If you press the button, somewhere in the world, a young adult about to be killed by a drunk driver, is magically saved.
Also, every ceiling in the world is (safely, magically) lowered by 0.5 inches.
how many times do you press the button?
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I really, really like high ceilings. They just do it for me, more than almost any other architectural feature. House I designed for myself? 27 foot high pointless ceiling in the entryway. I think I could give up a foot, but I feel like an a$$hole now. Thanks.
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Is there a circumstance in which lowering a ceiling by 0.5 inches once will result in at least one death?
I don’t know how but it seems like the answer is yes.
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Would be interesting to see the reverse question also (press a button that raises ceilings but leads to someone getting killed)
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I'd press it at least at a rate that would allow people to hopefully escape the ceiling lowering to their death. No doubt this would cause some accidents though, but it's a maybe accident for a definite save.
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There's a fundamental maximum of hitting the button what... 48 times? Going from 8' standard to 6', which is basically intolerable for about 15% of the world population?
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just keep lowering it until that ceiling passes through the floor n creates a new floor 10 feet below the old floor. QED
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The number of people saying zero is distressing.
I'm a little over 6 feet tall and I answered 6-30 because that is where the one foot mark lies. With one foot of change you've saved 24 lives with very little change in comfort for the vast majority of people.
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Reducing average building size by ~0.5% would mean effectively spending billions to save one life. That's a bad deal even by rich-country standards (EPA value of a life is ~$10M), let alone effective altruism standards (~$3k to save a life from malaria).
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