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Old 11-21-2006, 07:58 AM   #3 (permalink)
smallstar
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Wow. I surely wouldn't have expected results like this. I think that most of my friends would say 0 (or some ridiculously small number like .000001) in this case.

Now, to the interpretation to your answers. 0 is a pure egoist - one who does not care about others at all, or alternatively a person who knows that he will be discovering the Cure for Cancer 20 years ahead of his time.

I arbitarily ended up in .05 since it's the often cited statistical definition of impossibility - I'd be going there and trusting that it won't happen. The implication of .05 is that I value my life 10 times that high than the unknown girl's. Of course, if I would be forced to make a rushed decision instead of a conscious one, my limit would probably be somewhere near .5.

Those of you who voted .2 still value their lives more than the unknown girl's life, statistically about 2.5 times that high, and those who voted .5 value all life as equal. I was expecting most people to vote either .5 or below.

Those who voted >.5 are true altruists, since they value the life of another, even a stranger, higher than their own, and are willing to die just to give another a slight chance of survival. There may be various reasons to this: being trained to do so, having a religious reason to do so etc, but I have to ask if this really is something that would be done by a person with a healthy ego and a healthy knowledge of their self-worth? Why do you only value yourself 60% or 20% of the girl?

If you voted 1, you are suicidal: you would jump from the top of the world's highest waterfall (4 km) after someone that just fell. You see no reason to live, as you are willing to throw it away for nothing. I can still understand that people rush into such decisions, but if you consciously ended into that decision, I think you need help fast.
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