The Pathological Altruist

[Cin]

Originally Posted by ElijahRene

I once posed a hypothetical question to a friend about a discussion we were having along the same vein...I asked if you were on a ship with 2,000 people on board but only had enough life rafts to hold 1,000, would you save the 1,000 or would you attempt to overload the life rafts and in the end, no one survives?

It would be foolish to overload the life rafts so no one survives. However, for me the problem lies in who dies and who decides it. Because it is hard to imagine 1000 people willingly sacrificing themselves.

I would be interested in the plan for making the hard choices. I would also be interested in how the plan once made would be implemented. Who gets saved who gets condemned to death? And who tells the 1000 who need to sacrifice themselves? Perhaps there would be 1000 pathological altruists on the ship. Now that would be a stroke of luck.