Would you press the button?

I have NO idea. But I really want to see this movie.

No way. Okay, maybe I don’t know the person who dies, but certainly somebody does. I couldn’t live with myself, for any price, knowing that I willingly caused people to suffer.

This was once called the Chinese Mandarin question, and it was posed, if I’m not mistaken, by Voltaire (I will check on that.)

That movie looks indescribably dumb. I don’t understand how they can drag it on beyond 20 minutes.
Yes I would push it.

You know how much good somebody can do with $1m?
Destroy one life to improve a dozen? I’d do it.

The Box

I press the button.

I contribute ⅓rd of the money to cancer medical care for children with cancer.

I pay taxes.

I use half of the residual to help fund my son’s software business.

I wait for the devil to arrive and kick my ass over the blackjack table at the Trop in AC.

@Sarcasm Are you kidding? I can imagine making a trilogy of movies using this theme. The first movie has the dilemma and all its ramifications. The second is being pushed and the consequences. The third is the alternate reality if the button was not pushed. I’m thinking, for example, of Babel and the unintended consequences of a single action.

By the way, randomly killing one person is not destroying one life; it’s potentially destroying many.

ill come back and edit before the 24 hours are up.

No I wouldn’t. As it stands right now, I wouldn’t even be tempted.

Would I kill a random stranger for money?
No.

Nah. Don’t need money that badly.

Nooo! that’s pretty harsh, besides I wouldn’t like to live knowing someone died because I was desperate for money.

I saw the trialer for this movie. I want to see it ASAP, It’s with Cameron Diaz which I LOVE :-)

After that, I will be able to tell you if I would press this button.

yes, and i would not donate one cent of it!!!! now if feel bad :( but i would

yep

In Richard Matheson’s Button, Button, the short story the movie is based on, it’s only $50,000. The wife is tempted, the husband isn’t. After she is assured that the person who dies will be someone she doesn’t know, she pushes the button. She later learns that her husband had been pushed in front of a train. She remembers he had an insurance policy for $50,000. The mysterious man calls her and she accuses him of lying, to which he responds, “My dear lady, do you really think you knew your husband?”

I’m sure the movie will be quite different. The “monkey’s paw” spin in the short story was disappointing. I actually went out and bought the book just for this story (something I rarely do). After I Am Legend, I expected mroe from Richard Matheson.

I’m surprised to find there are people considering and even taking the “yes” option.

Consider this: if instead of a convenient anonymous button, they would fly you to someone of their choice, give you a knife and tell you to personally slit their throat for one million bucks, would you do it? Could you do it?
Could you do it if it’s a child? Could you do it if they beg for their life?
And is there any significant difference with the original scenario, except that you wouldn’t have to see the consequences of your decision leaking on the ground into crimson puddles?

Consider this, too: someone else gets this button, presses it and gets filthy rich. The button kills your mother, or your best friend, or your wife, or your son. What does the button presser look like from that perspective?

No.

@Fyrius, i would not go and murder someone, hence the convince of the button. I could go rob a bank this very minute but i would not do that. Not really as for ethics but because of consequences.

I find it remarkable, and not in a good way, that they managed to turn that Twilight Zone episode into a feature length film.

Also, everyone who said “yes” obviously didn’t see that episode.

No.

@me Edit: no.

I began to write a response, but I had to get rid of it because it was misanthropic and deranged and and it sounded as if it were coming from someone who is about to kill himself. It isn’t that I don’t believe it, more that I don’t want to spend my time thinking it. Anyone who could say yes has some really fucked up priorities.

So I will just say two things: No., and ‘the things people will consider for money.’

No amount of money is worth someone’s life.

How many times can I press the button?

@boffin That is very, very bad of you, but it made me laugh.

I couldn’t do it, no way. I’d be unable to stop thinking of how I’d feel if someone in my family suddenly died.

On the other hand, what if pushing the button would instantly kill someone who had gotten away with murder? A serial killer who remains on the loose, someone who abducted and killed a child and was never caught. Would I push the button then for a million bucks? It’s cool when Dexter does it, but I don’t know if I could do it even then. Maybe. I’d at least think about it. :)

After reading the responses.. I’d do it without problem as long as I could be assured it wouldn’t be my SO who died.

I’ve had first-hand experience with this (okay, that’s a stretch). This scenario was also featured in the videogame Fallout 3. Instead of only one person dying, it was an entire town via nuclear bomb, and the reward was a posh penthouse suite. After much deliberation, I finally pushed the button. And I felt dirty! I regretted it for the rest of the game because the town and its residents were gone forever. I can say without a doubt that I could not push the button in real life. Loved the digs, though!

Murder is murder. Jail is not fun.

Otherwise,..yeah totally pushing it.

@ThePeanutGallery I’d feel dirty if I killed that many pixels too.

No

I don’t see any moral dilemma. Pitting a life against your own greed is not a moral dilemma. You lose nothing if you don’t press the button. The $1 million was never yours. What’s the dilemma? Of course I wouldn’t.

@boffin lol and no, wouldn’t consider it for a second no movie for me!

Well, knowing me, I would press the button before somebody said that I had 1 million dollars. I am one of those curious people, who like to push buttons. I’m sure that with all the buttons I have pressed, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that one was for a WMD.
So yes. I would push it, using my ignorance.

No, no one deserves to die, and I don’t deserve $1m.

@Alek2407
@Facade
@boffin
@rangerr
@bagelface
You guys seriously creep me out.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to back away slowly now and keep running until my body drops in exhaustion.

@rangerr, you’re fine with killing someone else’s SO as long as it’s not yours? Seriously? How fucked up is that?
@bagelface, you have no trouble with murder unless it lands you in jail?

@Fyrius I find it shocking myself.

Biggest problem today, lack of adherence to the Golden Rule.

I would like to think I wouldn’t $1m isn’t all that much but I know I would be tempted

Since this is fluther and we talk about relgiion, atheism, and theism all of the time, I can’t help wonder what religion the people who answered “yes” are?

I’m struck by the fact that this is such an old conundrum, discussed ad nauseam since the 18th Century at least, and yet suddenly it is the subject of stories, YouTube movies, a general release movie, etc. without a nod to the fact that it has been around for ages, and with no attribution anywhere.

@pdworkin
“The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.” – Goethe

That would be apt if it were true. These recent versions advance nothing.

Did people think it was a new idea? Isn’t it similar to Indecent proposal, or questions like who would you save first, and would you let them cut the baby in half or give it up to keep it whole?

The original included the press of a button and a far-away stranger dying. It seems like a direct rip-off to me.

@pdworkin Doesn’t it seem like the older you get and the more you learn, the more everything seems derivative?

who’s old?

I don’t think the people who said they would push it really would if they were actually confronted with the situation by someone who was completely serious. Most people aren’t really that avaricious.

@petethepothead One hopes but one sometimes wonders!

Or worries.

CHANGE OF QUESTION:

Would you press the button if it was you who would die (painlessly), and everyone you know gets 1 million dollars?

c-c-c-c-combo breaker

@Grisaille So not.

@Grisaille I would be offended if someone thought my company/life was worth only a million dollars. So I guess that makes me look at this question in a whole new context.

So if you were offered $20 million you might do it? Or, I guess I’m asking, what’s your price, then. $100 million? I’d do it for $100 million but I would never admit it.

@Clair 1 million, to everyone you know. How many people are in your family? Co-workers? Classmates, perhaps? Friends?

Exes? Enemies? Lost loves?

It adds up.

@Fyrius Oh, was this a serious question?

@Grisaille I would hope that my company would mean more to those people than the money. Besides, why would someone want to give someone who raped them a million dollars. I wouldn’t do it.

Good question.

I suppose my own question could be likened to, say, a serviceman.

FOREWARNING: I have absolutely nothing against the men and women who serve for this country. Not only do I hold them to be the highest examples of selflessness, I am leaving for the Marine Corps. less than a year from now.

I know a bunch of lunkheads who’ve entered service to kill (mostly for reasonably good reasons – some have had family members pass away in 9.11, some want something to fight for, etc), immediately requesting a 03 or infantry-like position. Would you consider these people to be inherently evil for wanting to get paid for what they do? Isn’t that the same as pushing the button, in a sense?

How about whenever a serviceman picks up the rifle and takes a shot at someone – isn’t he doing that on behalf of everyone in the country? That bullet holds the ideology and history of every citizen – from rapists to the selfless; from pedophiles to the exemplary.

Also how is taking a bullet for the citizens of this country any different than allowing every person you’ve ever met receive a million dollars a piece?

I want to say it again:

I am playing devil’s advocate here. I don’t believe these things. Just making sure you guys understand this.

@Grisaille I think those men you describes are lunkheads for the most part; cocky men who have their adrenalin going. I don’t think all are evil, but some LOVE the idea of holding a gun (we see this in our poilice force also, some are commmited to the law, and some are just power hungry), others truly felt a calling I think after 9/11 and joined the armed forces. I know many men who joined the service because it sounded good, they could see the world, get training, have a job, they did not think much about the risks of being wounded or killed. But, it is true that the ranks of the enlisted are many times filled with men from lower income areas who see little opportunity where they are. Personally, I think the bravery of our military personnel has more to do with the bonds they form with their peers, protecting each other, and working as a team. I think that is in the front of their minds more than anything while in combat. Maybe I am wrong.

You are joining the marines?

@pdworkin
“I’d do it for $100 million but I would never admit it.”
I think you just did.

@Grisaille
“1 million, to everyone you know. (...) It adds up.”
It adds up, indeed. If everyone you know will get a million bucks out of nowhere, the dollar exchange rate is probably going to plummet like an albatross having a seizure.

@bagelface
I assumed so.

@Fyrius That’s what makes that joke amusing. See, first I take you to “I would never admit it”, then you realize that I just did admit it, and the cognitive dissonance cause you to collapse in helpless laughter. Get it? Get what I did there? Joke.

screw the million dollars I just want the button

@pdworkin
Oh. I see. I’m sorry, my brain is a bit slow tonight, perhaps I’m experiencing a delay in the effects of yoAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- (falls off chair) – HAHAHAHAHAHA – (doubles over on the floor) – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*cough* help mAHAHAHAHAHA – (faints)

(twitches a bit)

See? There ya go!

(gurgle, cough) Okay… (cough) ...which one of you just pushed a button?! (cough)

sorry

(coughs slimily into handkerchief) It’s okay. I’m a dog. I have nine lives.

I hate to tell you this .. but um.. dogs only have one life. It’s cats who have 9. Better luck with your next reincarnation.

@Sarcasm
Quick, put this stick in your mouth before the cognitive dissonance kicks in!
You could bite off your tongue, you know.

I bit off mine just now. But it’s okay. I’m a dog. I have nine tongues.

@Fyrius What are you on tonight? I’ll have what you’re having!

@Fyrius Hmm, ok. Seemed pretty silly to me.

@janbb
Cognitive dissonance.

@Fyrius It never had that effect on me!

That’s because you’re not a dog. Dogs have 9 brains.

how do you know she’s not a dog? this is the internet.

My secret is out. I’m really a dog pretending to be a penguin. (hangs head in shame and puts ears over eyes.)

@janbb
Don’t worry. You’re a dog. You have nine secrets.

wonders if @Fyrius licks himself when he thinks no one is looking?

@RareDenver Hey I say, if you can do it – go for it (when no-one’s looking!) :-)

@RareDenver
How rude. I may be a dog, but I’m still a dog in a fancy suit. And dogs in fancy suits are too classy to lick themselves.

They have well-paid servant dogs to do it for them.

How many well-paid servant dogs? 9?

@Sarcasm
...do you have spies positioned around my mansion?
I’ll have to alarm my nine security guards.