We learned during Covid that at least half of the country would kill not some stranger, but their neighbors and friends, and not for ten grand, but to avoid the mild discomfort of wearing a mask and social distancing
paid, not been paid - that's a difference, and also not voluntarily. Arguably, those who don't pay taxes (i.e. took many times 10000) are causing the deaths of millions by their lobbying to become richer.
This is an old twilight zone episode. A women is given a box with one button on it and told to press it is she wants the money, but someone she doesn’t even know will die.
She decides the push the button, and then someone comes to collect the button device, saying that it will now be reset and taken to someone else now for the same challenge. Some random person on earth. Implying that she will be the next to die if the button gets pushed.
Frankly not a bad system. Slowly cleanses the selfish from the earth.
Yes it was clear that someone somewhere in the world “who you don’t even know” would die. The characters have a debate:
“Maybe it’ll be just some Chinese peasant.”
“What if it’s someone’s newborn baby!”
More than anything I’m shocked at the casual dismissal of the Chinese peasant. WTF?
Anyway at the very end of the show the same guy who brought them this dilemma comes to collect the device and he very pointedly uses the same language to say “now it will go to someone new that you don’t even know.”
Yes, that somewhere in the world, someone she doesnt know will die.
When Mr. Steward returns to collect the button box after the button is pressed, the lady asks what happens to the box next. She is told it will go to someone else with the same offer, with assurances that the new recipient will not know who she is. As the previous commenter said, the wording deeply implies she would be the certain "someone" targeted by the next button press.
But what would happen if she didn't press it? Would the button be offered to someone else again? In that case, she would be targeted regardless of her choice.
If there are no other rules, you break the cycle. That's incredibility dark because who knows how long this has been going on with no one refusing the offer.
"Would you push a button for money", on its own, is barely a dilemma. If you've been given no good reason not to press it then you don't have a reason not to press it. I'd be curious to see this Twilight Zone episode because, if it really is presented that way to her, then it's not her morals that are comprimised and instead that of whoever distributed that button.
She's told that someone on earth would die and she doesn't know them. The twist is that while it's implied that it's a random person, it's revealed at the end that it's the last person to press the button.
$200,000 - which if you consider that it was 1980s money, makes Mr. Beast’s $10,000 look very small.
By “originally meant to” I think you are referring to the short story it was based on ending that way.
A despondent Norma asks the stranger why her husband was the one who was killed. The stranger replies, "Do you really think you knew your husband?"
strongly disapproved of the Twilight Zone version, especially the new ending
Frankly I find the twilight zone ending more chilling and suspenseful. The “do you think you really knew your husband” line is kinda sad trombone.
Yeah, I really liked the line in the Twilight Zone when she asked who it would b given to next, "I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you don't know." Pretty chilling IYAM
I’m assuming the device gets passed on regardless if the button is pressed. If that’s the case, does it have any correlation to selfishness getting punished? Me living or dying has to do with the NEXT person being selfish, not whether I was selfish or not. Unless I’m missing something
I believe the idea is that if you push the button, it goes on to someone else. If they DON’T push the button, they get skipped. It goes to someone else besides them. And so on, until SOMEONE does push the button. And at that point, the last person who pushed the button gets iced.
And so in that way, every person who pushes the button inevitably gets killed, removing selfish people from the world while morally upright people get passed over.
This isn’t detailed in the episode, it’s just my mind filling in between the lines.
I'm an 80s kid but I skipped the old Twilight episodes ... so I'm trying to darnest to catch up on them and I'm learning how awesome the ideas were even if the presentation is dated.
Just a random segue ...
I sound naive but I didn't realize that Rod Sterling wanted to tell stories about social issues -- racism and stuff but the networks wouldn't let him. If he wanted to tell a story about an alien or an invader then the networks would let it pass through. So it was a way for him to tell harder stories to the general public.
I think that's a lot of sci-fi like Invasion of the Body Snatcher and such but I just never thought about it deeply enough.
There's the treehouse of horror episode by the Simpsons where Bart is omnipotent and I knew it was based on something but I only recently learned it from: "It's a Good Life" which is a book and a Twilight Zone episode. I only watched the parody up until this year and I just thought it was a fun concept. Then I watched the original and a breakdown and it was a take on totalitarian regimes.
Jokes aside, no. I don't think I'd do it for $100 million. I seriously don't.
The justifications y'all are providing don't work for me. Maybe it's because I have a son, and I can imagine he would be the one to die, then I remember everyone is the child of someone, or the friend, etc.
I will not be the knowing cause of the death of some random person just for money. You guys can have it. No, thank you.
You could save way more than 1 life with $100M. Malaria nets save on average one life for every $3k donated. Child deworming doesn't save a life per se, but you can stop a child from being permanently disabled for ~$500.
$100 million brings you into a different philosophical debate. $100 million is more than enough that you could use the money to save at least a few lives
I would in a heartbeat. I would keep 5k for myself, 10k for my parents. And donate the rest to cleaning up the environment, and curing cancer/diabetes. That would save more people.
Counter proposition: for every €10 I pay, a random fascist dies. I'm willing to spend all my money, and am willing to take gifts from others to continue paying more amounts of €10 for as long as I have any. I'll even spend €100 to prioritize highly influential fascists first.
So what I’d suggest is sending me 10k and i’ll see if I take. However I’d also suggest we do multiple runs just to confirm consistency. I hear 100 times is a good number for checking consistencies.
I'd press it at least 500 times. Maybe more, you need to make sure it works and one random death isn't going to make the news. So gotta put in work and press it as many times in one instance. And, I get paid at the end?
That's the premise of the Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button". After she pressed it, the man making the deal said he'd go to "a random person on Earth" offering the same to them (implying that the person being killed will be the one who pushed the button earlier in the chain)
In my current situation (ok economically but not without worries), wouldn't fucking take a million, nor a billion for that matter. It is not like all my consumption habits are %100 devoid of someone else's suffering or maybe even death, indirectly. But having a vague idea about bad effects of consumption habits vs knowing it will be a direct cause of death is two completely different things imo. On the otherhand if my life or a loved one's life depends on that money, that is a harder question and I don't think I can really know the answer without going through it and deciding.
Ok now lets do billionaires but 100mil and ten thousand people in a far away country dies.
I think a billion id take because you can save thousands and thousands of people
I could live with that choice. Maybe in the end I’d feel so guilty that I wouldn’t even use the money for myself at all.
Which is an interesting debate as well. How does your answer change if you can’t use that money for you or known people at all, and only “for good”. Do you feel less guilty?
As another commenter said it’s just a different version of the trolley problem
Yeah I thought about that but you can not trade one person's life for a thousand others unless that person willingly participates.
By logic this should also extend to me and my loved ones but ofcourse when it is someone closer to you whose life may be saved, you can probably no longer act objectively.
Yeah but I think there is a difference between the two, it is a more direct consequence of your decision only, not society on a whole. I would imagine shared guilt of indirect results is much lighter on the psychology than a direct and visible consequence of what comes out of one's mouth. There is ofcourse alot of grey region scenarios in between (like you won't know who dies, or death will be of natural causes but immediate etc).
This is the trolley problem on steroids tbh. I have $10.000 in my savings. I could use them to save a whole lot more than one life! Yet I don’t. At face value this is no different from accepting the money and a rando kicks the bucket.
remember that cring video he did with KSI, its like they were in cave in afghanistan, and he had a gun to the guests head to force them to eat his lunchly.
Every time I pet my cat, a random stranger somewhere in the world dies. There's 8 billion people in the world, at least a few hundred are born and die every minute.
the only way i'm ever pushing a stupid ass button like that is if hunger gets solved or manufactured housing scarcity disappears, and i'm the only one that dies.
Thousands of lives was perhaps a bit too high. I just thought of a family I talked with in Cambodia. They spent around $600/year, including all their expenses, and they were a family of four. They spent less than $1/day on food.
About 2 people are dying every second regardless, so if i don't take the money, 2 people die.
Im actually saving a life by briefly capping the death rare at 1.
Sorry, but that's not how it works. 3 people die that instant.
I'll stick with the original scenario and gratefully receive $10,000 for saving a life.
But thank you for your new offer.
Honestly this seems like a pretty good representation of how powerful people cope with the consequences of their ambitions.
Nuh-huh
Yeah-huh
I would think you random death would just be added to the baseline.
I don't know, I better take the money I think...
Well yes. But I think taking the money should actively kill someone, you can just get free money for a death that would happen anyway.
that was not a stipulation.
The next second 3 people dies, so you were just prolonging one's suffering by 1 second
Prolong an inevitable death by one second for $10,000.
Is that stackable?
That is happening everyday, done by thousands of people who could have stopped those deaths readily. Just they are obsessed with more wealth.
The ultra rich:
I'd do it for $10!
We learned during Covid that at least half of the country would kill not some stranger, but their neighbors and friends, and not for ten grand, but to avoid the mild discomfort of wearing a mask and social distancing
many of them were willing to kill their own children, and even themselves, to briefly avoid that mild discomfort
Still happening too
Actually, the ultra-rich actively spend money to cause suffering.
I'd do that for a dollar!
I mean, 3.6 million is a bit more money tbh.
I’m poor and would do it for 100.
The bourgeoisie already does that offer, the proletariat can't choose it.
You pay taxes in the US, you've already paid for the random death of people.
paid, not been paid - that's a difference, and also not voluntarily. Arguably, those who don't pay taxes (i.e. took many times 10000) are causing the deaths of millions by their lobbying to become richer.
Better?
*millions
This is an old twilight zone episode. A women is given a box with one button on it and told to press it is she wants the money, but someone she doesn’t even know will die.
She decides the push the button, and then someone comes to collect the button device, saying that it will now be reset and taken to someone else now for the same challenge. Some random person on earth. Implying that she will be the next to die if the button gets pushed.
Frankly not a bad system. Slowly cleanses the selfish from the earth.
Was the lady told what would happen if she pressed the button?
Yes it was clear that someone somewhere in the world “who you don’t even know” would die. The characters have a debate:
“Maybe it’ll be just some Chinese peasant.”
“What if it’s someone’s newborn baby!”
More than anything I’m shocked at the casual dismissal of the Chinese peasant. WTF?
Anyway at the very end of the show the same guy who brought them this dilemma comes to collect the device and he very pointedly uses the same language to say “now it will go to someone new that you don’t even know.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Yes, that somewhere in the world, someone she doesnt know will die.
When Mr. Steward returns to collect the button box after the button is pressed, the lady asks what happens to the box next. She is told it will go to someone else with the same offer, with assurances that the new recipient will not know who she is. As the previous commenter said, the wording deeply implies she would be the certain "someone" targeted by the next button press.
But what would happen if she didn't press it? Would the button be offered to someone else again? In that case, she would be targeted regardless of her choice.
That's not revealed, but I would think it just targets the last person who pushed the button. If you don't, you succeed the test and get skipped. .
If there are no other rules, you break the cycle. That's incredibility dark because who knows how long this has been going on with no one refusing the offer.
The dilemma is "would you push a button for money" not "would you push a button knowing what it did for money"
"Would you push a button for money", on its own, is barely a dilemma. If you've been given no good reason not to press it then you don't have a reason not to press it. I'd be curious to see this Twilight Zone episode because, if it really is presented that way to her, then it's not her morals that are comprimised and instead that of whoever distributed that button.
She's told that someone on earth would die and she doesn't know them. The twist is that while it's implied that it's a random person, it's revealed at the end that it's the last person to press the button.
Some people are actually paid to press buttons.
So, yes?
There's this cool new thing where you can search for stuff on the Internet. You should check it out. To answer your question, yes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Heaven forbid I try to have a conversation
There’s this cool thing called linking, too.
She got $20,000 if I'm not mistaken. In '80s money.
Also it was originally meant to kill her husband. They changed it for the show.
$200,000 - which if you consider that it was 1980s money, makes Mr. Beast’s $10,000 look very small.
By “originally meant to” I think you are referring to the short story it was based on ending that way.
Frankly I find the twilight zone ending more chilling and suspenseful. The “do you think you really knew your husband” line is kinda sad trombone.
Yeah, I really liked the line in the Twilight Zone when she asked who it would b given to next, "I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you don't know." Pretty chilling IYAM
I’m assuming the device gets passed on regardless if the button is pressed. If that’s the case, does it have any correlation to selfishness getting punished? Me living or dying has to do with the NEXT person being selfish, not whether I was selfish or not. Unless I’m missing something
I believe the idea is that if you push the button, it goes on to someone else. If they DON’T push the button, they get skipped. It goes to someone else besides them. And so on, until SOMEONE does push the button. And at that point, the last person who pushed the button gets iced.
And so in that way, every person who pushes the button inevitably gets killed, removing selfish people from the world while morally upright people get passed over.
This isn’t detailed in the episode, it’s just my mind filling in between the lines.
Ok that makes way more sense.
I'm an 80s kid but I skipped the old Twilight episodes ... so I'm trying to darnest to catch up on them and I'm learning how awesome the ideas were even if the presentation is dated.
Just a random segue ...
I sound naive but I didn't realize that Rod Sterling wanted to tell stories about social issues -- racism and stuff but the networks wouldn't let him. If he wanted to tell a story about an alien or an invader then the networks would let it pass through. So it was a way for him to tell harder stories to the general public.
I think that's a lot of sci-fi like Invasion of the Body Snatcher and such but I just never thought about it deeply enough.
There's the treehouse of horror episode by the Simpsons where Bart is omnipotent and I knew it was based on something but I only recently learned it from: "It's a Good Life" which is a book and a Twilight Zone episode. I only watched the parody up until this year and I just thought it was a fun concept. Then I watched the original and a breakdown and it was a take on totalitarian regimes.
Yeah some of them are little moral parables and some are just setups for a thrill/shock twist.
This “button” episode was actually from the 80s reboot of TZ, not the Rod Serling original.
No.
Also, fuck Mr. Beast. A billionaire proposing yet another Trolley Problem for amusement and engagement bait.
Jokes aside, no. I don't think I'd do it for $100 million. I seriously don't.
The justifications y'all are providing don't work for me. Maybe it's because I have a son, and I can imagine he would be the one to die, then I remember everyone is the child of someone, or the friend, etc.
I will not be the knowing cause of the death of some random person just for money. You guys can have it. No, thank you.
Yeah I'm not killing for money, even if I'm not the one doing the physical part of the execution
You could save way more than 1 life with $100M. Malaria nets save on average one life for every $3k donated. Child deworming doesn't save a life per se, but you can stop a child from being permanently disabled for ~$500.
Sacrificing a person in order to help a number of people survive for a month or a year is still a terribly bad calculation if you ask me
Ok, then you are sacrificing number of people to save one person. Think of what happens in wars: people don't even flinch at sacrificing someone
Not survive for a month or year but for a child to survive the rest of their lives, which is many decades on average.
$100 million brings you into a different philosophical debate. $100 million is more than enough that you could use the money to save at least a few lives
If the whole 100M was spent on saving lives, no contest.
What if you just kept back $50 for a nice meal out? Is that meal cursed?
Im the same way. If someone gave me a gun and gave me a choice to shoot myself or a stranger, I would shoot myself.
Mostly because I believe what we do matters. Many dont.
Bro, for 100 million, if you told me the button would kill me, I would press it, after writing my will first.
That is almost world-chaning money, so I would be ethicaly obligated from my perspective to press it.
I would in a heartbeat. I would keep 5k for myself, 10k for my parents. And donate the rest to cleaning up the environment, and curing cancer/diabetes. That would save more people.
Still pennies compared to the damage we make to the environment any single day
Can I only use it once?
-- every billionaire in the world
I'll take 0,01 if it ensures that the person who dies is a billionaire
The more often you'd press it, the higher your chances! Good luck, we're counting on you!
Yes. In fact I'll keep at it until Mr Beast is the one who drops dead. It's not about the money, but the principle of the thing.
this is the right answer, you've just won 10 grand!
Huh. I expected that to take longer.
Does the name of that random person rhyme with "rump" or "rootin" ?
Those two, and many others, paid to get excluded from the draw. Finances the whole enterprise.
No.
Counter proposition: for every €10 I pay, a random fascist dies. I'm willing to spend all my money, and am willing to take gifts from others to continue paying more amounts of €10 for as long as I have any. I'll even spend €100 to prioritize highly influential fascists first.
The monkey's paw curls. The word fascist has become so debased that you are now $80 billion in debt. And dead.
He’d do anything for attention, so I could see this video happening in future if he felt that social media would support him
if anyone presses the button and I die I'm haunting your stupid ass forever
Someone just watched The Box lol
I immediately thought of this as well and am irked that now I remember this terrible film
I’m not sure I can answer that yet.
So what I’d suggest is sending me 10k and i’ll see if I take. However I’d also suggest we do multiple runs just to confirm consistency. I hear 100 times is a good number for checking consistencies.
I'd press it at least 500 times. Maybe more, you need to make sure it works and one random death isn't going to make the news. So gotta put in work and press it as many times in one instance. And, I get paid at the end?
What is this from
The Dark Knight I believe.
You're right!
It's a life, how much could it cost. $10,000?
That's the premise of the Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button". After she pressed it, the man making the deal said he'd go to "a random person on Earth" offering the same to them (implying that the person being killed will be the one who pushed the button earlier in the chain)
That sums up the IQ of Mrbeast fanbase right there, peak irony.
In my current situation (ok economically but not without worries), wouldn't fucking take a million, nor a billion for that matter. It is not like all my consumption habits are %100 devoid of someone else's suffering or maybe even death, indirectly. But having a vague idea about bad effects of consumption habits vs knowing it will be a direct cause of death is two completely different things imo. On the otherhand if my life or a loved one's life depends on that money, that is a harder question and I don't think I can really know the answer without going through it and deciding.
Ok now lets do billionaires but 100mil and ten thousand people in a far away country dies.
I think a billion id take because you can save thousands and thousands of people
I could live with that choice. Maybe in the end I’d feel so guilty that I wouldn’t even use the money for myself at all.
Which is an interesting debate as well. How does your answer change if you can’t use that money for you or known people at all, and only “for good”. Do you feel less guilty?
As another commenter said it’s just a different version of the trolley problem
Yeah I thought about that but you can not trade one person's life for a thousand others unless that person willingly participates.
By logic this should also extend to me and my loved ones but ofcourse when it is someone closer to you whose life may be saved, you can probably no longer act objectively.
I don’t think that’s entirely true
Everyday society chooses to save a persons life and not another’s
Not explicitly but not so indirectly either
Yeah but I think there is a difference between the two, it is a more direct consequence of your decision only, not society on a whole. I would imagine shared guilt of indirect results is much lighter on the psychology than a direct and visible consequence of what comes out of one's mouth. There is ofcourse alot of grey region scenarios in between (like you won't know who dies, or death will be of natural causes but immediate etc).
This is basically what we living in developed countries are all doing every day.
I don't know about you, but I don't have enough in the end of taking care of myself to feed a person elsewhere but the 1% sure as fuck do.
This is the trolley problem on steroids tbh. I have $10.000 in my savings. I could use them to save a whole lot more than one life! Yet I don’t. At face value this is no different from accepting the money and a rando kicks the bucket.
It's always the last person who pressed the button dies that's how this works and the part they never tell you about.
So yes you could press the button and live until someone else presses the button.
But you're betting on no one pressing the button after you. Are you willing to take that risk?
Break the button, save a murderers life but stop the cycle of violcence.
Since people are already dying at random I would take it. Given they do not actively enforce the dying part.
remember that cring video he did with KSI, its like they were in cave in afghanistan, and he had a gun to the guests head to force them to eat his lunchly.
RIP 750,000 random strangers.
Every time I pet my cat, a random stranger somewhere in the world dies. There's 8 billion people in the world, at least a few hundred are born and die every minute.
8 times.
12 if I gotta pay taxes.
I would do it and repeat it until i read that MrBeast or - insert name of random billionaire - dies.
the chance of that happening is basically zero
Well with every death the chances grow :D
Ok Thanos
Thanos war es egal wer stirbt :D
MrBeast is the kind of guy who asks why the banana is yellow
the only way i'm ever pushing a stupid ass button like that is if hunger gets solved or manufactured housing scarcity disappears, and i'm the only one that dies.
tf is wrong with some of you?
Host: For $10000, push this button and some random person dies.
Me: Could I take less to get a billionaire?
Host: Sure. $5000.
Me: Make it painful?
Host: [visible discomfort] Uhh, $1000.
Me: The Brazen Bull?
Host: Jesus… You get nothing.
Me:
What if Mr Beast dies?
https://media1.tenor.com/m/-KgqJGNhJC0AAAAC/rocky-iv-dolph-lundgren.gif
You could take the money and use the money to save thousands of lives.
Show your work. How would $10,000 "save thousands of lives"?
Also, what if it's a random person, yes, but you need to watch them die? Would that maybe make you take pause?
Thousands of lives was perhaps a bit too high. I just thought of a family I talked with in Cambodia. They spent around $600/year, including all their expenses, and they were a family of four. They spent less than $1/day on food.