How much do you value your life versus others

[smallstar]

This is a thought experiment. Please read carefully before answering.

You are alone on the bank of the river, there is no-one nearby. Suddenly, you hear a cry of help, and see a girl about 5 years old in the middle of the river. The current in the river is strong. In order to rescue the girl, you know you need to jump to the river, and if you do that you know that you risk death.

Let us simplify the situation by assuming a few things:
* You know that the probability of outside help arriving is 0. If you decide not to help the girl, the probability for her death is 1.
* You know that if you jump in the river to save the girl, the probability of both of you to die is P, and the probability of both of you to survive is 1-P. No other outcome is possible.
* You know the exact value of P, and are able to make a conscious decision without rushing it.

The question is: What is the maximum value of P with which you would still jump to the river to try to save the girl?

[Adam]

I've already answered a similar question like this before. I offered my life to defend people once, and only a physical limitation is keeping me from continuing to honor that oath. Without having that oath, though, I would say that my answer would be much lower than the one I picked.

[smallstar]

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.

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

I chose .1. My reasons were not mathematically calculated. My first thought is - I must save her. My second, I can't allow myself to die, because I have a child myself who needs me. So it's a low-end trade-off!

[Brutha]

In those situations you can't make conscious decisions, your body produces hormones that influence the choice much more than any "conscious effects".

[smallstar]

Originally Posted by Brutha

In those situations you can't make conscious decisions, your body produces hormones that influence the choice much more than any "conscious effects".

True, and you also cannot predict how you would exactly do under such situations. However, you can also make conscious decisions about situations like this - in retrospect, as thought experiments, or when setting codes for moral or judicial systems. ("What is the maximum P with which you would condemn someone who does not jump to jail"), and similar questions.