A big red button

[annwfyn]

This is a random pondering.

If you were given a button, and told that if you pressed it, someone you dislike would die, would you?

You'd be able to name the person and they would die. It wouldn't be your fault. It would be entirely untraceable. Maybe it would be a car crash, maybe a heart attack. But they would die. It could be someone you'd never met - a dictator - or someone who had hurt you in a specific way.

Consequences free killing.

Could you?

Would you?

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Do I have any knowledge of how many other buttons there are? Is it a unique artefact? Have other people been given similar buttons? Does my possessing it prevent someone else from having it?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Let's say you do not have this information at this time.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

The first step would be to aggregate as many publicly available death records as possible. It's likely that a handful of territories would stand out in terms of public availability for such data, so I'd focus my attention there on the assumption that if anyone else is doing the same thing as me, they'd be looking in the same place.

I'd then try to obtain a list of people over the age of 85 in these territories, and arrange a statistically significant event involving the least number of deaths possible. There are a specific number of Sven Sorensens over the age of 85 all dying within a certain time frame which cannot reasonably be attributed to chance. Sorry, Sven. And Sven. And also Sven. If I have counterparts with a similar device, they will be made aware of my existence. The selectivity of my targets should also indicate my relatively benign intent. I'd maintain observations on death records for similar events, and a policy of reciprocation to a similar degree of statistical significance.

I'd then have to engineer some way of coming into a large quantity of money with which to safeguard the button. Once it's under lock and key, I would think long and hard about what to do with it. Also, y'know, study the sweet merry hell out of it, because it defies almost everything I think I know about the universe.

So the answer seems to be "broadcast my existence as a benign psychic assassin by kiling a bunch of old people, then figure out what to do with it". I accept this is probably not a popular choice, but I'd need to use it at least a few times to be sure it actually worked and that I wasn't just crazy. If someone comes up to me and says "here is a mysterious button that will kill anyone you like! Bwuya-ha-ha-ha-ha!", it would take a reasonably large amount of evidence to shift my belief from "some loony is giving you a button" to "you are now capable of committing untraceable remote murder".