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

I wouldn't commit suicide, but I have enough days where I feel the 'cease to exist button' impulse that I voted yes. I keep going in the hope that I'll someday stop feeling that impulse. And also because, from a dramatic standpoint, I've lost way too much in my life for me to stop existing at this point without it being a little too pat and convenient. Yes, this is among the thoughts that keep me going.</overshare>

Also, the direction this thread took (writ large) is among the reasons that nonexistence occasionally sounds pretty sweet.

No, I don't think it's eradicating all you've ever done or replacing your existence with someone else; just stopping you existing now. All the things you've done still happened, but you're gone. Suspension of disbelief is needed, but no one misses you, someone else comes in and does your job, you just stop. Vanish.

unless this button replaces your existence with another, identical, existence. i.e. it does fuck all?

That's an interesting variation. Suppose that by pressing the button your consciousness ends, but the world goes on "objectively" just as it would otherwise. Either your body continues to operate like a philosophical zombie, or it retains consciousness and a sense of continuity with its prior life (we can suppose that it blocks out the memory of the button-pushing), but *you*, in an important sense, no longer exist. Nobody would ever have to know. Would it still be a kind of suicide?

if I turn into a zombie by pushing the button I may want to change my answer

zombie you also now has a mustache

and what becomes of the "you" that continues? sure "they" will have some kind of "consciousness" in order to function? i guess it depends whether you regard there being a "spirit" or whether we are but automata

Oh, on the reinhabitation tip, I have thought before that it would be awesome if I could body swap with someone like Stephen Hawking who could put this bag of meat to better use and who would be much more appreciative of being relatively healthy. Healthy once you scoop the brain out, anyways.

it's like that film about that dude who does this magic trick that involves making a copy of him and then drowning the original copy to perform a teleport.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/

xps, you say automata, I say automahta, lets call the whole thing off.

twittercide

no way no way

automata

at present my answer varies from hour to hour - at the moment, no, but get back to me later, it's a pretty appealing idea

no. i don't know why but answering yes to this seems kind of narcissistic somehow

if a guy walked up to you with the button every day going "how bout now?" yeah we'd probably all push it eventually. and then it'd just be the guy with the button running things. which is probably what he wanted all along, the bastard.

reagan

ned ryerson

fwiw the OP is complaining about me by name on their twitter account. i guess i get to join the club.

― Mordy, Friday, 12 October 2012 14:57 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you should retweet

― some dude, Friday, 12 October 2012 14:59 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

guilty of being a dick SM, but eh that's what happened. Nobody owns threads, suicide wasn't a huge intangential leap.

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Friday, 12 October 2012 15:00 (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

done xp

― Mordy, Friday, 12 October 2012 15:00 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, I had that happen before too! Fun, huh?

― (✿◠‿◠) (ENBB), Friday, 12 October 2012 15:02 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

indeed.

Lol wcc actin like she's the fuckin mayor mccheese of psuedo philosophical faux suicide threads

but get back to me later, it's a pretty appealing idea

It really is! But even more appealing is a "do-over" button. If I could cast my current consciousness back in time into my body -- say, when I was 11 and we moved from CA to MS -- I would do that without even bothering to say goodbye to anybody here first. Well, maybe a couple of people.

oh hell yeah wmc, just lmme grab these lotto numbers first

I don't think I'd do a do-over. There's stuff I'd change, for sure, but I think there's too much stuff in my childhood that I had no real control over that got me to where I am today. I'd still just be dealing with the same underlying shit.

i dunno the "do over" button would involve too much paedophilia.

I've never seriously thought of suicide, but if the button-device were just lying around the house... I dunno, I might eventually press it just out of curiosity, to see whether it was the real-deal, to resolve the tension of the unpressed button, because it's a forbidden button to be pressed.

xp How much is too much?

i would throw it into the ocean (dramatically)

Seal in lead box, solder shut, tie to cinderblock, throw in ocean off cliff at tip of Patagonia where no one goes.

The "do-over" concept is fascinating. Part of me finds it massively appealing, and part of me finds it horrific.

the interesting thing about 'do-over' is that you'd kind of have a leg up on controlling certain things about your life, but at a certain point you'd just start making new mistakes and navigating a life that was just as unpredictable as it was the first time.

great, u just gave bear grylls the ultimate weapon

xp How much is too much?
― Tom Hardy & the Batbreakers (Phil D.), Friday, 12 October 2012 14:49 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ask Jimmy?

Getting to keep the memories of adulthood is cheating imo.

I would love to write a letter to my 11 year old self with a list of books to read

Don't mention Jimmy or we'll all get arrested.

I would love to write a letter to my 11 year old self with a list of books to read

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, October 12, 2012 2:56 PM (7 minutes ago)

i've daydreamed about this fairly often

Getting to keep the memories of adulthood is cheating imo.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, October 12, 2012 9:55 AM (8 minutes ago)

That's the only thing that makes it appealing for me though. I certainly wouldn't go through the decade from 11-20 again without knowing what to avoid and who to warn.

my parents; my brothers

exactly!

to me the part of this that's interesting is the "no consequence to others" - that's magical thinking in a way that the magic button isn't, because the button just doesn't exist but you can imagine how it works. but this added "nobody suffers" benefit could not really exist logically. so it becomes a "would you painlessly kill yourself if it doesn't bum anybody out" question. I think about suicide a lot, but I think the pain it inflicts on people is some bullshit, so I bust ass to keep my head above water at all times on that q. if there were a button that said "nobody even feels bad and the you-who-is-presently-suffering goes away" then yeah there would have been no more me as of, like, last week.

do-overs with or without your added knowledge are fraught with fuckin peril tho. You know some good stuff you might do but unforeseen consequence could take all the sweetness right outta that super-quick.

i was imagining this like a "it's a wonderful life" scenario where you just never existed

well that makes it real different though - rightly or not, I'm proud of some things I've accomplished, plus I'm a dad, if I never exist at all then I deny existence to a swell little guy who likes to play and yell and make funny faces - the original q posits no ill consequences to others

A large part of my current happiness is looking back at what a strange messed-up kid I was and how OK I turned out regardless

yeesh

a large part of my current happiness is my car </mygodiamshallow>

Also, going back to age 11 with all current knowledge means you have to hang out with teenagers for eight fucking years, no thank you.

plus you'd be one of those terrible teenagers who believes they're an 'old soul,' which would be insufferable even if technically correct in that case

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

Our parents and teachers would recognize our sudden precocity and bump us ahead to college. Then we'd spend the rest of adolescence inexplicably failing to develop any further, plummet into depression, finally request the button-man to undo the do-over.

^ thought that has occurred to me manys the time when musing on the 'back to my teenage body' thing

It's interesting, the liminality that these conversations create, to both exist and not-exist, to be an adult and also a child, to eat an oyster and also a pizza

lj??