2. Think of someone who is your friend (do not select your best friend, but make sure the person is someone you would classify as “considerably more then an acquaintance”). This friend is going to be attacked by a grizzly bear. Now this person will survive the attack; that is guaranteed. There is a 100 percent chance that your friend will live. However, the extent of his injuries is unknown; he might receive nothing but a few superficial scratches, but he also might lose a limb (or multiple limbs). He might recover completely in twenty-four hours with nothing but a great story, or he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Somehow you have the ability to stop this attack from happening. You can magically save your friend from the bear. But his (or her) salvation will come at a peculiar price: if you choose to stop the bear, it will always rain. For the rest of your life, wherever you go, it will be raining. Sometimes it will pour and sometimes it will drizzle — but it will never not be raining. But it won’t rain over the totality of the earth, nor will the hydrological cycle be disrupted; these storm clouds will be isolated, and they will focus entirely on your specific where-abouts. You will also never see the sun again. Do you stop the bear, accepting the lifetime of rain?
Alright, this one is just preposterous. Those weird little rainclouds that follow you and only you only happen in cartoons. I don’t think there’s anyway to program the weather to act a certain way by a certain person. I mean, I guess it might be possible if you were carrying around a rain-making machine, or a GPS tied to a weather machine or something like that, but really? I call bull.
And in all honesty, I really don’t know how to answer that question. I would hate to see any of my friends permanently scarred by a bear attack, but that rain would seriously get annoying after a while. I suppose the honorable answer would be to say that of course I’d take the rain (a minor nuisance in comparison to a bear attack) to save my friend. But, come on people, level with me — would you really? This is another one of those selfishness v. selflessness moments (see Question #1).
If it were a week or a month or some set amount of time of rain versus a bear attack, or my friend getting majorly attacked versus me being minorly attacked, then I’d probably say bring it. But, honestly, a lifetime of rain? Blah.
Angela Marie Stefano 