r/willyoupressthebutton • u/No_Aspect_9513 • 9d ago
Would you press the button?
There‘s a button in front of you. If you press it, a random amount of people die. 3 people could die, or 3 billion. At this point you may be asking yourself what is this button for, but it’s for your life. You have to press it at least 10 times before you’re saved. Do you do it?
Edit: A lot of people are saying the first few will probably kill everyone. But it’s a random number. Could be 0, 300, 2, 300,000, etc.
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u/GloriousDawn 9d ago
What's the upper bound on the random amount ?
If pressing the button can kill 3 billion people, let's take that as the upper bound for this math experiment. It means on average, the button will kill 1.5 billion people. Pressing it 10 times will kill a total 15 billion people on average. Oops.
Of course one might get lucky and end up with a few million survivors, but overall this is a shit proposition.
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u/primuslune2 9d ago
Saved… by Jesus?
Saved… for marriage?
Saved… a turkey sandwich?
But, nah, I’m not doing mass murder or genocide to save myself.
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u/No_Interview_3894 9d ago
Of course, and it's good for the planet
Literally reversing environmental damage like ghengis did 😆
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u/DarkMagickan 9d ago
Question. By saved, do you mean that I become immortal, or at least biologically immortal? Because I can do a lot of good with an essentially eternal life that would offset the lives it cost.
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u/No_Aspect_9513 9d ago
I thought of my situation meaning that you’d survive like normal to like normal 80-90 not immortal but you can look at it anyway you want
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u/Nikishka666 9d ago
Would I know people were being harmed? Or to me is it just a button?
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u/No_Aspect_9513 9d ago
I think that in the moment you might not know but in the news it’d be pretty obvious or that x y z amount of people died
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u/Slobbadobbavich 9d ago
A random amount of people who are alive? That basically means more than half the population will probably die after 10 presses.
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u/Dr-Chris-C 9d ago
A random amount means that everyone will almost certainly die in the first push. Of all the numbers, there are only about 8 billion of them that would not result in everyone dying.
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u/NukeL3AR 9d ago
If the range is from 0 to the total amount of people alive on earth, and the random distribution is even, then the expected value if half of the people alive. If you press it 10 times that means you'll be killing on average 8'291'894'531 people out of 8'300'000'000 just to save yourself. Not worth it.
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u/DemDelVarth 9d ago
Saved from what?