OnlyPolls on Yik Yak | This button has a 99% chance of giving 3 billion random people stage 4 cancer, but has a 1% chance of solving every problem in the universe, in a way that answers, everything. Everyone and everything in perfect harmony and ecstasy. You pressing it?

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OnlyPolls 2w

This button has a 99% chance of giving 3 billion random people stage 4 cancer, but has a 1% chance of solving every problem in the universe, in a way that answers, everything. Everyone and everything in perfect harmony and ecstasy. You pressing it?

#poll

Yes

I’d think about it

Suicide

I’d tell people about the button

Destroy the button

515 votes

Anonymous 2w

What exactly does the button define as a “problem”? Does it involve reaching into everyone’s heads and rewriting their personalities to make them agreeable? Or maybe it sees something like the Higgs field not being at its ground state a problem, and induces vacuum decay to solve it, destroying the universe as we know it. Even getting that 1% might cause an enormous ethical problem or kill everyone since it’s so vague.

Anonymous 2w

could you only press the button once?

Anonymous

#1 2w

Coward

-4

Anonymous

#2 2w

I think the question is pretty clear, it creates such a world where everyone is happy. If the method was unethical, surely someone would be unhappy about it and therefore it's probably ethical. And obviously the universe being destroyed would be a problem for people so that wouldn't happen.

Anonymous

#5 2w

There’s no way to make everyone on Earth happy. There are too many conflicting ideals. How would you make a Neo-Nazi happy on the planet at the same time you make an Antifa member happy? And you can’t say to kill the Neo-Nazi because that’d make someone unhappy. Someone’s always gonna find a problem with something unless the button makes us not care about it at all.

Anonymous

#2 2w

That's irrelevant to the question though because the question specifically imagines a scenario that finds a way to make both sides happy. Maybe in some utopian society people will realize they dont need to waste any energy hating other people.

Anonymous

#5 2w

You can say that, but it’s equally likely that a world where nobody has worry or need for worry would be one where those people do not exist at all. Removing the problem is, in essence, solving it. As would be my original worry, being that simply rewriting everyone’s personalities to be more agreeable and not at all care about the change inflicted upon them would accomplish this goal. My point is that without knowing what such a world would look like, it’d be foolish to even consider it.

Anonymous

#2 2w

Or put in other terms: Always read the contract before you sign it.

Anonymous

#2 2w

But killing people doesn't lead to a solve everyone's problems. For "everyone" to feel "ecstasy" you have to be alive to feel that so we can deduce that killing everyone isnt going to happen.

Anonymous

#4 2w

You can press it as much as you can. You might get stage 13 cancer tho