Pushing the button

[Graham Kennedy]

So I was watching the old Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button" - a few years back it was turned into a movie with Cameron Diaz called "The Box".

The premise is simple. A stranger comes to you and presents you with a wooden box that has a button mounted on the top. He tells you that if you elect to push the button, two things will happen. One - the stranger will return and give you one million dollars. Two - somewhere in the world, a person whom you do not know will die. The stranger then leaves, leaving the box in your hands.

Assume that you find the offer plausible, the stranger convinces you that it is a real offer. Would you push it?

Does the amount matter? A million isn't that much these days. What if it was a hundred million?

There's a twist in the tale of course (it is the Twilight Zone after all), and if you know what that is it may change your answer. But if you don't know the twist, or the twist didn't apply, would you do it or not?

I have to say I hope I wouldn't do it. But I wonder... it's easy to make moral judgment calls when they are abstracts that you aren't actually faced with. Not so sure I'd be able to stick with them in reality.

[Tyyr]

Don't know the twist or doesn't apply?

$100 Million and someone I don't know dies? Yeah I probably push it.

[Teaos]

As much as I'd like to think I wouldnt do it, I probably would and then try to do some good with the money.

[Graham Kennedy]

Enough good to make up for a death? How would you judge that?

[Teaos]

Impossible to say, but I assume you want an honest answer. 6.5 billion people, some good, some bad, some young some old, some about to die anyway.

I have no idea which one will die. So yeah, snap decision, press a button, and something random happens to someone, but I get a million to make my life and the life of my family better, I give 200k to a hospital or something to save the lives a few dozen people maybe and relieve my guilt a little.

People make decision every day that kill people to make the lives of others better. An anonymity is a powerful force.

[Graham Kennedy]

That it is. And I don't know that I'd do it any different to you, either.

[Teaos]

If I had to do it there and then, I think I would probably do it, not having time to let myself think about "killing" someone. If he said I could think about it and he'd be back tomorrow or in a few day the odds of doing it go down.

[Mikey]

If he said I could think about it and he'd be back tomorrow or in a few day the odds of doing it go down.

They definitely do. Assuming that one doesn't have too much time to consider the moral ramifications, there's way too many rationalizations that the typical person could find. Everyone's going to die anyway, the person who dies from the button-push may just be a terminally ill patient or someone who'd be hit by a bus tomorrow anyway, they may be a "bad" person who "deserves" to die (I said it was a rationalization, please spare the Gandalf monologues,) maybe you could save two lives with that money for the cost of one, etc., etc. Of course, as Teaos said, those rationalizations wear transparent after some critical thought, but are pretty easy tools with which to convince ourselves on the spur of the moment.

That is, I think, why it was a successful episode (I haven't seen the film.) From behind the fourth wall, it's terribly easy to sit on high moral ground and proclaim that I wouldn't sacrifice a human life for money... when you are forced to try and personalize that decision, however, and deal honestly with ourselves, it becomes significantly murkier.

[Graham Kennedy]

The Diaz film is horrible. The premise isn't enough for a film, so they run through that story in about 45 minutes and then spend the next hour doing all kinds of additional twists on the theme that make a nonsense of it.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I don't know what the twist is, and I'm hoping I won't do it and hopefully punch the guy with the box.

[Tinadrin Chelnor]

I do not care for money, only people. Thus there is not any amount in the world I would push it for. I have been both "comfortably wealthy" and penniless and homeless, and am much happier now that I have nothing of much material value.

I have the entire collection of the original Twilight Zone, but I do not remember this episode. Is it from the original or the relaunched series?

[Lt. Staplic]

I haven't seen the twilight zone episode, so this is going off of the Diaz movie (which was awful), so let me know if I'm wrong:

The twist is that the person that dies is the last person to push the button. So you push the button, the box moves on to the next person and the people in charge arrange it so that you will die when the next person pushes the button.

Even if I didn't know the twist, I'd like to think that I wouldn't push the button. I've been hard up for money, even recently, but never so hard up that I'd stoop to doing something that bad, or even remotely close. Maybe in the moment things would be different, but I just don't see myself ever pushing the button.

[Teaos]

Given that twist I am glad I gave some to charity and family. And the rest I assume would be given to family after the fact.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yes, that's the twist.

She pushes the button and gets her money. Then as the man leaves she asks what will happen to the button and he says it will be reprogrammed and given to somebody else. "And I can assure you... it will be somebody who you do not know."

And it's from the 80s Twilight Zone.

[Tinadrin Chelnor]

And it's from the 80s Twilight Zone.

Ah, mine is the 1959 series
Maybe I shall keep an eye out for the 80's one too.