Interesting thought experiment

[ChipsAHoid He/Him]

I wasn’t quite sure where to put this so I figured this would be the best place

I had an interesting philosophical question and I’m trying to find what the best answer to it is

If you could set the quantity of one thing to the value of one, what would it be?

Nothing is off limits here. You could talk about reducing a harmful quantity to one, improving the quality of life for so many people at the expense of one. But who then do you pick to be that one? Who then is the one who suffers from your choice? To whom do you give power and from whom do you take? Why should you make one person so far beneath all others?

You could say one nuke left in the world, meaning no nuclear wars looming. But who then gets it? It's up to chance and the one person with it is now a massive global threat to everyone, perhaps making the situation more unstable. Besides, MAD doctrine is enough to prevent a lot of conflict.

Perhaps then the solution is to pick something that is fair

One preventable cause of death remaining instead of many

One fair legal system to govern international disputes

You could also set the number of universally understood second languages to 1, therefore granting everyone a second language that they can communicate with everyone with and still retain their culture

I'm curious, what are y'all's thoughts on this?

[SpiritOfWrath he/him]

12 hours ago, ChipsAHoid said:

I wasn’t quite sure where to put this so I figured this would be the best place

I had an interesting philosophical question and I’m trying to find what the best answer to it is

If you could set the quantity of one thing to the value of one, what would it be?

Nothing is off limits here. You could talk about reducing a harmful quantity to one, improving the quality of life for so many people at the expense of one. But who then do you pick to be that one? Who then is the one who suffers from your choice? To whom do you give power and from whom do you take? Why should you make one person so far beneath all others?

You could say one nuke left in the world, meaning no nuclear wars looming. But who then gets it? It's up to chance and the one person with it is now a massive global threat to everyone, perhaps making the situation more unstable. Besides, MAD doctrine is enough to prevent a lot of conflict.

Perhaps then the solution is to pick something that is fair

One preventable cause of death remaining instead of many

One fair legal system to govern international disputes

You could also set the number of universally understood second languages to 1, therefore granting everyone a second language that they can communicate with everyone with and still retain their culture

I'm curious, what are y'all's thoughts on this?

One instance of physics defying things (magic) that allow the creation of mass.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

12 hours ago, ChipsAHoid said:

I wasn’t quite sure where to put this so I figured this would be the best place

I had an interesting philosophical question and I’m trying to find what the best answer to it is

If you could set the quantity of one thing to the value of one, what would it be?

Nothing is off limits here. You could talk about reducing a harmful quantity to one, improving the quality of life for so many people at the expense of one. But who then do you pick to be that one? Who then is the one who suffers from your choice? To whom do you give power and from whom do you take? Why should you make one person so far beneath all others?

You could say one nuke left in the world, meaning no nuclear wars looming. But who then gets it? It's up to chance and the one person with it is now a massive global threat to everyone, perhaps making the situation more unstable. Besides, MAD doctrine is enough to prevent a lot of conflict.

Perhaps then the solution is to pick something that is fair

One preventable cause of death remaining instead of many

One fair legal system to govern international disputes

You could also set the number of universally understood second languages to 1, therefore granting everyone a second language that they can communicate with everyone with and still retain their culture

I'm curious, what are y'all's thoughts on this?

Won’t people still be able to create more of a limited thing?

1 nuke does not mean there is no more infrastructure to make even more.

Now I’m going to set the number of conflicts happening in the world (wars, ideologies, theologies, anything that divides people and causes disagreements) to be set to 1. That being whether cereal is a soup.

[Usseewa ✾ She♡They ✾]

14 hours ago, ChipsAHoid said:

You could talk about reducing a harmful quantity to one

One human? /hj

 

I like this question, I think.

Honestly I can't think of an answer right now.

I mean, if we go slong the lines of lessening death, improving life, etc. ("solve world hunger," "end all wars," "cure cancer," "world piece," etc.) then... idk. I'm just tryna figure out if that'd actually be a good course of action. Especially, what sufferings are "good", if any? And would it be worth it, and would something else take its place? If we, say, cured cancer (even if it doesn't align with this question), then in like a long time will we remember, or care? No one will know what cancer is like. Idk if this makes sense or is logical at all...

Also, your question can kinda be scaled, can't it? You gave the example of having only one preventable cause of death.

What about, number of people to die [starting now, lol] to one? Then of course maybe we'd have other issues but still.

Number of unanswered questions set to one, maybe?

 

Also, going back to the cancer thing, would anything have an actual impact? Like, even if we completely change things,... idk I feel like that change will be lost, with time, and will become the norm. Like, idk, people knowing a life without phones vs. kids growing up around it. Internet, etc. AI. All that. Will they just take it for granted?