Nisan comments on Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alicorn 09 July 2010 06:54AM

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Comment author: Rain 14 July 2010 10:53:01PM *  6 points [-]

Day-to-day question:

I live in a ground floor apartment with a sunken entryway. Behind my fairly large apartment building is a small wooded area including a pond and a park. During the spring and summer, oftentimes (~1 per 2 weeks) a frog will hop down the entryway at night and hop around on the dusty concrete until dying of dehydration. I occasionally notice them in the morning as I'm leaving for work, and have taken various actions depending on my feelings at the time and the circumstances of the moment.

  1. Action: Capture the frog and put it in the woods out back. Cost: ~10 seconds to capture, ~2 minutes to put into the woods, getting slimy frog on my hands and dew on my shoes. Benefit: frog potentially survives.
  2. Action: Capture the frog and put it in the dew-covered grass out front. Cost: ~10 seconds to capture, ~20 seconds to put into the grass, getting slimy frog on my hands. Benefit: no frog corpses in the stairwell after I get home from work, and it has a possibility of surviving.
  3. Action: Either of the above, but also taking a glass of warm water and pouring it over the frog to clean off the dust and cobwebs from hopping around the stairwell. Cost: ~1 minute to get a glass of water, consumption of resources to ensure it's warm enough not to cause harm, ~10 seconds of cleaning the frog. Benefit: makes frog look less deathly, potentially increases chances at survival.
  4. Action: Leave the frog in the stairwell. Cost: slight emotional guilt at not helping the frog, slight advance of the current human-caused mass extinction event. Benefit: no action required.
  5. Action: As above, but once the frog is dead, position it in the stairwell in such a way as to be aesthetically pleasing, as small ceramic animals sometimes are. Cost: touching a dead frog, being seen as obviously creepy or weird. Benefit: cute little squatting frog in the shade under the stairwell every morning.

What would you do, why, and how long would you keep doing it?

Comment author: Nisan 17 July 2010 05:53:00PM 2 points [-]

2: I would put the frog in the grass. Warm fuzzies are a great way to start the day, and it only costs 30 seconds.

If you're truly concerned about the well-being of frogs, you might want to do more. You'd also want to ask yourself what you're doing to help frogs everywhere. The fact that the frog ended up on your doorstep doesn't make you extra responsible for the frog; it merely provides you with an opportunity to help.

Also, wash your hands before eating.

Comment author: jimrandomh 17 July 2010 06:14:09PM 4 points [-]

If you're truly concerned about the well-being of frogs, you might want to do more. You'd also want to ask yourself what you're doing to help frogs everywhere. The fact that the frog ended up on your doorstep doesn't make you extra responsible for the frog; it merely provides you with an opportunity to help.

The goal of helping frogs is to gain fuzzies, not utilons. Thinking about all the frogs that you don't have the opportunity to help would mean losing those fuzzies.

Comment author: Rain 19 July 2010 02:48:47PM *  4 points [-]

There's no utility in saving (animal) life? Or is that only for this particular instance?

Edit 20-Jun-2014: Frogs saved since my original post: 21.5. Frogs I've failed to save: 23.5.