The question is whether to lay down your own life or kill someone to preserve it.

The U.S. invading Japan would've involed a LOT of U.S. soldiers dying. And maybe more Japanese, depending on how strongly they resisted, than the atomic bombings anyway (remember, those were just 2 cities, and we're talking about conquering the entire home islands).

I don't think it would be an easy sell to all the families at home if you told them that X% of their husbands and fathers had to die to end the war. Not that the public was informed about The Bomb or given a choice, but yeah.

Pragmatism ain't pretty.

It's not useful if idiots are constantly applying it to things that don't really warrant the label "scandal."

Whenever I hear -gate these days it's a pretty safe assumption it's something that is totally not worth the bother for me to inform myself about enough to realize it's overblown and really doesn't matter.

The people who name these things also have a real low threshhold for what constitutes a "scandal." I swear, half the time I hear about a new one, I couldn't care less, much less get outraged about it.

4 out of 99 is not 10%, it's just over 4%.

Since I phrased the dice bit poorly (although you can tell from the explanation what I was going for), alternately 4 out of 20 is 20%.

Then you immediately roll a 3 ;)

Ah well. At least you died knowing that your odds were marginally better to win big.

It's a thought problem. What information you get out of it is more important than what your individual answer is.

What I was angling for wasn't calculating the two extreme outcomes such that they have an equal value; my point was deciding should you play the game at all. If you're crunching the numbers to try to arrive at a conclusion that logically involves the least risk/most payout, you're kind of missing the point.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say vaccines specifically are. I was just talking about the hypothetical case.

Again, smoking isn't really a communicable disease. I could see being in favor of prohibiting smoking IN PUBLIC just for second-hand smoke reasons, sure. If people want to give themselves cancer in the comfort of their own homes...good on them, I guess?

Idealistically, I am against government interference as well. But there are certain circumstances such as vaccination that really require the compliance of everyone able to do so. I don't like making exceptions either, but you have to.

Would you also be one of the people complaining about the government infringing your rights if you got infected with ebola and they quarantined you? They're infringing on my right to go outside and run around in a crowd of healthy people!

What schools are letting them enroll without their shots?

That's the problem right there.

Call it Mississatheism: The belief that no Mississippi atheists exist ;)

It's not a false dichotomy, it's a historical observation. Civilization started with people gathering into cities.

To reference a common /. idiom, your "right" to not get vaccinated for no valid medical reason ends with my right to not be pointlessly at risk of contracting diseases we could (and did, for a long time) prevent.

I did feel pretty conflicted when people were complaining about being quarantined during the Ebola in the U.S. thing.

My idealistic side said, yeah, technically that's a violation of their rights.
My pragmatic side said, damn straight, that's what ya gotta do to solve the situation.

Well, I could say "if you see one, instantly call the SWAT team to come out with flamethrowers to remove the risk" but I doubt you'd like that answer.

I'd also bet that that would put a lid on the problem pretty damn fast.

Pregnancy is not a communicable disease.