The button thought experiment

The crude topic I had in mind for this blog post is a thought experiment that I would say I came up with independently, but which — after some googling — can be found in some form or another in other places¹². Just over a year ago I would offer this thought experiment to my friends, and in time it would become known as “Wessel’s Button”. The thought experiment goes something like this:

Suppose that there is a button that, when pressed, will cause all humans to cease to exist. This change will occur instantaneously and painlessly, with no one but the person pressing the button realizing what is happening. Would you press the button?

Take some time to consider the consequences, arguments in favour and arguments against, and try to answer the question. There are also variations in which pressing the button would extinguish all life³, but the version here deals with human life only.

Thinking about the consequences of humans going extinct (and whether we should accelerate it) is not a new thing, as shown by the existence of, for example, the book The World Without Us (2007, written by Alan Weisman) and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (founded in 1991). However, the general consensus is that this process is a gradual one, whereas the thought experiment deals with instantaneous extinction. I can recommend reading some of the arguments for and against on online threads, but I had the most interesting discussions in person when posing the question to others.

My thoughts

At the time of writing, I would be in favour of pushing the button. I won’t try to explain and weigh all possible perspectives and refute arguments against pushing the button, but instead limit this post to contributing my main view to the discussion.

Essentially, to me, pressing the button would restore (some of) the balance in the ecosystem that is planet Earth. Humankind has had some devastating effects on almost all forms of life on our planet, and considering the current rate of destruction I think it is safe to assume that prolonged human presence has caused and will cause substantial irreversible damage⁴. Surely, life on Earth has had some hard hits in the (distant) past and always recovered, and I don’t doubt that that will happen again even when humans go extinct in a natural manner, but in my opinion it would be preferable to limit the amount of damage dealt to the environment.

Enter Darwin

A compelling narrative I’m telling myself to justify my position in a semi-scientific manner is a parallel that can be drawn with (neo-)Darwinism⁵. On small scales, evolutionary pressure and the struggle for existence drive individual organisms and populations to exploit available resources for survival. Scarcity of resources leads to competition, resulting in the survival of the fittest — those best adapted to their environment persist, while others decline or disappear. On a broader scale, entire species may go extinct if they can no longer occupy a viable niche within their ecosystem.

From this perspective, humanity’s continued dominance and exploitation of the planet could be seen as an aberration — our technological prowess allows us to circumvent many natural checks and balances, exceedingly at the expense of other species and the overall health of the biosphere. To me, removing humans from the equation can be seen as a kind of ‘genetic mutation’ that makes Earth fitter for survival, as the ecosystem would be given a chance to recover and re-balance itself.

While the commonplace evolutionary processes work well on the scales of individuals, populations and species, there is no system in place for keeping the planet fit, and humans — despite having the opportunity to — don’t seem to want to play that role of a regulatory agent. Pressing the button would not be a choice that improves one’s own chances in the struggle for existence, nor the chances of one’s population or even species, but it would be a choice that improves the chances of the entire ecosystem.

Conclusions

You can probably see that with this reasoning I am trying to take the moral high ground in the debate. People who wouldn’t press the button would typically cite the value of human experience, culture, and potential for positive change: a choice in favour of ‘just’ the species that you happen to be born in. It seems to depend on whether you see what is happening on Earth right now as a Project for Humanity — prioritizing the preservation and flourishing of our own species — or a Project for Life — prioritizing the resilience and thriving of the biosphere as a whole.

I don’t think many people would easily change camps in this regard, but to me that is what makes this thought experiment so fun to talk about: both views are highly understandable, and discussions therefore tend to be not so much about convincing one another, but about exploring new perspectives and challenging our assumptions about humanity’s place and role on this planet. Besides, it helps that such a button doesn’t exist — yet.