— A Christian, a Kantian, a utilitarian, and an ILP poster share a lifeboat that will only hold three people without sinking into the abyss. How does each reason about who gets thrown to the sharks?
The Christian argues that if he’s thrown to the sharks, he won’t be able to call on the God Almighty to save them. She suggests that Skeptic is thrown in, purely on the basis of face value and the fact that she’s freaked out by his avatar.
The Kantian is still trying to get to grips with chapter II of the Critique of Pure Reason, but postulates that if they all think hard enough about what they perceive the boat to be, and maybe add 10% onto the representative size of the boat, the underlying object will fulfill their ideals and it’ll all be fine without any death or other fun antics.
The utilitarian is busy trying to fix the washing machine because he believes that a good pair of clean jeans will improve morale for the whole boat.
The ILP poster tried to make an argument but received an Invalid_session error and logged off.
The utilitarian would argue that the heaviest of the passengers should be tossed overboard. Not only would this maximize the happiness and freedom on the boat (freedom to move about atleast), but it would also maximize the happiness of the sharks. I would argue that the Christian be thrown overboard, as if he was a good Christian, he would be in heaven, thanking us for deliverying him from hell. If it so happened that he was bad Christian, well, then he/she deserved it anyway. If for some reason the Christian could not be thrown overboard (perhaps God has created a holy force field around him), then the Kantian should be next, as the categorical imperative is nothing more than a ripoff of the Golden Rule anyhow.
Why shouldn’t I be thrown in? I would argue that it’s not my time; I haven’t reached the 1000 post mark yet. I do believe this poses a problem for Gadfly of ILP, however, he could argue that 995 of his posts were made by his alter-ego Magius. By the time everyone agreed upon what personal identity was, I’m sure some dolphins would have pushed the boat to shore by then.
P.S- I liked your post Kajun, especially the part referring the Critique of Pure Reason 
Thank you for both of your posts. I’ll be posting my own version soon.
lol, is it really that scary?
Skeptic makes the argument that he should be thrown in, but only on the understood basis that the world will become a utopian haven after his death. Otherwise, he says to hell with you guys and pushes all three in, then logs into ILP on his solar powered satellite computer and scares new posters with his avatar.
The Christian believes that God will stay the mouthes of the sharks or allow them to seek refuge in the belly of a whale. The kantian wonders whether you can make feeding humans to sharks into a universal. The utilitarian is still trying to figure out how much everyone weighs, and the ILP poster is determining exactly how to kill all of those sharks (perhaps if like perseus with the head of medusa he were to flash them the avatar of Skeptic…).