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

I have been convinced since day one that the button just makes you respawn somewhere else, as a sort of hidden bonus the universe gives you for being so polite. Of course, now that you know the secret you can't cash the prize anymore.

sometimes being in work or the prospect of it makes me want to press the button. maybe i shd amend my answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA2ktUcWX7Q

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WL3-c8SHcLY/TKRugk-WDTI/AAAAAAAAAGg/PRIcxOlDp3k/s1600/337168.full.gif

http://i47.tinypic.com/2h7jfjd.png

Are you saying his big mouth keeps on existing?

If Romney gets elected this button will be in high demand.

would be funny if the button was really just a reset button and initiated an eternal recurrence of the life you decided to erase.

Maybe there was a similar button on that alarm clock from Groundhog Day

WDYLL after pressing the button:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUi1PdYn5nk

o shit, posted that then saw evan's post, never mind

Would you push a Groundhog Day button? May be a cool poll.

i totally would if I could opt out once i got to some predestined number

Aside, the "do over" questions upthread reminded me of this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_(novel)

(worth reading BTW)

― Elvis Telecom, Monday, October 15, 2012 2:25 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Took Elvis' suggestion and boy was that a good book.

wondering if the storm is part and parcel of this poll

Just reading 'The Lazy Man's Life' by Thaddeus Golas, who wrote the hippie classic 'Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment' and liked this tripping anecdote which seems vaguely appropriate to quote:

In an early experience [with acid], I was sitting cross-legged, and thought, "Well, here I am, ready to go," but was stopped short when I realised I might permanently go, leaving an ungoverned, lunatic brain or a messy dead body behind. Then I thought, "Okay, suppose you know for sure that this whole level of reality is an illusion, and that it will all vanish when you leave. Would you go?" After long seconds, I decided, "Yes. Yes, I would go." Instantly the whole room turned radiant, as though lit from within. "That's it," I though. "Be ready to leave." It's like those dull summer vacations when everything interesting starts to happen just when it is time to go home. Be ready to die and leave at any time. Do not hold on.

[Also a bit later he gets held up with a gun:

One of the bikers pointed a gun at my forehead and said, "How does it feel to be looking down the barrel of a .44?"

Since I was high on LSD, I thought, "Far out! My horoscope says I'm going to live to 84, but here I go." Aloud, I said, "I dig you, brother."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ah, now i see why this poll is closing when it does. In the event of a Romney presidency....

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

landslide

that's amazingly high (the 44)

can lurkers FP themselves?

nah, if they don't post the button never appears. quality tactic, like finding those hiding spots in goldeneye imo

hoping button appears if Election Day thread isnt locked tonight

'hoping button' appears after obama wins imo

http://bluecollarphilosophy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Obama-Button-196x196.png

http://alliandgenine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/george_michael_choose_life-thumb-430x408.jpg

^ either that is a wax museum figure or I'm changing my vote to 'Yes'

His right hand blur suggests movement.

OK then a real human is putting his arms through the sleeves. That head is too uncanny.

Once upon a time there was a dualist. He believed that mind and matter are separate substances. Just how they interacted he did not pretend to know-this was one of the "mysteries" of life. But he was sure they were quite separate substances.

This dualist, unfortunately, led an unbearably painful life-not because of his philosophical beliefs, but for quite different reasons. And he had excellent empirical evidence that no respite was in sight for the rest of his life. He longed for nothing more than to die. But he was deterred from suicide by such reasons as: (1) he did not want to hurt other people by his death; (2) he was afraid suicide might be morally wrong; (3) he was afraid there might be an afterlife, and he did not want to risk the possibility of eternal punishment. So our poor dualist was quite desperate.

Then came the discovery of the miracle drug! Its effect on the taker was to annihilate the soul or mind entirely but to leave the body functioning exactly as before. Absolutely no observable change came over the taker; the body continued to act just as if it still had a soul. Not the closest friend or observer could possibly know that the taker had taken the drug, unless the taker informed him ...

To return to the story, our dualist was, of course, delighted! Now he could annihilate himself (his soul, that is) in a way not subject to any of the foregoing objections. And so, for the first time in years, he went to bed with a light heart, saying: "Tomorrow morning I will go down to the drugstore and get the drug. My days of suffering are over at last!" With these thoughts, he fell peacefully asleep.

Now at this point a curious thing happened. A friend of the dualist who knew about this drug, and who knew of the sufferings of the dualist, decided to put him out of his misery. So in the middle of the night, while the dualist was fast asleep, the friend quietly stole into the house and injected the drug into his veins. The next morning the body of the dualist awoke-without any soul indeed-and the first thing it did was to go to the drugstore to get the drug. He took it home and, before taking it, said, "Now I shall be released." So he took it and then waited the time interval in which it was supposed to work. At the end of the interval he angrily exclaimed: "Damn it, this stuff hasn't helped at all! I still obviously have a soul and am suffering as much as ever!"

Yes! Didn't I link that upthread in Google Books but was too lazy to type it out?

I did, just confirming I'm not crazy. Raymond Smullyan is a total bro

ah i missed it the first time

wow i love that, thanks for introducing me to this guy

i hate it! philosophical zombie by any other name, lousy intuition pumping, armchair introspeculating.

does soul equate to mind in the fable above? I'm confused.

i don't think it's a thought experiment, it's an exploratory parable

then again i'm not keen on dualism

I didn't like it much either.

so why didn' t he notice when he woke? shite.

Its effect on the taker was to annihilate the soul or mind entirely but to leave the body functioning exactly as before

even under substance dualism (which i'm not keen on either although from a materialist perspective my distinctions may be seen as hair splitting) this is not necessarily a coherent or meaningful proposition. Cf. "I have designed a computer virus that annhilates all electrical activity in the computer completely but leaves it functioning exactly as before."

and mind = soul? i dunno, i must be a triangulist or whatever

(3) he was afraid there might be an afterlife, and he did not want to risk the possibility of eternal punishment.

maybe shouldn't be popping Soulkillers imo

we ended up not breaking up btw but like two weeks later SANDY

...?

"test audiences didn't respond well to the soul dying so we brought in the writer of sex and pottery to rewrite the ending. the soul pulls through and it and the guy decide to stick together and weather the storm metaphorically and then there's an actual storm, geddit?"

Its effect on the taker was to annihilate the soul or mind entirely

Yet it sounds like this did not happen at all; false advertising? I mean I guess you could say the body just natural goes through existential crisis even if there is no soul, but it also makes it pretty clear that mind and soul should be considered the same thing here, why didn't he 'wake up' as a brain-dead vegetable?

that parable should have ended with "Makes you think."