Reminds me of that twilight zone episode where random ppl are offered a large sum of money if they decide to let a total stranger die.
If they keep the money the choice is offered to another total stranger, and guess who dies if that other stranger also decides they want the money
Epic episode imo.
Says the child who has never been in love.
Add to this the fact that these 10,000 people are already, by natural causes, dying of cancer, and that makes this a no-brainer for me.
It’s not like the devil is going to kill them; it’s nature and reality taking its course. 10,000 strangers already on course to die isn’t going to inspire me to play god (devil) with fate, particularly when there’s a personal cost.
Yeah, I thought of that too. That is one of my favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone, actually. The difference is I wouldn’t push the button for any monetary gain because human life is more important than money. If it is a question of taking my husband away from me vs. the lives of others I’m going to choose to keep my spouse every time.
I wouldn’t sacrifice my love for anything. Anything. Maybe you can’t comprehend what it’s like to love someone that much, but do please get off your moral high horse.
Qin, no offense, but a 13 year old virgin has no business answering this question.
Rah, bah, bah. See how well your genes propagate with that attitude, kid!
To answer the question: Hell no.
This is a key point that seems to be getting overlooked. All of these people were going to die before any kind of demonic intervention, so who would I be to argue with fate/nature/whatever?
I wouldn’t be choosing to kill 10,000 people, I’d be choosing to let nature take it’s course…in that vein, it’d be more immoral to let them live, IMO. Everyone dies…some of us very late, some of us early, but that’s how it is.
Clearly, since in this scenario I’m talking to the devil, I’d have to also assume there is a God (I’m not saying that logically there has to, just that me, personally, would assume there has to be.) So therefore, it seems that God has either decided for them to die, or at the very least decided that “we make our own fates” and it’s not up to him to interfere…either way, who am I to argue?
Some people would sacrifice anything that’s theirs, but not what belongs to others. Their life, yes; the life of another, no.
Oh, I glanced over this part. In that case, no-brainer. Keep the one, forget the 10,000.
I wouldn’t force the one I love to wear uncomfortably tight, blister inducing shoes for a day if in turn it would save 10,000 strangers.
People die; it’s horrible, but it’s going to happen to all of us. It’s natural. I don’t have the hubris to consider myself capable of judging who gets to live.
(And after all, knowing deals such as these, if I save them, they’re all going to grow up to be Hitler; or, they’ll die within the next year in a series of 10,000 completely unrelated random car accidents.)
That wouldn’t be reneging on the deal. At no time has Old Scratch promised not to murder anyone.
I hesitate to join a Qin-bashing on either side – but why does virginity matter? It could be your child, mother, baby sister, or platonic soulmate, after all.
ETA: Okay, admittedly virgins don’t have children. 'Cept for that chick from Nazareth, and I’m not convinced even then.
+1
Why would your love have to stop at just your immediate family? Isn’t it possible to love all individual humans equally? That’s what some saints and such though the ages have claimed for themselves.
Anyway, it’s her call not mine (assuming she is conscious and of sound mind)-[rereading OP] if she doesn’t have to die as part of the deal, then it’s a no-brainer. Shame on Skald to wimp out like that!
Then again, given that such a person seems to constantly elude my presence, perhaps my choice is easier than that of others. Then again again, I’ve gone though a lot of changes over the last 20 years, having managed to achieve a level of happiness by myself that the former melancholy romantic fool that I was could never possibly comprehend, in the throes of what he once thought was an eternal and deeply passionate love for his beloved. He would undoubtedly think that my current self was completely insane to actually say the above.
I’d make him get in the bag I got from an old Russian peasant.
I’m going to say that,for the vast majority of persons, it is not possible to do that. We’re not evolved for it.
Even if we grant that Buddha and Jesus and such actually existed and were capable of such a thing, there’re extraordinary.
There are probably a few thousand people in the United States capable of running a mile in less than four minutes. But the vast, vast majority of the population, no matter how they train and exercise, is not going to be capable of such a feat.
But Mephistopheles’ purpose isn’t to kill people. As somebody’s pointed out, nature and entropy do that for him. His purpose is to cause the person receiving the offer to either concede their own essential selfishness, or to deny themselves love and thus increase their suffering.
Not for me. Since that is what the OP was interested in, I am not concerned with any microquantity of altruism that might contradict me.
Why should you let that stop you? If that had been a common excuse thru history, humankind would never have “evolved” out of caves and discovered all sorts of amazing things (both about the universe and themselves) that they did.
I think you sell people a little short-or at least their potential.
But what if you take the third option, where relinquishing your companion causes you no suffering in the first place, because their leaving is completely incapable of affecting you negatively? If you truly believe (or I should say know) that you are lacking absolutely nothing in yourself or outside of yourself, then your loved one cannot take anything away from you when they go (be it your happiness, or your subjective evaluation of their companionship, or security, or somesuch). Then Mephisto can go stew in his own juices, having failed his little test (or you having passed his I should say).
And, assuming we are unable to relinquish our attachments, what about the 10,000 who feel exactly as you do-why should you privelege your suffering over theirs to the magnitude of at least 10,000:1? How do you explain your decision to them? Why should they be denied the happiness that you will continue to enjoy?