Wait, what am I saying? Let them be 150 year-olds. Seems like you’ve already foreseen in the OP that plenty of those will be tired of life by then; they might as well keep society running on their way out.
What would I vote for? No deal, I’m ornery.
What would the nation vote for? Hell, throw in, “this will keep us safe from terrorists!” and no-one will bat an eye even if the omnipotent bastard intends to slowly skin the 14 alive. Oh, and that’s not torture, that’s just an enhanced sacrificial technique.
There is a 14 in 300 million chance of being selected to get sacrificed. Hell I’ll volunteer to strangle every last one of them. Every year. It’s a small price to pay for an ideal society.
I think the Omelas story is a little more troubling, since we’re talking about torturing an unwilling child for it’s whole life. I agree with da pope that there will easily be 14 volunteers out of 300 million people each year, and even if there weren’t, a quick, human death (presumably to old people who would have died decades ago anyway) is not the same as lifelong torture. I’m not seeing much of a downside here–we’d save millions of lives and improve everyone’s life substantially. Hell, I see no reason why this wouldn’t alleviate suffering around the world, since we’d have basically unlimited resources to share.
Exactly.
Like I said, I don’t understand the question very much. Our current world is much, much worse than that. If the people were randomly selected, it would still be dwarfed by the number of innocent people that die every single day from everything ranging from cancer to driving accidents or even falling in the shower.
Actually I think he got it from Neil Gaiman or John Ney Rieber. One of the stories in the Books of Magic described a similar deal. The Kingdom of Fairie had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Hell as a sacrifice to keep Faerie perfect.
Personally, I can’t decide what I would choose. On the one hand, it would be rational to minimize suffering. But I’m stubborn. I don’t like the idea of intentional sacrifice.
What if your country was involved in war and you were a fighter pilot? From what I have read, killing a random person only affected some people badly. Others enjoyed it and most were ambivalent about it. I don’t like to think of myself as a cold-blooded potential killer but the situation has never arisen. Unless their kids and spouses are sitting there begging for mercy, I don’t see why anyone would care much. They are going to die anyway and their luck just ran out like it does for millions of innocent people every year. That is just the human condition.
I think we all agree that turning over fourteen people to the alien is wrong. Millions of people may die every year but that’s due to the vagarities of fate. These fourteen people will die because we sacrificed them.
So the issue is whether it’s worth a small wrong to obtain a far greater good. Rationally, yes - my mind knows what it should do. But the idea of “millions for defense but not one penny for tribute” rings in my heart. Sometimes you should defend a principle even when its cost is irrationally high.
Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon…
Because there would be no way to guarantee enough volunteers, I would vote against the proposal. Even if said proposal had some way of selecting people when there was a shortage of volunteers in a way that suggested that those people are the ones that “should” be volunteering, we should not be handing people death sentences arbitrarily just to improve the rest of society.
I would attempt to negotiate; there has to be some common ground between the two positions. If the sacrifices meant nothing to him, he’d just as easily renege on the agreement. Therefore, there’s no reason to give in to his demands without attempting to extract a better deal.
What makes you think it’ll be a quick, humane death?
I would vote “No”. This asshole is no different than any other god, and all gods are our enemies, real or imagined.
And if the US, say, took up this offer, then they would be what the law calls pirates and slavers: Hostis humani generis, “The enemy of all mankind”
Just like, while I am a pacifist, I shed no tears for the fate of the Aztec, Maya and Inca religions.
To continue this hijack, I know I have read within the past two years (which include a lot of Gaiman) a story of a child kept in the darkness its whole life until it was sacrificed. Wasn’t that in American Gods?
Back to the main topic:
I’m of two minds on which way the vote would go. People are horrible at statistics and might worry they’d be one of the 14 out of 300 million, but there’s greed and luxury to be considered.
I would vote no. This is partially out of ethics, partially because I don’t trust people who are obviously playing headgames with me, and partially because there’s no reason to trust a NOB who only supports one country unless we’re going back to history when it made sense to have specific pantheons. Maybe if the NOB showed up in Egypt and said it was Ra or Osiris or someone, it would make a little sense to possibly look into it. But if the NOB came to the USA? Automatic distrust.
But assuming I was for the sacrifices:
Death row supplies the initial supply of men. Ideally they would last until we had enough 150 year olds to take over, but you just know some people will get bored by 120 or even before that. Boredom is not curable. If a kid with video games, books, movies, internet access, drawing supplies, a kitchen, and 35 acres of fields, orchard, woods, and dirt pits can be bored (me!) then an adult destined to live to 150 at least could get even more bored.
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.
Lord Summerisle, killing me won’t bring back your damned apples!
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 for it. But I always was a hedonist. Put a lottery up. Limit the lottery to people over the age of, say, 150 - but everyone has to register at that age. It’s worth it.
applaud!
I read the story linked upthread, and that is much more horrific than the premise outlined here. That one is a little child being tortured, with no idea why. I’d probably walk out of that world too.
I would vote no. The cost effectiveness is fairly irrelevant, because it seems that this being is giving us a whole lot, and wanting not much in return. Sounds like a scam to me, like that Nigerian bank thing. Yes, 14 lives seems like a great deal, but there would be no more heart attacks, accidental death, etc. We’d have a population explosion. I would not trust the WHY of this creature. What possible use could an omnipotent (or nigh-omnipotent) being have for creating utopia unless it’s a science experiment? It knows what will happen, it can see/predict it. All it is doing is creating more work for itself, for 14 lives a year? I can imagine a creation/ant farm scenario, where a deity taps the glass every once in a while to see what happens, but not a nearly-omnipotent being. I can’t trust it. I’ll vote no, and walk if it’s approved.
And the NOB’s response:
“You have failed the test, Earthlings, and shown that you are not worthy of such great gifts. Had you refused, then you would have enjoyed peace and prosperity forever, but now this cannot be. Perhaps when I return in a thousand years your descendants will be wiser.”
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?
No. 8 lives saved is nowhere near Utopia. You are talking about eradicating suffering and misery on one hand, and saving just a few lives on the other. Stopping rape, torture, murder, and disease, suffering, war, famine, is worth 14 lives. Your scenario has much less reward. And reward is what it’s all about.
So, what if it was 16 lives?
160?
250?
What is the minimum kill/save ratio that would make it worthwhile?