Thanos's logic is flawed


Thanos snaps his fingers and halves the population of the known universe by half....but what would that accomplish? The world's population is 7.6 billion people, so if he halves it it'll be 3.8 billion people, what the population was roughly in 1967...so assuming Infinity War occurred in present day the earth's population would be back to its present number of 7.6 billion in roughly 50 years and presenting the same problems again with overpopulation and low resources.

Had Thanos used proper logic he would have lowered it further, dropping it by 50% only puts a band aid on an open wound.

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Thanos can also time travel so theoretically he could prevent the Avengers from being born. Although that could create a paradox.

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You see that would have been cruel, he takes no joy in killing, and in 50 years he would do it again.

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No kidding. But I prefer to look at it as a failure by the writers to motivate their main villain. It bothered me throughout the movie. I found Thanos unconvincing, and more confusing and irritating than menacing, because of it.

In a different universe, I myself might have been Thanos. What I mean by that is that if I had the power, I too would want to do something about overpopulation in order to reduce suffering. But just killing a bunch of people is a six-year-old's idea of a solution. Because it's evil, but even more importantly, because, like you point out, it's only a temporary fix. Put just a tiny bit of thought into it, and it should occur to you that gradually reducing reproductive ability is the least destructive option. Presumably the infinity stones can get that done with a snap of the fingers, too.

After seeing the movie, I've been told that Thanos was somewhat better motivated in the comics. Something about wanting to give his death-loving crush a bunch of souls, or whatever. See, comic book silly as that notion is, it makes more sense than what the movie went with, which is Thanos basically being stupid.

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Here's my psychoanalysis of Thanos.

He grew up on Titan and realized they had a population problem. He hypothesized that killing half the population at random could save everyone else. Since that idea never got to be initiated on Titan for him to see the results of such a plan, and because Titan did come to ruin, the seed of killing half the population was permanently planted in his head. Eventually, it got to the point where the only way to satisfy this urge forever was to obtain the infinity gauntlet and snap his fingers. After doing so, he was finally able to smile and watch the sun rise in peace.

Thanos chose his genocidal urges over logic... and that's why he's considered a villain.

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He succeded saving Gamora's planet by killing half the population manually though.

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No, he didn't. The problem is limited resources. If resources are limited, a percentage of the population will suffer because there's not enough to go around. Right? However, if you kill half the population, that's half of the population still suffering. So the conversation shifts to "quick deaths" are less painful than "slow deaths."

But the reality is, we are all mortal. We are all experiencing "slow deaths" just as we live our lives. To suggest we'd be saved by being given quick deaths to ease our pain is maniacally psychopathic.

In order for someone to find that as a viable solution, they would most likely have an underlying desire to either see people killed or partake in their killing. That's Thanos.

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I agree 100%. Seeing his planet be destroyed drove him insane and caused him to fixate on his unexecuted plan to save Titan. He was driven mad; that's why he's so convinced he has to go through with the scheme on a universe-wide scale.

It's like how the Joker went from being a comedian who wanted to make people laugh as a career to a lunatic who wants to make people laugh to death. It's a crazier version of his original self.

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That's a fair point. I would also argue that Thanos is the MCU's version of Harvey Dent. You don't always need to be a criminal for Two-Face to flip his coin on you, and you don't always need to live on an overpopulated planet for Thanos to attack with his army. They both give their victims a 50/50 shot at survival, and they base it on a warped sense of fairness that was caused by traumatic experiences that altered their perception of right and wrong.

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Yep, a definite band-aid, short-term solution. I also find it odd that his crusade involves wasting tons of resources, with his huge ship and a small fleet of sub-ships, massive energy expenditures, towers full of cloned/grown "disposable monster soldiers" that are used en masse with no regard to waste.

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Yeah, his plan is stupid, even by the standards of comic-book villains. Does he pull this shit on underpopulated planets, or ones that have recently suffered population drops because of plague or war? What about planets that are so overpopulated that they're running out of habitat, like Earth, shouldn't he be doing extra killing in places like this? What about his own followers, do they realize that at some point he's going to kill half of THEM as well?

So while he was played with a certain verve, his lack of plausible motivation is a problem.

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Also, is Thanos eligible for being randomly included in the 50% culled, or is he an exception?

If he's not eligible, then he's a hypocrite.

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Excellent point!

But really, writing supervillains with motives other than the old "I want to conquer the world/galaxy/universe/spiritual plane" is difficult. So while I think Thanos is hardly a complete success as a villain, I do give the writers credit for trying something different.

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What never made sense to me was the indiscriminate killing. The killing at random means you're killing good people even who actually contribute to society and leaving scummy people behind who will continue to be scummy people and benefit nothing to the new world you've created so, how does that help anyone? For example, you've randomly gotten rid of a highly skilled doctor but left a child molester. What logic is that?

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Highly skilled doctors are bad if your are trying to control population. Save the crappy doctors and problem solved.

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If you're not killing randomly then who are you to decide who's good and who's bad?

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This movie incarnation has a bit more heart and works better in a genre full of idiots who do evil “just because”.

But that nutsack for a chin makes no sense.


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