A magical red button sits on a table in front of you… When the button is pressed, one million dollars (tax free) is automatically deposited into the bank account of the person who pressed the button… That’s the good part.The bad part is- a totally random person in this world will lose his or her life.
Would you press the button?
A friend of mine asked both Moe Greene and myself that very question not too long ago.
Moe asked a few questions, debated the options aloud, made a stupid comment about “what if you knew the person that died?” and then finally decided that he would press the button… I guess in an attempt to justify his answer to those present, he made some BS statement about how part of that money could be donated and help save the lives of thousands of- blah blah blah…
When it was my turn I only had one question… “Is there a limit on how many times I could press he button?”
I almost expected him (my friend who asked the question) to end the discussion by telling us that , in fact, there was such a button and of course, he even knew where it was... He didn't though. *
* sub-question... if indeed you would press the button, how low would you go? Would you do it for half a million, 250k, 50k, a $100 Best Buy gift card???
** I'm really starting to love the footnote idea a blatantly ripped off from Chanclita.
***Just so we're clear, I would feel guilty about the whole thing later on... really... but I would push the hell out of that button.... at least 10 times.
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15 comments:
Lets see...I would totally press the button. Think of it this way. There are millions people that die every day. At least this way, someone is making some money out of the dying process.
Joel, I'm guessing you all would press the button until the person who died was someone you knew. I would not press such a button.
i'm with regina. i wouldn't press the button; doing so would automatically make my life (figuratively and literally) "more valuable" than someone else's.
Santiago- good point
regina- There are approximately 6.6 billion people in the world
I only know 5 or 6 hundred people… if I were to hit the magic button over and over until someone I knew was killed, (as you have decided I would do), I would have to kill about 11 million people before the odds got close to the possibility that I would kill someone I knew…
Now, 5.7 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust… 214,000 Japanese were killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima… Stalin’s death toll came in at about 3 million… During the Rwanda massacre, the Hutus took out about 937,000 Tutsis… The Tsunami took out about 300,000… finally, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge wiped out about 750,000 people… All of that together gives us a grand total of 10,897,000 deaths. It’s a little short of the 11 million or so I would have to take down with the magic button, but we’ll call it even (unless you want to throw in a few South American dictators to really make the totals equal)
So your theory is that, for enough money, I would kill more people than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, The Hutu Army, the Atom Bomb, and the Tsunami all combined together?! Ouch...
I said before I think I would hit the button about 10 times… but I remember when I was 12 years old and I threw a rock at a duck and hit him in the eye. I didn’t kill him, but I probably fucked up his week. About 10 minutes after I hit the duck, the guilt set in and I cried nonstop for about 45 minutes.
My point is this... I doubt I’d be able to hit the button 10 times… maybe only 5 times… That’s 5 deaths… John Kerry killed like 7 people in Vietnam and we strapped him down with a fist full of metals and tried to make him president… I’m only taking out 5 people and all of a sudden I’m a bloodier sequel to Hitler? come on, 5 people is only a mediocre serial killer... I'm not even Ted Bundy or the DC Sniper...
cad- yeah, I'd hit it as soon as they said a million dollars... then I'd listen to the rest of the explanation before I tapped it a few more times
jenn- i can respect that
Joel:
Once the button is pushed, are you shown the person you "deleted"?
Well I reckon I was a proffesional hit man in a previous life so killing for money wouldn't be a problem.
I just had an experience I wanted to share with everyone... after reading everyones comments about the red button and having a good laugh I checked my email and I had a new piece of mail from Amnesty International (yes I, the bloodier sequel to Hitler, am a member of AI) and the subject of the email was: "Immunity from War Crimes?"
inside was a picture of the 'W' shrugging his shoulders making that look he always does... you know the one I'm talking about... anyway, givn the discussion we've been having it made me laugh... that 'W' is a MAJOR button pusher!
i need a button like that ...i would hold it down for a while.. haha
i heart footnotes. also i feel so bad for that duck, we can be such awful beings. with that said, i would probably press the button. being able to pick the person to delete that would be bonus.
I'd like to think I was noble and not push the button.
But I know me. I'm nowhere near noble or enlightened.
I'd push the button.
And then I'd be the random person killed.
It's just the way my luck goes. Especially lately.
OOOhhhhhh...
I never thought about the random deletion being ME.
Very nice.
G. uses these types of questions in his ethics class. The situation he usually offers is that if you could guarantee happiness and peace to everybody in the world, would you do if it meant death and/or torture to a child?
He says women usually want more information before making a decision. Men don't usually ask for any other info.
A million dollars wouldn't necessary last a lifetime, so I say NO to the button.
By the way, excellent red button graphic there, Joel.
Joel, stop rationalizing. You said a "totally random person." Odds are odds, but if it's POSSIBLE that someone you know COULD be killed, then someone you know could be killed, even on the first push. I wouldn't push it, but that's just because I couldn't live with the knowledge of having caused anyone's death. JHD, good point: if anyone could be killed, it could be the button-pusher.
regina- the point i was trying to make wasn't that the odds were against killing someone I know (although they are) my only issue was that you said I would keep pressing the button until someone I knew got killed.... you know, making me Hitler or Stalin.
I guess that's an old Western philosophy saw, and it made for a damn good episode of the Twilight Zone, btw.
I would NOT press the button to kill another human for $1 million. Couldn't live w/ myself. But change the question around and I would press that button.
Let's say someone gets roughed up a bit... or a really bad cold... or all of the ATMs in their neighborhood are suddenly out of order. Then, I'm there.
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