Just the opposite. To say that one person is as important as any is to distribute importance equally.
Is humanity less important than the trillion?
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Would you wipe out humanity if it were to save a trillion other sentient species
- Thread starter Absolute Zero
- Start date
Is humanity less important than the trillion?
Absolute Zero
fon memories
YES If those specieas never did anything that humans have then by all means if the extinction of humanity must take place so be it.I mean for those who belive in god at least they will go to what ever hevean they belive in and if you are athiest ....well you were going to just go into nothing anyways.
Absolute Zero
fon memories
I mean think logically...it makes sense
I actually perhaps come closest to agreeing with you, but if thinking logically, then am perhaps furthest away.
Like if you changed the OP logic to say, "all human criminals" - I think you'd get more agreement with your position. Though maybe not. If you said "child rapists," I'd be surprised if anyone* disagreed.
*Me, I would disagree with whatever 'type' of person you came up with. I would need a pretty elaborate description of the scenario to go along with remote possibility of saving a trillion other life forms while destroying rest.
Partly because whatever is telling me that "humans will be destroyed unless," would be something, is something I would question / doubt, and play logic game with. I would think it plausible same 'thing' could destroy both and that I played role in part of it. Also partly because I'm as anti-capital punishment (or really pro life) as they come. There is no case where I would favor death penalty. And partly because notion of destroying life to save life is just illogical to me. This is perhaps covered in first thing I cited (at top of this paragraph), but is where I'd be coming from. I have difficulty killing mosquitoes or bugs. I can do it. I have done it. I find it uneasy.
Oh and on reread, another partial reason is because, to me, living in corporeal form, isn't necessarily "saving." Not that I wrestle with this a lot, but just would be hard for me to say, "I absolutely did right thing" by that sort of decision.
Me Myself
Back to my username
Probably no. For starters I don´t want to reincarnate that many times to attone for it 
, going even further, I do believe we as human beings are better than animals, so Our lives are a lot more important than them.
We are capable of being cruel, no animal can do that. but we are capable of compassion too. While animals can "care" for each other, I do believe the compassion humans can have is far more advanced.
That being said, I am ovo-lacto-vegetarian
? Are you vegetarian then? Believe in animalism?
, going even further, I do believe we as human beings are better than animals, so Our lives are a lot more important than them.We are capable of being cruel, no animal can do that. but we are capable of compassion too. While animals can "care" for each other, I do believe the compassion humans can have is far more advanced.
That being said, I am ovo-lacto-vegetarian
? Are you vegetarian then? Believe in animalism?
But it's not a case of "so be it," it's a case of someone making it happen.
Now, the extinction of the trillions at the hands of humanity, that's a "so be it."
I haven't seen any logic here yet. A bit of ethics, a bit of aesthetics, but no logic.
Darkness
Psychoanalyst/Marxist
It depends if I love the person being labotamised.
Logic is the slave of emotion. Cognitive rationalism is a fools gambit. All morality is rooted in emotions, like David Hume said. The only reason I give a damn about whether someone kills my daughter, is because of the emotions I feel for her. Psychopathy is a disorder in which a person is unable to form human attachment. Without human attachment, psychopaths posses no ability to perceive what we call good and evil. Thus, I have much more moral attachment to the human race, so I choose it for survival.
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Otherright
Otherright
No, I'm human. Self-preservation instinct.
Draka
Wonder Woman
Not to go all nerdy on this, but have we become the Daleks of the universe or something? Would our existence really mean the destruction of many other peaceful worlds and various life? Are we the Borg? In that light, I guess the only thing to do, if absolutely necessary, would be to end the human race. It would be for the greater good. However, like the good Doctor, I would have to give humanity a choice. To either change what it is we are doing or what it is about us that destroys so many others, or be destroyed ourselves.
Absolute Zero
fon memories
I see where your coming from with the whole scify connection.espicealy the doctor who/star treck anology.
Absolute Zero
fon memories
Darkness .I understand how emotion plays into what we care about but with what your saying would that not be akaine to a type/form of rasicm? I mean you could draw countless parrlles towareds the era of slavery from the colony eras to as far back as the bazintine empire. So what arre you trying to say ? Unfeeling for sentient life form in the trillions Is crule and Hateful.
Hope you can see where I 'm going with this.
Hope you can see where I 'm going with this.
Darkness
Psychoanalyst/Marxist
It is a form of speciesism.
otokage007
Well-Known Member
Environment and biodiversity preservation are good and I support both. However humans survival goes first for me, that's why I'm human.
Competence between species is something natural that we can't stop, and something that not only humans do. The only difference is that we are VERY competitive and all species that try to compete with us for resources, suffer the consecuences.
In fact, humans are the unique specie that cares about preservation of other species, so we aren't as bad as you think.
Competence between species is something natural that we can't stop, and something that not only humans do. The only difference is that we are VERY competitive and all species that try to compete with us for resources, suffer the consecuences.
In fact, humans are the unique specie that cares about preservation of other species, so we aren't as bad as you think.
It depends. If these sentient beings have no way to communicate with me personally then no I wouldn't. If however these beings included beings that I can communicate with and are 'better' than humans then yes I would
Yes, I'd have some reservations about it; but I value sentience/sapience/consciousness more than I value what physical bodies those traits inhabit.
I don't think it matters whether it's humans that survive or whether it's martians so long as beings with sentience/sapience/consciousness survives; assuming that these traits imply the existence of beings that yearn for knowledge, engage in moral and intellectual persuits, and so on.
I don't think it matters whether it's humans that survive or whether it's martians so long as beings with sentience/sapience/consciousness survives; assuming that these traits imply the existence of beings that yearn for knowledge, engage in moral and intellectual persuits, and so on.
Me Myself
Back to my username
I always thought of us as bout the worst and the best...
McBell
Unbound
Nope.
I will use the exact same amount of logic as you have thus far shown in this thread:
[logic]
[/logic]
[/logic]
good idea.
Don't forget the logic you have spoken of....
ManTimeForgot
Temporally Challenged
Anyone who answers this question affirmatively in a vacuum is courting a trap by walking straight into it.
None of us would make the decisions we are describing without knowing more about the situation, unless of course you all really mean to say that you would squeeze the life out of a thousand people just so that your parents would not die... And then when the families of those involved came and killed you and your entire extended family for be selfish ********, you would be ridiculed as An Idiot by the rational community.
Supposing that there are 1 quadrillion blades of grass on the planet IF we had a scientifically extant possibility of grass being sentient of 1 in one thousand, then the moral weight that a rationalist should attribute to grass should be higher than all of humanity. But in order to track this hypothetical moral weight you still have to consider what we know about biology and plant growth. Many plants like to be cut and actually grow better when you do (Roses are a very good example of this; if you don't cut roses back a lot, then they actually tend to not grow well). Certain areas are not good for plant growth, and thus letting them die off or transplanting them elsewhere is for their own future good as a species.
Without knowing anything about the other species of sentients and how either species would be killed the rational decision is probably to sacrifice humanity to save the trillion sentients. But the problem with that is that a situation like that is never going to happen in reality and thus its instructional value is nill.
Would I let humanity be tortured to death over the course of 100 years by an engineered plague to save a trillion sentients from a quick painless death? I might, but only if I thought I could convince the trillion sentients' race to salvage human genetic material so that we might be brought back at some point in the future.
Would I let humanity avoid a quick painless death via steller event in order to prevent a trillion sentients of unknown disposition avoid death via torture over the course of 100 years? In a heart beat. Humanity's influence on the cosmos will be one of moral character if I had any say about it.
Would I let humanity die by any means if it meant saving Daleks or Borg (Imperialistic and Ultra-Violent...) from extinction? Nope, not a chance. I would try to preserve whatever knowledge and remains of the other civilization that I could convince humanity to retain, but humanity's position is safe there.
Supposing all things being equal: the fates of the two races the same (only one must die) and the qualities of the two races approximately equal (both advanced races of roughly comparable scientific, technological, psychological, social, moral, and aesthetic development) in development, then the most suffering prevented becomes the one with the greater population. The trillion sentients MUST survive.
MTF
None of us would make the decisions we are describing without knowing more about the situation, unless of course you all really mean to say that you would squeeze the life out of a thousand people just so that your parents would not die... And then when the families of those involved came and killed you and your entire extended family for be selfish ********, you would be ridiculed as An Idiot by the rational community.
Supposing that there are 1 quadrillion blades of grass on the planet IF we had a scientifically extant possibility of grass being sentient of 1 in one thousand, then the moral weight that a rationalist should attribute to grass should be higher than all of humanity. But in order to track this hypothetical moral weight you still have to consider what we know about biology and plant growth. Many plants like to be cut and actually grow better when you do (Roses are a very good example of this; if you don't cut roses back a lot, then they actually tend to not grow well). Certain areas are not good for plant growth, and thus letting them die off or transplanting them elsewhere is for their own future good as a species.
Without knowing anything about the other species of sentients and how either species would be killed the rational decision is probably to sacrifice humanity to save the trillion sentients. But the problem with that is that a situation like that is never going to happen in reality and thus its instructional value is nill.
Would I let humanity be tortured to death over the course of 100 years by an engineered plague to save a trillion sentients from a quick painless death? I might, but only if I thought I could convince the trillion sentients' race to salvage human genetic material so that we might be brought back at some point in the future.
Would I let humanity avoid a quick painless death via steller event in order to prevent a trillion sentients of unknown disposition avoid death via torture over the course of 100 years? In a heart beat. Humanity's influence on the cosmos will be one of moral character if I had any say about it.
Would I let humanity die by any means if it meant saving Daleks or Borg (Imperialistic and Ultra-Violent...) from extinction? Nope, not a chance. I would try to preserve whatever knowledge and remains of the other civilization that I could convince humanity to retain, but humanity's position is safe there.
Supposing all things being equal: the fates of the two races the same (only one must die) and the qualities of the two races approximately equal (both advanced races of roughly comparable scientific, technological, psychological, social, moral, and aesthetic development) in development, then the most suffering prevented becomes the one with the greater population. The trillion sentients MUST survive.
MTF
otokage007
Well-Known Member
I would never put the life of any other species over my own life. Biodiversity and stuff is very important, but I would surely sacrifice it to save my life. Competitiveness and survival is something every living being share, they would never sacrifice themselves to save us, and neither would I. In fact, I think that idea is kinda weird and so "not-natural" that can only arise from a human brain.