting to kill himself. So would you or should you kill yourself to save the world? If you had some belief in an afterlife, this may make it a little easier to opt for one distinct answer. Yet this too is why we have religious derived justification for suicide for some cause.

I used this very rationale once to ask to those who are religious: If one's belief in their God is so strong, wouldn't it be wise to sacrifice oneself to save everyone even if it means that such a sacrifice entails that you'd be punished by God rather than be rewarded? For instance, if you believe that children are innocent and get automatically accepted in heaven, you might think that by committing an act that kills those children saves them by assuring they get to heaven even though it sends you to hell for it! That's the ultimate sacrifice isn't it? God may both favor and disfavor this person simultaneously and not know what to do.

I also used this example to ask whether it is wise that we have anyone religious in command of some doomsday device, like a nuclear bomb. If a religious person agrees to the idea that you could not find an atheist in a foxhole because they would prefer any act that favors their selfish existence, wouldn't such atheists also be just as self-serving as to not want to push some button that would also risk their own survival? Therefore, they should agree that it is wiser to favor the atheist in such critical positions of power!!