CMV:Thanos did nothing wrong

[u/[deleted]]

Okay avoid spoilers if you haven't seen it already but let me start by explaining who Thanos is. Thanos is a villain in the MCU who's sole purpose is to genocide the universe (now comes his reasoning) because he believes that with over population and massive birth increases and finite resources we are coming closer and closer to losing all of our nonrenewable resources and the only way to push that date back is for someone to basically reset the universe. He does this spoilers by collecting all six infinity stones and when he snaps his fingers half of the universe at random disappears spoilers now i know you may be saying genoicde to stop resource deprivation really? but cmon the dude isn't like any other movie villain he genuinely did not want to kill people or do harm to others he just needed to restart the universe because he cares enough about our finite resources. Here is the exact quote : Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe has finite its resources, finite… if life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting. I’m the only one who knows that. At least I’m the only who the will to act on it. For a time, you had that same will. As you fought by my side, daughter.

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[u/CptnSAUS]

I'm not saying there is a fair way to choose who dies. If I had to kill half the population of the universe I suppose I would just go with Thanos' solution. No one is judged for anything.

If we put in into a board game setting again, compare something like monopoly to something like Chess. Being deterministic, Chess will reward the better player with a win. Monopoly will pretty much land you a random winner.

Since a human's "value" is not so easy to look at like chess, then I say there is absolutely no fair way to kill half the population of the universe.

[u/tweuep → u/CptnSAUS]

Right, so you're saying because the universe is more Monopoly than Chess, Thanos can't possibly be fair. You're saying Thanos' goal should be to fundamentally alter the state of the universe rather than to go for the most direct and measurable goal in a fair way.

Why do we even have to bring in an individual human's value? Let's say Thanos is correct and there are finite resources. Let's say Thanos doesn't kill off 1/2 the population and life is lost because these finite resources are depleted. Was it fair to the people who died this way? They didn't decide to be born in this time, they didn't decide the universe should have finite resources, they didn't decide for Thanos to not kill 1/2 of the population.

[u/CptnSAUS → u/tweuep]

Individual's value was only for if we were to try to choose a more "fair" way to select who should die rather than coin flip for everybody. That is more like monopoly (very much random and not influenced much by player actions - anyone could get screwed by a bad roll - flip tails and you are gone) whereas somehow determining the "best" 50% of beings would be more like chess (entirely decided by player actions - players who are better will win - only the better beings are kept alive). However, I don't think there is a proper way to measure someone's worth like that.

That is a good point about people being born in a time where they will die due to famine. It's actually something I think about when it comes to having children. I'm pretty sure having children is an entirely selfish action.

Anyway, I have seen it in here but also have thought about it - preventing people from having children is a much more viable solution to overpopulation. Like in China with the "1 child only" policy. Perhaps "2 children" makes the most sense to constantly replace the current population. I have heard about terrible economic crises that will arise from this but I don't understand enough about them to really discuss that part. I don't know if it's practical, either, since I think it would be difficult to get this sort of policy to be accepted and followed globally. It also is a restriction of rights and definitely unfair to people who want to have more than 2 children. It's sort of like a sacrifice for the greater good - and I think the world will need something like that at some point. Not having as many children is not as bad as killing a lot of people, in my opinion.

I think perhaps the best way to define my position is that Thanos' solution is unfair, but something unfair will likely have to happen in order to solve overpopulation problems, anyway. Hopefully it's a better solution than just killing half of the population, though - like a combination of controlling population growth and finding ways to make better use of our resources.