(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.)