Ask Lemmy

And my toes too, just to be sure

If "basic human needs" includes a full working set of fingers, all ten, because then I get them back.

id do it in a heart beat. and then get robot hands. spend the rest of my life being adored, with robot hands that can have like darts or lighters in the fingers or something.

plus, all my needs would be taken care of as a result. and the poor would be better equipped to tackle inequality further without worry of starvation or loss of healthcare and various other listed issues that currently hold us back.

Who would answer anything but "chop em all off"? Lol. You can singlehandedly stop world hunger, and you don't even have to give your life for it, just your fingers? A lot of praiseworthy people have given way more for way less. It's a small sacrifice for the betterment of the world, I wouldn't trust any man whose immediate instinct isn't to sacrifice their fingers...

If those 10% were picked completely at random, then it’s not obvious to me that this would be a good thing. It would effectively increase wealth inequality in the world, where 10% of any population is given something the rest don’t have. That kind of disparity builds resentment and could, in the long run, end up causing more harm than good. If there’s a poor village where nearly everyone is struggling, and suddenly 10% of the population has their basic needs guaranteed, they’d instantly become the “rich guys” of that village. You’d need to do it for the whole village - but then the same issue arises when people in the next village start resenting yours, and so on.

Either way, I’d give 0–2 fingers. I could probably live a perfectly normal life without my pinkies, but I’m not going to pretend I’d definitely go through with it - even if, from a strictly rational perspective, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

hm... Five fingers.

Ten right away, and then another as often as there's a 10% turnover in world population.

Hey, you never said they had to be my fingers.

OP, are you a billionaire trying to reframe global poverty as me being unwilling to chop my fingers off rather than you being unwilling to share your enormous wealth?

Do the needs stay satisfied, or is it going to be like 2 years later we have billionaires and starvation again?

Fuck yes dude, chop my hands off. I'm in one of those 10%

I will sacrifice 10 of my premium fishfingers and 10 of my precious ladyfingers. You are welcome.

My only regret is only being born with 7 fingers to give...

the fuck am i gonna do with 1 finger or 2 fingers? going all 10 guarantees my needs are provided for so obviously I'm doing that

yes because there would be billions of people who would be willing to lift my drink to my lips for a sip and and help me dress etc

I would need more specificity around "basic human needs". It could be that only 1-30% of the world's population don't currently meet that threshold, so sure, easy call to lop off pinky thru middle finger on my non-dominant hand to help them. I mean, ask "would you cut off your pinky finger to stop the genocide in Gaza?" and that would be a hard, fast yes and that's way less than 10% of the world affected.

If we're talking past basic survival to full universal healthcare and universal basic income... I'd consider all ten fingers with more details. I'm super sus of any monkey paw curls, so I want to understand the ins and outs before I say all ten fingers.

Hey—so uh—you didn’t say whose fingers were have to sacrifice. This is a no brainier.

Yeah, it's definitely all ten, although I can see how I would regret that choice from time to time.

Fortunately, robot hands are pretty cool, and I'm sure that if the world were prosperous and they saw somebody with no fingers, they would all chip in to help back out. So it wouldn't be like terrible forever, but it would definitely have its moments where it sucks.

All 10 of course. Rather keep it discreet though, don't want anybody asking awkward questions about why I carry around bags of fingers, whose fingers they are, that sort of thing.

Depends: for how long? 1 finger = 10% of humanity has all of their basic survival needs met forever? Done and done, take all 10. Seems like an extremely tiny price to pay to alleviate a colossal amount of suffering in the world forever, and without all those people being distracted by meeting their basic needs odds are technology is going to advance even more rapidly, along with the quality of things like medical prosthetics and neural interfaces and shit. So, yes please bring on the cyberpunk without the dystopia.

So how does the 10% get chosen? Like if the first 10% were all the people desperately in need of it, that's an easy finger. But if there is a potential that only wealthy people could be effected by that, then the loss of the finger would be meaningless. If it's totally random each time, it's a harder choice since you really aren't helping 10% of the population each time, given that many will already have basic needs met.

Wait wait, by saying 10% stacks each time, do you mean 10% of the original number, or 10% of the remaining number of people?

Like, for the sake of simplicity, 10 billion to start with, 10%, so 1 billion for the first finger. Then does it become 10% of the remaining 9 billion, so around 900 million, or another 10% of 10 billion?

I would likely still do it, even if all 10 fingers wouldn't save humanity together, but if I could also pass this deal, it would be interesting to get 10 random people off the street and present the choice to them. If the collective has the solidarity necessary to want to save others, it shows just how justified it is for them to be saved.