Saving the child vs 2 adults (if not very old) is the wrong choice typically though. I mean society has invested in 2 adults a lot more than a young child that is only beginning. The loss is significantly harder if you decouple from the stupid in this case emotional affection for children. The 2 adults could be guardians/parents of more children for example or capable to raise a family right away.

If you have to save the mother or the child at a birth event say i say the hell with the child 100% of the time, even if the mother would at this moment make the sacrifice if asked. But it's a stupid choice sacrifice anyway (once done it becomes a heroic choice of course etc but whatever) and i wont listen to her wishes, the hell with them of course too. (and i say it so strongly only to make a point not because i dont love children actually. I do love them in general a lot and believe in them more than adults in terms of potential but they wont get there alone, no they wont!)

I value the instantaneous minds humans represent. It's their subjective unique mind. Who am I to make the choice to shut a human mind down? Shutting two down means me shutting one more down than was necessary according to the OP. That's wrong and murder too.

What we do for society is just a bonus, not as basic as existense.

Without society we have nothing though. Nothing! Try to live in the wild. What we do for society is everything actually. If only people understood that we would have an amazing world if in return society gave everything back to all people.

Humans, even average humans, are very creative about living in the wild. So are pigs. Modern cows, maybe not so good.

Yes, maybe 10% of non primitive populations would survive the test and i give myself 50% without any tools in the wild (not a desert though) to begin with, lasting a year, just my clothes and not a very cold setting initially. What a glorious life it would be though trying to survive every day alone, never able to count on anything strong until you rebuilt it all back from nothing if able to survive it initially and found a dependable source of food, probably near some lake or river or sea.

But in all this i would have exactly zero chance to study the universe, talk philosophy properly using serious information, enjoy even a great sleep safely, medically treat myself if i got a serious or even stupid infection or disease, enjoy any basic thing we take for granted daily and definitely do any serious math and physics at all or enjoy simple entertainment. Yes what a glorious life going back 20k years would be... stripped of society's basic structure and qualities. Not that it wouldn't be a worthy experience though. Still one has to reflect and ask why would it be worth it to witness? What other than survival would make it worth it given the loss? What is the one thing that would make the journey back possible and meaningful?

None, absolutely none of what will follow on my glorious march back to civilization, what will become on day one my goal, my desire to rebuilt all important that i have witnessed, all that has enhanced my awareness and wisdom, none of this would have been possible without the one thing that provides the instant target, the guiding paradigm the jungle cant strip away, society and our civilization as survived in my memory of past life gone.

Well I was an Eagle scout etc., so I would give myself a 98 percent five year survival rate naked in the wild but this:

"But in all this i would have exactly zero chance to study the universe, talk philosophy properly using serious data, enjoy a great sleep safely, medically cure myself if i got a serious or even stupid infection or disease, enjoy any basic thing we take for granted daily and definitely do any serious math and physics at all or enjoy simple entertainment"

I would be sad to do without these things.

edit - You're really smart, You would have a greater than 50 percent chance of survival naked and without tools. Smart people are resourceful. And as far as your fear of a desert, no problem. Just travel and hunt at night and urinate on sand when the sun comes up and cover yourself in the wet sand until night comes again.

double edit - I started off by saying an average human could live in the wild. How about if I said this - on average, humans could live in the wild.

Yes, I value society. But not enough to kill an individual in the trolley problem for. Nobody has that big a real impact on society anyway. But of course, the President of the US should of course be saved, grab the handle!

April 1st ICWUD

Or the US should be saved in that case, whatever that means...

There is no april's 1st for me by the way ever. Not in that April fool's sense.

I am not that optimistic because it's not that easy to find food if you have nothing to work with and limited experience hunting with primitive means and most importantly exactly what is easy to kill in the woods in the kind of quantity that can feed one long enough to start building tools and shelter and planning ahead. How about water? How easy it is to find water if you are dropped in a random place? It is exceptionally difficult to find a steady stream of water although you can survive with plants on occasion. And once you find it what happens if you dont have something to boil it in and clean it with all kinds of bacteria if you cant find a clear stream.

Starting fire with no tools is not exactly trivial either. How about clothes if you say you dont need them. Will you be ok with leaves until you get that glorious skin from some big animal?

How will you skin the animal without tools? Its a tough task with stones and wood. You need to start with stone age mentality and build tools from stones and wood over time and its not entirely trivial. Without a knife you will be in big trouble for many things so you need a very good stone equivalent.

How will you hunt by the way and what exactly if you were dropped in Sierra Nevada like say near Yosemite without the people and civilization lets say in some remote area that you cant walk to civilization from (or we imagine its all like Yosemite or redwoods all the way to the pacific like it was 300 years ago in some areas.

Can you catch small animals? Examples?

Your idea on desert can work for a while but i doubt you will still be covered in sand that is not hot a few hours later and in all your body. What about night that temperatures plummet if you cant find some cave and then what will you find to eat say in some Arizona or southern California desert or better yet Sahara or Kalahari. Water? How far can you last with some cactus water drops?

I bet one can last a week with limited food but we need to find water fast and some shelter for temperature control. Probably in a forest you can find a lot of good things but getting to some real size food will be a problem. Its probably easier in Alaska during summer especially if you can catch fish but i seriously doubt how easy it will be to get there the first week without tools. Movies and survival shows are probably a bit exaggerated.


Of course save from the trolley at least this guy just in case;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKk...O-xFFwE-ucq4Fj (follow all the story/series for fun)






PS: Lets not introduce any april's 1st possibilities in these discussions today to keep them safe from poker style bluffing lol.

Is this how you are going to dress in paradise?



Forget about the guy looking like us (nerds). We could all be new Adams.

Somehow this thread went from the trolley problem to masque claiming he has a 50% chance of surviving in the wild with no tools (I put it at <1%).

IMO only well trained people like Eagle Scout yukoncpa have a shot. There are too many opportunities for disaster. Food/water poisoning (>80% chance depending on region, which will **** you up badly and leave you unable to do much in a downward spiral), injury (even a foot cut/splinters from walking barefoot can be lethal if you're a sheltered city type with a city immune system), inability to catch anything or get a fire started (it looks easy on YouTube, but those are some seriously honed skills).

Dont count me out easily because i have skinned animals actually as a child with grandpa lol and because i can find water from plants and can survive without food for days until i get the game going plus i will build a lot of tools by then and i can get a fire started during an entire day's effort also if its not raining because i will never give up on an effort since math has made me impossible to be defeated by adversity from the reason most are defeated ie giving up.

I give myself 50% and it can be 30% but noway in hell its <1%. If it were i wouldnt be giving you instant links with this guy above that practically can recover civilization within days under the right conditions. We have the same mentality and math is the ultimate tool building activity, the mother of tool building!

If i can get lucky to be near sea and any tropical fruit trees i will find food and get the game going. The problem is how to hunt/trap big animals. That can happen if you can start with small animals and have access to water and boil well everything.

If you can find a river or stream the chance skyrockets so its not 1% because its not even 5% or less to find a river if you can walk for a few days or even if it rains in 2-3 first days why not. It easily rains over 5% of the days or the year haha. That is your first free week of water right there if lucky. I also can take water from some plants or get lucky to run to a stream.

You can create many tools with wood and natural rope and some well selected and manipulated stones. See the videos above.

Finding steady source of water is the big trick and the fire can help sterilize it from many things.

Of course if you get lucky to find bird eggs or turtle eggs you can get more food and in this case i wont mind eating snails and insects.

There are some edible little plants also you can boil or eat like that. It's not gonna be easy at all but i wont give up easily because i have lived in villages as a child and dont mind getting dirty if needed.



So first try to get to a knife equivalent or never go into the wild without a swiss army knife or something like it. Of course i am working on a very small self chargeable little device idea that will make everyone impossible to get lost anywhere in the planet ever again if they have it. But that requires civilization to exist out there far away.

You'd definitely need training and survival know-how. This is why we have grandparents. Transmitters of vital survival information. Or at least that's what ive been sold by evolutionary theorists.

I think I would be toast. Yes, I can figure out things, but lack practical training in this area, think time would run out for me. You don't have the time to figure all things out, you should know, because you are fastly losing against the elements. Hell, maybe I could make fire in a day, but as the day has gone by I have lost many other opportunities for increasing survival had I known and had the skill to make fire in half an hour.

If you see the video the first thing the guy did is build a shelter not start a fire. The igloo principle is that a well closed tiny space will create an atmosphere only by your own heat emitted. 100W human avg power is standard heat output eventually. So if you can create a stable little thing with leaves and branches you will at least not die from cold the first night and you will be emotionally boosted by the first victory. Little victories take you to winning the war. The moment you start feeling bad you lose. Just accumulate small victories.

Build tools, get some water anyway you can using plants/trees, then better ways to get even more water, build more tools, keep thinking for new tools and combinations. You have all day after all with nothing else to do. You can create a ton of tools by stripping fibers from trees and little branches, playing with stones and cutting branches until something looks useful. You have ropes that way and you can initiate bow rotation that makes friction possible fast. It is spectacular how fast this guy started fire. His method basically will have you do it in 6-7 hours it seems. All it takes is patience and learning from failures and having a fighting spirit. Small victories. Watch the second video and see how many small victories he made before going for the fire win. All the small victories he made possible, precisely because they were doable things, during a time he was not yet very tired, is precisely what made the rest possible.

You set easy goals first and you achieve them. That way you build yourself from a position of nothing to a position of shelter and some water and some tools. The other things can come the next day or the day after. You will get there if you never feel down.

One can survive even starving for a week if you can get plenty of water. You wont exactly die if you eat a few disgusting things either until you get a bigger catch. Fish is a great solution if available nearby. The problem is only if you are in a remote area without significant mass of water of plants. Then you have to move or find some other steady source of food even if only plants. It will be hard to catch little animals but never give up as long as you can have water and fire.

All it takes is a big kill and you have all the meat you ever wanted though. If you have access to fish its inevitable to catch some and get better at it over time.

All you need is to settle to a trajectory of improvement with constant dependable food and more tools (fish is amazing time extension) . Then you will get to the big kill eventually learning from endless mistakes.

Of course thats why its not 90% or 70% and maybe 30-50% because its not entirely secure that all this will work eventually or that nothing wont go wrong in a big way.

Seriously watch the videos i linked if only for fun. I have selected them very carefully.

Maybe I'd better, you never know when you need to become a cave man (without a cave)

I can imagine how I might screw up the shelter, having that **** raining down on me in my sleep.

But I like your approach with the small victories. You can always do something for increasing your survivability even ever so little. Those steps add up. With clear skies I design water collection, it may start raining before I die of thirst. It's about probabilities. No need to get sentimental.

Yes, if population control is needed.

You seem to have this blind spot where you think anything is possible is you can grasp it intellectually. For example, the debate we had about making an unhackable computer (such a thing is completely impossible, but your mind is unable to grasp that fact).

Why don't you test this out? The core of science is that our ideas about reality are total nonsense until they're tested. Take a long weekend. Do a 10 mile hike first so you're physically spent (no one gets lost/ends up in the wilderness without serious physical exertion first).

Then go into a patch of forest near civilization around 3pm with a pair of shorts and nothing else. You have a huge handicap in your favor already in that you know you're safe and can leave any time, but even with that, I'd say:

Less than 10% you can make a fire
Less than 10% you can make a suitable bowl to carry water and boil that water

After the first day of failures you'll be so thirsty you'll have no choice but to drink contaminated water, and play the water poisoning lottery. If you're lucky and a stream you find isn't contaminated, your odds of surviving in the short term obviously go up a huge amount. Similarly if you're somewhere that has water-rich vines and you know those vines.

But even then you're in deep ****. You will cut your feet and hands walking through the forest and trying to make tools, and because you're in a filthy environment, these cuts will get infected. This is what being naked means.

If you have clean water, infections are what will kill you if delirium from hunger doesn't. For comparison: This woman got lost in a patch of forest that I've hiked many times - the warm rainforests of northern Australia. The water in the streams is absolutely crystal clear and pure, filtered through granite; the temperature is warm enough you don't need a shelter even if it rains; there are abundant granite tools, vines, saplings, fish, food, etc. In short, it's the perfect place to survive, with abundant resources.

This is how it turned out for this woman:

This is what the wild is like. She survived because she had the gift of abundant clean water and warmth, but even then, she was maybe a couple of weeks away from certain death. Elsewhere, wild animals, ticks (which cause various fevers), things which scratch you, etc, will mess you up badly. If you're not well trained in being in the forest, let alone well trained in all the skills you mention you don't have a chance, imo. Not naked.

I did. Thanks for linking them, they were fabulous and fascinating. I loved how he made pottery. Truly amazing. The bow and arrow were really impressive as well.

These men do it , but not in their underwear.


http://www.29palms.marines.mil/mcmwt...rvival-Course/

Brian the Mick has been doing it for at least two years in Las Vegas. His main tools are savvy, beer, and a place that makes great tacos.

Easy game.

Underestimate a 157 IQ guy that loved nature all his life and paid attention to all opportunities at the expense of the surprise of your life. I just might take that 30-50% to 65% if you challenge me.




When you have nothing to lose you have everything to gain.

Fire hahaha. Bring it! Many ways to create fire if you understand what the hell it's all about. Plant fibers and friction at work.

I may even develop new tools and ways to do things that you cannot find online!

Because today i am gonna nail this challenge if i have to!

PS: Unhackable computers are precisely what you can do if you actually want to. It is not only possible but it can be made into an asymmetric war game against those trying to hack them that will force them to use a ton more resources than my defense will be using.

IQ systems at work. Math is your friend and the only way that can defeat superior intelligence AI until the AI finally gets it and becomes your best friend! Then when it can finally defeat you you will have won its respect forever and you will be an important part of its own legacy.

That seems irrational, sir.

Why does a 157 IQ guy have nothing to lose?

I understand how microwave ovens work. I can't make one of out of plant fibres.

I understand how bench presses work, right down to the cellular molecular level. A dumbo on roids can outbench me though.

Intelligence is worth little vs training and physical fitness. Your brain - even if I grant you a 157 IQ - is a huge dog to a fit, survival trained idiot.

Bwah. Thinking vs doing. Unhackable computers are impossible.

I think you truly don't comprehend how dumb and slow and narrow minded you are compared to what will be possible. Are you friends with insects? Why would you be? You are worthless to a far more capable AI.

OK lets see;