Russian Roulette is not necessarily the game of putting a gun to your head. The point of this thread is the morality of advising a person on a minor technical point while ignoring the main question. It is indulging in an activity that can result in permanent damage or death and whether I should concentrate on the activity or just let a person “do what he has to do”.
They used to call this “common sense”.
Captain Amazing,
you are the man!
I’ve got news for you; it ain’t as common as we first thought.
2 things:
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Regarding the Brandon Lee incident, we actually covered that in a thread about magicians and their “bullet catching in the teeth” trick. You can also look it up in Snopes.
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My view on suicidal individuals is this:
If a person is truly intending to kill themselves, then you’ll find a body and wonder how it got there.
If a person is talking about their intention to kill themself, they’re looking for attention or professional assistance, and if you’re not a psychologist or psychiatrist or a professional counselor with experience in suicidal tendencies, professional assistance is what you should give them.
As for your situation, this guy does seem to be a few fries short of a happy meal if he’s seriously intending on playing russian roulette for the “thrill”. But then I’m also of the mind that if he’s intending on contending for a Darwin award, then let him. But stay FAR away, don’t offer assistance, or a calibre, or anything. Just make a call to the local authorities so that you can say “Hey, I did call the police/local psych ward!” And the onus is off you.
In case you’re interested, dalovin’, in the example you describe each participant has the same chance (1/6 or 0.1667) of dying, even though some of them have to try the gun before others.
This is because it is an example of sampling without replacement - once person A has survived his 1/6 dice-with-death, the next person then is up to a 1/5 chance of being killed. This means that at the start of the game person B has a 5/6 x 1/5 = 1/6 chance of being killed, the same as person A. If you follow this through for all participants, you see that at the start of the game they all have a 1/6 chance of being killed.
If, however, barrel of the gun is respun after every attempt then the chances of death for each participant are as follows:
A: 0.2506
B: 0.2088
C: 0.1740
D: 0.1450
E: 0.1208
F: 0.1007
so, as you can see, participant A has a much higher chance of death than participant F - over 2 1/2 times as high a chance.
You can try it for yourself, though I’d recommend using a die rather than a gun. Dice are less lethal.
pan
Tell your candy-ass, “don’t really care if I die”, attention seeking friend that I said put up or shut up.
.22 hollow point, in the mouth. Sure, really good chance that he’ll end up a vegetable, but with the low calliber-hollow point combination; he’s least likly to harm someone else.
I watched my prematurely born son die at 2 months old and my 21 y/o wife die of lupus. Both were desperatly clawing onto the meager chances of survival only so I can listen to an account of this pathetic F**k.
DO IT, COWARD! I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU! IF I HAD A DOG I WOULDN’T LET HIM LICK YOUR FEEBLE BRAINS OFF THE FLOOR. (Please refer your friend to this post, thank you.)
So, Tr8trJake, because you have endured two heartbreaking tragedies, you’re going to encourage one sick young man to put those who love him through the same pain and heartache that you’ve gone through? I suspect that you need help just as much that boy.
I will say, emphatically, YES you should do all in your power to discourage him. As someone who lost a sister to suicide, a year ago today, I can tell you that if you really give a crap about this guy, if you do not do all within your power to stop him(and maybe even then) and he does kill himself, you will have a hard time living with yourself.