Spoiler about the end - Did he have the right?

J akkerman has the best argument in either favour, the real people that would have been hurt through the sudden inactivity of the fakes. I reckon he did have the right other than that.

And better than Avatar!

[deleted]

"surrogates for kids..."
Well, a human brain has not finished 'growing' until about age 25, so that makes sense, as their brain would be changing too fast to keep up with.


That other discussion sounds a lot like the threads from the TV series (two seasons only) REVOLUTION where "something" turned off all the electricity in the entire world. And it was both abrupt and simultaneous. The series began about eight years after that event, and flashbacks occasionally showed 'the lights' going out, and airplanes still flying, then crashing to the ground while their navigation lights (red and green) were still flashing on the way down...

It eventually revealed one woman, one of "the good guys", had the ability to turn the power back on at any time, but doing so would have painfully killed her son within a few weeks. And remember I said she was one of the "good guys". That show lacked any sympathetic characters, but several were very heroic, and it tried too hard to reform some of them, and add in an AI that was more than capable of killing people at will.
The series took place after about 80% of the Earth's human population had died of both direct and consequential results of the complete lack of electricity.

So, did the woman have the right to keep the power off and kill as much as 6 billion people to save her son?



Did Willis have the right?
Could he make a reasonable decision in less than ten seconds?
The military force storming the main control room shot the surrogate before the countdown ended, but it was after Willis's character, linked to that surrogate, had entered "N" allowing the surrogates to all 'fry', and all that happened in less than 10 seconds. I admit the character entered was not expressly shown, but the side view clearly showed the finger pressing some key near the bottom of the keyboard, while the "Y" is close to the top. And, the surrogates all shut down.
Of course he made the choice with his own bias against the surrogates and the people who made them, as his character was defined and shaped in the movie... Besides that, their own creator was about to fry all the surrogates and kill all the operators in the process.
In that movie, far, far less than 80% of the world had surrogates, so while there were casualties from the abrupt deactivation/frying of the surrogates, the world would have gone on. It probably would have done well enough after the clean-up (crashed/wrecked cars, surrogates 'chassis' blocking all sorts of things, etc.) was completed. If the surrogates needed to all be rebuilt, that could have taken much, much longer.

Would the surrogates be rebuilt/reactivated? Probably yes, and as soon as it could be done. The use of surrogates seemed as addictive as Facebook, other social media, and smartphones appears to be. And remember, this movie was made quite a while ago, probably before 1st graders started getting their own smartphones.



The right?
He was the only one remaining who had any choice to make...
That gave him the right. Oh, and remember, doing nothing "in time" was the same as entering "N".
(Snarky comment follows: Just think of all the jobs he created!)

The discussion might be better about whether he made the right choice.