cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/37546528

[blue]
If you could push a button that gives you a hundred thousand dollars but a random person dies, would you do it? 

[yellow, cautious]
Interesting thought experiment… intuitively, I’d say no, but it’s worth thinking about… it’s a genuine moral dilemma in a capitalist world: there’s a dialectic between our desires and the common good…

MEANWHILE, BILLIONAIRES

[an orange guy in a suit is shown with a terrifying grin pushing as many buttons as possible at once on a table, slamming one of the buttons, and even using their foot to press an extra one]

https://thebad.website/comic/the_totally_hypothetical_button_thought_experiment

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    When you say a “random person would die” well that random person could be me or someone I am close with.

    Its should’ve been: “but a random person - who isn’t you nor any of your close family and friends - dies” then yes, billionaires would absolutely smash that button

    • ReptilianCleric@lemmy.zip
      3·
      22 hours ago

      You overestimate the capacity of billionaires to feel empathy, which is actually zero. Somebody who is going to amass that amount of wealth, I don’t believe there’s anything that would stop them so I disagree. A billionaire would hit that button with absolutely no hesitation.

    • JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org
      2·
      18 hours ago

      Nobel had his brother exploded by the nitroglycerine formula he created, so for certain disgustingly wealthy folks, it really do be just ‘a random person dies’ matter.

      EDIT: sorry, not one of Nobel’s later formulations, it was actually just straight nitroglycerine. Alfred Nobel would later stabilize it with diatomaceous earth and then, much later, with cotton.