Philosophical answers now.

Question

You hear on the news about a disease that is spreading throughout the nation. Your mind immediately races to your spouse and 2 children, who are out of town for the weekend. You call their cellphone, and hear it ringing in the bathroom. Two days later, they show up at the front door tired and happy. The youngest has a runny nose, but that's it. The next day, your spouse can't get out of bed, and you can't wake your children. On the TV you hear about a disaster center nearby that is giving out the cure and you jump into the car and speed over. There is a huge line and when you get to the counter, there is only one vial left. You take it and race back home. Who do you save? Your spouse of 10 long, happy years, your 15 year old teenage daughter who is starting college in 2 months, or your 5 year old son?

Answer 1

5 year old son.

Answer 2

Son, age of 5, under the age of reason.  The others should have already come to accept the fact of all death being innevitable.

Answer 3

Nobody.It is not fatal, so you can get more the next day.Keep it as reserve for yourself, who will be running around to get the vials for your family.

Answer 4

I'd probably save my spouse, as a matter of rational self-interest: She would be more important to me personally than my kids. This depends on exactly who she is, though, for example if I know by her psychology that she would be unable to understand me or forgive me for letting the kids die and would leave me as a result, I might opt to save the daughter. I wouldn't save the son; not only would I likely be less attached to him, but at his age he is also less of an investment than the daughter is. This is all assuming that I myself don't need the cure, of course, as I would always come before anyone else in my mind.

That said, realistically a person like me is unlikely to ever attract the romantic attention of the opposite gender, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't want to have kids.

Answer 5

I would split the contents of the vial into thirds and give each person an equal chance of surviving.  If none survive, you can always get married to someone else and start up another family.

Answer 6

Take the vial back. Saving any one will only bring her/him lifelong heartbreak at the loss of the others.. Surely there will be some one out there who will use the vial and some one will still be saved.

Answer 7

I would have to really think about this but here goes.  I would save my 15 year old daughter.  She would have the strongest immune system and would also be able to care for herself.  My 5 year old boy would require assistance.  My wife and I would have shorter life expectancies and we would like to preserve the life of our daughter.

Answer 8

The spouse has done their job, you already have two children. The 15 year old daughter (that is starting college at 15) would be the one to save. The 5 year old son would not survive on his own anyway, should you also perish in the pandemic.

Answer 9

Sell the vial to the highest bidder and live like you've never lived before.

Answer 10

I would get a life.  

Answer 11

" Altruists are concerned only with those who suffer—not with those who provide relief from suffering, not even enough to care whether they are able to survive. When no actual suffering can be found, the altruists are compelled to invent or manufacture it." Ayn Rand

Why is it necessary to manufacture such scenarios? Only to make people feel guilty that they must make choices.

"The psychological results of altruism may be observed in the fact that a great many people approach the subject of ethics by asking such questions as: “Should one risk one’s life to help a man who is: a) drowning, b) trapped in a fire, c) stepping in front of a speeding truck, d) hanging by his fingernails over an abyss?” Consider the implications of that approach. If a man accepts the ethics of altruism, he suffers the following consequences (in proportion to the degree of his acceptance):

"1. Lack of self-esteem—since his first concern in the realm of values is not how to live his life, but how to sacrifice it.

"2. Lack of respect for others—since he regards mankind as a herd of doomed beggars crying for someone’s help.

"3. A nightmare view of existence—since he believes that men are trapped in a “malevolent universe” where disasters are the constant and primary concern of their lives.

"4. And, in fact, a lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality—since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.

"By elevating the issue of helping others into the central and primary issue of ethics, altruism has destroyed the concept of any authentic benevolence or good will among men. It has indoctrinated men with the idea that to value another human being is an act of selflessness, thus implying that a man can have no personal interest in others—that to value another means to sacrifice oneself—that any love, respect or admiration a man may feel for others is not and cannot be a source of his own enjoyment, but is a threat to his existence, a sacrificial blank check signed over to his loved ones.

"The men who accept that dichotomy but choose its other side, the ultimate products of altruism’s dehumanizing influence, are those psychopaths who do not challenge altruism’s basic premise, but proclaim their rebellion against self-sacrifice by announcing that they are totally indifferent to anything living and would not lift a finger to help a man or a dog left mangled by a hit-and-run driver (who is usually one of their own kind)."

“The Ethics of Emergencies,” The Virtue of Selfishness" Ayn Rand

http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/al...

My own website denies the importance of altruism, and of making up such choices. The answer to your question will come when the time comes, if it ever comes, and the man who is placed in that terrible position of having to make the choice may not like the choice he is forced to make. Leave it until it happens.

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/