Would You Save a Stranger’s Child or Your Own Dog?

[Monster Energy]

I want to bring up a question that recently became very heated and controversial in Sweden:

If you were in a situation where you could only save one: a three-year-old child you don’t know, or your own dog that you love, which would you choose?

What made it especially interesting was that many people actually said they would choose their dog, which sparked a strong debate about morality, empathy, and how we value life.

Is it obvious that you should always choose the human? Or can a personal emotional bond outweigh that principle?

I’m curious how you would reason about this, both your immediate instinct and after deeper reflection.

 

“I would save my dog any day of the week over some damn kid nor any other human, regardless of age, that I don’t have and will never have any connection to. Omg, this is stupid.” 🤦‍♂️

This is one of the comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6 by Monster Energy

[Eskilon]

I would save a cockroach over somebody I have no connection with.

Edited April 6 by Eskilon

[Monster Energy]

4 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

I would save a cockroach over somebody I have no connection with.

That’s a fascinating stance. 

 

[Basman]

Child. I mean come on. 

It's typical terminally online psychos to value your pet over humans. In general bad people, not just because they are misanthropic. 

[Eskilon]

46 minutes ago, Basman said:

It's typical terminally online psychos to value your pet over humans. In general bad people, not just because they are misanthropic. 

Source = my own farts

[trenton]

I have encountered a dog owner who seemed to think it was no big deal when his dog bit made and tore my pants. He just walked away saying sorry and didn't do anything to pay. He just let his dog on a long leash run across the street and bite me. I'm scared of dogs and he said the dog wants to say hi.

It looks like people get really infatuated with their pets to the point that they care very little or are blind to the harm they cause. I would need to do research on why people get this infatuated. My sister is infatuated with animals. Maybe it is because she views animals as fundamentally more innocent than humans as humans have a nasty mind.

In my case, I would prefer not to own any pets. I have an instrumental sense of love because of how I was raised. I see the pet as a liability and feel inconvenience rather than connection. For me it is easy to choose the human child. I call this human bias.

The human bias is what I define as a human bias in which humans are biased toward humans rather than animals. Although we can argue that humans are more valuable, this is a consequence of human bias toward human bias. Our reasoning is itself not applicable to the value of animals beyond subjective utility or any other number of philosophies invented by humans.

I logically understand that animals are worthy of love and respect, but I don't want them. For me it is more abstract that animals are not really less valuable than humans. We just act this way for our social survival. In the case of dog owners, there might be psychological studies we can find to understand why they act this way.

[Eskilon]

2 hours ago, trenton said:

In my case, I would prefer not to own any pets. I have an instrumental sense of love because of how I was raised. I see the pet as a liability and feel inconvenience rather than connection. For me it is easy to choose the human child. I call this human bias.

Dude, you say all of this while having a pfp of a cat lmao. 

[trenton]

@Eskilon It was a stray cat. I didn't want to keep him. In this case I cared for the cat because it was the right thing to do. Eventually, someone adopted him. I know I am biased toward humans and I get annoyed by animals, however on principle I understood that this cat needed care until we could get it somewhere safe. Just because I feel a certain way toward animals and they often annoy me like this stray cat that gets under my legs and makes me trip, doesn't mean I won't care for the animal anyway out of an intellectual moral reasoning rather than an emotional attachment to animals.

Does that clear it up?

[trenton]

[Basman]

7 hours ago, Eskilon said:

Source = my own farts

Look for yourself. 9/10 times these are people who haven't felt the touch of grass for tears. Losers and trolls. 

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Human has to have a priority, obviously. Not a scenario I would want to be in tho, and not particuliarly likely to happen either. Life isn't some Walking Dead playghtrought where you are somehow magically forced into these binary choices, it's so weird

Edited Wednesday at 08:35 AM by NewKidOnTheBlock

[PenguinPablo]

17 hours ago, trenton said:

Humanity is temporary.

Meow is forever.

[Jannes]

You can find that sort of question in all sort of plots, of having to choose between something that has a lot of personal value to you vs something that has more "objective" value.

Reminds me of the last decision in Life is Strange where you have to choose between your best friend you built an emotional connection with or a city with a bunch of people, animals, buildings and so on. 

I think it comes down to development. The more developed you are, the more you will choose for the greater good then your personal good. 

With the caveat that loving animals is also a kind of development which goes beyond the usual human bias but also having a grudge against humanity is not a sign of development. 

[Jannes]

I have never had a pet so for me its hard to judge. 

[dddddddddd33]

    If they were both in front of me, guns to their heads I would save the child, but I wouldn’t judge someone for choosing differently because I feel like the implications of taking a hard stance on this would be very hard to align with. Whenever I hear this question I imagine someone approaching me with “Would you give up your bike to save a child from being murdered in another country?” Sure. A child’s life is more important than my bike. Then “Would you give up your nice car and be forced to drive a beat up one to save an additional child?” Okay, yeah. This can keep going with things that are not strictly necessary to survival until you are reduced to only what you need to survive and be maybe reasonably happy. At some point most people would draw the line. I think for most that would be at some possession that is probably much less valuable than the life of a pet. Would I trade every single luxury in my life to save 20 impoverished children who I didn’t even know existed and will never see? Probably not. So I don’t see it as strictly wrong for someone to choose a pet’s life over a child when I would choose some degree of material luxury over that child. 
     Now if the child was right in front of me, crying and begging, I almost definitely would give up most of my things to save them so it’s also not that simple.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

It depends on how it transpires, I suppose.

By my instincts tell me my dog. Reflexive no-brain action in the moment.

But it's impossible to know. Anyone who has faced these sorts of situations knows it almost feels as if there is no decision. Just action.