hypotheticalpolls

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The Earth has undergone runaway climate change, reducing the human population to a quarter of what it once was and causing irreversible ecological devastation. One day your country’s space agency approaches you and says they have good news: a potentially habitable planet has been discovered orbiting a star only 4 light years from Earth. They have decided to use the remainders of their funds to scrap together a mission to colonize the planet, eventually bringing as many people as they can there if the mission is successful. You have a unique specialty that makes you vital to the success of the mission: if you go, the mission will most likely succeed, but if you don’t, it will probably fail. However, by going on the mission, you’d have to leave everything and everyone you know behind, for years at minimum, until (if you’re successful) they can follow you to the planet. A few other people will be on the mission, too, but not anyone you know. You’ll be in hypersleep for most of the mission and will have similar odds of survival to if you stayed on earth. If the mission fails, almost everyone on Earth will die within the next 100 years.

Any people/animals you’re caring for will have alternative caretakers arranged if you decide to go.

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An 8-year-old child you love is undergoing a dangerous surgery with a 50% chance of survival. They ask, worriedly, if there’s a chance they’re not gonna make it.

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You become aware that a piece of machinery in your workplace is faulty and that if it is not repaired then there will soon be an accident which will result in someone losing the use of their legs. Despite knowing that nobody else is aware of the fault, you take no action.

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Your friend is engaged to her fiancé and they are going to get married in 2 months. Your friend has had some bad experiences with cheating and is really scared about being cheated on, but her fiancé assures her that he has never cheated and would never cheat on her. However, someone has recently sent you undeniable proof that your friend’s fiancé cheated on his girlfriend in high school. He seems like a much better person than he was in high school, and there’s no evidence of him having cheated on your friend or in any other relationship. You know that if you tell your friend, she would probably call off the wedding.

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Your friend loves his cat very much. One day, you see the cat sneak out of your friend’s house, and before you can say anything, your friend hits her with his car while pulling out. You rush out, but by the time you get to the cat, your friend is long gone. You rush her to the vet and find out that she’ll be ok, but she will be permanently injured. You know that your friend will be devastated if he finds out that he was the one who hit her.

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You have been chosen to go on a very important mission to Mars. You have no choice in this matter, you must go. But you can choose your means of transport.

One method is teleportation. You will step into a scanner here on earth that will destroy your brain and body, while recording the exact state of all your cells. This information will be transmitted to a replicator on Mars - taking approximately 12 minutes to arrive - which will then create a brain and body exactly like yours using entirely new materials. The person on Mars will look like you, think like you, in fact be indistinguishable from you. They will feel as though they have merely fallen asleep on Earth and then woken up on Mars. This method is 100 percent reliable.

The other method of transport is space travel. This is very risky and there is 50 percent chance that the spacecraft will not complete the journey and you will die in transit. But if you do successfully take the spacecraft, then your body and brain won't at any stage have been destroyed.

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You have contracted a rare virus that affects your brain. If you let it run its course, it won’t kill you but it will alter your neural pathways, resulting in memory loss, personality changes, and changes in what you’re good at. You can also choose to have doctors replace the parts of your brain infected by the virus with silicon chips that will preserve your memories and personality exactly. Your brain will still function as normal with the chips, and there’s no chance of them being hacked or compromised.

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Your child has been born with a rare genetic syndrome.

Scenario A: Their genetic syndrome means that their life will be significantly altered. They are likely to have severe or profound intellectual disability, need to use a wheelchair, and need to be tube-fed. But a certain medication has been developed that will allow them to not be in pain from their condition.

Scenario B: Their genetic syndrome won’t impact them significantly neurologically or physically. They will still be able to do most things that an abled child can do, but they will be in significant pain their whole life. There isn’t much painkillers can do.

The doctors give you two options in both scenarios: you can either let your baby pass away peacefully and without pain, or you can give them life-saving intervention and have a 80% chance that they will survive.

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You are a juror in a trial for someone who murdered a very corrupt CEO. You know for sure that the person is guilty, but you also know that by voting to acquit them, you will send a message to other corrupt companies.

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Your close family member is part of a rebel group in a post-apocalyptic society. You aren’t involved, but you know that if the government finds you you’re associated with them, they could be tortured for information. However, they know a doctor in the rebel forces that could give you a surgery that would permanently erase any memories of your loved one. This would far reduce the chances of being tortured by the government and the surgery has a 100% success rate.

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You find out that you have a 50% chance of inheriting a rare fatal genetic disease that will probably start causing symptoms in about 20 years, with an average survival of 10 years after symptoms start. You can take a DNA test and find out if you inherited the disease, or you can do nothing.

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You deliberately sabotage a piece of machinery in your work place so that when someone next uses it there will be an accident which will result in that person losing the use of their legs.

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You can save the lives of a thousand patients by cancelling one hundred operations that would have saved the lives of a hundred different patients.