Yeah, it has parallels to Milgram Experiment too, as it involves a conflict with your personal conscience. It’s a great test for psychopaths.
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A Big Red Button, yes, I could see that. Depending on the Button.
This Big Red Button? All it represents is the ultimate in selfishness and greed. It means you want to be rich, no matter who it could hurt - or in this case, kill.
The Large Hadron Collider example doesn’t really fit this mold. The belief of some people that it was some kind of doomsday device was based on ignorance. The scientific community had to spell out over and over again that our planet has been shot through its entire life by particles blasting through the universe with energies that the LHC couldn’t begin to produce. And to this day people don’t believe it. We have an unshielded fusion reactor blasting us with hard high energy radiation every day called the Sun. But oh, we know all about that. Supposedly. People have irrational fears? That’s a newsflash. 
I do too, I’m human, but I try not to let them control my thinking.
Of course it’s also not a newsflash that some people will justify anything. History is liberally decorated with unjust wars and authoritarians who kill some people for the good of others, and I don’t mean evil criminals. Moralizing around harsh actions is also what people do. I’m intending to write about a lot of this unsavory human stuff in the near future. 
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To me it represents an opportunity for change. It would have been better if there was something other than money, but I would have no issue giving up my life for the betterment of another, and would hope that the person potentially killing me would use it to improve the lives of his or her surroundings.
People are too caught up in the moral of “me, and mine”, when in reality we are insignificant as an individual (in a sea of 7 000 000 000). My hope is that a majority of people will one day see the use of “ours - mankind’s” (which would make this question a moral one).
For me to consider it a moral question, it wouldn’t be “would you push the button?”, but “would you push it again?”.
will you kill yourself and give me all your money?
i’ll promise to better my life with it
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I don’t have a million dollars, sorry.
But even if I did - would I have to kill myself to give it away?
(In reality, being good to others usually doesn’t come with such a cost, or require vast amounts of money. Most situations where you do risk losing your life, on the other hand, are only indirectly decided by yourself)
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yes
btw: i didn’t say million dollars, but i’ll promise to better my life with whatever you got
you can paypal transfer if you want
You live in a harsh world, if any generous act must come with the additional cost of a life…
what? you’re the one that was happy to give up your life, these are your rules.
We would like your heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and various other bits, for the betterment of others. We’ll be round in an hour.
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well… my question didn’t come with that disclaimer or i might have a different opinion. mine only asked me to take a 50/50 shot at being a millionaire or a murderer so…
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Care to change your vote hmm?? 
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But even if I did or didn’t, still a somewhat hard question
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That button exists, and it’s my job to push it.
I take x-rays for a living. Depending on the exam there’s a small but non zero chance that my x-ray will cause a fatal cancer. Not in everyone - most will be unaffected, most are frankly too old or close to death for that to be a realistic concern. But, if I work for 30 years, then it’s almost a statistical certainty that I will have killed someone who was otherwise perfectly healthy. And, because it’s a stochastic effect of the radiation, I will never know who it is - a random person somewhere will have died because I pressed a button.
My lifetime earnings from this job will be somewhere just over £1m.
So, I said yes. Of course, over the course of my career the images I take will have saved countless lives by identifying cancers and infections and other conditions. The question is, is the risk worth it? After all, an extra million in the world could save a hell of a lot of lives if used wisely…
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Interesting analogy, but the Red Button in this thread does not guarantee helping anyone, not even the pusher, in fact if it kills someone, there is not a million dollars for the pusher, it just kills someone.
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If your place of employment is taking X-rays willy nilly of people who are perfectly healthy, I’d say they’re guilty of malpractice.
However, the typical X-ray is of such low level that it’s the equivalent of a few days or a few weeks of… living. Or a long plane flight or spending long periods in a basement. We’re being bombarded by radiation because everything is radioactive, even the foods we eat, some more so than others like seafood. But are you never going outside, flying, or eating lobster?
And if you’re one of those lucky people who are getting seriously X-rayed? You have problems that are more serious than your X-rays. I’ll have to include this tidbit in my fiction. 
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Yeah… A person with such propension would be most likely killed by an airplane trip than by a radiography…
The situation could be posed, that it was the X-Ray operator the one with such propension, taking the chance with his own life, helping others, and to make money… But that is a different conundrum.
Thinking of Milgram, I wonder whether the true psychopath would refuse to administer the shocks - not from any moral imperative, but purely to frustrate the researcher.
Reminds me of an old joke:
“Hurt me” said the masochist.
“No” said the sadist.
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A true psychopath would fail to read the true desires of the researcher and would act to serve his own or what is expected… You are thinking a Sociopath.
lol, I was just thinking of the test subjects that actually enjoyed administering them, and found it amusing. Definite red flags there, but apparently it was quite normal for people to follow orders but were just ‘conflicted’ about it 