Be Excellent To Each Other

Let's pretend you have a button in front of you.

Probably a big red button with a sign next to it saying "Please do not press this button".

If you press the button, the entire multiverse / existence as we understand it vanishes - it's totally wiped out.

It's not a massive explosion, there's no pain nor suffering - everything just ... is not any more.

Ignoring any paradoxes (well if you don't exist/never existed, then you didn't press the button so it's still there stuff).

Please, if you the vote on the poll thing explain your reasoning, extra 3 marks for spelling and grammar.

I decide who is the winner.

I wouldn't press the button. I am not an emo fag.

Why would you press it?

To end suffering?

I am a god. Don't bother me with your pointless fucking debates on a Friday evening. I've got drinking to do.

I would question the existence of the button and postulate that it is a trap in which the OP wishes to catch god complex types

I'm both touched and disturbed that you might think I'm the forward thinking type.

But you can strike that comment from the record as I'm the one asking the questions.

I voted yes, because the universe contains Steven Gerrard and Robbie Savage.

They have to go.

/ed I want to change my vote... if there's a universe ending button, imagine what other buttons there might be? An 'All women redheads' button, or a Liverpool bankruptcy button. Cor.

But what about Holly Willoughby and (er, er) Princess Diana (damnit!)?

I would push the button but not before I've made a lot of people aware of what I'm doing. Just so I can become the worlds most hated bad guy.

"Excuse me Holly, but the universe in ending as we speak... any chance of a go on your tits?"

"Well, since you put it like that..."

Hmmm, do we know that pressing the button will result in the end of the universe as we know it?

If so, then there is no point in the 'Do not press this button' sign, surely? If you're giving someone the option to press the button it should either have no sign or a sign saying 'This button should only be pressed as a form of universal euthanasia to save us from the pain of an exploding sun/Dalek invasion/super-massive black hole'.

I wouldn't press the button under normal circumstances. Although, logically, there would no reason not to press it. The reason I don't do most bad things is because of the consequences, if you destroy the universe then you have no fear of reprisal and no consequences to face, guilt would be irrational wouldn't it? So I could press it if I felt the need was great enough, not just out of morbid curiosity or because it said 'do not press'.

If the button would be available for others to push if I opted not to, then you can be sure that someone else would. Personally, no I wouldn't, but I also wouldn't care if someone else did press it. (Ok, I wouldn't exist to care, I know)

I wouldn't push it, because life is pretty good for me at the moment, and I'm a selfish bugger.

So you'd let Hitler stay alive just to spare those two (admittedly 7+/10) bints?

my finger is on the button

Pushing the button would mean one of two things:

1) The universe would end. That would be spectacularly dull, as nothing is pretty much by definition the dullest thing ever. More dull than today, so no pressy.
2) All the men around the museum would wake up and start shooting me. That would be OK, but being me I would have forgotten to go and pick up the sweet guns first.

I'd just lick the button and walk away.

Someone else would push it to take that away from you though. You'll have to dismantle the button mechanism.

Pressed.

Oh everybody would press it eventually, by accident probably while reaching for a chocolate hob nob to dip in their tea.

I wouldn't press it.

OK, you might argue that you could end all suffering, but you'd also end all of the beautiful things in life, the world, and the universe. Think of the sheer extraordinary unlikelihood that this world has formed, developed, that life sprang into being, how intelligent life on this planet (and probably many others) has evolved - who am I to end that?

It's like anti-depressants. OK, they can help with all of the hurt, but I find they also take away all of the joy, leaving an empty plateau. I understand the ideal of ending all suffering, but I wouldn't want to end all of the wonder and happiness that does exist as well.

It would depend on who had the button and when they had the button. If for example you had given me the button two months ago, I'd have swallowed it or something to stop it ever being pressed.
If you gave me it now, I would buy a gun, shoot someone, then press the button.

I wouldn't press the button. I would, however, use the fact that the button existed, coupled with the fact that my finger was on it to make myself Emperor of the Universe.
Then I'd probably get bored after a bit and press the button anyway.

I would press it. Of course I would press it. It's a big red button, for christ's sake. It even has a sign saying "Please do not press this button". What more reason do you need, exactly?