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Originally Posted by Plankton
C'mon Batty, there are some people in this world that have morals and integrity. Money is the root of all evil. It is. Whether you understand it or not. I have NEVER done something for monetary gain that directly ended the life of another living thing, and I wouldn't kill a person for 50 trillion dollars, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I'd die slow and miserably.
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I've never screwed someone else for monetary or other gain in my life (at least as far as I can remember), but I think that fifty million dollars and the possible life altering changes that it could bring you is too much for you to really contemplate and it might very well temporarily "short circuit" your moral compass and make it almost impossible to think clearly. I think that if anything would stop you it wouldn't be thinking about the consequences (since I don't think you would be capable of that kind of complicated thought process at that point), it would be actually being unable to physically make yourself bring the knife across the person's throat or pull the trigger. Even if you decided to do it. You could offer me as much money as you could think of, but there's probably no way in hell I could ever force my body to jump off a high cliff into the ocean. I've seen people do it on TV so I know it's possible to do it and not die, but my body would simply cease to respond to my commands when I got anywhere near the edge of the cliff.
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Originally Posted by Engine
As for the "doubling" that The Batlord brought up (which I don't believe is a widely accepted term among psychiatric professionals), this is totally different. The killing and torture that people do because their military higher-ups told them to is done regardless of the financial benefits they receive. Nobody working under the Nazi regime made 50 million for what they did. Most probably barely made a living wage.
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Sure the specifics are different, but the concept is sound. If you can rationalize it, you can live with just about anything. It may eat away at you but still, you could probably do it. A concentration camp guard probably tells himself that this is necessary to preserve the racial purity of the German race and that however unpleasant the means may be they are necessary. I'm sure if they can do that then it would be simple for you to rationalize the murder after the fact. "My friends and family can have everything they could ever need now. And just think of all the homeless people I can feed with this money. The African villagers I can help. If I can save two people with it then does it matter that one man died for it?"
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Originally Posted by Engine
Back on topic. I personally place this moral question in a file in my mind that I call "hypothetical decisions that I absolutely cannot make until I'm faced with them in reality" - it's a pretty large file.
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That's pretty much how I feel. Given how extreme an event this would be I think the only honest answer is "I don't know." Anything else is just a guess.