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riveralwaysknew · 5 years

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If you were Steven Moffat and you could write rivers timeline, what would you change? I’m super interested to see if you’d change anything about TWoRS

First of all, I am Steven Moffat.

Second of all, I wouldn’t rewrite her timeline as much as I’d rewrite how much of that timeline we get to see.

Her out of sequence, complex, and chaotic life is a big reason why I love River Song. She was given a hard backstory and yet was never hardened by it.

As much as I love Moff, er, myself, not giving River more screen time was a disservice to her story and to the S6 arc as a whole. It would have added clarity had she been a part of team tardis on a more permanent basis for season 6 rather than just those episodes involving her story arc.

So, let’s use the Wedding of River Song as an example of how limited screen time affected clarity.

1) Context has to be pieced together by the viewer. From episode 1 to episode 13 you’ve got a couple arc stories and many filler episodes. Personally, I love that it’s not mindless television, and that you have to think a little, but it can be a lot of work sometimes! For people who watch casually, the episode on its own can seem ridiculous and confusing. It is often interpreted as River being selfish and overly obsessed with the Doctor to the point of letting the universe die, when it couldn’t be further from the truth if you understand it in context.

First, The Wedding of River Song utilises a young River. It’s not the good ‘ol confident River that we know and love, but baby River who has recently regenerated from Mels and is trying her best not to kill the Doctor again. lol She’s just graduated college where she’s been trying to learn everything she can about her own history and about who the Doctor really is. This is where she starts to understand him. Through stories and research. Is he “the demon” that Kovarian told her about? Or is he the “good man” her parents told her about, the one who saves people?

Archaeology teaches her so much. Not just about him but about her future and what they’ll mean to each other. We see just how deeply she’s researched their life together in the Husbands of River Song, when she brings up their last night, “there are stories about us you know.” To clear up a BIG misconception— River was never trying to find out where the Doctor was! She never stalked him or followed him around like a lovesick puppy. Every time we see them onscreen together it’s because they’ve sent each other a calling card. Space Mail, texted, sent Rory with a personal invite, written on psychic paper, left books, etched coordinates into cliff faces or onto pottery etc. They call on each other.

River never follows the Doctor around. EVER. In fact, the only time she does follow him is not to interact with him but to steal his TARDIS. #yes

Anyway, River graduates and Madam Kovarian puts River back in the suit. But River had changed. Her studies and her experience in Let’s Kill Hitler helped River kick off the conditioning. She was the child of the TARDIS, her parents loved her, the Doctor loved her, and she was not some church’s assassin. She was River Song.

So River hijacks the weapons system and is all, “um. not today!”

YES. It’s a fixed point, but she wants to buy some time.

Why?

Well, the answer to this question isn’t to force the doctor to marry her so he can restart time. She just needs time to find a way out.

“But how can you possibly know all of this!” You all cry.

Because of what transpires off screen (shakes fist!). WE DO NOT GET TO SEE IT and that’s the real tragedy here. This is what I would change! Because it would explain SO MUCH.

What happens offscreen? Well, River and Amy, (but mostly River) have been working on a distress beacon for a months!

Say what?

YEE. It’s been a hella while. So long in fact that they’ve captured Kovarian, held the Silence inside watery thingies, organised an army and planned a rescue mission!

I mean, the Doctor has been chained up in the Tower of London by Winston Churchill for so long that HE HAS A FULL BEARD YO, so it’s been A WHILE.

With all this time to problem solve and experiment, River has realised that the universe cannot sustain the paradox, and that this fixed point cannot be rewritten. And she comes to terms with the reality that she has to kill the Doctor if the universe is to be restored. So what does she do? SHE BUILDS A DISTRESS BEACON. One that transmits a single message, “the doctor is dying, please, please help.”

Ok! so let me get this straight…

KNOWING FULL WELL THAT NO ONE CAN HELP. THAT THE DOCTOR MUST DIE IN ORDER TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE. River builds a distress beacon asking for help? WHAT? W H A T? Why would she do that? If she knows it’s not going to make a difference?

WELL. ONE PURPOSE. But I’ll get to that in a little bit.

THEY FINALLY SEND OUT THE RESCUE MISSION AND RESCUE THE DOCTOR. But why wait so long? They obviously have the capacity to do it at any time.

Simple! 1) THE BEACON NEEDS TO BE COMPLETED 2) IT NEEDS TO TRANSMIT FOR A WHILE & 3) INTERGALLACTIC PEEPS NEED TIME TO RESPOND

By the time The Wedding of River Song begins, all of the above has happened!

HURRAY.

So they go get the fool.

But when the Doctor arrives he’s immediately combative. Time is dying and “HE” NEEDS to fix it. Ate egomaniac. So he did the only thing he knows will start time: touch River. But River’s all like, ‘DUDE CAN YOU WAIT ONE SEC?! LIKE, come on.’ So River has him cuffed. She’s not trying to kill the universe, she just doesn’t want them touching prematurely. He’s pissed because she’s messed up his plan and she’s annoyed af because he won’t put aside his ego for once second and listen to her. Finally they’re at the top of the pyramid and he’s all, “omg what is this? a distress beacon? oooo cool. no wait, i’m angry, this isn’t going to help! i have to die!” and River’s all, “SHUT UP” and FINALLY! HE LISTENS.

This is where it gets good, she doesn’t say, “we can fix it” or “let’s just stay here and live out our lives” or “marry me and we can touch” NOPE, she says

River: Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They’re wrong. They’re aren’t any. It’s not the sun. It’s you. The sky is full of a million million voices, saying, “Yes of course. We’ll help.” You’ve touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think when your time came you’d really have to do more than just ask? You’ve decided that the universe is better off without you. But the universe doesn’t agree.

The Doctor: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.

River: I can’t let you die—

The Doctor: But I have to die!

River: Shut up! I can’t let you without knowing you are loved. By so many and so much. And by no one more than me.

EXQUEEZE ME? That’s a full sentence right there. NOT, “I CANT LET YOU DIE.” But, “I CANT LET YOU DIE WITHOUT KNOWING THAT YOU’RE LOVED. BY SO MANY.”

That’s it. River knows that he has to die, and she knows that she has to be the one to do it. She built a beacon, not to save him, or hold him hostage, or force him to choose her, but to show the Doctor how much the universe loves him. How much she loves him. SO MANY space peeps responded to the beacon that their space ships lit up the sky like stars. How beautiful is that? It’s the opposite of The Big Bang when they all came to kill him.

Anyway – Right after she tells him this, RIGHT AFTER SHE EXPLAINS, she’s like, “OK, I’ll do it bro but it’s gonna hurt me.” She’s ready to do the one thing she doesn’t want to do. Because she loves him, and proceeds to do exactly what the Doctor asks of her.

But the Doctor also has a revelation: He marries River Song.

his face, it’s like the blindfold has been lifted, “this. this is the woman i would marry.” I don’t think he really knew before - as flirty and ‘friendly’ and kissy as they were, I don’t think he knew how much he could love her. Enough to wholeheartedly commit to another person, one he’s already lost. And when she tells him “I’ll suffer more than every living thing combined but I’ll still kill you so the universe can survive,” it’s her strength and her heart that makes him go: “Whoa. Yep. She’s everything.” And he’s done doing it alone. Because he’s not alone. He has always had this beautiful and selfless wife, the whole time. THE WHOLE TIME. and it was about time she knew it. So instead of being the stupid boob he is, he asks for her help. The ‘im going solo cuz im clever’ dude says ‘to hell with me’ for the woman he loves. And finally, without any reservations, marries his wife.

BOOM.

Done. They’re in it together. ALL IN.

It’s a great story. It’s a grand love story. I cry.

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jackednephi · 5 years

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So now that I've had some time to recuperate from a weekend of Doing Things every single day and I'm awake and can focus thanks to meds

Sunday was the last full day my parents were up here. They left 6 am Monday because the drive back to my older brother's was like a solid 12 hours or so and they have doctor appointments they have to attend. They'll visit my younger brother in Utah at some point but whatever. Point is they went to sacrament meeting with me and met a lot of the people I've come to love. They get why I don't want to switch wards unless I have to

As you all know, I'm moving about half an hour away from where I'm living currently in the next few weeks. I could easily switch wards to one closer but I did the math and it's only a few more minutes (five to ten) from my new place to where I currently go to church. There's one that's literally five minutes from my current apartment but I go like 20 minutes out of my way to attend this specific ward. Why?

Well a year ago when I moved up into the area, I decided a fresh start was what I needed. I'd try going to church again and do my best to lift where I stand. I'm physically disabled and unable to drive so I'm stuck at home. I knew I'd need friends and a support system and figured it was high time I got my act together spiritually since I'd handled my queerness, mental health, and disability already. I'd run into the elders unpacking my uhaul and took that as an Answer to my prayers about if I should go back or not. My first week back was fast Sunday and I got up and introduced myself. I made it perfectly clear that I'm queer and struggling

The response I have gotten was radical inclusion, complete acceptance and love. My bishop's son is gay so he has a unique perspective. Everyone just accepts my gender expression even if they don't Get It and nobody says anything when I mentioned having dated various genders when I bring up life examples in lessons. They call me by my chosen name and I consider them my church family. I'm still completely silent about being polyamorous but I'm slowly coming out of my shell and I've experienced nothing but gentle love and complete acceptance

I have NO idea if this would be the case anywhere else and I don't have it in me to risk trying. It's hard enough being called Sister and sitting in relief society where I definitely do not belong. They're little hurts I can endure but I don't think I could do more. It was a struggle with one particular family (who has since moved) calling me my birth name and I was too shy to correct more than a few times or meekly as a joke. Just because even after a year I have no way of knowing who's love and acceptance is conditional upon me being an Acceptable Queer

My mother didn't quite get it until she experienced everyone's warmth for herself. Nobody knew who my parents were, if they were visiting or permanent, and they all warmly introduced themselves and welcomed my parents to the ward the way they had my very first meeting. She saw how much gentleness and acceptance there was to go around and why I'd be loathe to leave such a sweet home. Like the place feels like one of those cozy branches where it's you, two other families, and one set of missionaries. She was impressed that the bishop himself came to greet them within moments of walking in the doors

I forget where I was going with that. I got interrupted partway through. Anyway

Elder Zeller had finally come back from his mission. He'd served in the Fukuoka area where my parents live but they'd never crossed paths. My mother knows the mission president's wife and sent her a message about seeing him in church. It was his first Sunday back and his younger brother's last Sunday before going to the MTC and heading off to the Kobe area mission. So two brothers with Japan missions, me having lived in Japan for six years, and my parents visiting from Japan. All in one sacrament meeting

I'll admit I didn't pay much attention to the younger brother's talk all that much. I'd welcomed Elder Zeller home in Japanese and he was delighted to have someone who could understand him. From what I could tell though the jet lag at least

Anyway he was talking about one sister who had all kinds of hard questions. About why she should worry about something arbitrary like "happiness" when there were hungry children who needed God more. Why he didn't just intervene and take away suffering if he existed. Super concerned for other people and stubborn with her questions until she was finally baptized. Then about a brother who attended every day for two years before getting baptized because he was anxious about the process, most notably speaking at his baptism to others because he had a fear of public speaking. The point was about how we have to take a leap of faith in order to be rewarded blessings and I felt like that was meant for me about continuing to attend regularly

Then he bore his testimony in Japanese. I didn't expect that and started crying because it had been, oh I don't know, seven years? Or so? Since I'd heard Japanese spoken in church. He had greeted us (and I did the greeting back without thinking about it whoops) but I hadn't expected him to Speak speak

It was what you could call a primary testimony. But here I was hearing it in a language I hadn't heard in person in church in years. I started going to an asian market to be less homesick trying desperately to hear anything spoken at all. A language I continue to study and work hard to understand as much as I possibly can. A beautiful, nuanced language I can barely speak anymore for lack of people to practice with

And the meaning was a bit more nuanced than in English. There are words that mean a couple things that he used. One was a word that can me heart, soul, or (spirit) essence depending on context and can be translated differently according to individual translator. Because I knew what this word means, I knew that him saying "I know in my [kokoro] this is true" he was saying all these at once in a way you can't in English. The beauty of his words were indescribable

I ended up bawling my eyes out in the back of the chapel, just a waterfall of snot down my face choked sobs. My poor parents thought something was wrong but it was just so moving. I couldn't tell you what he said exactly but I know what he meant. I know he talked about the truth of the gospel, being grateful for his experiences, and what it meant to him. The spirit of his words were overwhelming

But I also understood the words. And they were so beautiful

I ended up thanking him after service. I'll admit I didn't expect to just lose my mind and end up holding my face just crying my eyes out. But the love was so thick you could have cut the air

It was like he was talking directly to me. I was the only one who could understand him. And the sweet feeling of "this is where I need you to be" was so overwhelming all I could do was sit there and sob and hope I didn't make too much noise and disturb people from his testimony

Anyway that's the thing I wanted to tell you guys about what happened Sunday. My dad gave my husband and I blessings and those were lovely. The comforting hug to be told that I could get through anything so long as I asked was amazing. It was helpful to be told to take my husband to the doctor which has definitely been excellent guidance

But Sunday was lovely and the highlight was the testimony Elder Zeller gave

#long post #text heavy

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somewordsfromtoday · 6 years

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Always

It wasn’t fair, and there would be no further explanation. Unexpected it was: out of nowhere. He would never know the man responsible; no formal claim to the information. It was not something they could give him, the police had said. It was for safety reasons, they had said. He had asked Her family too, but they had remained silent. They cared for him, and whatever information they were privy to, they chose to keep. He could see now that it was for the best. They wanted to make the whole situation easier on him, on everyone. “She is gone”, they had told him, as if his sorrow had not been born from that very fact. She was gone. He knew it, and years later he would thank them for protecting him. He had made a promise to them: he would remember the good, and not the bad.

He had written letters, sent texts, called, anything to feel like she still heard him. It was a peculiar sensation: to write letters that would never be read, and leave voicemails never to be heard. These weren’t the actions of a mad man, at least he didn’t think so. Getting his thoughts out of his head and onto paper was a good thing, after all. Thoughts were harmless on paper. There they could not twist and change as they did in his head. The letters he had sent, to where he did not know. This went on for months before his family had urged him to stop. They encouraged him to move on with his life, and forget all about that which he would not get back. A few months? Was that all the time he was allotted? Sympathy had a short shelf life indeed. He had run out of time, now, as he had run out of time with Her.

It would be thirty-four years come November. Thirty-four years since he had seen Her. Thirty-four years since she had left for what he did not know would be the last time. That final morning lived on, vivid in his mind. The clutter and exhaustion of adult life had eroded his memory, but even an old man’s clouded mind could remember that smile. How such a small person’s expression could fill the room with joy was beyond him. It had been his favorite thing about Her. It had been his favorite thing. There was pure and unsolicited happiness in that smile. It was honest and pure and available to all who were lucky enough to bear witness. He wondered if he might see that smile again, before the end.

He had many such memories, moments that called him back to his time with Her. He often reminisced about their small valley, well outside the metropolitan buzz of downtown Boston. It had been their oasis: a much needed escape from their 8th story flat and the chaos of adult life. They would lay in that valley for hours, enjoying everything about each other. He had marveled at Her appreciation for nature, for life, no matter how small. She would do Her best to help him see their surroundings as She did, pointing out the vividly colored flowers and the funny shaped clouds and everything he had missed while he had been fixated on Her eyes, on Her freckles, on that smile. Truly, he thought, She was a mirror. For everything She looked upon, he saw reflected in Her own radiance. He had never truly noticed the simple cricket until the day She had scolded him for rolling over onto one. She had been so foolishly upset; upset enough to hide that smile, if only for a moment. The mood was short lived however, as he knew Her weakness. A light kiss on Her ear was it all it took to reduce Her to fits of giggling. He had learned this secret early on and it had been one of his favorites. He would never kiss another in that way.

His wife would be back any minute now. Whatever career obligation that had drawn her from her husband’s bedside was to be over by noon. He did not blame her for leaving, in fact he had insisted she go. The same way he had insisted his youngest son proceed with his mission trip that had been planned years in advance. How could he deny the world such altruism? His eldest, a Lieutenant Colonel, had been stationed in South China during the early stages of his father’s illness. It would be a long process, the doctors had said, and to justify putting months upon years of his family’s life on hold, just to mourn by his bedside for an indefinite amount of time, was out of the question. He did not want anyone to miss him, the way he missed Her.

His wife came through the door, tall and elegant. She wore a long pea coat that hinted at a still impressive figure, whose desirable curvature had persisted well past the age of child bearing. She was beautiful still, no one would deny that. Even at the age of 51, she strode through the room with a poise that belonged on the runway, not the cold tile of the Boston Central Hospital. She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and the awkward, unsatisfying half hug that plagues all those wishing to embrace their bed locked loved ones. Her arms reached as far as they could around him without forcing his frail body into an upright position. She leaned in, unnaturally far, an attempt to achieve the same intimate embrace that came so easily when he had been healthy. Too weak to sit upright, and too slow to make use of the complex hospital bed controls, he had no choice but to lay there and reach up for her, as newborns reach for their mothers. He could not do his part to hug her back, but it did not matter. She had walked to his bedside and leaned awkwardly low and done everything she could to create this moment together. He could barely participate in the awkward half hug, it was enough for her. “I love you,” she said, and just as he had so inadequately returned her embrace, he replied “I love you too.”

He held his wife’s hand as they sat and talked. He felt guilty: an old guilt that he had come to terms with long ago. Now, speaking with his wife of twenty-eight years in what was surely one of their last moments together, he felt ashamed that all he could think of was Her. For twenty-eight years he had done all that a loving husband should, but he only ever loved Her. It was not his his wife’s fault, not in the slightest. She had been a caring mother and a passionate partner. She had been a loyal companion and an understanding friend. For twenty-eight years she had done all that could be done to heal him, and he had wished for both their sakes that she had been able to.

Her efforts had not always seemed so futile. He once believed that she would be the one to save him from Her. Their wedding day had been everything a wedding should be. They spared no expense and a formidable crowd of family and friends gathered in the greatest exposition of happiness he’d ever seen. He had stood at the altar, optimistic and radiant, looking every bit his best. He remembered her too, walking down the aisle arm in arm with her father whose stoic demeanor he had come to appreciate. She looked beautiful, she really did, and as she stepped onto the altar he thought to himself that maybe he had found his true soulmate after all. She brushed the veil out of her face and looked up with her beautiful brown eyes. Her eyes had been green.

They would miss him. He knew they would. Although his sons were not there with him, he knew that he was in their thoughts. They were out there, making a difference in the world and living up to the potential their parents had cultivated in them. At his funeral they would be there. At the front of the congregation they would stand tall, for their mother’s sake, and tell the sizeable gathering how they could not have asked for a better father. More tears would be shed at these words and none of the assembled would doubt their authenticity. The truth would die with him, he could be sure of that.

He wondered what his life would have been, with Her there to be a part of it. Would he have been a father, as he was now? Would he have been bound to success as an entrepreneur and family man or would they have run away and left the modern world behind as She had always wanted to? What would he have done with such unalienable happiness? He had found happiness in his current life: his backup plan, but never what he had had with Her. There was no use thinking of what could have been, he had spent years on that already. His father used to tell him that time heals every wound: that given time, all things would right themselves. Such was the optimism of an older generation. His father had known many wounds but this, this was an amputation. He had lost a part of him that he would never again regain. There was no amount of time that would bring Her back.

He had kept his promise, to remember the good and not the bad. He remembered the valley, and not their empty flat. He remembered Her many hellos and not Her abrupt goodbye. He remembered their many travels, and not her moving boxes. He remembered all the times She had said “I love you” and not that final morning, when she had said, “I love him” instead. She had left along with her luggage, her mother’s china set, and their dog. She had taken his happiness. She had taken his future. It is said, in the context of death, that our loved ones never truly leave us. Well what about in the context of life?

Obsession: An idea that had haunted him the better part of his adult life. The sharp distinction between reciprocated and unreciprocated infatuation confused him after all these years. Passion, commitment, love, the idea that one person’s life is linked to that of another: all inclinations that are rendered acceptable or despicable by their mutuality. Love a person who loves you back and well, by all rights that should last for an eternity. However, love someone who will never feel the same, or worse, no longer does, and you’ve got a few short months before the interest is deemed unhealthy. Those who’ve lost love to death are given more time but in the end, life must go on. It never felt right, that the condition of another should dictate the nature of such deeply rooted emotions.

As his wife lay there, head against his chest, her tears soaking through his thin hospital gown, he knew that the time had come. There was nothing the doctors could do to save him. They had offered him a painless death, a merciful euthanasia. He had laughed at the irony. He had known pain all his life. It would not bother him now. A painless death to end a painful life was an ironic thought indeed. He did not wish to end his life, not that way. When he had heard the final diagnosis he had told them not to intervene: to let nature take its course. Ah yes, She had always liked nature.

His wife could do nothing but weep. She took him by his shoulders and shook him frantically, but his body was far away now. She sobbed and begged him to open his eyes. What for? He wondered. He would not need to open them, not to see Her. He wondered if he might see that smile again, at the end, but he did not. In the end, he saw nothing at all.

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heliosfinance · 7 years

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The Ultimate Game of Economics

Have you heard about the ultimate game of economics? Here’s how it goes.

A person – let’s call him proposer – is given a hundred bucks and asked to split the money with a stranger, called responder. The split doesn’t need to be equal. Proposer could split it 50-50 or he could even keep 90 for himself and offer 10 to the stranger. But the condition is that if the responder rejects the offer, none of them get any money.

If you were the responder, at what split ratio would you accept the offer?

50-50? Most people would consider that fair. But is it rational?

What if you didn’t know about the total sum involved in the deal and you’re told only about the amount that proposer offers you? Isn’t it like a free money, something that you found lying on the street. Why would you reject even 5 bucks that way?

But that’s not how humans think. Right?

The knowledge that someone else got a better deal (at our cost) makes us humans feel cheated.

“Not fair,” we cry. “How dare the proposer offer less than 50 to me?”

Some would even argue that the proposer should keep less than 50 for himself and offer more to the responder.

The ultimate Game of economics isn’t something that I have coined myself. Wikipedia mentions –

When carried out between members of a shared social group (e.g., a village, a tribe, a nation, humanity) people offer “fair” (i.e., 50:50) splits, and offers of less than 30% are often rejected.

But how exactly do we define what’s fair? Here’s another hypothetical situation. I have taken this example from Prof. Sanjay Bakshi’s post –

You are in charge of running a retail store and one of your cashiers, an elderly woman, is caught committing a minor embezzlement. Fearing that she might be dismissed, she approaches you to plead forgiveness. She tells you that this is the first time she embezzled money from the company and promises that she’ll never do it again. She tells you about her sad situation, namely that her husband is very ill and that she was going to use the money to buy medicines for him. She becomes extremely emotional and your heart is melting. What do you do?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s an open-ended question and how you think about it is more important than what you decide to do in the end. Prof Bakshi writes –

The possible actions are: (1) She is lying and you fire her (good outcome – because it cures the problem and sends the right signals); (2) She is telling the truth and you fire her (bad outcome for her but good outcome for system integrity); (3) She is lying and you pardon her (bad outcome for system integrity); and (4) She is telling the truth and you pardon her (bad outcome for system integrity because it will send the wrong signal that it’s ok to embezzle once).

What’s fair to the elderly lady may not necessarily be fair to the larger system or the society. Prof Bakshi has termed this mental model as the “law of higher good.” So one way to solve this problem is to make a decision based on what’s good for the larger group of people i.e. the people in the organization. Of course, this course of action assumes that your decision will lead to a good outcome for the larger system, which again may not be true.

Devdutt Pattanaik, a medical doctor turned mythologist, in his book How To Take Decisions, writes –

At the time of action, our decision is based on a set of assumptions. The assumptions may be wrong. Leaders have to constantly deal with uncertainty, give hope to the people even when nothing is clear. Decisions become good or bad in hindsight. We would like to believe that a decision is rational. More often than not, decisions are rationalized.

Now the question of fairness leads us to a bigger and even more interesting conundrum. It’s about morality.

For centuries, the trolley problem has troubled the philosophers.

A trolley with no brakes is cruising at a dangerous speed on its track. Few hundred meters down the same track five people are working, unaware of the oncoming trolley. Fortunately, you are sitting in the control room and can see the precarious situation. You can save those five lives by pulling a lever which will send the trolley on a different track. But doing so will ensure the death of another guy who is working alone the second track. Should you kill the one to save five?

Most people say, that they would pull the lever and save five lives at the cost of one. Fair enough. But here’s a little twist in the tale. Now imagine you’re standing on a footbridge above the track and can see the trolley hurtling towards those five people. There’s a fat man standing next to you, and you know that his weight would be enough to stop the trolley. Would you push that fat guy while the trolley is passing through the footbridge? Effectively, it’s the same situation. Just that, now you have to push a guy instead of pulling a lever.

A real moral dilemma. Isn’t it? There’s even a book on this particular problem called Would You Kill the Fat Man?

Now you might think that it’s a purely hypothetical question which armchair philosophers have created for their own amusement. Not really. This problem is perhaps giving sleepless nights to Elon Musk these days.

Imagine you’re out on a long drive in your brand new self-driving car. A Tesla maybe. The car is gliding on a deserted mountain road. All of a sudden, a group of cyclists appear from nowhere. The car-software, supposedly powered by an advanced artificial intelligence, does a few million complex calculations in a couple of microseconds and determines that collision is inevitable unless the car takes a sharp turn towards the right and plunges several hundred feet down the hill, killing the passenger. What would the car do?

It’ll probably depend on how Mr. Musk chose to address the trolley problem. Or maybe it’ll boil down to a much simpler problem i.e. what version of the software have you bought for your autonomous car. Is it the cheaper altruistic version? Or is it the selfish one for which you had to pay an exorbitant price?

We started this discussion with the ultimate game of economics and then drifted off to the subjects of fairness and morality. How’s all this related to investing?

Let’s say you spend months together in researching a stock. You read all the annual reports of the past year, you crunch the numbers, you attend the AGM and study the conference call transcripts diligently. After all this hard work you decide to invest in the business only to find out a few months later that the stock crashes because of a change in certain government regulation which negatively impacted the businesses. Is it fair?

In this situation, if you harp on the question of fairness you may lose more money as the stock continues its downward journey while you are shaking your head in utter disbelief and crying, “It’s not fair.”

Peter Lynch said, “In this business, if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.”

That’s why you need diversification. If you have 15-20 stocks in your portfolio, you don’t need to make money on each of them. In investing, you don’t have to make the money the same way you lost it.

Extending the “law of higher good” mental model in this scenario would mean ensuring a positive outcome at the portfolio level and not getting disheartened about few losers.

Let’s talk about morality and investing.

Should you invest in a business that manufactures tobacco products? How about investing in a company that sells alcohol? These products are harmful to the society so isn’t it unethical to promote these businesses? But scientists have proved that even sugar is very harmful too. Should you then reject the businesses that use sugar in their products? If yes, then you’ll have to filter out almost all the businesses selling packaged foods.

It’s a very difficult question. And the answer is very subjective. Call it the investing version of the trolley problem. By the way, if you haven’t watched Harvard Professor Michale Sandel’s lecture – Moral Side of the Murder – you must watch it as soon as you’re done reading this post.

Coming back to the proposer-responder game, it’s not just the ultimate game of economics but the ultimate game of life. How should one deal with seemingly unfair situations in life? Should we fight for our fair share? Or we should move on?

Image Source: Dilbert.com

My intention in this discussion is to nudge you to think about these paradoxes of fairness and morality in the context of your own life and the decision that you’ve made or are going to make in future.

And while you do that let me go and find that scientist who would like to play the ultimate game of economics with me. It would be a good opportunity to make few easy bucks.

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