If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

even if it is super special suicide

Isn't it great that there are people on this thread who can mansplain to me what the thread I started is about! Because I would ~never~ have known what was in my head otherwise.

who cares what you think the thread is about is really the point. i would happily "mansplain" 20th century literary theory to you, but i'll let wiki handle that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author

if you could push a button and authorial intent would simply cease to exist, would you press it?

^^^ yes

I would only ask:

Do you mean, fade out to nothing, leaving behind no body for someone else to sort out, including yr stuff?

And where to go?

Put it this way, would it be the same as going to some far-flung, ooh, coastal area some place 'west' of here, with enough resources to live on?

?

OK, I've looked at that wiki link, it's beyond my ken...

you lot carry on.

The relevance of suicide depends on how we read the question.

If the effect of the button is that at the moment of pressing I simply vanish, whereas my friends and relatives are magically unafflicted, then it sounds like a peculiarly consequence-free self-killing.

If the effect is to change the world such that I've never existed, then I don't think that suicide is relevant. It's a limit case of the question, "How would you wish for the world to be different?" If the consequence of my wish is that someone isn't born who would otherwise have been born, then I wouldn't regard that as murder.

The act of trying to consider this hypothetical anullment in a hypothetical universe which does not contain the concept of suicide is twisting my poor little brain. I'm out too.

That's not why I'm out, just to clarify.

xp Jim, there's still a active act of self-annihilation involved, for which suicide is still the only relevant analogue.

xp ( sorry Mark, didn't mean to speak for you chap )

a better question is push a button and some OTHER person ceast to exist etc?

― nostormo, Friday, October 12, 2012 7:36 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah being a parent makes this whole question more complicated. does my son cease to exist too? would he just suddenly have another guy as his dad? or no dad? because fuck that w/ any of those scenarios. so maybe not so complicated.

hell no

my life isn't even half as great as it could be right now and i still didn't even have to think about this one

You can't cite death of the author in a discussion, you fucking lugnut. This isn't literature, it's communication.

yeah despite being a major stan for death of the author i dont think it applies here at all

xp I don't see why the thread creator should have any special privilege to police the discussion

and some dude otm. even if it would be ethically okay for me to wipe out my own existence, i don't think i can make that decision for the life that is dependent on my own existence to exist.

what about push a button to freeze everything except yourself?

This was a pretty decent novel, fwiw.

If the It's A Wonderful Life scenario were available, I'd totally want to see what the world would be like without me.

― thomasintrouble

Heh, I'm sure I would be miffed to find out everything was EXACTLY THE SAME.

no. i like existing. dealing with crap that it entails is another thing but really that's the crap's fault not mine.

this, but there were times - not necessarily times of great depression (most memorably walking down a moonlit sunken lane in Sussex in my early twenties) - where I longed for such a button and would have pressed it.

Thought experiment. Pretend it would involve no physical pain to yourself, and no emotional or financial or other repercussions to the people around you. Would you hit the Flag Post button?

i'm assuming for the purpose of this question that the button is ideally consequence free. we can argue that in reality our existence has had consequences for everybody we've ever met and many people we haven't, but i don't need to work out the nuts and bolts of how it wd be possible for me to cease to exist without impacting on those people - it's a given of the question, which is reduced to "do i choose to cease to exist or not, given no consequences ensue from my decision?"

my answer is still no, because in the most simplistic Camus-ian sense, i prefer existing to the alternative.

Nah. I mean I don't contribute anything to the well being of my fellow humans or the planet but I'm not bothered by that. There's always a record to listen to, a TV show to watch, a football match to obsess over. That's more than enough for me to want to exist. Being a shallow sort probably helps.

If a thread-starter asks a question which is "do you prefer red or blue?" you don't get to walk into a thread and declare that actually red is yellow for the purposes of this question and claim "ooh, death of the author."

Especially if that means drawing dubious psychological conclusions about what it means for anyone on the thread who chose "yellow" (when they actually chose red.)

i'm sure i've had a lot of times when i'd've pressed it, maybe. i think i'd've been wrong. (inasmuch as i can speak for an i that isn't me, now - complications!)

but to go back to something else i thought upthread, i think i'd be comfortable with a consequence-less removal from the world of other people as long as i cd go on experiencing, including experiencing that world, without belonging to it.

what if the thread-starter asks: 'if you could eliminate yellow or blue, which would you eliminate?' and someone declares that eliminating any one of those colors would also eliminate idk green (if i remember my primary and secondary colors correctly?) and then the thread starter said: "NO. ONLY ELIMINATING THOSE COLORS DON'T TELL ME HOW TO FEEL"

Thought experiment. Pretend any hypothetical situation in which you cause yourself to "simply cease to exist" can be discussed without ever referring to suicide.

maybe it's like that dr who thing where the crack in the wall eats you and then everyone forgets you ever existed.

'if you could eliminate yellow or blue, which would you eliminate?'

blue. man city. obvious.

Mordy, you're a total arsehole and I wish you would cease to exist. Or at least keep your unpleasantness off threads that I start. Can you please just go away and just not do this, for once?

If you can't do that, I'm going to ask for the thread to be locked, because I'm really, really sick of this.

Get over yourself.

I'm becoming completely serious, before you start with your "oh noes, women be being emotional" garbage again. Please just stop this.

always, always include a poll option that states ”YOUR OPTIONS DON'T INCLUDE MY PERSONAL CHOICE YOU THOUGHTFASCIST” is the key rule imo

WCC, any issue I have with you has nothing to do your gender.

fwiw, I don't really have an issue with you except that you love to escalate ILX arguments. I don't even have a problem with that tho! Go with god.

also lol @ *my* women are being emotional garbage. i've never said that. but when did you stop beating your inappropriate work crush?

Seriously tempted right now to push a button so that this discussion could cease to exist.

i'm trying to decide which of mordy's "texts" most warrants a flagging.

MATT DC otm this tiresome crap has to stop.

quite.

i don't think i said anything warranting a flag post itt, but do what you've gotta do xxp

I'm on my phone can someone post a .gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn, thank you in advance

I love this "I'm not even being a dick to you!" faux-innocent act followed by immediately being a massive dick.

Matt, please can you lock the thread. I'm deeply tired of this.

deeply

Yeah, from my perspective, I answered the question, thanks WCC for clarifying it had nothing to do with that wiki link, and any discussion seems to be hidebound by some bloke almost making a point then being quite nasty in the next breath...

mordy engaged with the thread sincerely and in good faith, and then was told he couldn't use the S-word

literally all the bullshit happened after someone tried to control how people interpreted the question.

i think he was asked not to use it, but it seemed v. important to him to ignore that request

look, Dolphins. aren't they adorable?

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/dolphins-poster-l.jpg