Dear friends,
I am conducting a research out of personal interests and curiosity. I am wondering if you can please help me by just answering the two questions below. When I have enough a sample of answers, I guarantee you that I will inform you of the results derived from this study.
Should you have any question related to this questionnaire, please feel free to ask me.
Thanking you in anticipation.TrienPS. Have a nice weekend.
Scenario 1You are now twenty years old and in a fatally critical condition. You are still very eager for life. With the traditional medical treatments, you only have a few moments to live. Luckily, the latest technology can “extend” your life by keeping your brain alive in a special compartment filled with nutrition. Your brain will be connected with a super computer which can provide you with all the feelings, sensations, and awareness that you perceive through your five senses. Moreover, the computer can even adjust your “perceptions” to different levels of happiness. The adjusted perceptions can depend on the treatments. For example, some advanced and powerful computers can make you feel “happy” overall, but some less advanced computers can only make you feel “normal”.You now have to choose one treatment out of two. These treatments are not failure-proof, but on the contrary, they both are very risky. For convenience of the argument, let’s call them treatment A and treatment B. The chances for the treatment A to be successful are 20 out of 1,000,000. The chances for the treatment B to be successful are 19 out of 1,000,000. But when the treatment A is successful, it can keep you “alive” for 10 years with an overall “Happy” status. When the treatment B is successful, it can keep you alive for 20 years with an overall “Happy” status. The two treatments can be summarised as follows.Treatment AProbability for successYears to live if successfulStatus20 / 1,000,00010Very Happy
Treatment BProbability for successYears to live if successfulStatus19 / 1,000,00020Very Happy
Which treatment will you choose?
Scenario 2You are now twenty years old and in a fatally critical condition. Now think of another scenario. You are twenty years old and in the same fatally critical condition, you are still very eager for life. This time, science and technology can deal with this particular sickness very well. It can offer fairly safe treatments with high success rates. You are given two different options. The treatment A is failure-proof (with probability for success being 1), but it can help you to “live” for 10 years with an overall “Normal” status. The treatment B involves some risks: its probability to be successful is 95% (in other words, there are 5% of chances the treatment fails.) But when it succeeds, it can help you live for 20 years with an overall “Happy” status.Treatment AProbability for successYears to live if successfulStatus100/10010Happy
Treatment BProbability for successYears to live if successfulStatus95/10020Very Happy
Which treatment will you choose?