You’re the first mate on a Titanic like ship that went down in the cold northern atlantic. Yourself, some other sailors, and the captain are on life rafts in the water. Surrounding your rafts are 100 passengers (equal thirds of them being 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class passengers) in the water, but unfortunately you only have 70 spots available on life rafts. You need to choose a system that will decide which passengers get a spot on a raft and which ones are going to die in the water from the cold and fatigue
The captain comes up with two systems
System one: For some reason somebody brought the bingo raffle cage along with them, and a sharpie. You go to each swimming passenger and draw a unique number on each of their foreheads. Then the captain will draw numbered balls from the raffle cage to choose which passenger gets a seat. Although it is completely random, this system does take a while and during the proceedings 33 passengers slipped into the water and died. 67 passengers were randomly saved but 3 seats went unused.
System 2: Whoever can give the captain the most money from whatever they had in their wallet at the time will get a seat. This means that most of the wealthy 1st and 2nd class passengers will get a seat while basically all of the poor 3rd class passengers will die. It’s a faster system so all 70 spots are used but the captain gets to make a lot of money by poaching the pockets of desperate passengers.
The captain knows its not a good look if he picks system 2 so he leaves the decision up to you the first mate, which system will you choose?
System 1: purely random but slow, 3 seats are unused and 33 random passengers die
System 2: the wealthy get spots on the raft, 30 poor people die in the water, and the captain gets a fist full of cash.
JownCluthber t1_ir1bkjt wrote
Reply to /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 03, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt
You’re the first mate on a Titanic like ship that went down in the cold northern atlantic. Yourself, some other sailors, and the captain are on life rafts in the water. Surrounding your rafts are 100 passengers (equal thirds of them being 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class passengers) in the water, but unfortunately you only have 70 spots available on life rafts. You need to choose a system that will decide which passengers get a spot on a raft and which ones are going to die in the water from the cold and fatigue
The captain comes up with two systems
System one: For some reason somebody brought the bingo raffle cage along with them, and a sharpie. You go to each swimming passenger and draw a unique number on each of their foreheads. Then the captain will draw numbered balls from the raffle cage to choose which passenger gets a seat. Although it is completely random, this system does take a while and during the proceedings 33 passengers slipped into the water and died. 67 passengers were randomly saved but 3 seats went unused.
System 2: Whoever can give the captain the most money from whatever they had in their wallet at the time will get a seat. This means that most of the wealthy 1st and 2nd class passengers will get a seat while basically all of the poor 3rd class passengers will die. It’s a faster system so all 70 spots are used but the captain gets to make a lot of money by poaching the pockets of desperate passengers.
The captain knows its not a good look if he picks system 2 so he leaves the decision up to you the first mate, which system will you choose?
System 1: purely random but slow, 3 seats are unused and 33 random passengers die
System 2: the wealthy get spots on the raft, 30 poor people die in the water, and the captain gets a fist full of cash.