You can guarantee a random 10% of the world population all basic human needs, but you have to sacrifice a finger every time you make that deal; how many people will you help?
The 10% stacks additively, each time you do the deal, this status is applied to a different 10%. If you sacrifice 10 fingers, the entire world is guaranteed basic human needs (food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcate, etc...)
Nobody knows you saved them. Would you do it?
If everyone knows about the fact that you can do this deal, would that change your mind?
Yeah, I feel like that's a good deal. Especially if I get credit. I mean, I'd still do it if it was anonymous, but can you imagine the popularity of being the guy who cut off his fingers for world peace? Frankly you'd be kind of a monster not to do it. So many people lose hands for nothing at all. But being the guy with the robot fingers who gave the world peace and joy? Sure, sign me up. Sounds rad af.
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?
Every single finger. I'd give my arms and legs too if it would help. Once the world was fixed I might want to take part in it again too, if nobody knew it was me.
If it was public knowledge that I did it though, I'd probably keep being a hermit. I do not like attention or people knowing who I am.
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...
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.
Of course I'd do it. Lack of fingers would be an inconvience, sure, but there's cool technology like 3d printing that I could use to get by okay. The inconvience is more than worth it for people to have basic human needs. Plus, with everyone having basic needs they'd be able to spend their time doing things that they enjoy and are passionate about. In all the population of the earth there are definitely gonna be people whose mission is to get people functioning bionic fingers that work like the real deal. I don't care about people knowing. It would be more annoying if they did because then people would constantly be thanking me and receiving compliments is awkward.
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.
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.
If I help 100% of people that means that science will advance super fast and I can get those gnarly hands from Ghost in the Shell that split into even smaller fingers and allows me to type at 7,000WPM.
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.
I'll be honest: none. I'm not making shady deals like that. Besides, shortcuts always come with giant caveats that you don't know in advance. Like: how long is this guaranteed for? Will it magically prevent people from depriving others of their needs (murder, arson, imprisonment, torture, etc.)? How will it be sustained, and how would it affect the rest of life on Earth?
No no no, count me out. I'm not taking that deal just to find out it only applies for 1 month or some crap like that and people can still kill each other.
This is what I think when characters in fiction want achieve inmortality. Yeah dude, inmortality is one thing, but good health is other thing. You can get disabled, unable to walk, even worse, been in a vegetal state, but hey, you are inmortal.
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.
Completely random. A quantum-dice roll, impossible to predict. If they were already rich, it just means that if they go bankrupt, they still have their safety-net, they just lose all their luxury stuff. But they don't notice any change if their basic needs are already met.
Losing 10 fingers would guarantee the status effect applied to everyone.
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.