To Be Or Not To Be.

You're sitting in a restaurant when someone walks by and drops a note on your table. You open the note and it says that there is a box attached to a telephone pole two blocks away, and that on that box is a red button. It goes on to say that if someone does not push that red button within four minutes, the world will simply disappear; it will be as if it never was.

Do you:

A. Get up immediately and get your ass to that location and press the red button?

B. Stay put and finish your meal, knowing that it will be your last?

C. Get up immediately and get your ass to that location to prevent anyone else from pushing that button?

 

D.
Laugh at the joke.

 

unless you add a "and you know with complete certainty that it is true" clause, I would have to say

D. Ignore the note knowing that it is bullshit

 

Very well. You know with complete certainty that the note is true and accurate. Now, which choice would you choose?

 

If I knew it was true for sure then A.

But it sounds like a good joke.

 

Explain your reasoning for choosing A.

 

I'd phone the Pole and tell him to get to the nearest finger.

 

Actually my first thought was "I'd hope this wasn't something fucked up in that by hitting the button I'd actually be the one eliminating the world"....but then you said if you were absolutely certain.

I don't know. I mean a part of me, sure, I think it would be nice if we all just went back into a state of pure existence. But I don't feel I should make that choice for everyone in the world... the kids, animals, everyone. I am a bit too much of an optimistic against all odds that in many ways I still believe in humanity and would just rather save it.

 

OK, let's say that that pole is deaf, and has been since an unfortunate incident involving an aggressive woodpecker. What now, smart guy?

 

But save it from what? No one is going to know that they've been . . . erased. It'll be all over.

 

By the way, that's pretty fuckin' funny.

But as it turns out, it's a light pole and not a telephone pole; plus there's the woodpecker thing. So . . .

 

I'd say it would be one hell of a good excuse to leave without paying, but try convincing the waiter

*staff tackles customer*

"Wait, let me go! I have to press a red button two blocks away, or the world will blow up!"

 

Definitely C. It would worry me too much not to do so!

 

Bet that'd be the first time they heard that excuse . . . and the last.

 

Yes, there would be nothing to mourn, and no one to mourn.

 

I've asked this question of others, and one person said that they would hurry into the restroom and masturbate as quickly as possible. I asked them, "Why go to the restroom?"

 

Woodpecker so it turns out happens to be my trained pecker so I'll just peck the button by extension.

 

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I fail to mention the big fucking pecker-hating hawk nesting at the top of the lightpole?

 

Being that hawks do dine on woodpeckers I would think this particular one would abstain.

 

Yea, I know.

That is actually tempting. Because complete oblivion is bliss. There's nothing bad about a deep, dreamless sleep.

I think it comes down to, for me.... having an attachment to this world and whether or not I think this world is a mistake or not. And I don't really think it's a mistake.


But yea the more I think about it... just saying if you press it, none of it would ever have happened. Kinda like a dream that was just...forgotten.... is kinda messing with my head.