Hypothetical situations are just what the name implies, situations that are hypothetical. But, there is a little more to it than that. These situations work for so many different things and areas that it is unlikely you will go through life without coming across one.
They come up in job interviews, ('how would you handle this situation' questions), they come up in philosophy ('imagine you have two people one who does good to do good and the other who does good to get something out of it, are they both equally good people?'), and everyday life ('what will I do if it rains tomorrow?'). There are variety of uses and occurrences makes them important.
But they are also pretty fun. They allow you to try and figure out how you would handle a particular situation before it occurs or it allows you to just have fun thinking about something that might never happen.
Below are examples that were interesting to answer, but not likely to happen in real life.
1) Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted, just for the sake of it? (knowing nothing more about the history of the house than that) There is no electricity though there is running water and other utilities, and you can bring your own flashlight and/or lantern and such. The nearest neighbors live 5 miles away.
No, I'm not an idiot and I have seen a lot of horror movies that start just like this. I might be on the fence about the existence of ghosts, and I may not think of them as the vicious entities portrayed in movies, but I am not about to take that chance. I don't want my obituary reading like one of those stereotypical, naive girls in horror movies who goes to shower after hearing a noise or decides to stay in the house even after they have been shoved down a flight of stairs.
2) Would you accept $10,000,000 in U.S. dollars (or the equivalent in whatever currency) to leave your country and never set foot in it again?
Of course. For that much money, I would go to England and never set foot in Canada, or anywhere else in North America, for that matter. If my family wants to visit me, I could fly them to me. Or I will buy a cruise ship and just sail to them, but not leave the boat.
3) If you knew of a way to use your estate, following your death, to greatly benefit all of humanity, would you do it and leave only a minimal amount (10%) to your family?
Assuming that I actually had an estate worth leaving, I would leave it to benefit humanity. My family would still get something and, assuming that what I left did greatly benefit society, then it would benefit my family as well.
4) Would you rather be given $10,000 for your own use, or be able to give $1000 anonymously to 100 strangers? You can't pick who it's given to, though you know that all of the people could really use the money.
I would rather get $10,000 for my own use. Then, I would have the opportunity to give it to people I knew needed it. It might not be as much but who knows what kind of people are in the group of 100. What if they would use the money for drugs? What if they would use the money to buy weapons? What if it would further a gambling habit while the person's family was at home starving? Meanwhile, if I get the money I could give it to people I know who are struggling to pay for school or to people I know who could use it and would use it for a good cause.
5) You 'somehow' know for certain that you will die of an incurable disease within three months. Would you allow yourself to be cryogenically frozen *within the week* if you knew it would give you a modest chance of being revived in 1,000 years and living a greatly extended life?
No way. I mean, I am not going to give up the small amount of time I have left with my friends and family for a slight chance that in 1,000 years I will wake up and have an extended life. What if I wake up and there is no cure? Or if there is a cure, I walk outside and am hit by a flying car? It would make it pointless. I would rather stay and spend my last three months with my friends and family.
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