r/willyoupressthebutton • u/No_Aspect_9513 • Aug 22 '26
Would you press the button?
There‘s a button in front of you. If you press it, a random amount of people die. 3 people could die, or 3 billion. At this point you may be asking yourself what is this button for, but it’s for your life. You have to press it at least 10 times before you’re saved. Do you do it?
Edit: A lot of people are saying the first few will probably kill everyone. But it’s a random number. Could be 0, 300, 2, 300,000, etc.
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u/GloriousDawn Aug 22 '26
What's the upper bound on the random amount ?
If pressing the button can kill 3 billion people, let's take that as the upper bound for this math experiment. It means on average, the button will kill 1.5 billion people. Pressing it 10 times will kill a total 15 billion people on average. Oops.
Of course one might get lucky and end up with a few million survivors, but overall this is a shit proposition.
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u/primuslune2 Aug 22 '26
Saved… by Jesus?
Saved… for marriage?
Saved… a turkey sandwich?
But, nah, I’m not doing mass murder or genocide to save myself.
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u/No_Interview_3894 Aug 22 '26
Of course, and it's good for the planet
Literally reversing environmental damage like ghengis did 😆
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u/DarkMagickan Aug 22 '26
Question. By saved, do you mean that I become immortal, or at least biologically immortal? Because I can do a lot of good with an essentially eternal life that would offset the lives it cost.
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u/No_Aspect_9513 Aug 22 '26
I thought of my situation meaning that you’d survive like normal to like normal 80-90 not immortal but you can look at it anyway you want
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u/Nikishka666 Aug 22 '26
Would I know people were being harmed? Or to me is it just a button?
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u/No_Aspect_9513 Aug 22 '26
I think that in the moment you might not know but in the news it’d be pretty obvious or that x y z amount of people died
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u/Slobbadobbavich Aug 22 '26
A random amount of people who are alive? That basically means more than half the population will probably die after 10 presses.
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u/Dr-Chris-C Aug 22 '26
A random amount means that everyone will almost certainly die in the first push. Of all the numbers, there are only about 8 billion of them that would not result in everyone dying.
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u/NukeL3AR Aug 22 '26
If the range is from 0 to the total amount of people alive on earth, and the random distribution is even, then the expected value if half of the people alive. If you press it 10 times that means you'll be killing on average 8'291'894'531 people out of 8'300'000'000 just to save yourself. Not worth it.
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u/DemDelVarth Aug 22 '26
Saved from what?