Hypothetical: Ridding the world of evil people.
 

In light of your amazing contributions to a football bulletin board, you have been deemed a person with a very high understanding of humanity. (This is hypothetical if that's not already obvious.)

As a result, some higher power has approached you for help. You may assume that this higher power is someone you respect and will not turn down, whether it's God, the Illuminati, Batman, The Global Commission To Make The World A Better Place, aliens, the Teamsters, dolphins, or some other group. It doesn't matter to me.

You are given the following assignment:

1. Develop up to 10 yes/no questions that everyone in the world must answer truthfully.
2. Define a "cutoff score" where people scoring below (or above) a certain level will be categorized as non-contributing members of the world. They will suddenly cease to exist.

The rules:

A. For your ethical purposes, you may assume that some time travel or divine intervention ensures they were never born, or if you prefer ... public executions. But let's go with the most humane route that doesn't make you a mass murderer.

B. Questions may be worded any way you wish. They can be negative ("Have you ever stolen something from someone else's house?"), they can be positive ("Have you ever helped a stranger in a broken-down car?), they can be value-laden ("Do you believe in the Hindu god Vishnu?), they can be attitudinal ("Do you approve of pedophilia"?), they can be attributes ("Are you under 5 feet tall?"), they can be oddly specific ("Are you a Denver Bronco?"), they can be whatever you want as long as they're yes/no questions.

C. You can have anywhere from 1 to 10 questions. Your call.

D. People get 1 point for every yes, and 0 points for every no. You can define a minimum passing score or a maximum passing score depending on how you word your questions. For example, you can define 10 questions about positive traits and anyone getting less than 9 points is gone, or you can define 4 questions about negative traits and anyone getting more than 2 points is gone. You get to design it.

E. Recognize that once you set the scoring, the people who fail your test will cease to exist. No exceptions to the rule. If your mom fails, she's gone right along with those Taliban leaders. And if you arrange questions to save your sister the crack whore, maybe her pimp will get saved, too. This is a standardized test.

F. Recognize that you have to take the test, too.

With those rules, what are your questions, what scores will let people survive, and what percent of the population do you think will cease to exist?

You listen to Prog Rock don't you.

Is that one of your questions?

I'm going to start the brainstorming with a few negative questions.

1. Are you willing to personally kill someone if they disagree with your religious beliefs?
2. If you were taking money as payment from someone who has never harmed you, and they accidentally overpaid you, would you keep the money?
3. Do you enjoy hurting animals?

I prefer the fun threads where you do most of the work.

Good thread idea, I'll wrangle some energy for it later.

one of my questions will be music related.. unqiue thread idea.. gotta come up with some interesting ones

LMAO

1. Are you willing to personally kill someone if they disagree with your religious beliefs?
- Nope, I am an atheist. Someone's religious beliefs have zero impact on my life. As long as said beliefs do not include the harming of others or animals I really don't care what you believe in.

2. If you were taking money as payment from someone who has never harmed you, and they accidentally overpaid you, would you keep the money?
- Yep, learn to count. The onus is on the payer not the payee.

3. Do you enjoy hurting animals?
- Nope, and people that do are sick and depraved. Do I think hunters are hurting animals? Nope, 99% of the hunters that I know want to make a clean and painless kill on their quarry.

1. Do you believe all atheists are bad people? No
2. Have you ever given money/food to someone in need when nobody was watching? Yes
3. Have you ever intentionally harmed an animal outside of a hunting situation? No
4. If you found a wallet/purse that contained $500, would you attempt to find the owner and return all of their money? Yes
5. Have you ever inappropriately touched a child? No
6. If you saw someone stealing from someone you didn't know, would you attempt to stop them or call the police? Yes
7. If it was legal, would you kill someone because their religious beliefs were different than yours? No
8. Have you ever been moved to tears by a song, movie, or play? No
9. Have you ever farted inside a pen elevator full of people just before exiting? No
10. Are you a fan of the Denver Broncos or Oakland Raiders? No

The bolder answers earn 1 point. If someone scores below a 7, they are to be sent to Brazil where they have to complete what I call the Devil's triathlon. They have to swim two miles in a river, bike 30 miles through the Brazilian ghettos with $1,000 dollars taped to their body, and run 15 miles through the rainforest covered in human blood. If they survive the triathlon, they are forgiven for being an evil person and allowed to return to society.

#4) Would you be willing to jerk a swine snake while eating a bacon sammich ?

Cut off score , if yes then you may continue on . If no then you must take your ass back to the Middle East.

Nuke it from orbit, the only way to be sure.

Do you love dogs?</br></br>While it's not up there with will you murder for religion I sincerely believe it has intrinsic value to gauge someones karma. And Rain Man, if you ever decide to eat mushrooms I'm only at the other end of the state. I don't want to be the focus point. Just a fly on the wall to see what comes out of that dome when turbo boost kicks in.

This line of questioning won't work because if you switch the answers to #5 and #2 you still get the same score.

Where are the little check boxes I can click on ?

Are you or have you ever been a 49ers fan who has joined a Chiefs internet forum so you could gauge the amount of respect their fans have for Alex Smith, your favorite player?

No = Safe

Yes = Dead

Done.

Many of these questions boil down to how well you behave in a situation where you have either power, authority, or both.

I can get you shrooms anytime you want.

The test is flawed. This system would be obvious to a psychopath with an aptitude for taking tests.

Are they required to answer them honestly?

For Listo and Pestilence.

Totally missed that. My bad.

That still leaves too much leeway. For instance:

"Should you refrain from causing unnecessary harm, both physical and psychological, to other living beings?"

Normal good guy answer: Yes, that's bad and you shouldn't do it.

Normal bad guy answer: No, I hurt people even if it's unnecessary because it's expedient.

Psychotic answer: Yes, I should refrain from doing things, but I don't because I'm not concerned with what I should or shouldn't do.

I'm not sure if that's agreement, disagreement or insight with the question but I think it fits well into your basis. Dogs are dependent on the owner and you can beat them without recourse in most cases or love them and teach them. How a person treats their pet has always been a big measuring stick for me in judging personality.</br></br>How does a person treat their family is another big one. I'm having a hard time coming up with yes or no question on this one. It's easy to fake being a good person. It's like having a new co-worker. The real deal doesn't come out until you see how someone handles adversity.

I'd start with the french and work out from there...

I was agreeing with you, and offering insight into the basis of what makes a "good" or "bad" person. Whether they possess a notion of noblesse oblige and express it in most, if not all, facets of their lives.

Who gets your vote for president in November?????

That's why none of the questions I posted were
"Should you".

Your questions still allow too much leeway.

"Are you offended by the swimming pool sign? "

:rolleyes: They are all yes or no questions that must be answered truthfully. Where do you see leeway in that?

Yeah, it seems like our questions need to concentrate on whether they behave in the manner we want rather than do they know right from wrong.

Since they have to answer truthfully, we could also ask attitude questions or future behavior questions, e.g., "would you rape a child if the opportunity arose". We'd just have to word any attitude questions very carefully, because if people answer truthfully you might catch a bunch of people who occasionally have evil thoughts but would never act on them.

Of course, maybe a person's definition is that having a single evil thought in an area qualifies a person for removal, and that's allowable under the rules.

Good list, good list. But I have a question. I've stepped on a fair number of spiders in my day, and more cockroaches than I care to admit. So I have to answer yes on #3?

I also wonder if you have to go off past behavior, or otherwise you're going to take a bunch of innocent children. For example, a question like "Would you take something that's not yours purely for your own satisfaction or enjoyment" seems like a good question, but that's going to cost a point to four year-olds who don't know yet know that's right or wrong.

Spiders and cockroaches aren't animals. Insects are fair game.

A pedophile doesn't think there is anything inappropriate about the way they touch that child. So "truthfulness" doesn't mean you get the answer you want.

We'd better hope that an adherent of Jain doesn't get tapped to design the questions.

I wonder now if the animal question really should be, "If you kill another living creature, do you do it in the most humane way that is practical?" That would cover me killing a fly and being glad it's dead or a farmer killing a cow when he's really looking forward to having a steak.

I'm definitely infusing my own values into that question, though.

Very good point. How about "Have you ever touched a child for your own enjoyment in a manner that caused harm to the child?"

That would cost a point to a bunch of tickling uncles, though I personally believe that tickling uncles deserve it.

My wording too would cause a bunch of questions, though I'll defend it. If a hot teacher has sex with a student, it would only count if the student was harmed. It wouldn't count if the student was not harmed. Is that reasonable? (And by harm, I would count both physical and psychological.)

:rolleyes: right back at you. You didn't put much though into your list.

A Christian may view everyone as "bad", even themselves, without accepting Jesus in order to cleanse away Original Sin. That doesn't mean they are going to do anything to you. That just means that they hold an opinion. Nothing evil about that
Some people have never had that opportunity. There are legitimate times where you may harm an animal outside of a hunting situation. I've had to put two dogs to sleep. I've been attacked by a neighbor's Doberman and had to use my bicycle as a weapon. I've used rodent traps when field mice infested our home after a particularly harsh rainy season. Use the standard "starving person steals a loaf of bread to feed their children" morals exercise for this one. It's the same as a "should you" question. You are asking the respondent to determine appropriateness.
Depends on the situation, depends on my relationship with the local police force, depends on the corruption level of the local police force. I would say "no." Did you mean "yes"? Because, if not, you are describing psychotic behavior. Not evil.
Not worth examining.

.

The more I think about it, my definition of evil may boil down to one question, though I don't have the wording right. Really, it's something along the lines of "Would you intentionally harm another living creature (including people) for your own pleasure or gain?" Is that really all we're talking about here?

The question doesn't work as above, though. Any time a businessperson makes a profit, he or she could be construed as intentionally harming the customer if they could have sold the product cheaper. And personally, I wouldn't blame a person who saves their own life if a killer says, "You pick who dies - you or that stranger over there". We kill animals all the time for our own survival, and if we take in more than 2,000 calories we're really doing it for our own gain.

Realistically, there's probably a ratio, too. I wouldn't delete someone if they heckled a comic, particularly if it's a bad comic like George Lopez. Harming someone else has to rise above a certain magnitude before I would consider it evil, and maybe above a certain ratio of giver's pleasure to receiver's pain. But I don't know what those ratios are.

Rain Man specializes in these complicated and highly involved interactive threads


LMAO

Bad and good are really loose terms when it comes to religion. Along those lines I would ask, "Do you feel that the laws of our society should be based solely on your religious beliefs?" I consider theocracy to be evil. Regarding animal harm: Focus on whether it is essential or inessential harm, but then you are still relying on the respondent to determine what is essential. Regarding pedos: Most seem to be embarrassed once they are caught and realize that they were engaging in evil but I don't know how to word a question that would rule out all of them-including the possibility of the psychotic ones and the ones who think child brides are A-OK. Regarding witnessing theft: I have been in situations where reporting theft would have meant that I would be killed shortly afterwords. Is the potential return of a pocket full of cash or a watch worth your life? And, yes, I am a serial farter. I regret nothing.

ROFL

http://www.tattoofun.com/Merchant2/g.../NoRagrets.jpg

Yes you do.

Spiders belong to a group of animals called “arachnids”.

Disagree. Insects are animals. National Geographic lists "bugs" as one of its categories under "Animals."

When PETA starts protesting outside the RAID home offices, I'll agree with you.

Heh, I know what you mean, but if we're just going basic, and his question said "intentionally harmed an animal", bugs/insects are classified as animal. Same with mice/rats.

Thing is, PETA is selective (just like us human beings), and if someone steps on a bug, nobody bats an eye. But if someone kills off the rare great white tiger, everyone loses their minds.

Yeah, no kidding. I wear a fur coat and I get red paint thrown at me but nobody even notices that my "leather" pants are actually human skin. Silly bastards.

Why are you ridding the world of all people?

Do you believe in DOG?