Isaac Asimov, a very intelligent person, wrote a lengthy essay to the effect that he had no idea what intelligence was. He talked about how society would generally consider him more intelligent than the nearly illiterate man who repaired his car, and yet whenever something went wrong with his car he would go to his mechanic and listen to his advice as if it was being handed down from the mountaintop by Moses himself, because Isaac Asimov knew fuck all about car repair. He talked about how he thought that supposedly objective IQ tests were generally a series of gates designed by people already considered intelligent to keep themselves in power, and that they totally disregarded huge swaths of indispensable human knowledge and talent. Isaac Asimov, who has been published in literally every section of the Dewey Decimal System, concluded that he had no firm idea as to what exactly "intelligence" even was.

In short, how could one even define "the dumbest 50%"?

And that's why Thanos should have made everybody half as large as they once were.

Yeah, because it’s so morally defensible to eliminate all of the developmentally disabled and republicans.

Hang on, do you mean “with the least capacity to be smart,” or is he killing all the babies and children?

They'd still be appalled and try to stop him given their strong moral code. And given that they'd be at full strength they'd probably find a way to stop him and reverse things faster than they did in OTL

Would they have all still fought against him?

I know this is No Stupid Questions but...come on.

Why on Earth would the Avengers react any differently? Is the assumption that they're morally bankrupt enough to actually reconsider in this scenario? That somehow letting "stupid" people be murdered is ever, in any way, acceptable?

50% was such a dumb number anyways.

It requires a single doubling to get back to where we were. To double, you'd need about 10 times a 7% growth. Probably within less than 100 years you'd be back at the same problem

Not to mention that when you murder a shit tonne of people, and when it's over you'll likely have lots of people getting babies, so you get a birth wave about 9 months later. That regrowth starts FAST.

The real question is which avengers would be gone. Putting my money on Thor

I mean, he could have just created 200% more resources as well. Or he could have equally redistributed all the resources. The problem he was trying to solve would still eventually happen again, because solving the problem relies on everyone working unselfishly, which is simply not possible when humans are involved.

I think the whole 50% depopulation is a flawed premise, of the hundred of thousands of years modern humans have existed that would throw total population back to... 1970

Dude, he killed Vision and Gamora and other people close to the member of Avengers, no way they gonna let him off the hook.

I think it largely depends on his definition of “dumb”…. Given he’s already committed to wiping out half of all life, I’d consider his mental facilities to be of questionable intellect already. His idea of who is dumb may be similarly questionable…

Then we know he would have killed all of GOTG

Why couldn't Thanos just wish for unlimited resources? Or universal peace? Or literally any number of things that would have solved the problems he was trying to solve without anyone getting hurt or never existing? His method was stupid.

I always wondered if your goal is to reduce population. Why not just make half the people infertile?

He also could have just created trillions more planets so that there wouldn't be natural resource shortages. Nope. Gotta murder quadrillions of life forms.

I don't think the hulk would have reacted at all, since he'd be gone. But does that mean Banner would stay somehow?

That leaves an interesting situation for Bruce banner/the hulk

Ant-Man: Well come on, wait, you know, there are different kinds of intelligence, right? Please someone tell me I'm not making that up.

You killed all of our kids!

Thanos could have literally chosen 1000 other options that were better than killing 50% of all living things, and I'm sure nobody would have disagreed!

What would make this question more interesting is can you think of any metric where they would flip, or at least consider it. For example, all the members of Hydra (a bad example, would never make 50%, but you get the idea).