Sophie's Choice

Sophie's Choice is an interesting problem. A mother is forced to choose which of her children die. I think we can use a similar problem to discover interesting qualities of our feelings on human worth.

In my version lets imaging we are in the middle of a strip of land that is located between two lakes. There is a person drowning in the middle of both lakes. The lakes are large enough that if you swim out to the person you only have enough time to save one person. Who do you save?

If you assume everything else is equal, these two people are same age, gender, weight, attractiveness, etc, you can examine your own feelings on various subjects. You will also find that having something in common with a person will lead you be more likely to save them. For example, if the only difference between the two people is musical taste, you will save the person who's taste matches closer to yours. It is also possible that if one of the two enjoys classical music and you find that to be a more intellectual style of music you will save that person. But if we look at say rap or death metal it is more likely that you'll just save whichever is closer to your preference.

Another interesting topic to look at here is vices. How much does a person have to gamble before his life is worth less to you than the guy who does meth once a week? We can get a relative idea of how bad we think a certain vice is. For me at least, the answers ended up being kind of surprising especially when comparing and contrasting my own vices.

After thinking about this for awhile, do you still feel all lives are equal? Is there something concrete that can determine the value of someone's life?