(no subject)

[prog]

I keep returning to this thought experiment, concocted by the part of me that's been continually angry since November:

You are presented with a button, and are told that pressing it will instantly vanish every person not in the United States. They will simply wink out of existence, leaving the whole world empty of people, except for this country.

Would you press it?

Intentionally worded to avoid words like "kill" and "destroy". If the interviewee asks if the people would die, the interviewer does not answer definitely, instead reiterating that the people would vanish entirely, as if they had never existed in the first place. If the interviewee asks if they could choose to spare certain people, the interviewer says that they could not; it's an all-or-nothing deal.

My hypothesis, which I have no intention of actually pursuing: among people who voted in the 2004 presidential election, a greater number (to a statistically significant degree) of Bush voters would choose "yes" over Kerry voters.

I would not be surprised if in fact a majority of Bush voters chose "yes" and a majority of Kerry voters chose "no", but that would be an interesting side-observation if so.

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

This probably ties closely into whether the person in question knows people outside the USA.

I'm willing to bet a nickle that most of Kerry voters count at least one person who lives outside the USA as a friend or relative, while the majority of Bush voters do not have a single friend outside the USA.

Mr. Bush, for example, had never travelled outside the USA until he was appointed President.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's part of my accounting.

[magid.livejournal.com]

'Course, they might answer differently now, if they know someone serving in Iraq...

[prog.livejournal.com]

I think that many who would hesitate because of military personnel serving overseas, either because they're known personally or because they specifically don't like the idea of personally wiping out any U.S. troops. I nonetheless bet that a significant remainder would reckon that the sacrifice would be worth the payoff. (Or, not even have the loss of foreign-based military occur to them.)

[jadelennox]

To be fair, making this kind of statement unsubstantiated is the same kind of horrible judgments conservative pundits make about liberals. My hindbrain shares your prejudice, but my forebrain insists it's not a fair statement.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

what she said.

[prog.livejournal.com]

If you mean my hypothesis, I agree with you. I certainly don't claim this to be the truth. Were I to actually turn this into a statistically valid survey I bet I'd be surprised at the results.

It's something that's been sitting on my head for a while, and I wanted to share it.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people would press it simply because its a SHINY CANDY-LIKE BUTTON!!!

[daerr.livejournal.com]

Your question made me forumlate this more abstract question:

Would the world be a better place if it were only made up of Americans?

[prog.livejournal.com]

The may be the same as mine except without the (quite intentionally) nasty accusatory underpinnings.

[daerr.livejournal.com]

Yours puts the responsibility for the fact that the rest of the world is gone on the answerer's shoulders. I think (hope?) that very few people could really go for that. However, if it's posed as "what if this was just the way the world is, would that world be better then ours?", I think we would see the sorts of results your hypothesis predicts. That is, I think most right-wingers would believe that the world would be better with just Americans, even if they might pause at personally being the cause of that...

Though I suppose there is a critical difference between our two things. Yours is geography based, mine is nationality based.
Do you think results would be changed if your question was rephrased as:

You are presented with a button, and are told that pressing it will instantly vanish every non-American. They will simply wink out of existence, leaving the whole world empty of people, except for Americans.

Would you press it?