Why is it that everyone assume that saving lives is a worthwhile goal in and of itself? China has been working to get its population down for decades now.
From my perspective, a better question to ask would be why some people deserve to be in power when they clearly have sociopathic tendancies manifested as nationalism
Isn’t an oath, or the underlying bond of a promise, also an abstract notion of morality? What makes someone who keeps a promise more or less moral than one who doesn’t keep it, especially taking into account that the only reason why some say its better for this American agent to save the US city is due to the oath? That’s like saying your words are your cite; its circular logic. If there is a morality as we commonly understand it, then the oath is secondary to the moral act of saving a small town or a big city
If one attributes value to life and wants to lower suffering, then there definitely is a greater virtue by reducing the latter and saving the former.
Irrelevant. We’re not talking about what is the proper ratio of American to Chinese lives to save, we are talking about this decision given in the OP and what criteria one would use to come to a conclusion
I’d save Doom. Cause you can’t beat anybody with Richard Kimble in Marvel vs. Capcom 3
My gut reaction is to save Beijing. FWIW I’m an American, and although I’ve never been to Wheeling, WV, I live within 300 miles of there.
Afterward, if I felt it necessary for my own safety, that of my superiors, or the Chinese moll herself, I’d try to work out some story with her so that she’d get the credit for disabling the Beijing satellite. Maybe I could say I was shouting instructions to her as I disabled the other satellites and she had to make the choice between Wheeling and Beijing.
Looking over the thread, it’s surprising to me how many of the responses cite Agent Bail’s oath to protect the lives of US citizens. The OP doesn’t tell us she was under any such oath. She’s described as working for “an American super-secret spy agency”, not the US military or the CIA, so I wouldn’t make any bets as to what sort of oath she’s under. It’s not totally clear from the OP that Bail is even employed by the US government at all, and if she is then she might have some super-secret oath about, say, protecting the best interests of the US government. That might very well mean saving Beijing.
I think it’s fighting the hypothetical to answer based on an assumption that Agent Bail is sworn to protect American lives when the OP does not tell us this is the case.
Pay closer attention to what you think you are responding to, then. The exact criteria I cited was who I know v. who I do not know. You may not agree but by how you are now choosing to phrase the dilemma, it is not irrelevant.
your dirty words don’t scare me. I’m for us and against them, which you can call sociopathic nationalism if you like.
Sure, but you seem to be using “greater virtue” here in the sense of “consistent with one"s belief system,” which I have no objectio to. Lobo, OTOH, was using it in the sense of “objectively better,” which is obviously ridiculous.
I don’t think that’s fighting the hypothetical at all. I was certainly operating under the assumption that Bail had sworn such an oath when I wrote the OP. And I don’t know how she can be working for American super-secret spy agency without working for the US government, and if she’s the (fictional American) equivalent of James Bond, she’s certainly vowed to protect US lives & interests.
Skald typically allows and sometimes encourages reasonable extrapolation in these kinds of threads. He said it was an American agency. U.S. Government employee is highly likely, otherwise **Skald **would have had whichever one he found hottest to be one of his minions/hookerbot models.
I don’t want to hijack the thread but maybe Skald could start an equivalent thread in which the choices aren’t Chinese and American but instead humans versus aliens on another planet that are vastly more numerous but just about the same intelligence as us and oddly similar in most ways.
There have been many humanist type answers in this thread but no compelling reason for it in my opinion. It all comes down to ‘us versus them’ at some level. You can twist that in lots of different directions. Under some interpretations, you get PETA, in other you get Star Wars. Which one is right?
Are real government agents even sworn to protect American lives? A quick Google indicates that the actual oaths used by the US military don’t say anything about protecting American lives, but rather protecting and defending the Constitution and obeying orders (http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html). I don’t know what sort of oath CIA agents have to swear, but an obligation to save American lives whenever possible would seem likely to interfere with the ability of field agents to maintain their covers and carry out their other duties.
It’s your hypothetical, so if you want to say she’s sworn to protect American lives then I’ll accept that, but it wasn’t in the OP and I wouldn’t make that assumption myself.
In a wild fictional scenario like this it seems possible that there might be a privately owned and operated super-secret spy agency that is “American” in the sense that it is based in the US and employs Americans. The lack of anything in the OP to make it clear that Bail was employed by the US government led me to wonder if you were actually planning some kind of “gotcha!” about her not being a US government agent…especially since the OP does specify that she’s a lesbian. It’s my (limited) understanding that while homosexuals are not barred from the CIA, being gay is considered a liability if one wants to work as a field agent.
Anyway, as I said before the interests of the US government might very well involve saving Beijing. If she’s sworn to protect US interests then her oath might require her to let Wheeling get zapped.
Well, I’ve already written that I think (based on Chronos’ & a few others’ argument) that Bail has to save Beijing. I’ll concede that the specific oath “protect American lives” wasn’t mentioned in the OP and could be argued against, but since every other poster clearly understood “American secret agent” to mean an operative of the United States government, I think it’s perverse to say it could mean anything else – just as, if I wrote “American soldier”, I would clearly mean “a member of the United States armed services,” not an employee of Xe (formerly Blackwater).
Incidentally, do you realize that “Demetria” is just the feminine of “Demetrius” (Greek for James) and “Bail” is mean to hearken to Bond? Demetria Bail is just a female James Bond from Atlanta. 
With what? The Chinese don’t have, so far as we know, any ICBMs that can reach the west coast, let alone Chicago, Houston or the east coast. Their strategic nukes are primarily as a deterrent for close in hostilities.
Also, Agent Bail would now be in possession of an orbiting death laser.
Hey, you’re the one who asked how she could work for an American super-secret spy agency without working for the US government. If you look back at my first post in this thread, I didn’t make a big deal about her maybe not being a US government employee. I mentioned this possibility only briefly, in the context of my bigger point about not making assumptions about what kind of oath she might have sworn.
Since a number of posters said they were basing their answer on the belief that Bail was sworn to protect American lives, I felt it was worth pointing out that the OP does not say she had taken any such oath. As far as I know no one employed by the US government has to swear an oath to protect American lives, so even if you had spelled out that Bail was a US government operative then I would not have assumed that she had sworn such an oath.
Definitely nuke the small city and save the big one. Wait, what? Did you say Wheeling? :eek:
Never mind. Beijing gets it.
(the fact that I’m originally from Wheeling did not influence my decision at all… nope… not at all)
Cool beans. I don’t really wonder why folks like me don’t hold on to power, and I assume you don’t wonder why folks like you get locked up in prison so often. Them’s the breaks.
Shagnasty, if it were a choice between two equally sentient species, then yeah, I’d go for the higher population saving. “Us versus them” is loathsome thinking and gets us into all kinds of trouble as a species.
U.S. city. He’s employed to serve his country.
I didn’t say anything about people like you “holding onto power.” I said something about the frequency (specifically, the lack thereof) of people like you being chosen as a leader.
Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the Virginians.
This. I don’t really see how this is even a question.
Beijing. Not only because of it having more people, but because this would be of greater benefit to the US too.
Because now the Chinese owe you one, big time. And sure, there’s realpolitik too, but next time the US asks for some tariff adjustments or some action on North Korea, the Chinese are not going to be able to just shrug it off.
I don’t understand? What would James Bond do? Do that, only with less penis.
Beijing. This is easy because I live in Beijing and want to live.