Let's say you are presented with the following opportunity: A government researcher gives you a button that if you choose to press, it will: Instantly give you $100 in cash. Take away $1000 from some random person living in your country who is at a less fortunate economic status than you. Whether you push the button or not is completely anonymous. No one will ever know if you pushed it or not, and you are guaranteed no repercussions against you as a single individual. You will also have no way of knowing which specific person you harmed. Do you push the button? Discuss. Supplementary questions: Does the monetary amount of reward/harm matter? At what point would the sum large/small enough to change your decision? If you were allowed to push the button multiple times, which would benefit you additively and harm the same person repetitively until the victim went bankrupt, how many times would you push the button? If you decided to stop at a certain point, why did you stop pushing and not sooner? Are their situations in real life that this thought experiment could be used as an analogy for? How do you think most people in real life would act, when presented with this situation? If everyone in your country was given the opportunity to push this button, what would happen? Is there any solution to this problem (apart from eliminating the button itself)?
Most people would, as long as you don't have to see the person, empathize with the person or see the effects of the choice. Stealing from a granny on welfare, while looking her in the face or a bank making a whole group of people's money disappear while seeing them as nothing but a statistic. It's easy to see which would come more naturally. p.s. If you're into these sort of questions , look up the 'prisoner's dilemma'.
If it were like a trillion dollars verses 10 dollars i'd do it and just offset the damage through charity. I'd still feel massively guilty though. Otherwise no.
yes i would. also, that is the premise of The Box if i recall but the monatery gain is much more at the expense of a "random" persons life.
100$ to 1000$, no, I would not press the button, as the amount of guilt it will incur will feel too much for the amount of benefit. Personally, I feel like any amount above 2000$ might tempt me to press it, and above 10000$ I will press immediately. Others might press it at lower or higher ranges, b/c too little and the amount of guilt is little since the othee person will only lose a small amount; too large and the amount seems ludicrous, and thus unbelievable and easier to press.
Being able to push the button indefinitely is a flaw - I'd just push till everyone was broke and from there on free gains.
If it was completely random, then sure. But it’s someone who’s less fortunate than me, which means that someone can be seriously harmed by that.
The question is in a sense designed in a way such that the "victim" is always harmed more than the "thief" is benefited. I think this reflects reality a little bit better. If a thief can gain $1000 dollars when the victim loses $100.... there's no conservation of mass here, and is somewhat unrealistic.
This protects anyone with more money than you... Which means the less money you have before you press the button the more you are a dick to fellow people.
The unwritten part of this social experiment is that the government researcher gets to keep the $900 difference that you don't see. XD So in the end the government wins.......... (JK I made this scenario up, so who knows what happens to the $900 difference......... it's not specified in the prompt xD)
I feel about 50/50 on this question whenever it comes up, but for whatever reason the specification that the person harmed would be of “lower economic status” pushed me to 100% nope. I’m an empathetic sort, after all. Some nights I can’t sleep for hours because I remember that human trafficking is a thing and I’m not doing anything to help millions of captive people silently begging for help. I doubt I could knowingly push a stranger closer to bankruptcy. Monetary amount: i would be more likely to push the button if the “harm” amount was placed at some arbitrarily trivial value, like $10, but only for equal of greater compensation for me. Multiple presses: I’d probs only press once. I’d be too afraid of forgetting the gravity of each press if I tried it more. Real life analogy: first thing that pops into mind is job competition. Few know after an interview who got the job, especially when they don’t get it. This scenario might actually be crueler though; one person gets a job, and for the rest the time and money they used to get and participate in the interview is essentially wasted. That one that got the job due to having a slightly better position pushes several other slightly lower on the totem pole. Real life response: my go-to answer when assuming the actions of others is pessimism, so 99% would push the button. Country wide distribution: to be honest, I can barely keep up with Spice and Wolf, so I think that sort of simulation is beyond me d:
Does this button put people into debt? or does the other person have to have more than 1000 dollars for this to work? EDIT: and does this button convert their assets into cash as well?