Open thread, August 26 - September 1, 2013

Is it better for the last million people of a certain population to die, or for two million people all around the world, randomly selected and evenly distributed, to die? For the first group, their death would not just result in loss of human life, but potentially loss of a lot of cultural information; their language, their religion, their mythology and folklore, their music. I feel like this cultural information has value.

Thoughts?

Showing 3 of 11 replies (Click to show all)

ChristianKl13y00

What do you mean with "certain population"? Any selection of one million people describes a population.

0drethelin13y

people are mostly interchangeable. i'd save the million.

-2Izeinwinter13y

In order: 1:This kind of thing does not come up. 2:If it did, the moral obligation is to find a third option. 3: The million would be the lesser evil, but is exceedingly unlikely to to actually die, as an identifiable group faced with the prospect of a loosing that high a number of its membership is going to exert a lot more leverage than the world at large is going to exert over a one in 3.500 chance of death.

See in context