• rbn@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    I go for option 1.

    In all programming languages that I know, integers have a maximum number. E.g., in C that’d be 2,147,483,647. After that, you would run into an overflow, resulting in either…

    • a crash (train stops, no more deaths),
    • death count suddenly turns negative (all people previously killed are suddenly alive again and even new people are generated out of nowhere) - until we reach the next overflow when people disappear and start dying again
    • or - if it’s an unsigned integer - death count resets everytime we reach the maximum limit

    So compared to option 2, we have a chance of stopping the death count. And even if the train keeps running, we have essentially option 2 but the same people only die very rarely. If we assume a cycle of 1 death per second and an integer boundary of 2,147,483,647, that’s just one death every 68 years per person involved. Seems more fair to me compared to 100 people constantly dying over and over again.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Ah, but eventually the trolley breaks down, and in the case of the reincarnating circle, you end up with zero deaths (but a whole lot of Therapy)

    • Kogasa@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      At the universities I went to, Calc 2 was integration, sequences and series, then Calc 3 was multivariable. They really pack all the harder parts into 2.

    • Codex@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I managed until university when I left calculus and entered “Linear Algebra” and man, I really don’t like matrices.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        2 months ago

        I found linear algebra super hard until I learned it a second and then third time, from different angles. I found it harder to understand when it was taught in a pure maths context, but coming at it from the applied side made me go “oh, so that’s why that’s like that”

  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    Arguably these are different amounts of bad even before considering this: We generally consider existing preferable to non-existence to some extent when suffering isnt taken into account, consider that if you murder someone quickly and painlessly in their sleep without waking them, they dont really themselves suffer from it, but people will still find you to be a murderer, and would object to the idea that you might do it to them. In the top example, killing the people actually kills them, but in the lower example, it arguably doesnt, because the experiences of the people involved never actually cease, therefore, the lower path seems to me to be preferable because you supposedly get equivalent amounts of “suffering”, but different amounts of time that people spend in non-existence.

    • Johanno@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      Morally speaking people could argue that torturing immortal people is worse.

      However legally speaking to you don’t kill them and therefore the immortals are preferred.

        • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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          2 months ago

          Though I do wonder whether a sufficiently good lawyer could argue that it’s not attempted murder if you knew they were immortal

        • Johanno@feddit.org
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          2 months ago

          That would mean you did it on purpose. But you didn’t power the trolley. You “accidentally” flipped the switch… And left. Since you can’t do more.

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    Cant you just take people from the track with reincarnating people? They might have to die a couple of times, but thats nothing compared to infinity

  • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Well their heads aren’t on the tracks and they’re immortal, I bet we could rig some kind of device to make them total praplegics and then work on a direct neural interface so they can use computers while they lay there endlessly having their bodies painlessly trisected.

  • SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Hell couldn’t be real because humans would eventually fetishize any pain input and dump buckets forever.

    Some webcomic I saw back in the earlier days of the Internet

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Allegedly it isn’t a place where you are tortured, but instead a state of permanent depression from being cut off from God. Just the former is easier for pop culture to portray.

  • Xyprus@beehaw.org
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    2 months ago

    Also, Option 1 would essentially mean the end of the human race. Assuming the rate of killing is faster than the birth rate it would mean everyone dies soon

  • Iceblade@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Programmer asks: how many bits for the integer?

    At 32 bits it’s “just” a Thanos snap with extra pain