Poll: Who would you rather let die, your pet or me?

Maze1125

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Walter Sobchak said:
Maze1125 said:
Walter Sobchak said:
funny but it just shows that you are unwilling to an the question because you know morally what the answer is.
Bollocks. I answered the question with what I would actually do. Nothing could ever force me to make that choice, so I wouldn't make it.

Serial killers don't have a sense of morality butchers do
So do terrorists and people who murder abortion doctors.
It may not be the same morality as yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't have a sense of it.
your still talking about people murdering people i'm saying normal people no when things are wrong and do you realize by saying this you are putting yourself in the same ring with terrorists and worst of all tea partyers
by choosing to murder someone over your pet you are justifying it with your own set of morals thats what I mean by he puts himself with terrorists/teapartyers
The poll clearly shows that the majority of people who put their pet first.
So, it seems to me, that saving your own pet is precisely the normal thing to do.

Now, you may have a different moral outlook, but it seems quite clear that if anyone's morals are abnormal, it's yours.
 

TheHaunted

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Well, since my pets have all already died, I vote to let my pet die. If my pet were alive, I probably would still let my pet die, since my dog had lived to the ripe old age of 15 and he was starting to have trouble walking.
 

Walter Sobchak

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Maze1125 said:
I say old chap said:
To the people that argue animals are equal or superior, I've heard this before and I'll put it this way. What beagle has built or steadily filled a library with literature and science over generations? What canary has opened a shop to sell goods and make the lives of other canaries (or people) better? A cheetah is fast (although not a typical pet by any stretch) but does it catch violent criminals in a society, or does it run into burning buildings and carry out the helpless or injured? Some animals have languages as identified, but have they developed or used telecommunications? Animals can eat, but can they cook and present a fine meal (a croc leaving a corpse to rot under a log does not count, lol). Various types of monkeys can be intelligent, but have they ever written a screenplay, novel or persuasive essay? Ants are industrious (some of the time) to our perceptions, and cultivate fungus, but do they plant and nurture varied crops of wheat, fruits and a variety of vegetables? Pack animals bully or follow but have they ever created and institutionalised something like the code of Hammurabi or any code of jurisprudence? Lizards bask on hot rocks, but have they ever used solar power for their benefit, and so they didn't have to go outside and be vulnerable to predators? Animals can sometimes heal injuries and some are better at this than others, but has any non-human animal species ever developed medicine and acted to improve and refine its treatments?

The superiority of humans is plain if you move beyond emotion swaying your opinion and examine history and multiple human civilisations. I'm a sociologist, so this is somewhat my area.
Yes, well done, that rambling paragraph just showed that humans are, as a whole, the most intelligent species on the planet.

But so what? That doesn't mean anything unless you choose to value that intelligence.
We, as humans, of course choose to value intelligence, because we pick the attribute that defines our species over any other. But that is nothing more than a biased opinion of a species wanting itself to be the best.

Nothing in that makes intelligence more moral, or more worthy of life. We, as humans, like valuing humans. But so damn what?
I am an atheist and there isn't a point to it but intelligence lets us more easily understand the short time we have on the earth
 

Walter Sobchak

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Maze1125 said:
Walter Sobchak said:
Maze1125 said:
Walter Sobchak said:
funny but it just shows that you are unwilling to an the question because you know morally what the answer is.
Bollocks. I answered the question with what I would actually do. Nothing could ever force me to make that choice, so I wouldn't make it.

Serial killers don't have a sense of morality butchers do
So do terrorists and people who murder abortion doctors.
It may not be the same morality as yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't have a sense of it.
your still talking about people murdering people i'm saying normal people no when things are wrong and do you realize by saying this you are putting yourself in the same ring with terrorists and worst of all tea partyers
by choosing to murder someone over your pet you are justifying it with your own set of morals thats what I mean by he puts himself with terrorists/teapartyers
The poll clearly shows that the majority of people who put their pet first.
So, it seems to me, that saving your own pet is precisely the normal thing to do.

Now, you may have a different moral outlook, but it seems quite clear that if anyone's morals are abnormal, it's yours.
oh no the poll on the internet website most people anwsered jokingly is against me I must have been defeated but somehow I think in a real
situation people would respond differently

EDIT: at least i hope so if not I think i lost my faith in hummanity and it shows that anti-intellectualism really is valued
 

ehagen

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Mar 22, 2011
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definitely the stranger. but if you turned out to be a jerk, I would make you buy me a new pet.. or sue you somehow. =)
 

Walter Sobchak

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TestECull said:
TheDrunkNinja said:
[
But that's because this isn't real, right? Because this is just a question, not an actual choice. He's asking you to imagine like it was, which therefore reflects your attitude on life and how you treat other people. If you looked him in the face, would you still choose the same result? Would you feel better if he was in some other part of the world? If these factors have an impact, what does that say about you and your actions in life?
But they don't. That's the thing. If I don't know someone I don't care what happens to them, regardless of whether they're right next to me or half a world away.
Nihilistic interesting
 

Cliff_m85

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I'd strangle every puppy in the world to save the life of one AIDS infected heroin addict.
 

Serge A. Storms

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I won't deny that it's the selfish move but I'd save my pet. I'm not into the intrinsic value of the human spirit and I lawlve my fuzzy wuzzies.
 

Googooguru

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Jan 27, 2010
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Sorry Buddy my Dog is one in a Million, brings me the paper, once chased a burgular off my property and does this weird thing where she pets me.. no serious its fecking weird (its cute but its more like being hit over and over again on the head with her paw)

If you are willing to come chase some burglar off my porch in the middle of the night and bring me my paper maybe i will reconsider..

Am i Selfish your damn right i am but the Selfless people are the volunteers over in Japan clearing ruble and rescuing victims and working in Africa for the UN.. not the people sitting at home drinking hot chocolate, watching CNN and posting crap on Forums

cause right now your just some random guy and although your life has value to you and the people you know ,to a complete stranger you are no different than any of the other 6 Billion strangers out there in the universe, largely expendable .. and in 100 years time no one will remember you or me or me choosing my dog over you or this thread
 

Maze1125

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will1182 said:
Oh boy, people like me. I can see where this is going. I'm done being nice.
I really don't think you need to turn things nasty due to one turn of phrase.

Okay, define "welcome". The cat is simply reacting to your appearance; you perceive it as some sort of gesture.
Exactly the same thing can be applied to humans too.
Yes, humans talk to you and can tell you what they feel, but there's absolutely no proof that that is nothing more than the conditioned response of an organic computer.

Perhaps this is a reflection on you rather than relationships in general. What kids aren't happy to see their dad?
I never said that, my children are perfectly happy to see me, just not as happy as my cat.

Of course, this is all just my interpretations of gestures, as neither my cat nor children can talk. I have absolutely no proof my children even have feelings, they're probably just acting entirely on instinct.

Having never owned a pet, I am no more blinded than you by your attachment to your pet.
That is precisely the blindness I was talking about. You surround yourself entirely by humans and never other animals, and shock, you see humans as having emotions and other animals not.

You love your pet, and just assume it loves you back.
You're absolutely right.
I love my children, so obviously I have no evidence that they really love me back, I just assume they do because I want them to.

Take a step back and look at it from a neutral perspective.
Okay, all species are descended from a common ancestor.
The very idea one species could evolve emotions entirely independently without any other species at all having them while, at the same time, all the other species have actions that look speciously like emotional responses but really just conditioned instincts, is so utterly absurd, arbitrary and against every concept of evolution that I would find it impossible to believe that anyone could believe it if I wasn't faced with so many people that apparently do.

Yep, I saved my disabled friend who has no parents and let someone with parents die. I'm a selfish bastard.
Please read my post again. Please read the post before that, if that wasn't enough to make you clue in: I have no problem with that and never said you were.
Did you honestly miss the sarcasm there? Or were you just trying to find something to criticise?

I never said you did say that.
"The parent-child bond doesn't "transcend" death. (Unless you believe in an afterlife, in which case there's no problem anyway, as he'll just end up with his parents anyway.)"

Yes you did.
No I didn't. I said that it wasn't true. Pre-empting the possibility that you might claim it.
I never claimed that you did or would, just that you might.

And your example for that has how humans react when other humans die. Which, as I pointed out, is pretty damn similar to how people react when their pets die, just to differing degrees. The only exception being the parent-child relationship which is intrinsically biased due to evolution and so inappropriate for the example.
It's not biased or inappropriate, its an example of how human relationships are stronger and generally more important than human-animal relationships. I will not type out that sentence again, because you don't seem to get it.

Calling it "biased" just because it doesn't apply to every relationship is silly, it's a valid example. Especially considering every human is someone's child.
You're the one not getting it. The parent-child relationship is strong because it is a parent child relationship, not because it is a human-human relationship.

If humans gave birth to some other species, the relationship would be just as strong, because they'd still be parent and child. The fact that the parent-child relationship is also human-human is, for the purposes of the argument, essentially coincidence.

Yes, I know you said that, because that is exactly the thing that I have a problem with.
Oh, you have a problem with my opinion? I had no idea, I will immediately recant it because you can't seem to accept that it differs from yours.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was expecting from that statement. A great piece of sarcasm you had there.

The only way this disabled person is different from a dog is that he is a human. He corresponds exactly with a dog in every single one of your arguments as to why humans are more worthy of life and yet you still attribute that same superiority to him even though he fails the very tests you give out yourself
The man can still live a long, fulfilling and enjoyable life, despite his handicap. Don't try to tell me he can't. The man can not be literally the same as the dog. He does not act purely by instinct, he has the capacity to make friends, and he is not guaranteed to die after 15 years. That alone makes him worth more than a dog. Forgive me if I would save him rather save a fellow human than a dog.
So you'd be fine with someone saving their pet if their pet was an elephant then?
 

Dark Knifer

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Yes. I have a dog and he is really great, but him over a fellow human being? I'd have to go with the person just because humans can achieve a very wide number of things and can be really awesome at times.
 

Maze1125

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Oct 14, 2008
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Walter Sobchak said:
Maze1125 said:
Walter Sobchak said:
Maze1125 said:
Walter Sobchak said:
funny but it just shows that you are unwilling to an the question because you know morally what the answer is.
Bollocks. I answered the question with what I would actually do. Nothing could ever force me to make that choice, so I wouldn't make it.

Serial killers don't have a sense of morality butchers do
So do terrorists and people who murder abortion doctors.
It may not be the same morality as yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't have a sense of it.
your still talking about people murdering people i'm saying normal people no when things are wrong and do you realize by saying this you are putting yourself in the same ring with terrorists and worst of all tea partyers
by choosing to murder someone over your pet you are justifying it with your own set of morals thats what I mean by he puts himself with terrorists/teapartyers
The poll clearly shows that the majority of people who put their pet first.
So, it seems to me, that saving your own pet is precisely the normal thing to do.

Now, you may have a different moral outlook, but it seems quite clear that if anyone's morals are abnormal, it's yours.
oh no the poll on the internet website most people anwsered jokingly is against me I must have been defeated but somehow I think in a real
situation people would respond differently

EDIT: at least i hope so if not I think i lost my faith in hummanity and it shows that anti-intellectualism really is valued
How on Earth would people caring about their pets more than strangers prove that anti-intellectualism is really valued?
I really doubt those people want the humans to die because they're too intelligent, it's just that they value their pet more.

And you only have to read the majority of odd posts in their thread to know most people weren't joking.

You're morality is only one of many, everyone has their own view on what is right or wrong. There is nothing proving yours over anyone else's.
 

WanderingFool

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I think 62.7 % of the ppl who voted would let you die, simply because you put yourself on the block. This is the internet, if people could actually see you, they would pick you (hopefully). But as this is the internet, everything is for lolz, so yeah, sorry OP, You're dead...
 

DeathsHands

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Mar 22, 2010
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Honestly, it's not that I wouldn't want to save you, and I don't wanna know what circumstance this would be, but, as Cowabunga said:

I fucking love my cats.
Also, you called me selfish. (Don't think on that too hard, being sarcastic on the last part.)
 

Grey_Focks

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Jan 12, 2010
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woops, read the question wrong. Anyway, I would let my pet die, but I would resent you for it. Nothing personal, but I have a lot of attachment to something I've raised from birth, and have taken care of and lived with for the past 8 years, but I would still save another person.

But you would owe me a friend.