Conversation

Everyone is ranked on a spectrum of how much direct, concrete harm they've done to other people. If you press a button, the worst 10% of these people in your country disappear from existence, and the memory of them is dulled to a faint dream. Do you press the button?

Yes
54.9%
No
45.1%

2,341 votesFinal results

Replying to

There's a pretty solid reason to hit yes, but do you have a theoretical argument for no?

Replying to

and

Ranking people based on one dimension only is necessarily reductive. Good things wouldn't balance out the bad ones. No reason why the person to find the cure for cancer (sorry for the cliché) couldn't be horrible in his personal life and make the 10% list.

Replying to

and

I guess it depends on what constitutes 'concrete harm'. Since harm can come in the form of physical, emotional, mental, financial, social, etc. For example, if some scammer steals the entire retirement fund of an elderly person, are the misfortunes that follow after count?

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Replying to

@lewdearion

I imagine this ranking would be somewhat nuanced; as in, the more concrete the harm, the more 'bad' points are awarded, multiplied by the intensity of this harm. Concreteness could also be a multi-dimensional score weighted on different measurements.

8:44 PM · Jun 13, 2020

Replying to

It's really tough to think about. Theoretically, those in prison who went there for false charges would be fine, and those that got away with crimes would go poof, but once you are done away with all the actual malicious people, you are left with non-malicious people.

Replying to

and

The word “harm” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the question then