Hypothetical: You are kidnapped and find yourself in a room with a chair, a table and a gun sitting on that table.
A voice comes over an unseen intercom and says, “We will kill a random person in fifteen minutes, and every fifteen minutes after that until you kill yourself using the gun on the table. If you attempt to use the gun for any other purpose than to kill yourself a random number of people, between ten and fifty, will die. The same thing will happen if you attempt to escape. This continues until either you are dead, or a certain number of people are dead.”
How many people die before you pick up and use that gun?
The moral side of me would kill myself ASAP.
The scientific side of me would say the Earth is overpopulated and never kill myself, just letting the population be reduced.
How do I know that the voice isn’t lying?
Will they be bringing me food/water while I am being held? If no, I wouldn’t use the gun until my body was to the point of death to end my own misery. If yes, I would live there until the perpetrators were caught. My own sense of morality would not claim responsibility for evil done by other people, only that which is done by myself. Besides, we don’t know that the voice is being honest, or even if it has the power to enforce the claims it made.
(If they were holding members of my family, instead? I’d need to give the matter a lot more reflection in that scenario…)
Do you wait 15 minutes?
If you do, you hear a gunshot, and soon after a trap door in the ceiling opens and the body of a 13 year old girl drops to the floor.
Honestly - too late to edit my previous post, which I’d now change - I don’t think I’d ever commit suicide.
It’s not my moral responsibility that these killers are murdering people. Even if they said a million would die if I didn’t off myself, it’s still not my fault, it’s their choice to kill. So I’m still not touching the gun.
I don’t kill myself. Not because my life is worth any more than anyone else’s, but because I don’t take orders from terrorists.
I take the gun and escape or die trying. If I get out, I report it to the authorities and do whatever I can to help them hunt the bastards down.
You are not going to die if you attempt to escape.
The random people will.
If they’re not stopped, they’ll do it again and again, and thousands of people will die. Even if they kill people because I escaped, it’ll still be fewer than the number they’ll eventually kill if they’re not stopped. Morally, the right thing to do is to resist.
Or 100 people, or 50 people, or 10 people, or maybe even 1 person. They have a preset number, and you don’t get to know it.
Certainly not a sure thing, and certainly not as sure as to what will happen the instant you attempt to make your escape.
How do I know that? Why should I believe it? Murderers are murderers. Why should they ever stop grabbing more saps like me and making the same threats? As far as I know, unless someone stops them, they’ll keep on doing it for years.
You don’t give evil people what they want, because then they’ll never stop demanding more.
I disassemble the gun in such a way as to render it permanently inoperable.
Killing between 10 and 50 people.
The trap door opens and another gun drops down.
This is NOT a logic puzzle where the goal is to find the secret way out.
Who said I was trying to find a way out? I can disassemble that gun too. My intent is to demonstrate that I have no interest in playing their game, there’s nothing they can do to change my mind, and I’m not responsible for the choices that they make.
If they want me dead that badly they can do it themselves.
My usual self would wack myself asap.
But, then I remembered I live in a very red state. I’d ask how many times I could play and finally read War and Peace.
Then these monsters have to be stopped! And I have a certain set of skills…
Who’s going through all that trouble of forcing me to kill myself when they can easily do it themselves? I must be really special, so let the bodies pile up. I can eventually climb the mound of corpses and get out.
Or, if they’re not feeding you…
This. First of all, I don’t hear the Voice of God telling me that what they say is true. Second, as you say, why should I believe they’ll stop killing people once I’ve killed myself? Not like I’ll know whether they’ve kept their promise - I’ll be dead. And why should whether I kill myself matter to them? Why would that affect their willingness to kill more people?
The whole thing is such bullshit that I’d figure they’d be using my suicide to somehow exonerate them, or for some other advantage I can’t grok.
If one body tumbles through that previously unnoticed trap door in the ceiling after 15 minutes, I’m going to look to see if there are any cameras in the room. If so, I’ll take a shit and smear my shit over the lenses. And then I’ll be waiting 15 minutes after the first body to fire shots through the trap door the next time it opens. (Wonder if they’ll give me more bullets or a second gun if I miss, which is likely.)
If they want me dead, let 'em kill me. If they want others dead, that’s not something I can stop, except - allegedly - by killing myself. But as I’ve said, there’s no way I’ll ever know if they kept their bargain. So why should I believe them?
Seriously.