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

I am listening to "The Safety Dance" right now; fuck off, button

ate a tasty burrito for lunch, button couldn't be further from my mind

burrito stall

otm

http://www.vhemt.org/colorvisualize.jpg

I think this question is more about VHEMT-style selflessness than anything else.

lol @ the idea that people who buy tons of lottery tickets and fantasize about winning being the definition of happy people

I've never come across a one of those lottery ppl who fall into anything remotely resembling 'happiness'

ie the dude at my grocery store who comes out to his car, scratches off the scratch ticket, wins nothing, goes back in and buys 10 more, wins nothing, goes back in buys 10 more, rinse repeate for 30 minutes every day

Even though lately I feel like I asked for a fuzzy blanket and someone gave me a wire monkey mother instead, I still would not push the button.

lol @ the idea that people who buy tons of lottery tickets and fantasize about winning being the definition of happy people

― some dude, Friday, October 19, 2012 4:19 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Um, comparatively is all.

yes people who fantasize about winning the lottery are happier than people who fantasize about being in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

I absolutely wouldn't push it TODAY; but c'mon, it'd be nice to know such a button exists if I'm ever suffering the final painful months of terminal cancer or something equally horrible.

(What about paralysis - what if I couldn't physically push the button myself? Could somebody push it for me; and would they then instantly forget why they pushed such a button? Would the button's existence be retroactively wiped out too? POINTS TO PONDER.)

what if you were told someone could push the button for you, but the button actually wipes that person out instead?

Who told you this? Would you remember the person that actually got wiped out existed?

http://www.officeplayground.com/Assets/ProductImages/pi2500-2699/2571_BSButton_1.jpg

Can I see what the rest of my life has to offer me before I choose?

If there's travel, someone special, and an ounce of peace of mind coming up, I'd not press it.

But if it's continuing on the path it is at the moment, get me that button please.

How is this question not about suicide?

― Evan, Friday, October 19, 2012 10:22 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a much more interesting question than it looks on the surface.

yes, exactly HOW is this question not about suicide?

the thread-starter (famously now) said it just wasn't, by fiat. apart from the clusterfuck that followed, that declaration had no weight. the word suicide has appeared dozens of times as people approached their answer to the question in good faith.

but others (w/o reading back thru, sorry) have agreed that this scenario is something entirely different. (generalizing here) those are also some of the same people saying they'd push it, am i wrong?

what is it about the negation of pain and trouble (and memory?) in toto that changes this act from a suicidal one? i think this needs to bu justified.

it's the part about no negative repercussions

yes but HOW

Framing the question as "do you think the world would be a better place if you never existed" still is pretty suicidal since you're fantasizing a scenario that causes nobody close to you pain but with the same outcome for yourself.

My dad refers to the time before I was born as when I was "a bone over the road ditch"

I guess that's what this place would be, that place of non existence. I literally envision a bone... in a ditch.

IMO the question as originally framed is indistinguishable from suicide, just with a fantasy element and lack of "consequences."

reframing the question as "not to be born" or "never having existed" is much more interesting.

psychoanalysis sometimes talks about the desire for constraint, that is, the desire for that which inhibits the complete fulfillment of desire. that's interesting here because the second scenario above would seem to suggest in some sense to desire the completion of desire as its ultimate negation. ie, a performative contradiction.

what is it about the negation of pain and trouble (and memory?) in toto that changes this act from a suicidal one? i think this needs to bu justified.

Maybe it has to do with the social dimension of suicide. I don't agree with the idea voiced above that suicide is necessarily an aggressive action, but it's an action that has a social effect, impacts other people, has meaning for them. Maybe the feeling is that by eliminating the public consequences of suicide and making it strictly private, it loses the social significance that we normally associate with it. It then becomes something else.

If you commit suicide there are negative repercussions, if you push this hypothetical button there are none. There are (some similar) negative repercussions in non-suicidal death as well, but if you push this hypothetical button, again, there are none. Why is this? Because it is a hypothetical button. This is a button that bypasses death, that transcends time and space and to some extent logic.

The question is not 'If you could push a button and die...'. This is about something beyond death, and as such should be considered in a grander scale than the usual human life.

The scenario described in the initial post is basically the theme to M*A*S*H.

Ceasing to exist is not dying. If you are religious, does your immortal soul cease to exist? If you are a materialist, does the matter comprising your corpse cease to exist?

This is one reason why i think this question is very different from suicide.

so then, if this is a fantasy of universal painlessness, it is a roundabout acknowledgement that, no matter how little value you place in your own existence (vs oblivion), OTHERS value you. is their love, however attenuated, really that intrusive?

why not press the button "halfway," but the other half -- you're still around but you and everybody you know finds your existence painless?

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬~ஜ۩۞۩ஜ~▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­▬
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy23neI1Wno
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬~ஜ۩۞۩ஜ~▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­▬

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬~ஜ۩۞۩ஜ~▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­▬
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i47-QBL4Qo
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬~ஜ۩۞۩ஜ~▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­▬

AB: That's assuming that materialists all believe that matter is sufficient to sustain identity even in entropic form. *I* would cease to exist even if my disintegrated matter fell down to earth as a fine dusting of emil.y-tasting frosticles.

guys guys this question is about whatever u want it to be do u see

otm

without a second's hesitation.

If you could push a button and simply turn into you-tasting frosticle dusting, would you press it?

A long time ago a friend of mine said "The Velvet Underground suck... if they were around today among current artists nobody would like them!" I told him that hypothetical is impossible due to their influence. He argued that they're only revered because of their then new approach. I tried to explain that if they didn't exist then than none of the bands of today he is comparing them to would have likely existed without them in their rightful place in music history.

Perhaps there are too many consequences of you suddenly not existing to frame it with only other peoples memories taken into account- coming down to matter or if you believe in souls whatever they would do before you exist.

It is an interesting question to talk about if you never have existed, but it can't be the point of the original question to me, since it seems to revolve around the idea that you're deciding to press the button. There is a motivation to press it that makes the question about the perfect suicide, one that burdens nobody. And burdening loved ones just happens to most likely be the biggest hurdle for a suicidal person.

i'm going to repost my question from a couple days ago:

can i ask to have something clarified about the button?

"and no emotional or financial or other repercussions to the people around you." -- how precisely is this magic effected?

is it numbness? all others who have any relation to you at all register your sudden disappearance but find they just don't feel anything one way or another (this seems tyrannical and monstrous to me btw)

is it forgetting? their minds and institutional records are wiped, any debts are written off as an accounting mistake, memories of you come up blank, etc. you become a hole, but one so complete there's no pain to be felt.

is it rewriting history? ie the "it's a wonderful life" option. the clock is rewound. i suppose this is the most attractive option if you want to hit it.

― there is no dana, only (goole), Friday, October 12, 2012 3:20 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what are people imagining happens in their own scenario?

Makes no difference to me: I can't see anything appealing about pushing the button.

Your place in history and all of your belongings, the fact that someone's rent is weirdly hard to pay, or a job position somewhere is suddenly available, I don't see how this makes any sense unless as ryan said as if you had never been born at all.

But talking about it so literally is like how Dwight Schrute approached the "desert island books" question. The point of the question is the motivation knowing you wouldn't hurt anyone in the process. Perfect suicide.

Do not question magical hypotheses. While you might get answers, none of them would make any sense. I still prefer to choose the herd of friendly unicorns and magical rainbows shining out of my ass over pushing the magic button.

I'm going to resist image search this time.

I consider myself more influential than the Velvet Underground

This thread is kinda maddening to read. All the people going no but how does it work? what'll happen to my kids? are like people who can't sit still during a time-travel film. It doesn't make sense!

Automatically connecting this question to suicide is weird. The question itself boils down to "Is life worth living?" which is sort of the most basic building block of all philosophy, art, religion and anything else. "Is life worth living?" is not the same question as "Can life ever be fun or fulfilling or offer moments of pure exquisite insight/pleasure/glory/connection?" - of course it can, for most people (even in terrible situations), for some of the time.

I hesitate to write this sentence because it is so obvious, but all the while I am happy, seeing people, going to shows, having sex, making music, I know it's true that a third of the people I meet will die of cancer and two-thirds of them will die of something else, and I will be witness to this if I don't die of cancer or something else first; the people I have sex with will die, and before they do they will become people I would not want to have sex with, and I will be unsexy to them; the children I might create through this sex will go through the same process: much joy, delight in their abilities, friendship, excitement, whatever, but ultimately defeat/compromise/infirmity/death. And so on. Lust for life doesn't get you out of this. Death is no different whined at than withstood etc.

Again, I must say that I know everybody knows this.

So there is this simple question that everything in our culture that is not strictly administrative is built upon: much of life is pleasure and much of it is suffering - what is a tolerable balance? Is any amount of suffering worth it? Does a small amount of happiness outweigh much suffering? How could happiness even be defined if there were no suffering?

There are practical examples that might give some kind of answer. People in the most miserable corners ever drawn who nevertheless wanna live, live, live. Old people gone right into the ending who don't seem to regret living or to seem to suffer much to themselves even when they seem to suffer to us.

These are pretty much the basic questions since the year dot, and there will never be answers. But I suppose everyone has an opinion on how much pain they are prepared to take for a certain amount of satisfaction, or about whether just glancing at nature or a pretty arse is sufficient compensation for being so vulnerable and minor, and lots of other interesting things to say about the value of tiny, tiny life... These are very basic ideas, I know, but it is bewildering when people say things like "Why would I think of this? I am happy/not suicidal/living it up!" Ach, I have seen this so many times. I think it would be worth discussing the perverse neurosis of this kind of person. It's a different kind of life. Inhuman!

Nothing wrong with considering the effects of death, or even of suicide.

Strange to have a question where suicide-in-all-but-name is *not supposed to have any effects*.

If you suddenly cease to exist painlessly and easily, and no one else notices or minds, and life in every other respect goes on just as before, in what sense do you exist anyway?

The question makes no sense. Saying so doesn't mean one is shying away from weighing one's own life in the balance. All the questions you ask about whether life is worth it, or happiness outweighs suffering, depend on the opposite conclusion, that death/suicide does indeed have real-world effects, on you and on others.

I don't see how any scenario in which you make a choice and have to actively engage in something with the sole purpose of ending your existence isn't about suicide, but okay.

otoh, as someone who has thought almost daily for a long while now about wanting to die - and i don't consider myself suicidal by any means - i sort of understand the difference. i voted yes, even though my twisted scenarios tend to involve someone else killing me and me being all 'thank fuck for that'.

really though i wouldn't push the button, because as soon as i was confronted with the option to 'push the button', the sugababes' 'push the button' would pop into my head and how could anyone want to cease existing knowing that song exists.

The question itself boils down to "Is life worth living?"

This phrasing of the question would be much easier for most people to grasp more directly, and I do agree that the import of the question, as asked, is nearly equivalent to this. The most obvious difference would be that this poll personalizes the question, so a more accurate equivalent would be, "Is my life worth living?" This does change the essential question and how one thinks about it.

The people who are asserting that this personalization of the question invariably drags in the question of suicide have a valid point. If the answer to the question "Is my life worth living?" is "no", this leaves one morally bound to act upon this judgement in a way that the question "Is life worth living?" does not, because having decided that all lives and all life are equally futile, one cannot personally put an end to all life, but having decided this specifically about one's self, one can end one's own life. In fact, after coming to such a conclusion, inaction in this matter suggests that one's conclusion is actually quite inconclusive.

I'm think I'm too hedonistic to push the button. I love things, people and feelings.

OTOH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cS40pePzCM

out of the last 8 days, i would have said "no" during 6 of them.

which means that i've thought about this question during my every day life a couple times since this thread started.

would you press a button to tivo-skip over the days where you would have said yes?