Excellent essay, Smillew. I liked Prasanna's answer that rather than contemplate which button he would push, he chooses to trust his instincts if ever faced with such a choice, which I correlate to I would trust my intuition to determine which choice the universe would ask me to make.

The philosophical thought problem reflects the ethical belief that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, as Spock spoke to Kirk as Spock was dying from the choice he made to save the ship at the end of The Wrath of Kahn.

I understand using that to answer a hypothetical. However, I believe we cannot see all the reasons that things happen and the ripples caused by choices. Perhaps saving the individual will go on to save or better the lives of many more than the few sacrificed now. Who knows?

I firmly believe in soul contracts, which I call improv scripts because of the existence of free will (https://medium.com/illumination-curated/life-is-school-for-the-soul-9b081dbe8453), and that the one aspect of every person's script that we cannot affect is the date of death but that free will, whether exercised by action or inaction, both of the individual and others, affects how we live and how we die, and connecting that to the Japan vs Nigeria aspect of your essay, how others live and die.

As a writing prompt, I once posed this question: “Imagine if you will,” I say in my best distinctive Rod Serling voice, “a world in which we accept that date of death, but not the how, is determined before you are born. How would that ‘truth’ affect you, your thinking or your actions?” Note I did not say imagine awareness of the date — just that the date is set in stone.

I wager you can create an interesting essay from that prompt. I have discussed how my outlook would affect a wide range of belief systems ranging from suicide to abortion to wrongful death litigation. See, e.g., my https://marcus17043.medium.com/my-takeaways-from-news-that-alec-baldwin-charged-with-involuntary-manslaughter-4381d31637