There is a game, long a teenage favourite, which for the sake of argument we can call: Would you rather? In it, a questioner poses two equally gruesome options from which their friend must choose one.

For example, would you rather: endure a finger that bled a little and painfully for a long, indeterminate period with a hope that it would heal and not turn gangrenous; or would you take the greater, but shorter-lived pain of lopping it off now for the quick certainty of your reasonable health?