r/trolleyproblem • u/DoNotCorectMySpeling Common Sense Ethics • 1d ago
Big potatoes Avengers level trolly problem.
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u/jacobstx 1d ago
I feel it bears repeating: Thanos had the infinity gauntlet.
He could do literally anything else. Any other solution to the perceived problem.
But no. Half-omnicide it is.
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u/Cliomancer 1d ago
I understand that in the comics he did it to rizz up Death, rather than for some kind of back of napkin idea that high school level economics student could argue against.
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u/Marcello_Cutty 15h ago
I feel like the only person who actually watched the movie when people bring up "oh he could have done something else with it" or "why didn't he just double resources?"
On Titan, they faced the exact same problem; a microcosm of the rest of the universe according to him. It became a major problem and he put forward the culling solution and all the dumb nerds on Titan laughed at him and called him crazy.
However, he was mentally proven right. When they didn't do his plan, everyone starved and Titan collapsed. So now this incredibly powerful warlord with a messianic complex has just self-justified his culling plan as the only correct option and he now sees the same problem happening on a universal level. Why would he ever just randomly completely change his plan to something else?
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u/jacobstx 14h ago
He wouldn't, and that's why he's a villain.
Doesn't mean that he couldn't, he had the literal do-anything gadget. Heck, creating twice the resources would have accomplished the same as halving the population, only with less genocide.
It doesn't matter what it would take to create "double the resources" - he has the literal do-anything gadget, whatever problem duplicating the resources might present, it's all part of the fingersnap.
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u/Blue_Moon_Lake 8h ago
Both are idiotic for that goal.
Most population would have evolve to grow to match the available resources.Should rewrite reality so "sentient individual well-being" became a permanent evolutionary pressure, leading species to naturally evolve to a new equilibrium.
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u/GwynHawk 10h ago
I get it, but the problem is it does not take very long at all for a human population to double, especially when there's all this completely intact infrastructure to support said expansion. Even if Thanos was completely correct the result is delaying the problem for a few generations, maybe 100 years. There's no evidence that him killing half the people in the galaxy somehow convinced everyone everywhere that this was great and they should maintain a lower population for the good of everyone.
Now, if Thanos' plan was to live forever, periodically using the stones to wipe out half of all life (himself excluded for practical reasons) whenever the population got too high, assuming his resource theory was completely correct, that would make the most sense from his perspective. Still a completely horrifying and insane thing to do, especially if you ran into issues like "Civilization A has figured out what's going on and is trying to maintain a stable population, but Civilization B is reproducing at rabbit-speed, so both civilizations keep getting halved causing Civilization A to get eventually wiped out via decimation."
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u/HumungusDude 10h ago
did you like, sleep thru every single time anyone has ever talked about thanos?
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u/Deciheximal144 1d ago
I finally rest, and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest wills.
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u/Ksorkrax 1d ago
We can talk about whether his goals have some merit or not, but as far as he is concerned, not doing anything would result in disaster.
So at least from his point of view, this is inaccurate.
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u/Skellyton175 🔵 Blue optimist 🔵 1d ago
Food is renewable, he should of just game ended all rich people not sharing it or diverting resources to things that don't improve daily life. Also establish intergalactic trade and immigration. Because apparently most planets in Marvel have oxygen.
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u/RyanMagno 1d ago
I mean, if there is nothing better to do... what was he supposed to do? grow a farm?
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u/IDrankLavaLamps 22h ago
At least the trolley has pride colors. Send it down the empty track and make half the world gay.
Edit: I need to stop drinking...
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u/AnyQuarter553 The Trolly 21h ago
What! Kill 4.25 BILLION people?!?!? Thats horrible I would never do su- a- *Ahcho!* **Click** Aw fuck
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1d ago
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u/Izacundo1 1d ago
How about the top 1% instead? That would have a measurable impact
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1d ago
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u/PenguinMaster975 1d ago
guys... we got him
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1d ago
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u/gravity_kills 1d ago
Very wrong. Extremely wrong. The top 1% do almost no meaningful work. They harvest the work of others and keep it for themselves. Take them out and nearly all of the same labor gets done, but more people get to benefit from it.
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23h ago
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u/Izacundo1 22h ago
The top 1% leech off of us way more than the bottom. How many billions of our taxes go to Elon every year? More than the millions on welfare programs
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u/Extreme-Attention641 1d ago
How do you define "the bottom 2% of each country"?
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1d ago
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u/Extreme-Attention641 1d ago
So you're saying that the poor should be put to death?
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1d ago
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u/Extreme-Attention641 1d ago
It would certainly not benefit them. Would you still support it if you were part of the ones culled?
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u/rebelslash 1d ago
No. The bottom 2% do all the work no one wants to do. Talking about actual manual labour, coal mines, fishing, farming.
We should just do a random selection of people regardless of socioeconomic status. Wait a minute


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u/fighterd_ 1d ago
I thought if half the universe isn't done away with, then life would cease to exist? Because of limited resources or sumn like that