Cave Rescue Scenario

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

My group of 4 couldn't come up with a rescue order in the 20 minute time limit we had. We couldn't determine a "rescued first" and a "rescued last". We couldn't even come up with a majority on anything when it was put to a vote.

Curious, what methodology were you guys using to make your selection?

[jammies]

I would let them all drown so as to maximize the fairness of outcome. All will be equal, under the waves.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

Nowhere in the bio you are provided is their height (or their swimming ability). Which is the answer to the two questions I asked first.

What's the point of this twisted exercise? This premise is flawed in the first place and is based on saving lives on the basis of making prejudicial personal judgments of character and worth to society. That's not the primary consideration when performing any kind of rescue or medical triage.

Just say screw the bio, go in there, and take people out on a judgement of their physical fitness, characteristics (height/weight), injuries, etc. to ensure the highest percentage of survivability.

If you really want to go for the route of picking who has to live and who has to die, I'd change the premise to our alien overlords pointing a death ray at everybody and forcing you to choose instead of this stupid cave scenario which is badly designed and written.

[CaptainCrunch]

I'm interested in what this exercise relates to, is it university, high school, sitting around a bong with a bunch of buddies? I don't see the payoff to this in terms of educational value.

Its equivalent to asking the question, if you killed Hitlers parents before he was born would WW2 have been prevented and what would the world look like today.

Its an exercise in academic folly.

The AIDs researcher could utterly fail. Just because two smart educated people have kids doesn't mean that the kids are saviers they could become a bigger drag on society then the Vietnam Vet.

Maybe while he was in Vietnam he saved a kid that grew up to be a researcher who cured feline aids and we don't know it.

In fact its a pretty horrible exercise, what does Edward manufacture. Maybe in 5 years we find out that he cheaped out on safetry equiptment and gave his employees cancer, or in 10 years he dumped toxins in the river. Or even better maybe he makes nuclear warheads.

You can't base your rescue on perceived value on society unless you own a Time Machine, and wouldn't you feel regret if you rescued Tozo and then went into the future and found out that she had given up her goals to do research and help the poor and decided to become a plastic surgeon to the stars. Would you then race back in time and not rescue her and in fact drown her because she kept Kristen Stewart on the screen for 10 years longer then she should have?

[NuclearPizzaMan]

The fools got themselves trapped in a cave. Rescue none of them, throw a canister of nerve gas into the cave and get a pizza.

[Hockeyguy15]

Can any of them swim?

If the cave is filling with water wouldn't the water bring them all up to the hole eventually?

[SeeBass]

I think when you spent all that time asking them their stories you probably could have just pulled them out.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

What's the point of this twisted exercise? This premise is flawed in the first place and is based on saving lives on the basis of making prejudicial personal judgments of character and worth to society. That's not the primary consideration when performing any kind of rescue or medical triage.

Negotiations, defining leaders/followers, etc.

[Madman]

I did the same research project.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Negotiations, defining leaders/followers, etc.

Okay when it's explained that way it makes much more sense. Present a scenario purposely designed to be divisive and presenting a moral quandary and see who in the decision making group is able to impress his opinion on the others in choosing who gets to live and who gets to die based on a superficial evaluation of a person's value to society.

...

So it's basically a course in training Nazis and figuring out who is going to lead them

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Okay when it's explained that way it makes much more sense. Present a scenario purposely designed to be divisive and presenting a moral quandary and see who in the decision making group is able to impress his opinion on the others in choosing who gets to live and who gets to die based on a superficial evaluation of a person's value to society.

...

So it's basically a course in training Nazis and figuring out who is going to lead them

Well obviously its not real life, nor is it a moral test. Obviously from the choices, they wanted each of the 6 to have their own merit and play to to the sympathy of each aspect of emotion (employment? medical? family?) so there obviously is no right or wrong answer.

[Phanuthier]

Thinking more about this, what would I do?

In real life: there is usually one main decision maker, and a following chain of command. The decision maker will unilaterally make his decision of who goes 1st, then while that person is being rescued, I would probably designate people I unilaterally consider to be in pool "priority" and pool "next round" ... using this divide and conquor method, I've narrowed down the next choice (or if I'm completely 50/50 split, pick the choice with higher social leverage)... keep doing this each round.

In a group of 4 decision makers: after a quick scan, seeing the social exercise of this and knowing its decision making, and knowing I have the flex time of 20 min and nothing will be done in 20 min, I would divide the list in 2 (each side gets 3 members), I would try and socially divide up the teams based on gender/age (if possible), then between 2 people, you make your top choice and bottom choice. Each side gets 5 min. Then when the 2 sides re-convine and do their draft, you will see both members of each sides party "dig their heels in" ... you will probably see an interesting behavior in which one side may get their choice in "1st pick overall? in return for the other side getting "3rd and 5th" vs "4th and 6th" ... basically now you have 2 rounds of 2 decision makers per party, rather then 1 round of 4 decision makers (aka. anarchy)

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Well obviously its not real life, nor is it a moral test. Obviously from the choices, they wanted each of the 6 to have their own merit and play to to the sympathy of each aspect of emotion (employment? medical? family?) so there obviously is no right or wrong answer.

No, the right answer is that the participants (and misguided educators) are failing to recognize what the actual philosophical and practical implications of this scenario and exercise are pushing forward because it's training people to consider who lives and who dies based on sympathetic responses to a superficial and difficult to validate criteria (a brief written bio from which you judge the worth of an entire person) which is only a far cry from the same impetuses and justifications for Nazism, slavery, etc.

Anybody who was smart would think outside the box and point out the flaws of the experiment rather than participate in it. That's one reason I couldn't stand a lot of the educators in school. They just don't get it sometimes and know less about history and human nature than the students they are teaching.

[You Need a Thneed]

I'd throw out the bios, completely useless.

Fist of all, reading them would waste valuable rescue time.

Second of all, no life is more important than another, It could never be my responsibility to choose who's life is more worthwhile to save. The people down below can decide to sacrifice themselves to save others if they want to. Honestly, I didn't even read the bios in this made up exercise, cause it's completely pointless. It would be orders of magnitude more pointless if the exercise was actually a real life situation.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Thinking more about this, what would I do?

In real life: there is usually one main decision maker, and a following chain of command. The decision maker will unilaterally make his decision of who goes 1st, then while that person is being rescued, I would probably designate people I unilaterally consider to be in pool "priority" and pool "next round" ... using this divide and conquor method, I've narrowed down the next choice (or if I'm completely 50/50 split, pick the choice with higher social leverage)... keep doing this each round.

In a group of 4 decision makers: after a quick scan, seeing the social exercise of this and knowing its decision making, and knowing I have the flex time of 20 min and nothing will be done in 20 min, I would divide the list in 2 (each side gets 3 members), I would try and socially divide up the teams based on gender/age (if possible), then between 2 people, you make your top choice and bottom choice. Each side gets 5 min. Then when the 2 sides re-convine and do their draft, you will see both members of each sides party "dig their heels in" ... you will probably see an interesting behavior in which one side may get their choice in "1st pick overall? in return for the other side getting "3rd and 5th" vs "4th and 6th" ... basically now you have 2 rounds of 2 decision makers per party, rather then 1 round of 4 decision makers (aka. anarchy)

Why do these people even get to vote and squabble on who lives or dies leading to this mess where you waste 20 minutes trying to figure out who's in charge of this pathetic rescue team?

Somebody take charge and say "we're going to rescue these people in an order that guarantees the highest numbers of survivors" with adjustment based on the willingness of the people to be rescued. They need to have a choice in this also. If anything, they are the ones who should be voting. Not you.

To really fix this experiment and make it interesting (or a made for TV movie), the participants should be the "victims" and they should be trying to figure out who goes first...The participants shouldn't be the rescuers.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

I'd throw out the bios, completely useless.

Fist of all, reading them would waste valuable rescue time.

Second of all, no life is more important than another, It could never be my responsibility to choose who's life is more worthwhile to save. The people down below can decide to sacrifice themselves to save others if they want to. Honestly, I didn't even read the bios in this made up exercise, cause it's completely pointless. It would be orders of magnitude more pointless if the exercise was actually a real life situation.

This is essentially my answer.

I'd choose the rescue order completely at random. If one or more of the people who are actually in danger choose to give up their spot to another person who was randomly chosen to be rescued later, that's their call.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Why do these people even get to vote and squabble on who lives or dies leading to this mess where you waste 20 minutes trying to figure out who's in charge of this pathetic rescue team?

Somebody take charge and say "we're going to rescue these people in an order that guarantees the highest numbers of survivors" with adjustment based on the willingness of the people to be rescued. They need to have a choice in this also. If anything, they are the ones who should be voting. Not you.

To really fix this experiment and make it interesting (or a made for TV movie), the participants should be the "victims" and they should be trying to figure out who goes first...The participants shouldn't be the rescuers.

Thus see my "in real life" paragraph

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

This is essentially my answer.

I'd choose the rescue order completely at random. If one or more of the people who are actually in danger choose to give up their spot to another person who was randomly chosen to be rescued later, that's their call.

I mean, in real life, you could probably make a rigging system to haul them up. A 2-to-1 rigging system with proper equipment (lets say, a Petzl Pro Axion), the average man can easily bring up 120 lbs. Add a pully for a 3-to-1 rigging system and 180 should be no problem. If you have enough pulley's for 6-to-1? You can rescue 2 at a time, easy.

[CaptainCrunch]

I'd like to see a game show based on this premise.

You could even sneak things into their bios like He might be a great Aids researcher but his hobbies include having sex with animals and collecting the organs of young girls.

Or this leader of industry is secretly the grand dragon of the KKK.

It would be a combination of Baggage and Saw where people actually die on T.V.

and just think.

You go through the scenario and make your rescue choices and then its revealed that one of the mystery guests that you saved was former president of Syria Bashir,

Sorry you lose but you did win the board game version of this show which includes 7 nails and a gun.

Think of the ratings.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Why do these people even get to vote and squabble on who lives or dies leading to this mess where you waste 20 minutes trying to figure out who's in charge of this pathetic rescue team?

Somebody take charge and say "we're going to rescue these people in an order that guarantees the highest numbers of survivors" with adjustment based on the willingness of the people to be rescued. They need to have a choice in this also. If anything, they are the ones who should be voting. Not you.

To really fix this experiment and make it interesting (or a made for TV movie), the participants should be the "victims" and they should be trying to figure out who goes first...The participants shouldn't be the rescuers.

Just thinking about this more... I know it takes approx 5-min for an efficient individual to set up a anchor/rigging system, if obvious (not having whatever tree's to sling and other anchor points be >120 degrees to the strong point of your anchor. There is 5 min there to get a situation analysis, and you know this would be concurrently with the profiling. This is, of coarse, assuming this is a unilateral, isolated decision making process. And what are the factors in this rescue, and if they are ready to be hauled up or if you need to send in a man for the rescue.