Pat Tillman, yet again

[Adron]

But most everyone would consider a fireman, risking his own life by rushing into a burning building that is showing signs of collapse, to rescue the last remaining person inside, a hero.  Most everyone would consider a policeman stepping in the line of fire of a madman with guns aimed at other civilians, to try to bring a peaceful solution, a hero.

Ah, the neutral heroes vs. the biased heroes? I see your point. This is more of an "admirable hero" view to it - if what they're doing is good and admirable and courageous, they're a hero. It makes sense too.

Now for an example to see if I got your point:

There's a band of criminals inside a bank, holding hostages, and a group of policemen outside. One policeman manages to get in, pick up a little girl who was held hostage and sneak out with her. The band of criminals discover that, and realize that their time is running out. One of them goes out, guns blazing, and manages to keep the policemen down long enough for the others to get away before he gets killed.

Those two are both heroes, but never to the same people?

[Adron]

Lets try a classic example so I can try and get a feel for what you believe in. Lets say you are in a circular room 20 feet in diameter. There are 6 people in that room, one elderly woman and one elderly man, yourself, a small child and her young mother, and, say a man almost exactly like yourself, and you are all spaced equally from each other against the walls of the room. I place a grenade exactly in the center of the room, 10 feet from each of you. Would you jump on the grenade yourself, and die while saving the lives of all the others? Lets assume that you and five others exactly like yourself were in the situation. Would you dive on the grenade then? Or do you just leave that job to somebody else, since your life is more valuable than the lives of others?

I promised I'd get back to this...

In situation #1, as an outside observer, I'd pick one out of the elderly couple to sacrifice. They most likely have the least remaining life. The young child and her mother are the most save-worthy, unless young men are needed to handle what comes next.

If I was in the #1 situation, I'd consider the small child and her young mother are the most save-worthy. I'd still like one out of the elderly couple to sacrifice themselves, but they might not be able to move fast enough to be useful. What then remains is to negotiate who of us two young people go cover the grenade. In a real situation, there's likely to be strengths and weaknesses to us, and those might factor in. I'd probably end up covering the grenade.


Now, for the #2 situation... That's more tricky, as I said before. If everyone is exactly equal, and there's perfect symmetry, no noise, a mathematical-type problem, then there's no solution. Everyone will die no matter what, because noone will go first, and noone will go last.

For the best possible solution, only one person should go cover the grenade, and the others should stay at their maximum distance. As an outside observer, I'd pick a person to do it randomly. In the actual situation, there'd have to be imbalances to determine who does it. Do I like the others? Do I hate the others? Do I feel that one of them is more or less useful than myself? Do I feel gratitude or debt or contempt for any of the others? Emotions will decide.



There is a different solution. One could move the grenade to an edge, and collect everyone as far away as possible, with one or two acting shields, but trying to arrange everyone with their legs facing the grenade. Perhaps it would be possible to save more people.

[Tuberload]

There is a different solution. One could move the grenade to an edge, and collect everyone as far away as possible, with one or two acting shields, but trying to arrange everyone with their legs facing the grenade. Perhaps it would be possible to save more people.

Be careful pointing out holes in his scenario, you might get accused of being an idiot.

[Hazard]

Tuberload, the difference is that he made an intelligent solution without going outside of the bounds of the room and the original problem. Your solution of "Deeeer, I'd just ruuun." was something that you knew full well was retarded and outside of the point of the exercise.

Adron, while I do find your idea of arranging the occupants of the room and the grenade interesting, I'm afraid it does not serve to meet the purpose of the exercise, simply because the amount of time on the fuse of a fragmentation grenade is not nearly long enough for such an operation, and the kill radius for a fragmentation grenade is between 6 and 8 meters. Of course you had an interesting point with your analysis of everyone being equal and therefore all doomed, so I will pose to you that the men are not exactly the same as initially perhaps I implied. However, they are all the same age, weight, height, build, the same relative speed, same family style, you know same in the most basic things that might cause somebody to be a better candidate for the job.

[Adron]

Of course you had an interesting point with your analysis of everyone being equal and therefore all doomed, so I will pose to you that the men are not exactly the same as initially perhaps I implied. However, they are all the same age, weight, height, build, the same relative speed, same family style, you know same in the most basic things that might cause somebody to be a better candidate for the job.

Ah, but in that case, those imbalances will be what do the thing. In any real situation, there'll always be an imbalance, and that imbalance is what selects who goes. With six people in the room, the probability of each one going is supposed to be ~17%. I think my uncertainty is coupled to that - you're not supposed to be very likely to go in that situation, because only one out of six is actually supposed to go. Everyone going or noone going would be failures.

[Tuberload]

Tuberload, the difference is that he made an intelligent solution without going outside of the bounds of the room and the original problem. Your solution of "Deeeer, I'd just ruuun." was something that you knew full well was retarded and outside of the point of the exercise.

I made an intelligent decision based well within the bounds of the exercise seeing that you didn't fully specify the circumstances; you're making ignorant comments.  If you really want to continue being rude, I think your attempts to see what he would do in this sort of situation are pretty stupid, seeing no one can really say what they would actually do.... Yes you can say that you would be the one to jump on the grenade, but when the shit really hits the fans would you really do it?

[Grok]

I hate to keep banging the same drum

ANTI-PERCUSSIONIST.