My answer would be similar, for similar reasons. The adventure would be worth it, even if the heroism stuff is completely bogus.

If pressed, Jrxlsnikt defines "evil" as something or someone (it could be a creature, after all) who's actions result in apocalypse-level loss of life. We're talking a significant portion of the population destroyed due to the actions of this one being. Somehow, however improbable it seems, you are able to defeat it *maybe it's allergic to plastic and plastic doesn't exist in Jrxlsnikt's realm?).

Yes, the trolley problem is relevant, but only if you feel that the individual labelled here as "evil" is equally valuable as a life as the countless lives that would be lost if it goes on it's rampage. The trolley problem fails for me, in that 5 lives vs 1 just doesn't hit home. 1 life vs apocalypse... now I'm paying attention.

That's still a problem, though. The grandfather paradox kicks in the instant you know something happens and go back to the past to prevent it. In preventing it, you remove the reason for going to the past, so your future self of that timeline won't have a reason to travel back to prevent the thing, so it won't be prevented, and on and on.

Any survey question about time travel that doesn't address this issue is basically pointless.

Here's my version of the survey question that side-steps the grandfather paradox:

"A time traveler arrives at your door and introduces themselves as Jrxlsnikt. After thorouhly proving that they are, in fact, a time traveler and not a nutter, they explain the following:
1. They are from another world, another dimension, another timeline separate from yours.
2. In their timeline, it is recorded that they (the time traveler) arrived in their own time period alongside a stranger from another dimension (you) and slew a great evil just as it was beginning to emerge.
3. It is known from previous times that, when this evil emerges, many millions of lives would be lost.
The time traveler asks if you would follow them back to the past of their world and fulfill the mission that is recorded in their history. They assure you that you are fully capable of carrying it out.
Do you go?"

John, I'm not so sure it is simply a moral dilemma as stated in the question. Assuming that World War II is guaranteed to be stopped by killing Hitler before WWII begins, we are also implying several more absolute certainties:

1. The timeline that you are currently in, after travelling to the past, will lead inevitably to WWII if Hitler lives.
2. Hitler is the only one who can start WWII, or is at least the critical linchpin holding that series of events together.
3...

No wait, let's get back to 1. Is this time travel happening in a multi-world theory universe or is there only one timeline and I'm about to attempt to change that single timeline to a different path?

This question is critical to how I understand the ethical dilemma. If it's a multi-world theory universe, then it doesn't matter whether I kill Hitler in this particular universe, since he will be "not killed" in infinite other universes, and go on to start WWII anyway. I really don't accomplish anything if I attempt it, and if this particular universe isn't meant to have a WWII, that means someone else will be killing Hitler before WWII begins anyway, so my efforts are extraneous waste at best. The utter futility of the effort would convince me that it isn't worth bothering. I'll just get in some time-travel sight-seeing while I'm here then attempt to go back to my world and time.

On the other hand, if this is a single-world theory universe, then can I really kill him? There are two possibilities here:

1. I attempt to kill him and fail. This will happen because the world I live in doesn't see Hitler die before WWII. In this timeline, the only timeline that exists, all attempts to kill Hitler before WWII have already failed, so my attempt will fail as well. Will I try anyway? Well, no. All attempts fail, and I know this already, so I don't bother. BTW, this is how one logically bypasses the grandfather paradox: a universe where your attempt to change the past has already failed before you attempt it because that's how the timeline happened already. Trying just means you tried and failed already, it can't produce a paradox.

2. The grandfather paradox is real, and the universe will implode or whatever if I successfully kill Hitler. For those not familiar with this paradox, it would go like this in this situation:
A. WWII happens.
B. You travel back in time to stop WWII from happening by killing Hitler early.
C. You succeed in killing Hitler and stop WWII.
D. When you are born in the "no WWII" timeline, you have no reason to travel back in time to stop WWII... so you don't
E. WWII happens, since no one stopped it from happening...
F. Infinite loop continues. Universe implodes.

Personally, I don't believe in paradoxes, as it makes more sense to me to assume that all attempts to change the past failed, or were otherwise woven into the fabric of the timeline as we know it. This is probably why we have never heard of any time-travelers altering history (assuming it's possible to time-travel to the past), as all those events are just recorded as "history" to us.

So to answer the ethical dilemma, my answer is "I would if I actually thought it would work, but it can't, so it's pointless, so I don't bother." I'm not saying that killing Hitler in 1920 would not stop WWII as the question assumes. If the only rule is "Hitler's death in 1920 will stop WWII" then either my attempt fails regardless of whether I try (single-world), or someone/thing else will end his life anyway in this particular timeline or infinite others (multi-world).

And yes, I will admit that part of the reason I may be biased toward being against the celebration of unhealthily overweight individuals is due to the presence in my life of several people who are battling with that very thing.

I just don't appreciate the idea that we'd be clearly saying the VS ad women are unhealthy and not see that most of the supposedly full figured women shown in the other ad are equally unhealthy.

My mother was 250 lbs overweight at one point (she's been working hard to lose it since she was diagnosed with diabetes), and she looked quite similar to #3 and #6 from the left. Only difference is the waistline on #6, but she clearly wears her weight lower (on the hips) than my mother, who wore it higher (on her belly). That's a common discrepancy, but having something that appears to be a waistline doesn't mean one is a healthy weight. I don't think it's far fetched at all to suppose that those two in particular are at least 100 lbs overweight. I feel I'm going easy on that estimation, given how they compare to someone at 250 lbs overweight.

My wife is currently battling with being overweight. She's only 30 lbs over the upper limit of healthy, and she looks similar to about half of the rest of the pack up there.

The three on the far right are the only ones that look healthy. Maybe the redhead in the center as well, but it's harder to tell since only her one leg is really visible (she's twisted around, and her arm, hair, and shadow cover her midsection). The one on the far right "might" be labelled overweight, but only due to muscle mass, as she has clearly taken time to build more muscle tone than an average woman would. So she may be technically overweight on a pure numbers measurement, but she'd still be called healthy by any doctor worth anything.

I agree that a lot of people don't have an idea of what a healthy weight looks like. I think you're one of them, and you're ignoring obvious features that support the idea that, with the exception of maybe two or three, the majority of the women shown here are just as unhealthy as the ones in the Victoria Secret ad.

Maybe the problem is that so many countries, like the US, are more than 50% overweight among the population, so that people are starting to get used to seeing overweight as the norm. That scares me, but it makes sense that such a thing might happen.

Equipment failure kills a person just as surely as human error. And it's likely that a person is supposed to inspect the equipment before use, which would mean it's back to human error again, albeit maybe not the trainee's error if he's not the one that inspected that equipment.

Indeed, although incubation for Ebola is about 10-20 days, so still fairly short as far as having a lot of time to infect others goes (it still only spreads through direct contact). I suspect the biggest reason why Ebola spreads so fiercely (as does HIV) vs my claim that a Z virus would be stopped swiftly is that Ebola merely makes the infected get sick and die. I'm not denying that it's a brutal sickness, but it doesn't do one thing that the Z virus is best known for.

Imagine if, instead of merely getting sick, they got sick AND they turned savage and attacked their family and neighbors. I suspect that version of Ebola wouldn't last long, no matter what part of the world it starts in, as the infected wouldn't be treated like sick people as they are now, they'd be slaughtered.

And if the dead rose up from the grave and attacked again, they'd be slaughtered then burned. There'd be no patients being treated as long as there was no cure short of death, just pyres for the dead, and stories passed on from parent to child over the years of villages that had a small handful of cases that were swiftly killed and burned when the virus reared it's head.

That seemed like a good point to me until I thought it through. Maybe a Zombie version of HIV, infectious only through saliva or blood contact (as every Z virus typically is) and it sits undetected in infectious victims for 5-10 years...

That would be a good way to bypass most of that stuff I mentioned. Only, that wouldn't really be a zombie plague, would it?

Imagine watching a zombie movie where a guy who's been infected just goes about their lives for 8 years before going mad, biting two people, and being shot by the local cops. Along the way he may have infected maybe 2 people per year. Remember, this isn't the flu, only saliva or blood contact. Without patients going mad and biting folks every which way, the spread is greatly diminished. I feel a reasonable estimate for people just living their lives normally would be 2 people per year per person, so only 511 cases in 8 years.

Now that patient zero has gone mad and bitten people, the CDC gets involved to figure out why an otherwise normal person would do that. They suspect a new rabies strain or some such, and find our Z virus. Then, over the next few years, they track down at least half of those infected, and stop dozens more after they shift to the madness stage, stopping the spread even more. Within a dozen years, the infections are down to a manageable level, and a vaccine is being mass produced. Within 20 years, the new Z virus is contained in a similar manner to Small Pox.

Not a very exciting movie unless we fast forward through all the years where the people just go about their lives, and focus on the investigation of patient-to-patient spread of the virus and the slow, deliberate creation of a vaccine. Slow and deliberate because, let's face it, this virus spreads very slowly, so there's no hurry. Seems more like a medical drama than a zombie plague movie.

By making the virus incubate for a long period, we take out the primary fear of a zombie plague, the rapid drop to madness and biting to spread the disease further. It's scary if your buddy gets bitten and he might turn on you in the next few minutes or at best hours and you need to decide if you'll shoot them now or wait till they turn. It's not scary if your buddy is bitten and they go to a hospital to get a prescription for an antiviral drug that'll keep them fine for another 30 years while the virus sleeps. Or, if there's no cure or treatment, you can have the sad-but-still-not-scary ending where your buddy goes into quarantine and you can't see them ever again.

I suspect there's a reason why we haven't ever seen a Zombie flick where the virus has a slow incubation (not that I can recall, anyway), and almost never see how the Zombie plague gets started. The slow virus just doesn't get anywhere fast enough to be a threat, and even a fast virus can be stopped pretty quickly by rather mundane means, so the majority of films skip to the "some time ago the virus started and quickly swept through the world, now the survivors are fighting just to continue surviving" part.