What would the effect of me allowing the SDMB to run my life?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s say that I chose to pass all of the decision-making ability in my life off to the SDMB. I would effectively, when faced with a relatively big problem (crisis of faith, what to do with my lottery winnings, ask her out or not) and eventually trickle down into the smaller facets of my life (what job should I take, what to do Friday night, what book to read).

The way this would most likely be done is to pose a question, (“my mother is terminally ill and it’s sucking money out of our family’s estate like nobody’s business, not to mention that we can tell she’s in neverending pain, should we pull the plug or let her hang on?”) and both (or all) sides of the issue go head-to-head. The side that makes the best case (not necessarily the one that is most popular) will be the one I follow. Subsequent issues will be handled independently of previous issues (thus, if I’m directed to take a life of celibacy and then I meet this really hot chick, the ensuing crisis could alter the celibacy decision). Events that couldn’t really be undone (e.g. if I create a trust fund to pay for an orphanage in perpetuity, I couldn’t suddenly dismantle it and send it all to Dogface, say.* This will continue for each “issue” until the end of my life (or the SDMB).

Obviously, suggestions would taken, so long as they could be justified and unsolicited suggestions like, “punch yourself in the nuts” would be ignored.**

Given that the board is (in my estimation) full of 1) relatively moral people who are 2) slightly left-leaning as a whole and 3) not paritcularly religious 4) complete fucking smartasses, what would my life be like? Would I be a modern-day superhero/philanthropist sacrificing myself for the greater good; a hedonist doing the bidding of invisible master; a schizophrenic from following wildly divergent commands?

I dunno, I’m just throwing that out for some feedback. I suppose the underlying quesiton is, “given complete control over someone else, what would someone/a group of people do?” Not with laws and

Perhaps this should have been in Great Debates, so I’ll bow to the will of the mods should it be better off there.

  • I choose Dogface because he’s the first banned poster I could think of.

** You guys wanna put money on the first response being “punch yourself in the nutz?”

2

I hope you never are faced with a critical decision during the hour each day that the board is down for maintenance!

3

I suggest the OP use a Magic 8 Ball for critical decisions when the board is down.

And he should punch himself in the nutz. Heh.

4

My first and most important piece of advice would be to give all your money to Slortar.

5

Chairman - But you would still be doing the reading and making the decisions to do what posters say. So the decision making would still be up to you. Git it?

6

Yeah, but the idea was that the best reasoning would win out, not necessarily what I would have chosen to do in the first place. That is, if I had a pang of conscious that said, “there’s some dude with no legs that I see on the way to work every day and he looks more and more sicly every day, should I help him out? If so, to what magnitude?”

Normally, I’d be inclined to continue not doing anything about the guy, but, in this new life, I’d be willing to see what the “right” thing to do it (that is, what is the position that could be best defended). If I got responses that ranged from, “it’s your Christian duty to help others and here’s why…” to “you don’t owe that guy anything because…” I’d choose the answer that made the most sense, which may not be what I was normally inclined to do.

Ideally, the conversation between the “dos” and “do nots” would reconcile itself so that I wouldn’t necessarily need to make a decision, but one side would win out through superior reasoning.*

The thing that made me think of this was a story someone told me about how the Afghani congress worked (have no idea if this is true or not): basically, there was a group of 300 tribal leaders that would meet to determine a course of action. They would argue until all 300 members agreed that the choice was a good one, then they’d have to go to the council of 11 and argue their case for those guys. The Co11 wouldn’t necessarily play devil’s advocate, but instead try to deflate the argument as you would expect a thesis defense to be. Once swayed, the 11 would go to the three who would then go to the King.

I presume the idea behind this was that any course of action would 1) be agreed to by all and 2) be the ideal choice because there were no logical flaws. Granted, it would take the hell of a long time to work out and I’m sure that there was all sorts of pork barrell shennagins going on.

  • I know this is making a lot of assumptions that both sides will stick it through to the logical conclusion, but if it devolves to one side shouting while the other presents well-thought out reasons, that would allow a side to have one.
7

Sounds like a microcosm of a democracy. Extrapolating from larger democracies I’d expect your response time from stimulus to decision to skyrocket as the first symptom. Secondly I’d expect you to overanalyze everything, take on too many tasks, complete very few of them well, and overall end up wandering around in a haze as all the voices in your head argued.

Hmm, I’m a microcosm of democracy as well. Who knew?

Enjoy,
Steven

8

You would heat your house with solar, and with coal, because they’re both the most efficent means of producing energy. Except for nuclear, which you would not fear.

You would be a tireless advocate of space elevator technology, even though you insist it is an impractical pipe dream.

You would steadfastly oppose the war in Iraq because of your deeply held belief that it is an integral part of the “War on Terror.”

Your strong libertarian streak would lead you to support socialized mediciine in the United States.

As a devot secular humanistic atheist, you would regularly attend Catholic mass.

Your home is littered with Jack Chick tracts, which is your primary reading material.

Most of your free time is spent in your basement, working on 1920’s-style death rays.

You would own dozens of guns, but you would never fire them because guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Similarly, your Hummer stays in the garage.

You would be deluged with job offers due to your encylopaedic knowledge of super hero comic books.

Your favorite films: Showgirls, They Live, The Lord of the Rings trilogy (because of the numerous unforgivable changes in Master Tolkein’s work), The Matrix Reloaded, Casablanca (although you really don’t see what’s so special about it), and you just love, love, love the Star Wars prequels for their horrible, wooden acting; stupid plots; ugly CG effects; and midiclorians.

Your primary source of income would be money you win from celebrity death pools.

Three words: constantly greeting Opal