oh.... would I sacrifice someone to save others... No, I'm not god. ( had to throw that last part in highway )

And wanting to die a hero isn't?

its not heroics, its called valuing human life.

If it was just about valuing life, it wouldn't matter if it were you or somebody else.

Have you ever heard of ethical egoism?

but to make such a decision over that person's life, to assume that such a decision is your own to make, also seems a bit off to me.

no i haven't, can you explain it to me?

I thought this was all assuming that the person would know that their giving up their life.

Anyway, for the egoism thing, it's related to the notion that there are no (completely) selfless good deeds. You wouldn't do something nice for someone else for absolutely no reward, even if the reward is feeling good about yourself.

Edit: I just checked wikipedia, and apparently I was confusing ethical egoism with psychological egoism. Sorry about that.

without bigging myself up here, i have a story for you.. i gave up my chance to go to university so that i could lend my mum £700 a few months ago so she could pay the rent.. because she kept dipping into the rent money to buy herself cigarettes and clothes. then i decided to work really hard so i COULD go to uni, i had to get a summer job and i had to go extend my overdraft and take out a credit card to ensure that i was able to go, and now im in shitloads of debt and i don't feel good about myself, because i worry about my financial situation and my mum still smokes and hasn't paid back anything yet and still spends money like its free. so there have been absolutely no rewards for me out of this whole thing.

so believe it or not, there ARE people out there who do selfless acts.

yes

Edit: why you ask?

the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one 

To the best of my knowledge, you never give orders to that effect if the person in question will certainly die, because dying tends to mean failure, particularly for fire men.

Actually, while I'm on that, even if we just look at the exchange of lives as another form of economic expression, then sending a fireman to die in order to save ten does not make sense, becaus he can save dozens more throughout the years if he continues his career. The greatest good a public servant can do is to continue living and to continue saving lives, but their own lives do have to be preserved.

More, can we try to weigh the value of human life, trying to say that some lives musut be worth more than others, if only through numbers? How about through potential good done? How about actions up to that point in time? By assigning value to life, are we not cheapening it, making it smaller than it is, trying to rid ourselves of tragedy by quantifying what should or should not be done in any given situation? I reject this. I have neither the moral fortitude nor the clarity of vision to claim that I would be able to balance the scales.

I used to go into some of the most scary situations without hesitation (and scared as hell too!) for $14 an hour. Several times, I thought to myself ,"Oh well. This is how I die". And then, I went and did whatever I was supposed to do.

I always wanted a heroic death.

If there was a hostage situation, and the gunman said "I'll let 10 of you go, if one of you sacrifices himself", I think I'd do it.......but first, he'd have to let me have sex with the hottest woman there (and she'd have to be pretty hot!). I have a kid, though. A lot of my recklessness is gone. Still, I'd like to think I'd do it.