# Would most people agree to human sacrifice in exchange for living in paradise? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 29, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400 "2009-06-29T22:04:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/41 "2009-06-30T14:50:45Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > So, what if it was 16 lives? > 160? > 250? > > What is the minimum kill/save ratio that would make it worthwhile? Hell, _I_ don’t know. I didn’t realize I had to quantify it down to the life. However, your scenario and the OP’s are nowhere near close. It isn’t just lives being saved in the OP. Hell, we make those kinds of choices every single day. It’s part of the reason I work for a charity, after all, and not a really high-paying job somewhere - lives are being saved. But I work for _this_ charity and not _that_ one, so…somewhere lives are being lost, too. In the OP’s scenario, though, we’re getting _Utopia_. So let’s say that your reward, too, must be Utopia, and I won’t settle for anything less or a paltry few lives being saved. You may save X amount of people but rape and murder and violence are all still prevalent. Fix that and I’ll get back to you. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/42 "2009-06-30T15:14:49Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > When you say “seven men and seven women”, can they be babies? That would move me from the “this is a bad idea and not worth doing, and if the rest of y’all vote for it I’m moving to Uzbekistan” to “Zeus damn it! Now I have to get personally involved in the opposition!” ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/43 "2009-06-30T15:17:31Z")
> [@Leiko](#): > > 7 women is trickier: Has the NOB made it impossible for people to become brain dead by injury after the curings? Totally died versus only mostly dead and all that. If someone ends up at a point that their next-of-kin would be pulling the plug and donating the organs, they should go up on the list of sacrifices- brain-dead men could be kept around until we run out of death-row inmates, and women would go on the sacrifice list pretty much right away- I’m not sure how many female death-row inmates there are. That helps to tide us over until the women get really old and really bored. I expect the NOB has a couple of dozen Kryptonians under contract, constantly zipping about the country and preventing all accidents. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/44 "2009-06-30T15:49:11Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > That would move me from the “this is a bad idea and not worth doing, and if the rest of y’all vote for it I’m moving to Uzbekistan” to “Zeus damn it! Now I have to get personally involved in the opposition!” Yeah…like you weren’t already the commander of the Flaming Monkey battalion in my Army of Resistance.😛 ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/45 "2009-06-30T15:57:45Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > So, what if it was 16 lives? > 160? > 250? > > What is the minimum kill/save ratio that would make it worthwhile? For me the answer would be right around 2 million. That’s how many people die each year in the US as it is. So we would be trading lives that would be lost no matter what we do for a perfect world for the rest of us. I don’t look at this as sacrificing x to save y but instead x is dead do you want to make something of the death or let it be in vain? Once you’ve decided that it is better for the death that is already going to happen to be worth something it is just of question of what it should be worth. Now I am assuming that the sacrifices are going to die an equally horrible death as the average of all of the people who die each year. I’m not sure where exactly that is but I’d be ok with a moderately horrible death so massive injuries and then lingering for day. If their deaths were worse then that I think the number of deaths would need to be to be adjusted downward until the number of people saved balanced out the horror done to them. But where that point is I’m pretty fuzzy. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/46 "2009-06-30T16:29:16Z")
I think if it was just 14 people a year there would be thousands every year turned down for volunteering. Make that tens of thousands, mostly old people. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/47 "2009-06-30T18:27:06Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > Hell, _I_ don’t know. I didn’t realize I had to quantify it down to the life. However, **your scenario and the OP’s are nowhere near close**. It isn’t just lives being saved in the OP. Hell, we make those kinds of choices every single day. It’s part of the reason I work for a charity, after all, and not a really high-paying job somewhere - lives are being saved. But I work for _this_ charity and not _that_ one, so…somewhere lives are being lost, too. > > In the OP’s scenario, though, we’re getting _Utopia_. So let’s say that your reward, too, must be Utopia, and I won’t settle for anything less or a paltry few lives being saved. You may save X amount of people but rape and murder and violence are all still prevalent. Fix that and I’ll get back to you. (bolding mine). This reminds me of a joke, that seems relevant here: Man asks woman in bar: Would you sleep with me for $1 million? Woman: Well, sure, for $1 million. Man: How about for $40? Woman: $40? What kind of woman do you think I am? Man: We’ve already established what kind of woman you are. Now we’re haggling about price. There is a principal at stake here. It might be stated this way: you don’t have the right to take another innocent person’s life for any reason, no matter how great the reward. 8 lives saved or 150 years or more per person of paradise on Earth, the size of the reward is not relevant. The principle is everything. Roddy eta: you choose to work for a charity, that’s fine, that’s your choice. There’s no guarantee that there would always be volunteers for this duty (since even if they are tired of life, they don’t know what hell of torture the NOB might be planning for them), which means forcing someone at some point to be the sacrifice for the good of the rest. It’s ok to choose to sacrifice oneself, but no-one else has that right. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/48 "2009-06-30T18:32:37Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > (There is a principal at stake here. It might be stated this way: you don’t have the right to take another innocent person’s life for any reason, no matter how great the reward. 8 lives saved or 150 years or more per person of paradise on Earth, the size of the reward is not relevant. The principle is everything. So why do you have the right to take the lives of the extra 1.99 million people? > [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > eta: you choose to work for a charity, that’s fine, that’s your choice. There’s no guarantee that there would always be volunteers for this duty (since even if they are tired of life, they don’t know what hell of torture the NOB might be planning for them), which means forcing someone at some point to be the sacrifice for the good of the rest. It’s ok to choose to sacrifice oneself, but no-one else has that right. Would you be ok with the idea if it was only through volunteering that the 14 people were chosen? ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/49 "2009-06-30T18:45:35Z")
> [@Oredigger77](#): > > So why do you have the right to take the lives of the extra 1.99 million people? I’m not taking those lives. There is a big difference between not saving someone (at the cost of something that I don’t have a right to give) and actively killing them or sending them to be killed. [QUOTE=Oredigger] Would you be ok with the idea if it was only through volunteering that the 14 people were chosen? [/QUOTE] If it were possible to be sure that they are true volunteers with no coercion or misinformation, maybe. Full disclosure would, I suspect, make that difficult. Roddy ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/50 "2009-06-30T22:11:34Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Here’s an alternative scenario. People die from organ failure all the time, and there is not enough donor organs to meet demand. Just suppose that the government proposes a compulsory lottery. If your number comes up you are put to sleep and your organs harvested. Each person sacrificed in this manner will on average save eight lives. You and your loved ones are much more likely to have your lives saved this way than die from it. Say, ten thousand people die from the lottery, but eighty thousand are saved by it. > > Sound like a good idea to you? What are my odds in the government lottery? I’d take a 14 in 300 million chance of dying for around $1,000. I have a greater chance than that of dying while driving to work. And I work for free at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/51 "2009-06-30T22:39:07Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#): > > Opening offer? So you think we could maybe bid him up a bit? The guilt on humanity to know that the eternal continuous death 7 souls (per year) is buying you/us paradise is just the leverage Satan would need to bind the entire world in submission to him and hatred towards oneself. One would have to deny a part of their very being to be able to bear this, that part would be given over to Satan. This is not a way to Paradise, but just another road to hell. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/52 "2009-06-30T22:45:51Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > The guilt on humanity to know that the eternal continuous death 7 souls (per year) is buying you/us paradise is just the leverage Satan would need to bind the entire world in submission to him and hatred towards oneself. > > One would have to deny a part of their very being to be able to bear this, that part would be given over to Satan. > > This is not a way to Paradise, but just another road to hell. Recently there was a multi-pag thread in Cafe Society in which someone wondered whether he would like the Lord of the Rings movies, given that s/he has not read the books. I stayed out of that thread, as I have typed the phrase “Return of the King is a steaming pile of donkey vomit” so many times that even I weary of it. I had nothing to contribute to that conversation that was not assholish, so I chose not be to be asshole. My point, **kanicbird** , is this: it is possible to have a discussion without bringing your particular brand of religion into it. It’s even possible to say "You know, I really have nothing to say on this topic that isn’t annoying, so I’m gonna go over here instead.’ This is not a serious conversation. This is a silly one. This conversation has nothing to do with Satan or Jesus or any other fictional character, although if someone wanted to bring up Jean Grey that would be okay as long as they linked to hot pics. As you seem incapable of playing the game, please go away. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2009, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/53 "2009-06-30T23:54:08Z")
I’m changing my vote. Let’s kill them. Once I realized I was being offered a choice between turning Earth into paradise or spending eternity with kanicbird, it really clarified the issue for me. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/54 "2009-07-01T08:52:19Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > There is a principal at stake here. It might be stated this way: you don’t have the right to take another innocent person’s life for any reason, no matter how great the reward. 8 lives saved or 150 years or more per person of paradise on Earth, the size of the reward is not relevant. The principle is everything. I have a principle too, and that’s that human life is more important than principle. Every year, we sacrifice more people for less. In World War II, 300,000 Americans, many of them draftees, died to defeat the Germans and Japanese. Heck, in 2008, 29 Americans died in coal mining accidents. That doesn’t count the 10,000 miners who died from blacklung in the last 10 years. And that’s all so you can have electricity and heat in the winter. In 2007, 181 people, innocent people, were murdered in my city of Washington, DC. Innocent people die every day in this country. If this deal were to happen, 14 innocent people a year would die, and that would be a tragedy, but many, many more than 14 innocent people who would otherwise die would live, and that would be a miracle. ---
**Author:** ![StaudtCJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@StaudtCJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StaudtCJ)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/55 "2009-07-01T09:18:53Z")
I couldn’t do it. We’d have no population controls, limited space (unless we and our alien daddy want to invade someone else), and quickly losing skillsets like FARMING or Manufacturing or Thinking about How Things Work. Sort of like how tatting lace and needlepoint are no longer universal skills. So we get used to selecting _someone else_ to die/be taken away (because really, how do we know the alien’s telling the truth about killing them?) and we get used to having no disease (vaccination smaccination), no grieving (all death is voluntary, and not before 150), and no disability (ewww that person is deaf or in a wheelchair). Then, after the moral, physical, mental, and emotional bankrupting of our nation, alien dude takes a nap/gets bored/leaves/wants worshiped/gets attacked by other alien dude/reveals that all those people he’s been “killing” are really alive, well, well-adjusted, able to understand pain and damaged bodies, and ready to FIGHT you for his entertainment. What now? Can’t do it, sorry. Not Enough Information. I refuse to become part of a nation of toddlers. (Mo-o-o-m I’m HUNGRY! Here’s Free Perfect Food.) ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/56 "2009-07-01T09:26:08Z")
There’s no value in having skillsets above and beyond their ability to provide you with the things you want; if you can get the things you want some other way, then who cares if you have some particular skillset? As for how do we know if the alien’s telling the truth about what will happen if we say “Yes” to the deal… well, how do we know they’re telling the truth about what will happen if we say “No”? Maybe if we say “Yes” they’ll leave us alone and if we say “No” they’ll blow up the planet. But to really engage with the game we’ve been invited to play in this thread, it seems to me we must accept as part of the setup that the alien’s offer is exactly what it’s spelt out to be in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![StaudtCJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@StaudtCJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StaudtCJ)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/57 "2009-07-01T09:41:59Z")
Perhaps it is the cynic in me. Even if the alien’s offer is completely and totally genuine, the offer doesn’t come with a time limit. The alien doesn’t say “I’ll take care of you forever”. It says “I’ll take care of you”. Perhaps I’m a terrible person to consider that all those surviving millions, since we no longer have non-voluntary death, and the extended life-spans, could cause issues even with all needs provided for. Also, I have concerns about the moral/ethical dilemma of selecting 14 people to do something unknown or have something unknown done to them that includes death, regardless of the benefits, real or perceived, of their sacrifice (voluntary or not). This is actually something a group of my friends has debated over several years. I will admit, at first I thought that 14 lives\* in exchange for countless good things sounds like a fair trade. I’ve thought much about it since then, though. I certainly don’t think anyone thinking the answer should be an unequivocal yes is a bad person or flawed in any way. It’s a very difficult ethical dilemma that boils down to what price a life is worth when compared to other lives and society as a whole. That ethical dilemma has a different threshold for every human, and each human’s threshold will vary at different times and places in their life. \*The dilemma in the scenario debated with my friends wasn’t 14, it was 20, with 8 adults, 1 child of each gender, and 2 “others”, meaning transgendered, transexual, hermaphroditic, or asexual, with the caveat that if 2 of the alternates could not be found, an additional adult of each gender would be provided in lieu of “other” for that year. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/58 "2009-07-01T12:48:43Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > My point, **kanicbird** , is this: it is possible to have a discussion without bringing your particular brand of religion into it. It’s even possible to say "You know, I really have nothing to say on this topic that isn’t annoying, so I’m gonna go over here instead.’ Religion has nothing to do with it, just love for others and knowledge of human nature and how that is so easily exploited. The god in the OP would not be a god worthy of worship, where worship means submission to and/or entering into a convent with. And as such this god would be a adversary of humanity (satan means adversary). ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/59 "2009-07-01T13:24:50Z")
> [@da\_pope](#): > > I guarantee that every year there will be 14 volunteers. People will develop cult like devotion, and line up. There will probably be a waiting list. These are the people that donate to televangelists, REALLY drink the kool aid, and Mormons. Curing mental illness does not mean the end of the chronically stupid. > [@Shodan](#): > > There are twenty or so anencephalic births in the US every year. Let’s see if the NOB will accept those - they can’t suffer. > > We can also keep a reserve of folks in chronic vegetative states who the NOB doesn’t cure. Or fit some 150 year old volunteers with cyanide capsules in their teeth. > > If the NOB needs perfect victims, it is a bit more problematic. > > Regards, > Shodan I’d vote yes provided the 14 victims were volunteers or similar. As noted above, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to find 14 people out of 300 million willing to take the plunge, at least not for the first century or so. On the other hand…what would it be like to live in that world? There’s a lot in this world that we would love to get rid of - the constant low level risk of death and dismemberment, the struggle for resources, erectile dysfunction etc - but out and out paradise would redefine what it means to be human. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400/60 "2009-07-01T14:35:45Z")
Okay, you folks that would go along with the deal, what if the tribute doubled every year? How many years would you be prepared to go along with it? 01 - 14 02 - 28 03 - 56 04 - 112 05 - 224 06 - 448 07 - 898 08 - 1396 etc [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-most-people-agree-to-human-sacrifice-in-exchange-for-living-in-paradise/501400.md?page=4)