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

xp.out of this world. i had a bit of a crush.

Now? No way. As much shit as I deal with on a daily basis that makes it tough to be inside my head, I love life and am afraid of not having enough of it not too much. Ask me when I'm old and falling apart and my answer will likely be v different.

that's it, thomasintrouble... i remember being a bit freaked out by one episode where she had to physically battle the alien half of herself in a boxing match. it got a bit deep and psychological. i still get the theme song stuck in my head, although i think it's an old standard anyway.

A "delete all of humanity except me" button would be my idea of hell. That's unpleasantly how life feels too much of the time.

A "delete all of humanity, including me, now" I would probably feel pretty morally obligated to hit, considering what a drain we are on the planet's resources, but that's another thread for another day.

would consider the latter if it included cows as well.

for dog latin : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjQNoXWBWaM

wld prefer to hit the 'voluntary human extinction' option, to start NOW

delete all humanity def has its merits but I'd be tempted to hang around just to find out which species ended up bossing the game in our absence

they'd just become the new humans, and it'd take as long again for them to invent the toffee crisp, so i don't see the point tbh

i like the sound of these toffee crisp articles.

There have been times in the past when I would have pushed the hell out of such a button (and probably times ahead when I would want to as well, as much as I hate to say it). But now? No way.

I wouldn't eradicate humanity either because I think we'll figure it out eventually and if not, we'll all die anyway and the planet will spin on.

this question seems to be asking if you would make use of a pain-free (to yourself and others) way of committing suicide. i think for most ppl the impulse to stay alive is more than just avoiding pain - it is avoiding death/void/oblivion/nothingness. it is certainly that for me.

yeah it's not so much the death as the not-knowing? I don't mind making big decisions but I like being able to assess them afterwards.

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

We're not talking about death, we're talking about... not existing. Like actively choosing nothingness.

i sometimes wonder whether it would be in society's best interest to create a way for people to commit suicide in a responsible (to their families + loved ones + themselves) way. presumably people are going to do it anyway, so maybe if we had some kind of "ethically" sanctioned dystopian way to do it (like those drinks in children of men, or the suicide booths in a mind forever voyaging), it might ease some of the pain. this might be a copout tho, since treatment has got to be the better model, right? (kant would certainly never condone suicide, even under the best most responsible conditions)

this is the question i used to ask myself when i was lying in bed all day pretending i wasn't contemplating suicide. the answer was yes of course. can still find myself leaning in that direction in unguarded moments but in general it's a definite no, and for the change i am exceedingly grateful.

THere are definitely days when I would. Of late, most of them. But there are days when I wouldn't. "no emotional or financial or other repercussions to the people around you" weights it heavily towards the "yes" column.

I asked this question. This question is not about suicide. It is about not-existing.

Please can people not use this as a suicide thread, that was not the intention and I'd really rather the discussion did not turn that way.

Nope. I would miss out on stuff and that is the worst.

i think if this question is always on your mind and you think "it's ok this is just an impossible hypothetical and i'm not actually contemplating suicide" you're basically fooling yourself that your mental state is better than it is.

("you" = impersonal, would have used "one" but it reads funny.)

Historically speaking, you've already missed out on pretty much everything, and are going to miss out on everything else.

Existence is sometimes awesome, but on the whole it's pretty shit.

I would be very tempted.

Would it be as though I'd never existed? Would the actual world simply be replaced with the nearest alternative world in which there's no me? It's hard to know what exactly that world would be like... George Bailey taught us.

I don't think anyone in this thread has any right to draw conclusions about the mental state of anyone except themselves. Thanks.

Historically speaking, you've already missed out on pretty much everything, and are going to miss out on everything else.

On the one hand, sure.

On the other hand, the only things that matter are the things I'm around to experience, and prematurely shutting things down by ceasing to exist makes a bunch of stuff I care about no longer matter.

I disagree with the op regarding what this thread is about. Luckily death of the author etc.

i'm drawing the conclusion that the southern hemisphere doesn't have toffee crisps, which has got be having a serious quality of life impact tbh

darraghmac, what's your opinion of Double Deckers?

we did that thread last week, thomas!

srsly speaking tho any question that asks about self-annihilation necessitates a discussion of suicide imho

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.

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!

― Eyeball Kicks, Friday, October 19, 2012 11:18 PM (3 months ago)

i think this is prob the one to take from this thread in a fire tbh

Worrying to note that i have finished the wheel of time and at least ten toffee crisps since post #3 itt tho

I have measured out my life with toffee crisps

Vg, vg

i tend to favour measuring it out in terms of my regular purchases, washing powder, tea, olive oil, converse.

i like that. 'twere two converses, one washing powder and three teas ago...

i swear i only bought this current pair six weeks ago and they're practically in the grave already.

conversely (sorry), washing powder seems to last much longer these days

i use those squidgy bag things

http://i.imgur.com/9MY0RMF.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/58DT6ok.gif
http://i.imgur.com/pX9XYtq.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/zWQR4W1.gif
http://i.imgur.com/OM7SPzs.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/WwQtpDK.gif

ideally the button would function retroactively, terminating your existence a moment before you were presented with the option of pressing it, or on a date and time of your choosing, or ~before you ever came into existence~. but I'm not really sure how that would work w/r/t time travel paradoxes.

this was a weird thread.

push the button frank

what if you could push a button and ilx never existed

Eyeball Kicks was/is great

2 seconds after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/pX9XYtq.gif

2 minutes after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/OM7SPzs.gif

2 days after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/zWQR4W1.gif

those blank dudes are very popular in presentations these days

Please let there never be such a thing, because it'd be on my desk and I would get absorbed in something and absentmindedly p

not until i finish final fantasy vii, the wheel of time and another thousand toffee crisps

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Friday, October 12, 2012 5:28 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

good god, did you ever defeat Sephiroth???!?

destiny is calling me
open up my eager eyes

Long thread, didn’t read it all, maybe already been noted, but OP “does not exist in the ilx database.”

Kinda makes you thi— aw, never mind

lol

OP's still here occasionally, in a different guise, so there's life after death after all.

Really? Strange. iirc, the OP has left ILX at least four or five times, each time seemingly convinced they'd never return. This place has a weird effect on people.

they've been perma-banned now

had the decision made for them ig

i've very much grown fond of the "button" thought experiment

not in the form posed by white chocolate cheesecake, that's just anti-natalism adjacent. i experimented with antinatalism for a while, but mostly i just think cioran is fucking hilarious. that dude was seriously funny.

the version of the thought experiment that was most important to me was "if you could press a button and become a cis woman, would you?"

i'm framing it this way because i want to center the binary bias. i heard it as "a cis member of the opposite gender", which isn't a framing i'm into, i don't think of the idea of two genders _or_ "opposite" genders. i do come from a generation where i know a lot of women who genuinely wish they were cis. i don't know if a lot of zoomers think that... anyway, the only way to live with that, i think, is radical acceptance.

personally, i love not being cis. i can't think of any point since my egg cracked that i would have pressed that button. i've seen the framing help a lot of people, get past a lot of imposter syndrome. you ask a lot of questioning people that, and they'd push it without having to think about it, just instantaneously, it's not a question they have to think about. it helps with... a lot of the "questioning" is just imposter syndrome, people gatekeeping themselves. people don't need answers, they need permission. i guess that's a lot of the "button" framing... it's an acceptable way to ask these questions.

---

re: the original question... "do i _want_ to exist?" is a... to me, it's a dodge, it takes something personal and makes it impersonal. to me the real question is "am i happy being alive". if the answer is "no", that's something a person can _do_ something about individually. i don't mean that someone can choose to be happy. if i'm unhappy, though, there are paths i can pursue.

having said that life often hurts for me. it hurts a lot. i do wonder a lot if life is worth it, do often wish that i could disappear. passive suicidal ideation, it's called. people can argue all they want about whether it's actually suicidal... i think the clinical consensus _is_ that it's a form of suicidality... certainly it's my bias, it's my feeling. as someone who has struggled with suicidality for most of her life. often that suicidality expresses itself passively.

the tension is that i have, for pretty much my entire life, wanted very much to _not_ kill myself. that's the dialectical tension there. if i just disappear i don't have to deal with the fact that i want to _not_ kill myself, i can tell myself i'm not. i'm not hurting the people around me and... if i'm hurting myself, it's instantaneous and painless. by removing myself from existence, i _would_ be hurting myself and the people around me... it's just that none of us would know it.

grossly unfair. grossly unfair and even cruel. to oneself. considering others... considering others, in a situation like this, is... when i'm in that situation it's easier to care about other than it is to care about myself. i can't ever hate other people the way i can hate myself. i can learn to love myself, though, and that... there's no dialectic there. the whole "love is stronger than hate" glurge... there's truth to it for me. when i feel both self-love and self-hatred, the self-love is so so much stronger as to make the self-hatred... just fundamentally meaningless.

it's one of those things where if i allow myself the choice, there's... it's so lopsided as to not seem like a choice at all. once i truly allowed myself to _ask_ the "should i transition" question, frame it genuinely, it was the same way... it didn't even seem like a _question_, even though it was, in fact, a genuine question.

---

the point is the meme version of "the button" is one i really love a lot... it's a drawing by someone named jake clark.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/daily-struggle-two-buttons

it intersects really well with the "why not both?" meme, also really popular among... i mean i'm gonna be really honest a lot of the people i know have executive dysfunction and just hate making choices. is all.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have-both