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?

[ChipsAHoid He/Him]

13 hours ago, SpiritOfWrath said:

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

I don’t know if that’s wise

12 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

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

I am aware this is just something someone said that I provided as an example that doesn’t work there are more reasons than what I provided

12 hours ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

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.

We’re about to get the deadliest discussion about cereal the world has ever seen

11 hours ago, Usseewa said:

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

Do you really think humans not being able to die is a good thing? This is a highly explored topic and the moral is always that humans should not live forever

11 hours ago, Usseewa said:

Number of unanswered questions set to one, maybe?

Mkay I find that there’s very little beauty in just having the answers to everything

Yeah sure I bet a lot of lives would be saved but the answers don’t truly mean something to you unless you’ve fought and struggled to get assurance of their truths yourself

Plus that would likely mean we’d know the future and as Greek mythology loves to point out that may not be a great thing

And how would we go about keeping track of these answers? There’s an infinite number of questions and the human mind is far from infinite. There may be answers but how accessible are they? 

Sorry I just find ramifications really cool

11 hours ago, Usseewa said:

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?

Well, is it not enough to know you helped? To know in the end that you made a difference and saved lives? Would you rather it not happen and you lose more people to it that could’ve been saved? 

Even if they take it for granted I’d be happy just knowing that they won’t have to deal with losing someone to it. Let them retain their blissful ignorance rather than have it shattered by loss.

But maybe that’s just me

Edited 1 hour ago by ChipsAHoid
SPAG