Technology has become a part of us. Would you rather lose the use of all motorized vehicles, all telecommunication devices and computers, or one of your hands?
What would you do if your 6-year-old daughter’s favorite toy, a talking doll, started trying to convince her that she needed a new friend—the next doll in the company’s line?
If you had to be obsessed with money, sex, sports, religion, or food, which one would you choose?
Ignoring all financial considerations, would you rather spend the next 5 years confined to an urban mecca like New York City, or a beautiful, isolated town on the California coast?
Would you rather watch an Olympics that outlawed performance-enhancing drugs or one that embraced them and let athletes use medical pit crews to jack up their performances?
How would you react if you learned that a sad and beautiful poem that touched you deeply had been written by a computer?
What is the most serious law you’ve broken doing something you thought was morally right, wouldn’t hurt anyone, or was no one’s business but yours? How bad would the punishment have been if you’d been caught and given the maximum sentence?
If you could anonymously and safely destroy any one person’s reputation online through various postings, would you? If so, who and why?
On a typical Sunday, 10,000 people visit the Louvre in Paris. If a wicked sorcerer threatened to vaporize all the museum’s visitors or all of its art, sparing one or the other based on your plea, which would you save? Assume the sorcerer will obliterate both the people and the art if you don’t choose.
If your heart were damaged beyond repair, but you could regain your health for a few more years by getting a heart transplant from a genetically engineered pig, would you?
Would you like there to be a law requiring the police to archive video footage of everything they do while on duty?
For $100,000, would you put on 40 pounds and keep it on for 3 years? How much money, if any, would induce you to put on 100 pounds for at least a year?
If it were the only way you could remain with the love of your life, would you be willing for both of you to wake up tomorrow as native speakers of an unfamiliar foreign language, knowing that within a week you’d permanently forget the languages you now speak and largely be cut off from your friends and culture? If so, what new language would you want to speak, and why?
If the person you were engaged to was in a car crash and became a paraplegic, would you back out of the marriage? If not, what if they became a quadriplegic?
Would you like to be famous? If so, for what? What if you knew it meant that within a few years you’d lose all your current friends and never develop new relationships that were as meaningful?
If women were just fundamentally smarter and harder working than men, would you support putting rules in place to ensure that men would share equally in the best jobs and fill half the slots at the best schools? If so, how would you explain the fairness of this to a smart, dedicated woman displaced by a less-qualified man?
If, without being detected, you could spy electronically for the next month and watch anyone, anywhere, anytime like a fly on a wall, would you? If so, who would you watch and how closely? If not, why not?
If your mother and father told you that they never really loved or even liked you, and you knew it was absolutely true, how would it affect your life? What if you simply overheard them saying this to someone else?
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about any one thing about yourself, life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know, and why?
If ads could be tailored so effectively to your personal desires and concerns that they’d be nearly irresistible, would you want to ban them? Would you buy special high-tech sunglasses that screened out billboards and other advertising to leave a pristine visual landscape?
If evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe were discovered, would it alter your core beliefs or sense of self?
If you could legally pay whatever income tax you wanted, what fraction of your earnings would you give the government? If you knew that everyone would have to pay that exact same fraction of their incomes, would you choose any differently?
To be financially secure, do you work harder at anticipating risks so you can avoid them, or at building a cushion so you can withstand the unexpected? Which do you think might work better and why?
Would you completely rewrite your child’s college application essays if it would help them get into a better school?
Would you like to have a high-definition nude image of yourself in your physical prime? If not, do you think you might someday wish you could see one?
You meet someone at a party and absolutely know that if you talk to him, he’ll make you tens of millions of dollars, but after 2 years you’ll go bankrupt and have to scramble to get back on your feet. Would you start the conversation? Assume that if you do, your knowledge of what’s in store for you will vanish.
Would you like to be truly brilliant—more intelligent than 99.9 percent of the population? If so, would it matter if being that smart would virtually eliminate your sense of humor about the things that amuse most people?
A large crew is being chosen for an interstellar journey to a distant planet containing the first known extraterrestrial life. The expedition won’t return for a century, but the crew will be in suspended animation and age only a few years during the trip. Would you be interested? If not, what, if anything, would change your mind?
Would you steal money from someone wealthy if you could get away with it and thought it was the only way to support your family?
What do you feel more often: gratitude or envy? What are you most grateful for?
If you were locked in a time machine set for a single one-way trip to the past or future and had 10 minutes to dial in the time and place, when and where would you go? Why? What if it were to be a round trip that would include any family and friends you wanted to bring along and safely return everyone in a week?
If a country hit the U.S. with a nuclear bomb, would you favor unleashing our nuclear arsenal upon them?
Would you want to spend a week as someone of the opposite sex? someone very old? very beautiful? very ugly? or severely handicapped? If so, which one would most intrigue you?
If all online interactions and Web browsing had to be under your real name and would be recorded and archived, how would it alter your use of the Internet and the way you communicate with people?
Would you like your partner to be much smarter and much more attractive than you? If so, what is it about you that might hold his or her interest and love?
If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? What good might come out of telling them now?
You’re on an airplane talking pleasantly to a stranger of average appearance. Unexpectedly, the person offers you $30,000 for one night of sex. If you knew there were no danger and you’d get the money, would you do it? If the payment were meaningfully raised or lowered, at what point would you change your answer?
For $30,000 would you go for 2 months without washing, brushing your teeth, shampooing, or even using deodorant? Assume you can’t tell anyone why.
If a new medicine would cure arthritis but kill 1 out of 100 people who took it, would you want it to be legal? What about a vaccine that would kill 1 in 20, but keep the others from getting cancer?
You discover that, because of a mix-up at the hospital, your wonderful 2-year-old is not actually yours. Would you want to switch kids to try to correct the mistake? Assume you’d have no further contact with the child you gave up.
If you knew it would completely estrange you from your friends and family,would you follow your heart and marry a person you loved?
Do you think the world will be a better or a worse place 100 years from now? Do you see our present world as a better place than the world of a century ago? How so?
Which sex has it easier in our culture? Have you ever wished you were the opposite sex?
Amnesia comes in two forms: one in which you lose your memory of past events, another in which you no longer form new memories. If you took a bad fall and were to suffer one or the other, which would be worse?
If you could kill people simply by imagining their deaths and saying the word “good-bye,” would you use the power? Assume they’d die a natural death and no one would suspect you.
Would you be happier with more control over what happens in your life or more control over your response to what happens? How could you gain more such control?
Do you think that high-tech goggles that let you “see through” people’s clothing should be banned? How much would you pay for glasses that rendered people naked?
Would you rather be very successful professionally with only a tolerable private life, or have a great private life but an uninspiring professional one?
What is the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done? Do you look back on it more with pleasure or regret?
If it would have no negative impact on people’s health, would you render everyone in the world sterile except during months in which they took a cheap, readily available “fertility” pill? How much do you think birth rates would drop if conceiving a child required such a deliberate act?
If you could gain any one ability or quality you admire in someone else, what would you choose? Do you think you could develop that ability or quality just by working at it?
While walking in the park, you see a stranger and realize with absolute certainty that if you go over and introduce yourself, the two of you will fall in love more deeply than you even imagine possible. But you also know that in 6 months the person will be hit by a bus and killed. Would you go over to the person or leave? Assume you know that once you decide, you’ll forget what lies ahead.
If you could use a voodoo doll to hurt whoever you wished, would you use it on anyone? If so, who?
If someone threw a party for you and invited everyone who ever mattered to you, who would you be most excited about seeing? most anxious about? Why?
While on a trip, your spouse (or lover) spends a night with a stranger. If you knew they’d never meet again and you wouldn’t otherwise find out about it, would you want your partner to tell you? If roles were reversed, would you confess what you’d done?
Have your character and humanity been forged more by pleasure and success or by pain and disappointment?
If you had to either change professions or move to another part of the country, which would you prefer? What new career or location first comes to mind?
Are there people you envy so much that you’d actually want to trade lives with them? If so, who?
For an all-expenses-paid, one-week vacation anywhere in the world, would you be willing to tear the wings off a beautiful butterfly? If so, would you be troubled enough to enjoy your trip any less? What about stepping on a cockroach?
Does a beautiful creature merit more compassion than an ugly one? If so, why? Do you injure yourself psychologically by destroying something you find beautiful? Is there a meaningful difference between pulling the wings off an insect and stepping on it? How much would it take to induce you to rip the wings off a hummingbird or dove?
If you wanted to take a new and uncertain path in your life, but your friends really didn’t want you to, would you go ahead against their wishes if you thought it was right for you?
If you were a role model to millions of children who closely followed you and your life choices, how would you change your behavior? What if only your own kids were noticing you and being affected?
Would you be willing to murder an innocent child to end hunger in the world? If so, what if the child had to be yours?
If God appeared to you in a series of vivid and moving dreams and told you to leave everything behind, travel alone to the Sea of Galilee, and become a fisherman, would you?
If you could have free, unlimited service for 5 years from an extremely good cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, masseuse, or personal secretary, which would you choose?
If a very close friend learned she had incurable cancer and only 6 months to live, would you withdraw or try to spend more time with her?
What is your greatest accomplishment? Has it meant as much to you as you thought it would? Is there anything you hope to do that would be even better?
If your family lived in a low-lying area like New Orleans or Miami Beach, how might it change any of your lives if you knew global warming would raise sea levels a foot each century and submerge the entire place in a few hundred years?
Would you give up half of what you own for a pill that would permanently alter you so that sleeping an hour a day would fully refresh you without side effects?
If you knew that devoting yourself to an all-consuming occupation—music, writing, acting, business, politics, or medicine—for 20 years would make you one of the best in the world at it, would you? If so, which would you choose?
What was your best experience with drugs or alcohol? your worst?
Would you want to implant a rice grain–sized computer chip in your fingertip to enable you to throw away your credit cards and keys, and use a simple hand wave to make a purchase and unlock doors?
What could someone figure out about you by the friends you’ve chosen?
Would you have one of your fingers removed surgically if it somehow guaranteed you immunity from all major diseases?
If we lived for centuries and even very old people were healthy and youthful, would you rather have a partner who was old enough to be world-wise and experienced, or someone younger and more naïve who was seeing most things for the first time? Why?
If the government could use a mix of cameras, implanted sensors, and automated surveillance devices to follow every move of a paroled criminal indefinitely to prevent future wrongdoing, would you want to require this of convicted felons after their release? If so, for how long would you want to take away their privacy, and what limits would you place on their activities? If not, why not?
If you lived in a neighborhood where crime was commonplace and police were slow to respond, would you buy a gun?
If you discovered that when you were conceived, you were one of five identical embryos and have four living identical twins, would you be more intrigued or distressed? Would you want to meet your siblings?
Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire; after saving your family and pets, you have time for a final dash to save something of yours. What would it be?
What is the most violent physical clash you’ve had with someone in recent years? Who came out ahead?
How would you react if you were to learn that your mate’s previous lover wasn’t the same sex as you?
If you had the power to go any distance into the future and return a year later with whatever knowledge you could obtain during your visit, would you? What would be the most valuable things to find out? What might they be worth to you?
You are offered $5 million to play a variant of Russian roulette: Before you are 10 pistols, 1 loaded. You must pick a pistol, point it at your forehead, and pull the trigger. If you walk away, you do so a multimillionaire. Would you take the shot?
Would you rather play a game with someone less or more skilled than you? Would your answer be different if others were watching?
If your mother were in pain, bedridden, and a few weeks from death, and she begged you to give her poison so she could take her own life, would you find a way to get it for her?
If what you owned had no bearing on what people thought of you, would you spend your money differently?
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as your dinner guest? your friend? your lover? What do you seek in a friend that you don’t expect from a lover?
Since being deprived of the Internet would be viewed by many as a serious punishment, do you think it is right to give Internet access to those in prison who are ostensibly being punished for a serious crime they’ve committed?
How often do you step back and reflect on where you are headed? Would less or more self-reflection be good for you?
Some concierge health-care businesses will, for one up-front fee, guarantee free, world-class medical care for any future medical issues you face. How much of what you now own would you give up for such security?
If you walked out your door one morning and saw a bird with a broken wing huddled in a bush, what would you do? Why?
Terrorists send the president a message saying that unless he gives them $25 billion, they’ll detonate a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. What should the president do? What would you do?
Would you be willing to give up sex for a year if you knew it would give you a much deeper sense of peace than you have now?
Would you add a decade to your life if it meant taking a decade from the life of some random person? If so, would you still do it if you had to become friends with (and stay in touch with) the person?
A good friend pulls off a well-conceived practical joke, as only someone who really knows you could, and makes you look completely ridiculous. How would you react? Would it matter if you knew that they pulled the prank to make you see a side of yourself that you were blind to?
Do you feel comfortable going to dinner or movies alone? Would you rather be by yourself in such a situation or with someone you only marginally enjoy?
If you knew you could direct medical research funds so as to find a cure for one specific disease within 15 years, but make little progress on any others, would you target a single disease? If so, which one and why?
If your best friend fell head over heels in love with someone you thought was deceptive and creepy, and you could use an anonymous service to get the lowdown on his or her credit, medical, and employment history; school records; parking tickets; politics; bank records; and Facebook postings, would you? If so, what kind of discovery would it take before you’d intervene to protect your friend?
If you knew you were destined never to achieve anything of real importance, how would it change your goals and attitudes? What if you knew you were destined for great things but didn’t know what?
If your parents became infirm and you had to either bring them into your home or put them in a nursing home, which would you do? What about any siblings of yours who were unable to care for themselves?
If a technological breakthrough could enable people to travel as quickly and cheaply across the world as they now do between adjacent cities, but at the price of 500,000 deaths a year, would you want the technology developed?
If you were sentenced to hear one of the following all morning, every morning for the next year, which would be worst: a baby crying, someone screaming, someone cursing drunkenly, or the song “It’s a Small World” played over and over and over again?
You and someone you love deeply are placed in separate rooms, each with a button next to you. You each know that you both will be killed unless one of you presses your button in the next 60 minutes. You also know that the first to hit the button will save the other, but immediately die. What would you do?
If you could travel into the past but not return, would you? Where would you go and what would you try to do if your goal was to reshape history?
Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80?
When has your life changed dramatically as the result of some seemingly random influence or occurrence?
If you could work half as much as you do now and keep the same pay, or work just as hard as you do now and get twice the pay, which would you choose?
While arguing with you on the phone, a close friend gets angry and hangs up. If he or she does not call back, would you call them? If so, how long would you wait?
Have you ever “borrowed” money (or anything else) from family or friends and not returned it? If so, why? Who has done this to you, and what were the consequences?
For extraordinary wealth, would you be willing to have terrifying nightmares every night for a year?
Would you be willing to go to a slaughterhouse and kill a cow? Do you eat meat?
Would you want to record everything you hear or see 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year in, year out?
If you could let someone know your every thought and feel your every feeling for a week, who, if anyone, would you be willing to open up to so completely? Do you think they’d like you less or more at the end of the week?
Would you enjoy a month of solitude, all alone in an isolated, beautiful natural setting with food and shelter provided?
After a medical examination, your doctor calls and says you have a rare lymphatic cancer and only a month to live. A week later, she informs you that the lab test was wrong and you’re perfectly healthy. Do you think the insights from having to face death this way would be worth the pain?
One hot, sunny afternoon, you are crossing the parking lot of a large shopping center and see a dog locked in a car, suffering from the heat. Would you do anything about it? If so, what?
If it would greatly reduce crime in your community, would you be willing to have continuous video monitoring of all roads, walkways, parks, and other public spaces?
If you could end cigarette smoking by releasing a pathogen that would kill every tobacco plant in the world, would you? What—if anything—about doing this would most trouble you?
If you knew that in a year you would die of a heart attack, how would you alter your life?
If people routinely used tiny point-of-view cameras to record precisely what they saw and heard, what slices of life would you watch? Assume that countless dramatic videos of first-person experiences of everything from battles to crimes, sports, and sex would be readily available on the Internet.
Would you accept $2 million to leave the country and never set foot in it again? What would be the minimum amount to seriously tempt you to take this step?
Child pornography carries heavy penalties. Should virtual child pornography involving consenting adults and lifelike computer-generated images, but no actual children, carry such penalties, too? If so, why?
When you recount something that has happened to you, do you typically exaggerate and embellish? If so, why?
How would it affect your life if you knew for certain that 500 years from now humanity would be thriving in an inspiring, amazing way? What if instead you knew human civilization would be gone, destroyed by global war or environmental disaster?
Is it hard for you to ask for help? If so, what about it bothers you the most?
You’re raising money for a charity and someone agrees to make a large contribution if you perform alone in front of a thousand people at an upcoming fund-raiser. Would you agree? If so, how big a donation, if any, would you require, and what sort of act would you perform?
What would your funeral be like if you died tomorrow? Who would want to speak, and what would they say about you if they were being honest?
A movement to reduce political corruption maintains that the only way to keep politicians even close to honest is to require them to always wear tiny video bugs that record their every interaction and to post them all online. Would you support such monitoring of key elected officials?
You, your closest friend, and your father are on vacation together, hiking near a remote lake. Your companions stumble upon a nest of poisonous snakes and are badly bitten. You know neither will live without an immediate, full dose of antivenom, yet you have only one dose. What would you do?
If your child were to be boring, stupid, or ugly, which one would you prefer? Would your choice depend on the child’s gender?
If you could place yourself anywhere on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is having security and comfort and goals within easy reach, and 10 is taking risks, struggling, and reaching for great achievement, what number would you like to be at, and why? Where are you now?
Do you work harder to earn praise and recognition or to avoid criticism?
Would you be willing to undergo a relatively safe surgery to implant a permanent cardiac monitor that would detect the telltale signs of an impending heart attack and summon medical help before it occurred?
If you worked for the government and found that the president was committing serious crimes to bring about positive things you both believed in, would you try to expose the crimes? If so, what if you knew your reputation would be destroyed in the process?
What would you do if you were approached on a busy street by a well-dressed stranger who said he’d lost his wallet and asked apologetically if you could give him $9.85 to buy a train ticket?
If you could live to the age of 100 having either the body or the mind of a 25-year-old for the rest of your life, which would you prefer? What if you could keep your body or mind only as it is now?
Do you strive more for security, accomplishment, success, love, power, or excitement?
Given one shot at a 50-50 bet that pays 10 times your wager if you win, how much would you risk? What if your chances of winning were 90 percent and the payoff were still tenfold?
What are your two most compulsive habits? Do you struggle to break them? If so, what would it feel like to accept them and give up on trying to change?
If you had to conduct all electronic communication with your friends and colleagues using only one of the following—phone, text, email, or social media—which would you choose and how do you think it would change your relationships?
If you could release viruses engineered to extinguish any three species you wished, what animals or plants would you get rid of? Are there any you’d like to wave good-bye to but wouldn’t because of environmental or other concerns?
What would you do if you found out that your closest friend was a heroin dealer?
You are driving late at night in a safe but deserted neighborhood, and a dog darts in front of your car. You slam on the brakes, but still hit the animal. Would you stop to help?
Viagra was just the beginning. If there were two new drugs, one to raise your sex drive for 24 hours, the other to lower it, do you think you’d use either of them regularly—for example, increasing your sex drive for recreation and lowering it if you had work to do?
If by sacrificing your life you could contribute so much to humanity that you’d be honored everywhere, would you? If so, what if you knew your sacrifice would go unrecognized, and the credit would go to someone you detested?
If you could earn the same pay no matter what job you did, would you pursue another profession? If so, what would you choose, and why?
Does the fact that you’ve never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
A psychotic online stalker fixates on you and mounts a relentless assault to ruin you through threatening emails, public postings with horrible accusations, and vile notes to your family, friends, and acquaintances. The authorities can do nothing, and everything else has failed to help. Only two options remain: learn to live with it, or pay a large sum to someone who will discreetly find and kill the person. Which would you choose?
How close and loving is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most people’s?
Would you be willing to give up sex for 5 years if you could have wonderful erotic dreams every night?
At a meal, some people you know start belittling a common acquaintance. Would you stand up for the person if you felt the criticisms were unjustified?
Would you want to have your rate of physical aging slowed so much that, barring some accident, you’d live for 1,000 years?
In what period since you were a teenager did you have the most personal growth and change? If you wanted to have another such period, what could you do to bring it about or otherwise shake up your life?
If you were having difficulty on a critical test at school and could safely cheat by peeking online, would you?
If you were enjoying a festive dinner at a friend’s house and found a dead cockroach in your salad, what would you do?
For $50,000, would you put to sleep a healthy pet you love? How much more or less money would it take to change your answer?
Which would be worse: having to leave the country and never return, or never being able to travel more than 150 miles from where you now live?
If you could become brilliant by having a visible scar stretching from your mouth to your ear, would you?
What was your most enjoyable dream? Your worst nightmare?
Would you be willing to shorten your life by a decade to become extraordinarily attractive? famous? wealthy? bright? or gifted in some other way?
If 100 people your age were chosen at random from your last school or workplace, how many do you think would be more satisfied with their lives than you are with yours? Why? What about 1,000 people chosen randomly from anywhere in the world?
Would it disturb you much if, upon your death, your body were thrown into the woods and left to rot? Why?
If you had a choice between two virtually equivalent medicines, one a chemical carefully synthesized in the laboratory, and the other an extract carefully harvested from a medicinal plant, which would you prefer and why?
Would you get a tattoo the size of a dinner plate if you knew it would somehow save the lives of a busload of innocent tourists who’d otherwise die? If so, what tattoo design and location would you select?
How many different sexual partners have you had in your life? Do you wish you’d had more or fewer? Why?
What is so important to you that, without it, life wouldn’t be worth living? Would your answer have been any different 10 years ago?
Given that a woman can conceive a child long after menopause by using a frozen egg, is there an age beyond which it should be illegal for women to bear children? Why? What about men? If so, how would you punish violators?
If your friends and acquaintances were willing to honestly tell you what they thought of you, would you want them to? What do you think they might say?
If you could wake up tomorrow in the body of someone else and assume his or her life, would you do it? If so, who would you pick? What if you’d become the real you again in a month? or a year?
Would you like the government to install extensive car and road sensors and automatically ticket anyone speeding, rolling through stop signs, or parking illegally?
If you were relatively happily married, had no kids, and met someone you knew would always bring you passionate, intoxicating love, would you leave your spouse? What if you had young children?
Would you use a drug that made you extraordinarily happy for 12 hours without any side effects? If not, why not? If so, what if it were addictive and you’d soon want to be happy all the time?
Who is the most important person in your life? What could you do to improve the relationship? Will you ever do it?
When you do something ridiculous, how much does it bother you to have other people notice it and laugh at you? What’s the funniest thing about you?
You need to have dangerous brain surgery and must choose between two surgeons: one extremely gifted but a dishonest jerk; the other less skilled but very honest and friendly. Who would you pick? What if you were accused of a serious crime and had the same choice in attorneys?
Do you believe in capital punishment? Would you be willing to pull the switch to execute a man sentenced to death if you were randomly selected by the courts to do so and knew he would go free if you refused? Assume you know nothing about his crime.
If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time but haven’t? Why haven’t you? Is it better to have dreams that may never come to pass, or to stick with those that can be readily achieved?
Do you believe in God? If not, do you think you might nonetheless pray if you were in a life-threatening situation?
Your 12-year-old daughter hacks into a corporate database and causes $1 million worth of damage. When caught, she tearfully says it was just a prank and she had no idea she’d cause such damage. How should she be punished?
If you hiked to a remote beach and nearly everyone there were swimming nude, would you stay for a swim? If so, would you swim nude?
Have you had really satisfying sex within the last 3 months? What key ingredients make sex particularly satisfying for you?
While out one day, you come upon your mother holding hands with someone who is obviously her lover. She sees you and races over, begging you not to say anything to your father. What would you do?
Someone close to you will die in a few months unless you donate one of your kidneys to them. If you knew that your chances of surviving the operation were excellent and that your life expectancy wouldn’t be appreciably reduced, would you give up the organ? What if the operation were risky?
You’re with friends at an icy mountain lake on a warm sunny day. If you knew it’d be a harsh, bracing shock to jump in, but that later you’d be refreshed and glad you’d done it, would you take the leap?
Do you find it so hard to say no that you often end up doing favors you don’t want to do? If so, why?
When was the last time you stole something? Why haven’t you stolen anything since? Is there anything you’d steal if you were certain you wouldn’t get caught?
Would you rather spend a month on vacation with your parents or put in 4 weeks of uncompensated overtime at work?
Would you make a substantial sacrifice to have any of the following: your picture on a postage stamp; your statue in a park; a college named after you; a Nobel Prize?
If your teenage son died in a freak accident, and you wanted another child, would you rather clone an identical twin of your dead son or try to have another child naturally?
What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? (Assume you aren’t at an airport and subject to immediate arrest!)
When was the last time you felt real excitement and passion in your work? What about your life in general? How important is passion to you?
If you were handed an envelope with the date of your death inside, and you knew you could do nothing to alter your fate, would you look?
Do you ever spit, clean your teeth, or pick your nose in public?
Would you want to choose the sex of your child? What if you could safely pick other qualities: IQ, height, temperament, looks?
If someone you loved was brutally murdered and their killer was acquitted on a technicality, would you seek revenge?
If a close friend asked, and genuinely wanted, your opinion, but you knew he’d find it painful—for example, he’s an artist and asks your honest appraisal of his artistic talent, and you think he’s lousy—would you tell him the truth?
Do you have a favorite sexual fantasy? If so, what would you give to have it granted?
What are the most important things (excluding children) you’ve brought into the world that would not exist without you?
Would you like to know your risk for an illness that has no effective treatment? Why?
An eccentric millionaire offers to donate a large sum to charity if you’ll step naked from a car onto a busy downtown street and walk four blocks before getting back into the vehicle. If you knew there’d be no danger of physical abuse, how big a donation would it take to get you to do it? What if you knew your stroll would be posted online?
Would you accept an inflation-adjusted lifetime stipend of $150,000 per year if it meant you couldn’t earn or inherit additional money? What would be the lowest such stipend you’d agree to?
When did you last cry in front of another person? to yourself?
If you were attracted to someone of another race, in what ways, if any, would your behavior with them differ from that with someone of your own race? Why?
If you were given a voice-activated watch that tracked your whereabouts and would quickly summon the police if you shouted for help, would you wear it? If so, would the added safety lead you to do anything you wouldn’t do now?
Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote, supposedly haunted house?
Do you judge others by higher or lower standards than you judge yourself?
Many people are capable of being good runners, but to be world-class you need specific variants of key genes. If you were the best runner in your area and really wanted to win an Olympic gold medal, would you first check your genes? If so, what if you found you didn’t have the right ones?
Would you be willing to forgo all use of the Internet for 5 years if your sacrifice meant that someone would permanently provide for 1,000 children, saving them from starvation?
Which would you rather have: one intimate soul mate but no other good friends, or no soul mate but lots of good friends?
If you had to spend the next 2 years in a small, fully provisioned Antarctic shelter with one other person, who would you want to be with?
If you learned you were going to die in a few days, what regrets would you have? Which of them could you resolve if you were given another 5 years?
If your car told you in a soothing voice to watch your weight as soon as you started putting on pounds, how long would it take you to disconnect the feature?
Which would you prefer: a wild, turbulent life filled with joy, sorrow, passion, adventure, intoxicating successes, and stunning setbacks; or a happy, secure, predictable life surrounded by friends and family, without wide swings of fortune and mood?
Would you accept $20,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities without a hat or wig until your hair grew back? What is the minimum price you’d take for this?
If you knew that your child-to-be would be severely retarded and die by the age of 5, would you want to abort? Should fathers have any legal rights about such a decision?
You become romantically involved with someone but after a couple of years realize you want out. What would you do if you were convinced that your lover would commit suicide if you left?
For $5,000, would you be willing to stand up in a crowded restaurant and obnoxiously berate a server about some trivial problem? If not, is it because it would embarrass you or because it would hurt her feelings?
Under what circumstances—if any—would you want to watch a public execution in person? What about a graphic video of it posted online?
If advanced technologies enabled everyone to enjoy the material benefits of an upper-middle-class lifestyle without having to work, how would you change your life? What would most concern you about such a bountiful world?
If someone offered you a large bribe for privileged information about one of your company’s products, would you take it? Assume you knew you wouldn’t be discovered.
If you could take a one-month trip anywhere in the world and money were not a consideration, where would you go and what would you do?
Would you want every person in the country to have genetic information saved in a DNA databank so that small genetic readers could accurately ID anyone at anytime? What would be your biggest concern about such a system?
Would you do something boring and unsatisfying (say, cleaning toilets) for 5 years if you knew it would bring you contentment and inner peace for the rest of your life? If not, how long would you be willing to do it?
Would you be willing to become physically ugly if it meant you could live for 100 more years at your current physical age?
Would you choose to escape death if you could do so by having your brain removed from your dying body, suspended in nutrients, and wired to sensors and controllers that let you see, hear, and speak? Do you find this idea more horrifying or intriguing? Why?
Is there anything in your life too personal to discuss with others? If so, have you ever made the mistake of trying? What happened?
While walking, you come upon a lost wallet containing $1,000. Would you return it if there were a name and address inside? Would you act differently if the person’s photo ID showed a wealthy-looking young man or a frail-looking old woman?
If you were fated to be in a bad accident that would leave you either blind, deaf, or with amnesia that wiped away all your memories, which loss would be the worst? the easiest?
If you had a child who was your clone—a delayed identical twin—do you think that your hard-won self-awareness and self-knowledge would enable you to be a better parent for him or her than your parents were for you?
Could a marriage of the highest quality in all respects but one—it completely lacked sex—be satisfying to you?
Would you be willing to eat a bowl of live crickets for $5,000? What is the least amount of money you’d take to do this?
The night before you fly off on a family vacation, you get a reading from a fortune teller at a party. In the middle of it, the psychic gets very upset and says she sees a plane bursting into flames and you burning and screaming. Would you be disturbed enough to change your travel plans?
Do you think you have much impact on the lives of people whose paths you cross? Has anyone, over a short period of time, significantly influenced your life?
A deaf couple plans to have a baby by IVF so they can implant an embryo with genes that will ensure that their child will be deaf. Do you think this is wrong? Should it be illegal?
Would you rather have success and everything material you want, but few friends; or little success or material well-being, but lots of friends?
If you could give anyone a love potion that would so open their heart to you that they’d be hopelessly in love with you forever, would you? If so, who? Do you think the responsibility of their devotion might ever become a burden to you?
If you could reshape your recollections of any unpleasant past experience and replace your present memories with ones much more palatable, would you? If so, what would you change, and why?
Have you ever disliked someone for being luckier or more successful than you?
How old were you when you first had sex? Do you think you’d have been better off if you had waited longer or started earlier?
What do you like best about your life? least?
If you were given $1 million to donate anonymously to a stranger or cause of your choice, how would you dispose of it?
Would you rather live in a country where people can get rich if they succeed in business but might wind up destitute if they fail, or in a place where there is little opportunity to achieve wealth but a strong social safety net in place?
You are leading 100 people whose lives are in danger, and you must pick one of two paths. One will save 95 people but 5 will die; the other has an even chance of saving everyone, but if it fails everyone will die. Which would you choose?
What would you do if you found your 13-year-old child looking at shocking hard-core pornography on the Internet?
If you could take a pill and eat food all day without absorbing calories or nutrition, would you? If so, is there any particular food you’d gorge on?
If you were having a child by IVF and could safely add 25 years to your kid’s life expectancy by injecting an artificial chromosome into the embryo, would you?
Would you rather be given $25,000 for your own use or $250,000 to give anonymously to strangers? What if you could either keep $5 million or give away $50 million?
How many of your friendships have lasted more than 10 years? Which of your friends do you think will still be important to you a decade from now?
A cave-in occurs while you and an acquaintance are exploring a concrete armory deep beneath the ground in an old converted mine shaft. You learn that the entire shaft is now sealed and an airhole being drilled won’t reach you for 15 hours. If you both take sleeping pills from a medicine chest to slow your metabolism, the oxygen will still last only 10 hours. There’s no way for you both to survive, but one of you probably could. What would you do if the other person took a sleeping pill, motioned toward a loaded pistol, said it was up to you, and nodded off?
What sorts of things would you do if you could be as outgoing and uninhibited as you wished?
To prevent the otherwise certain extinction of the blue whale, what would be the longest time you’d be willing to spend as a quadriplegic, paralyzed below the neck? Assume that a complete recovery would be instantaneous.
Do you seek or avoid routines in your life, for instance, sleeping in the same part of your bed? ordering the same meals? returning to the same vacation spots? Why?
Would you rather be happy but slow-witted and unimaginative, or unhappy yet bright and creative? For example, would you choose the life of a tortured, brilliant artist like Vincent van Gogh, or of a happy, carefree, simpleminded soul?
Can you be counted on to do what you say you’ll do? What does it take for you to trust someone?
Would you rather live nearer to your parents or farther away from them? What about your brothers, sisters, or grown children?
When you are with your friends, do your interactions include much hugging, kissing, roughhousing, rubbing backs, and such? Would you like to have less or more of such touching?
If you could travel into the future but not return, would you? What if you could take along a few companions? If you had to make the trip, how far forward would you go?
Of all the people close to you, whose death would disturb you most?
Would you want your child’s elementary school to have hundreds of hidden cameras monitoring everything going on, so that parents could go online anytime to watch their kids?
You arrange an evening with a friend, but on the day before, an unexpected chance to do something much more exciting comes up. How would you handle the situation?
What is your biggest disappointment in life? your biggest failure? Has anything positive come out of them?
If computers could think and feel, should people be able to own them? How—if at all—should people be punished for hurting or destroying such machines?
How do you think you’d react if you found that you weren’t the product of a random meeting of sperm and egg, but had been selected by your parents from 100 of their embryos because of your likely traits and temperament?
If you could pass your life slumbering peacefully, cared for in every way, entranced by marvelous, wonderful dreams, would you? Why?
If a foreign country embarked on a eugenics program to raise the average IQ of their next generation of children by 30 points, so that average kids there were smarter than 49 out of 50 kids here, how would you want our country to respond?
If you were hypnotized to make your biggest worry fade away, how would your life change? What is that worry?
Do you do more listening or talking? Might it be good for you to shift that balance?
If you could return to any previous point in your life, change a decision you made, and pick up from there (obliterating everything that has happened to you since then), would you? If so, would you like to retain the memory of the life you are giving up even though you could never recapture it?
Do you enjoy sleeping in physical contact with your lover?
Would you commit perjury for a close friend? For example, might you testify that your best friend was driving carefully when he hit a pedestrian even though he actually was laughing at something on the radio and not paying attention?
If you won a housekeeping robot that could do every household task from picking up your clothes to shopping for food and cooking dinner, what would you still want to do yourself?
Relative to the population at large, how do you rate your integrity? your openness? your warmth?
Five years from now, what would you like to be doing? What do you think you will be doing?
If you learned that a century ago your great-great-grandfather robbed and murdered someone, would you try to make it up to their now-distant offspring? What if the great-great-grandson of the victim came to you and demanded that you or your kids pay his kids $10,000 to make up for what your ancestor did?
If you could prevent one of the following, which would you choose: an earthquake in Chile that would kill 40,000 people, a plane crash at your local airport that would kill 200 people, or an automobile accident that would kill a friend of yours?
Do you often find yourself—just to be polite—saying things you don’t mean? For example, when you say good-bye to people who bore you, do you pretend to have enjoyed their company?
If you could put a near-perfect lie detector on your phone to flag any dishonesties, would you? If so, would you use it a lot or just for very specific conversations?
If you came upon the scene of a terrible highway accident just after the ambulances arrived, and your presence would neither help nor hinder anyone, would you stop to watch?
If you thought that being cryonically frozen after you died would give you a chance of being brought back to life in a century or two, would you choose that instead of burial or cremation? Assume the costs were identical. If not, why not?
If you had to tattoo your arm with a message to yourself, what would you write?
If the car you were buying for your teenager offered an option to continuously monitor the vehicle’s status and location so that you could see where he was and how he was driving, would you?
While running on an icy sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house, you slip and break your leg. Would you sue your neighbor if you stood to make a lot of money?
If you could choose the manner of your death, what would it be?
What would you do if you came home unexpectedly one afternoon and found your spouse, or partner, on the Internet engaged in steamy online role-playing with a cyberlover? Assume they’d been doing it for months, but had never discussed meeting physically.
Do you trust your intuition? What important decisions in your professional life have you based largely upon intuition? What about in your personal life?
Would you like to be president of the United States? Why? What if you knew that 1 in 4 people would despise you by the time you left office?
Would you take a pill that, without side effects, made you feel utterly fulfilled for a year—glad just to be you, doing whatever you already do? Would you choose differently if you knew the effect would be permanent?
Do you view government more as a force for good that should be expanded or as a necessary evil that should be reduced?
If the military could guide a hummingbird-sized drone through virtually any window in the world and explode it, would you want it used for assassination? If so, who’d be at the top of your list?
Do you look to the future more with anticipation or anxiety?
If you were guaranteed honest responses to any three questions, whom would you question and what would you ask?