How Altruistic Are You, Really?
The Ultimate Survey for the Intellectual.
Intro (skip to "survey" if desired):
Technically, according to Max's philosophy, even altruistic acts are selfish, because it is impossible to voluntarily do anything we don't want to do; it's a contradiction, see? "Voluntarily" doing what we "don't want..." is a paradox.
I could give away all of my money and property to charity today; but it would still be, at heart, a selfish act to satisfy my desire to help a lot of people.
I could jump in front of a friend and take a bullet, sacrificing my life; but it would still be, at heart, a selfish desire to save my friend's life out of love.
It therefore follows that every action done on purpose MUST have spawned from our wanting to do it in the first place. So our actions are ALWAYS going to be selfish -- even if that action is helping everyone in the world and making oneself suffer.
But still... Just ignore that for now, and take this survey about altruism.
Survey:
1.
Assume you love a person, who will now be referred to as "Person."
a. Would you still love Person if Person had no hair?
b. Would you still love Person if Person had no hair or face?
c. Would you still love Person if Person had no hair, face, or voice?
d. Would you still love Person if Person lost Person's hair, face, voice, and limbs?
e. Would you still love Person if Person had no body and was simply a brain in a jar with personality and memories?
f. Assume there exists a random ugly person who you hate, who will now be referred to as "Ugly." If Person's brain were to be exchanged with Ugly's brain, would you still love Person, now trapped in Ugly's body?
g.
Assume that Person's brain and Ugly's brain are restored, and all the limbs/face/voices are restored, and Person and Ugly are both normal people just like they were to begin with.
But then a scientist discovers how to isolate "consciousness" from the human brain. You see this evil scientist exchange Person's "consciousness" with Ugly's "consciousness," WITHOUT TOUCHING PERSONALITY AND MEMORIES. Do you now love Ugly, trapped inside Person's body, life, personality, and memories of you; or do you still love Person, trapped inside Ugly's body, life, personality, and lack of memories of you?
Keep in mind that now Ugly loves you and Person does not, since they have switched brains.
2.
The apocalypse is coming. Assume you have met or known about 0.0001% of the people in the world. Choose only ONE of the following (in both cases, you survive):
a. Save only the people that you know, including yourself. Everyone else in the world dies.
b. Save only the people that you don't know, plus yourself. Everyone you know in the world dies.
3.
One fine day, an evil scientist captures you and creates an identical you (who will now be referred to as "Other"), having your same exact cells, brain, memories, and personality -- the only difference is consciousness: You observe the world from your body, and Other observes the world from Other's.
You have a spouse, two kids, a good job, and a good life. If you kill Other, no one will know, the scientist will not tell, and you will continue to live your life normally. If you don't, your spouse and kids will have to love two of you at once, since Other is exactly the same as you.
Would you kill Other?
Results:
If you don't love Person in 1a-1d, you are disgustingly cruel.
If you don't love Person in 1e and/or 1f, you are reasonably cold-hearted.
If you love Person in 1a-1f, you are reasonably altruistic.
If you answered "no" to number 3, you are admirably altruistic.
If you answered "b" for number 2, you are extremely altruistic.
If you love Person's consciousness trapped inside Ugly's brain in 1g, you are... fanatically altruistic.
I could've done some cheesy "points" system but I opted not do since I already spent way too much work on this dumb note.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Shooting vampires with lasers; Sighing Ghost
Dream 1: Being in Band
I had this wonderful ability to fly, that no one else in band had. We were on this band trip, you see, and somewhere along the way I learned that I could simply flap my arms and fly. It wouldn't work all the time; sometimes it would fail and I wouldn't fly at all. But it did work some of the time. No one else could do it, and some people were envious.
So when a bunch of evil people took me as a prisoner and thought they had me tied down as a hostage to ransom me and get money from the Amador band, I simply shot into the air. How wonderful it was! Two long spears were immediately launched at me from ballistas, but I evaded them smoothly. I flew higher than the evil people could shoot. How happy everyone was that I survived, and that we didn't have to pay the ransom.
[Some stuff happened here that I can't remember.]
Then a couple days later I was with the band again and we were exploring a cave. Then suddenly the floor crumbled beneath us and we fell into a lower level, consisting of a large room with an opening on one side, and on the other side, a corridor leading who knows where (all the walls are stone as we are still in a cave).
We had flashlights so we could still see. We saw some vampires coming out of the opening into the large stone room that we were in. They walked slowly, and they looked like bored kids with large fangs. Fortunately, they were relatively weak and we were able to zap them with our green wrist lasers before they got close enough to bite us (plus, they were walking slowly).
But we had to get out, of course. There were more coming, and we couldn't keep up with this. The only other opening was the corridor leading out of the cave. We hussled over to the mouth of the corridor, started down... but about 50 feet in front of us, some large scary brown mass of writhing monster with no defined limbs suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
We turned back, and ran the other way, back into the cave. But now, as we tried to zap the vampires with our lasers, they were unaffected. The brown monster had some sort of aura that imbued the vampires with invincibility! Oh noes. We were screwed. Yeah. We were definitely screwed. No other way out. The band... was doomed.
Execpt me. I could fly. I looked up, and high above in the roof, there was a semi-opening that no one could reach except for me (because I could fly). The vampires were already uncomfortably close; I debated not more than a second before making my decision and shooting up and flying into the opening and ditching all my band friends.
I weaved and wandered, flying through a maze of narrow tunneled rock. This was obviously a man-made (or vampire-made) escape route. At one point I realized that a vampire had followed me and was only 2 feet behind me! But then he was like "whatever, you can go on, i don't care. Just remember to lock the door behind you when you exit the maze." "ok, thanks."
So after a bit more weaving through the maze I found a trap door and I undid the trapdoor, dropping down into a goblin library inside a goblin city. It was nighttime and most people were asleep but there was a goblin librarian working nightshift. I thought if i stood completely still she might not see me, but she did. "Can I help you?" she asked. "Uh... not really, thanks." "Well, take care," she said as I exited the library.
I walked past some goblin houses and came to a large door, the exit of goblin city. I exited, and walked back into normal human civilization. Passing by a shell gas station, I met up with Kevin Sprague and Chris Bowman, in band. I was confused. "How'd you guys get out alive?" I asked.
Kevin said, "It was only a story, remember?"
Oh... it all came back to me... this whole thing was actually a story Mr. Grantham had been reading to us, and I was simply living through it. Outside of this fantasy I had been living, walking and flying through, there was "reality." My ability to fly, those vampires, that brown monster -- that was all just a story. My band friends were still alive; only in the story do they die.
Kevin said, "Yeah, that Max character should've stayed and fought, not ditched and flown away... what a pussy." And I realized that it was indeed selfish of me to ditch my band friends and let them die, instead of fighting those vampires alongside them (even though the vampires were invincible and we were indeed screwed).
The moral of the story: don't ditch your friends, even in the most dire of circumstances.
Dream 2: Sleep Terror
I ran through what seemed like a scene from Spirited Away: Random Japanese shops on the side of a small street. People stood on the sidewalk, yelling, "Watashi wa!" which actually means "my name is" in Japanese. But I didn't know that because I don't take Japanese, so in my dream, it meant "The Sighing Ghost!"
I became frightened with the knowledge that a ghost was roaming the village. But I knew this was a dream. I asked my brain if this dream was a real nightmare, and the brain responded, "no" (usually, I can tell if a sleep terror climax is imminent). So I was safe, for the moment. I could wake up easily, right? Turns out my brain was lying to me.
Opening my eyes was easy. But, like in every other case of sleep terror I have had, waking up was far from easy. I could see my room, my real room in real-life, dimly lit by the faint glow of the nightlight in the hallway. I could see my room, but try as I might, I could not move any part of my body.
To make matters worse, the black chair in my room had morphed into the "Sighing Ghost" -- a shapeless mass of black with two limbs -- and was caressing me, sending cold shivers and spasmic convulsions throughout my spine, neck, and shoulders. My breath became short and quick, and I felt my heartbeat rise... how fast was it now? 3 times a second... 180 beats per minute.
As always, I put faith in my own mental willpower to wake up. But it was taking me such a long time! In most of my "sleep-terror" experiences, it only takes 10 or so seconds to break through the barrier of the dream-state and enter the real world. This time, already 20 seconds had passed, and still my heartrate was rising. And the sighing ghost persisted in its wavelike motions and cold touches, and it would not disappear.
I concentrated on moving... just one tiny muscle movement would do the trick. If I didn't surface soon, I might get a heart attack... or worse, slip back into the dream state. In this limbo between dream and waking, I dwelled for a full 30 seconds... before finally bursting into full consciousness with a deep breath. My chair went back to being a chair.
I had this wonderful ability to fly, that no one else in band had. We were on this band trip, you see, and somewhere along the way I learned that I could simply flap my arms and fly. It wouldn't work all the time; sometimes it would fail and I wouldn't fly at all. But it did work some of the time. No one else could do it, and some people were envious.
So when a bunch of evil people took me as a prisoner and thought they had me tied down as a hostage to ransom me and get money from the Amador band, I simply shot into the air. How wonderful it was! Two long spears were immediately launched at me from ballistas, but I evaded them smoothly. I flew higher than the evil people could shoot. How happy everyone was that I survived, and that we didn't have to pay the ransom.
[Some stuff happened here that I can't remember.]
Then a couple days later I was with the band again and we were exploring a cave. Then suddenly the floor crumbled beneath us and we fell into a lower level, consisting of a large room with an opening on one side, and on the other side, a corridor leading who knows where (all the walls are stone as we are still in a cave).
We had flashlights so we could still see. We saw some vampires coming out of the opening into the large stone room that we were in. They walked slowly, and they looked like bored kids with large fangs. Fortunately, they were relatively weak and we were able to zap them with our green wrist lasers before they got close enough to bite us (plus, they were walking slowly).
But we had to get out, of course. There were more coming, and we couldn't keep up with this. The only other opening was the corridor leading out of the cave. We hussled over to the mouth of the corridor, started down... but about 50 feet in front of us, some large scary brown mass of writhing monster with no defined limbs suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
We turned back, and ran the other way, back into the cave. But now, as we tried to zap the vampires with our lasers, they were unaffected. The brown monster had some sort of aura that imbued the vampires with invincibility! Oh noes. We were screwed. Yeah. We were definitely screwed. No other way out. The band... was doomed.
Execpt me. I could fly. I looked up, and high above in the roof, there was a semi-opening that no one could reach except for me (because I could fly). The vampires were already uncomfortably close; I debated not more than a second before making my decision and shooting up and flying into the opening and ditching all my band friends.
I weaved and wandered, flying through a maze of narrow tunneled rock. This was obviously a man-made (or vampire-made) escape route. At one point I realized that a vampire had followed me and was only 2 feet behind me! But then he was like "whatever, you can go on, i don't care. Just remember to lock the door behind you when you exit the maze." "ok, thanks."
So after a bit more weaving through the maze I found a trap door and I undid the trapdoor, dropping down into a goblin library inside a goblin city. It was nighttime and most people were asleep but there was a goblin librarian working nightshift. I thought if i stood completely still she might not see me, but she did. "Can I help you?" she asked. "Uh... not really, thanks." "Well, take care," she said as I exited the library.
I walked past some goblin houses and came to a large door, the exit of goblin city. I exited, and walked back into normal human civilization. Passing by a shell gas station, I met up with Kevin Sprague and Chris Bowman, in band. I was confused. "How'd you guys get out alive?" I asked.
Kevin said, "It was only a story, remember?"
Oh... it all came back to me... this whole thing was actually a story Mr. Grantham had been reading to us, and I was simply living through it. Outside of this fantasy I had been living, walking and flying through, there was "reality." My ability to fly, those vampires, that brown monster -- that was all just a story. My band friends were still alive; only in the story do they die.
Kevin said, "Yeah, that Max character should've stayed and fought, not ditched and flown away... what a pussy." And I realized that it was indeed selfish of me to ditch my band friends and let them die, instead of fighting those vampires alongside them (even though the vampires were invincible and we were indeed screwed).
The moral of the story: don't ditch your friends, even in the most dire of circumstances.
Dream 2: Sleep Terror
I ran through what seemed like a scene from Spirited Away: Random Japanese shops on the side of a small street. People stood on the sidewalk, yelling, "Watashi wa!" which actually means "my name is" in Japanese. But I didn't know that because I don't take Japanese, so in my dream, it meant "The Sighing Ghost!"
I became frightened with the knowledge that a ghost was roaming the village. But I knew this was a dream. I asked my brain if this dream was a real nightmare, and the brain responded, "no" (usually, I can tell if a sleep terror climax is imminent). So I was safe, for the moment. I could wake up easily, right? Turns out my brain was lying to me.
Opening my eyes was easy. But, like in every other case of sleep terror I have had, waking up was far from easy. I could see my room, my real room in real-life, dimly lit by the faint glow of the nightlight in the hallway. I could see my room, but try as I might, I could not move any part of my body.
To make matters worse, the black chair in my room had morphed into the "Sighing Ghost" -- a shapeless mass of black with two limbs -- and was caressing me, sending cold shivers and spasmic convulsions throughout my spine, neck, and shoulders. My breath became short and quick, and I felt my heartbeat rise... how fast was it now? 3 times a second... 180 beats per minute.
As always, I put faith in my own mental willpower to wake up. But it was taking me such a long time! In most of my "sleep-terror" experiences, it only takes 10 or so seconds to break through the barrier of the dream-state and enter the real world. This time, already 20 seconds had passed, and still my heartrate was rising. And the sighing ghost persisted in its wavelike motions and cold touches, and it would not disappear.
I concentrated on moving... just one tiny muscle movement would do the trick. If I didn't surface soon, I might get a heart attack... or worse, slip back into the dream state. In this limbo between dream and waking, I dwelled for a full 30 seconds... before finally bursting into full consciousness with a deep breath. My chair went back to being a chair.
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