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Aleaver

The Black Button

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I would choose the key. I mean its a cool concept and all but honestly, in a creepy situation like that, I would be even less inclined to kill somebody than usual (and I have zero desire to kill anyone in real life either).

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Yea..when someone offers that much money if you just push a botton, there would have to be a big catch..And killing someone for money is something I would not do...Although people have killed others for less...:|

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lol the funny thing is I just watched What Dreams May Come yesterday, now this. There were also threads I was reading on sentience and then there was a conversation I had with my friend today about sentience and stuff.. I just keep running into stuff like this recently.

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This is based on a short story called Double Indemnity. It was a similar set up, but much less massive in scale. It concerned a house wife being met by a traveling salesman who had a button box. He explained the set up just like the "filter" and the amount was 50 thousand dollars. She too decided to press the button and received a phone call directly after having done so. Her husband had been killed in a subway accident, and his 25 thousand dollar insurance, with double indemnity, was paid to her.

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This reminds me a lot of that experiment they did a few decades back where they had a person in a room with a button. They told the person to press the button and it would deliver a severe electric shock to someone in the next room. When they pressed the button, an actor in the next room would start screaming, worse with every time the button was pressed, then finally after several button pressings, they'd go silent as if dead. Eerily enough, most of the participants kept pressing the button, many even after they had "killed" the person. Result of the test: most people will do what they're told, even if it means killing someone else.

Anyway, in a situation like this, I'd just take the key. I'm very unmaterialistic.

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Yeah it sounds very much like something from The Twilight Zone.

But, you know, I'd make a lunge for the suitcase with the intention of throttling the old man with it for suggesting the whole deal. A few blows in the head as punishment for attempted murder seems appropriate, and if he were to die, I couldn't be any worse off than by pressing the button, morally speaking, and who can trust what's beyond the door once you take the key, or whereto it leads?

If I were to subdue the old man in that way, I'd go over to the door with the key, not currently determining what to do with the money, since I wouldn't have enough information to do so.

I bet God would make me into some sort of avenger angel, to pop into the world from out of a lightning bolt, slap some bad guy(s) around a bit for great justice, and then fly back to heaven through a hole in the clouds till the next installment. I'd likely get tired of my job after a while, though.

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Danarchy said:

This reminds me a lot of that experiment they did a few decades back where they had a person in a room with a button. They told the person to press the button and it would deliver a severe electric shock to someone in the next room. When they pressed the button, an actor in the next room would start screaming, worse with every time the button was pressed, then finally after several button pressings, they'd go silent as if dead. Eerily enough, most of the participants kept pressing the button, many even after they had "killed" the person. Result of the test: most people will do what they're told, even if it means killing someone else.

Anyway, in a situation like this, I'd just take the key. I'm very unmaterialistic.


Milgram's experiment.

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Yeah, I'd walk, too. But that has more to do with me having pride in my own work :P

At the same time, I'm not irrational enough to think that pressing a black button would cause someone to die in an accident.

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It seems like a little social commentary. Government officials making decisions, pressing buttons that kill hundreds of people just to make some money for themselves.

As for me: Even I'd press the button. God shouldn't be tricking people like that, and if he'd do that to me, then I'd just come back as Spawn.

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It might just be me, but I like things that make me step back and think alittle bit like this does..

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Given too much or too little time to think, I'd take the key too, but with the "just right" amount of time (before thinking the consequences through, etc) I'd probably press the button too.

But it's not a concept just from a few decades back; just like the video comments said, it's in fact at least quite a few centuries old concept.

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I would have taken the money although I would have been tempted to push the button to see what it really did.

Maybe you should fix the title from "The Black Botton" to "The Black Button". When I saw this thread, I saw "The Black Bottom" so I was wondering what was going on in here and I don't remember any English dialects where button is spelled 'botton'.
EDIT
I do not see how leaving 10 million dollars behind would kill me because I am well enough off to be posting here, so both of use (whoever that black button kills) would live if I took the key.

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Opps...I just noticed that...:)

Edit: Fixed...I don't have the Custom Title Can't Spll for nothing..

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