Yet another Quora Answer:
Let’s think this through logically, okay?
Let’s think this through logically, okay?
The child dies as well if you don’t press the button. Hmm…. First of all, how long do I have and why can’t I just convince the child to press the button himself or herself by pointing out that it really isn’t suicide when either way you die. It isn’t like the child can live if the button isn’t pushed and that way I do not have to condone murder. Nope, that’s not satisfactory.
Another possibility is that I will somehow figure out how to switch places with the child so that when I press the button, I take only my life and Everyone Else Lives™. After all, I truly have only the right to kill myself and no other. Still, that does seem rather unsatisfactory.
No, actually I think that the best way to solve this problem is to call the bluff of the person who claims that failing to press the button will somehow cause everyone to die. The person who designed such a evil question must surely have realized that he himself/she herself and all of his/her progeny will die. That means that there are only five possibilities here that in my time-limited state I can properly assess and give subjective probabilities to so that I can assess how I should react:
(1) the person is an incredibly smart individual to have figured out such a device and also realizes that he/she wants to live and so the entire button pushing exercise does not actually kill everyone. Thus all I have to do is find the person who designed the contraption, figure out how he /she saves himself/herself and then replicate the world over. Thus Everyone Lives™
(2) the person is an incredibly smart individual to have figured out such a device and WANTS everyone (including himself/herself to die) but since not everyone is ALREADY dead, the person should have realized that he/she had not yet figured out a foolproof way to kill everyone and so it is unlikely that the device will actually work (come on, admit it, how many inventions in real life actually worked as expected on the very first try? The answer is very few — I will take my chances here). The chances that Everyone Lives™ is very high regardless.
(3) the person is a psychologist who did not properly vet his/her human subjects experiment with his/her relevant Institutional Review Board. Such an experiment is undoubtedly fake and so Everyone Lives™
(4) the person is incredibly smart and just wants me to have to make an immoral choice but is not so evil as to actually cause someone to have to die. Once again, I refuse to participate and Everyone Lives™
(5) the person hasn’t really properly thought all of this through. That means that contrary to my original belief that they are incredibly smart, they are actually incredibly dumb and I do not have to worry about the button at all. Everyone Lives™
In other words, I just shake my head at all of the highly immoral, evil individuals on this planet who would push the button and I REFUSE to push the button under any circumstances. I didn’t kill everyone and I didn’t kill the child. The evil person who designed this experiment did the immoral killing. Why if I had access to such a button, I would just . . . never mind. That highly immoral, evil thought just exited my brain because I just can’t bring myself to do it.
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