Would you rather?

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WanderingGaze22
Posts: 223
Joined: June 9th, 2021, 12:39 am

Would you rather?

Post by WanderingGaze22 »

After several posts, I have come to feel that I do not have a great impression of the forum users here. I find that an icebreaker is in order here. Answer these five Would You Rather questions and explain your reasons. I will respond to your posts and offer my choices as well.

1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?

2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?

3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?

4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?

5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
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LuckyR
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Re: Would you rather?

Post by LuckyR »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am After several posts, I have come to feel that I do not have a great impression of the forum users here. I find that an icebreaker is in order here. Answer these five Would You Rather questions and explain your reasons. I will respond to your posts and offer my choices as well.

1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?

2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?

3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?

4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?

5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
I understand your perspective, I similarly do not have a great impression of you, for example.

1. I would rather meet my ancestors, since regardless of what they bring to the meeting as regards their personality, attitude or whathaveyou, it doesn't change my perspective on myself. Whereas if I meet my great, great grandchildren, I may find that I was either misremembered or completely forgotten, which would be disappointing.

2. Phone, since I'm old so I don't text hardly at all and I'm not on social media.

3. What happens after the one day of contentment?

4. Me, of course.

5. You seem to have a particular description of the type of enslavement, could you elaborate?
"As usual... it depends."
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: Would you rather?

Post by Steve3007 »

These are immediate off-the-top-of-my-head answers. Longer thought might result in different answers.
1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?
Great-great grandchildren. Because I can already partially see the past, in records, more clearly than I can see the future, in predictions.
2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?
Without my phone. I can use the internet for all the same things, and more, that I use my phone for.
3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?
100 years being unfulfilled. It might be unfulfilling but at least I get to see what happens.
4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?
Stay me. Woody Allen once quipped "My biggest regret in life is that I'm not someone else". It's a good one-liner, but better the devil you know, Woody.
5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
Too vague to answer. Depends on what we mean by words like "brief", "longer", "free" and "enslaved". Opinions on the meanings of those last two, particularly, vary hugely. Some people would say I'm a slave simply because I pay taxes.
Steve3007
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Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

Re: Would you rather?

Post by Steve3007 »

(Actually, I think it was "My only regret in life is that I'm not someone else". That works better as a joke.)
Tegularius
Posts: 711
Joined: February 6th, 2021, 5:27 am

Re: Would you rather?

Post by Tegularius »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am After several posts, I have come to feel that I do not have a great impression of the forum users here. I find that an icebreaker is in order here. Answer these five Would You Rather questions and explain your reasons. I will respond to your posts and offer my choices as well.

1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?

2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?

3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?

4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?

5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
There is another which perhaps should have been included: In hindsight, would you have chosen life or never to have existed at all?
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Pattern-chaser
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Location: England

Re: Would you rather?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

These are some fun questions! Like steve3007, I have not given them in-depth study; these are my off-the-top-of-my-head answers.
WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?
I'm not sure if there will be humans around in sufficient numbers for me to have surviving great-great-grandchildren, so I'll go with ancestors. Our current ecological disaster requires action(s) - not just talk - we are not willing to take, so....


WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?
My phone is a dumb-phone, so I could easily live without it. My need for internet access, camera, music-player, etc, are taken care of by separate and better alternatives to a smartphone.


WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?
The idealist in me says the former; the bit of me that wants to live forever says the latter.


WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?
Sorry, I'm not having this one. 😉 If I became "someone else", then the "someone else" would actually be (or become) me. I'm not convinced this question can be answered.


WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people or emotion, money, or pleasure?
One could easily make the case that the supposedly "free" lives we currently live are actually a sort of enslavement anyway...? 🤔



Thanks for the playtime, WanderingGaze22! 🙂
Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"
AverageBozo
Posts: 502
Joined: May 11th, 2021, 11:20 am

Re: Would you rather?

Post by AverageBozo »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?
What kind of great-great grandparent wouldn’t want to meet his great-great grandchildren and snuggle them up? Besides that, I can and have studied much about my ancestors.
WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?
What? Drop my Internet fees and let me keep my smartphone with its own access to the net? No brainr.
WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?
With chronic major depression, I feel as though I have already lived a thousand years without fulfillment. I would instantly trade a day of contentment for the life I now know.
WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?
I would choose to be myself. I can’t imagine who else I would rather be. And although I have regrets, I have been coping with them many years by now.
WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
Quality of life outweighs quantity of years lived. I would rather be free of constraint.

My superpower would be to live long enough to meet my great-great grandchildren.
Alias
Posts: 3119
Joined: November 26th, 2011, 8:10 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Terry Pratchett

Re: Would you rather?

Post by Alias »

WanderingGaze22 wrote: September 13th, 2021, 12:44 am 1. Would you rather meet your ancestors or your great-great grandchildren?
Since I never replicated, I can have no genetic descendants. Ancestors, I have, and the ones I know about led interesting lives. No contest.
2. Would you rather be without internet for a month, or without your phone?
Phone, hands down. I work on the computer every day and hardly ever use the phone.
3. Would you rather spend one day feeling content or 100 years being unfulfilled?
You mean one day of contentment and then snuff it? No, thanks. Unfulfilled beats the hell out of dead.
4. Would you rather become someone else or just stay you?
Being someone else for an hour or a day might be fun. Permanently? No frickin' way!
5. Would you rather live free and have a brief lifespan or live longer enslaved, to people ort emotion, money, or pleasure?
Ort? Of course I wouldn't want to be enslaved or imprisoned without hope of escape. Guaranteed a long life, though, I'd be tempted to make lots of escape attempts - you never know....
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities. - Voltaire
LovelyLau
Posts: 28
Joined: March 2nd, 2024, 3:05 am

Re: Would you rather?

Post by LovelyLau »

Great, great grandchildren because it is beautiful to have a child.

Without my phone

One day content.

Be someone else because they would have it easier even someone less beautiful than me

I would live free. I used to be in chains and I did it because I thought for a worthy cause.
But my opinion is death is a beautiful passage and even if you die young yes it is really sad but your life and memories still had value and as long as you feel loved and cared for or it happens so fast you do not feel it yhen there are always people to remember you and carry on your legacy at least for most people.
So it may be incredibly hard for those people but absence makes the heart grow fonder and you can remember your loved one in beautiful ways and keep them close and even though it may difficult for people who go through that I think it is kind of beautiful.
Not everyone has loved ones to remember them
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