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[Neonivek]

My issue with the third option is you are kind of messing with people's minds.

[Baffler]

"National distinctions" makes me think it means just making everyone the same grey goo. That's not a good thing.

I think I'd take 1/3 to pay for the first one, then kill myself to pay for the second. The first is probably less people dying than if I hadn't pressed it, and the second one I'll pay for because while it'll probably still save more lives than pressing the button takes that's too many people dying when it can be bought much more cheaply. I'd probably wait to press it though, in case a solution to either of those problems ends up being developed on its own.

[helmacon]

3 doesn't appeal to me. What of the many benefits of cultural diversity?

Presumably the magic genocide box maintains the diversity, just gets rid of the tension and borders and similar such messes. All the benefits of cultural diversity without the xenophobia and murder.

This

Number 1: death is actually important for ecology, so I wouldn't touch this one.

This dosent mean that diseases stop existing, or killing other organisms. It dosent affect natural immune responses and stuff, just antibiotics. Basically, it just means that when we try to treat something it will usually be successful.

[FallacyofUrist]

Here's a new hypothetical:
You have a briefcase. It appeared on your bed(or equivalent) this morning, out of nowhere. In the briefcase are 5 vials, a million dollars, and a note.
The note explains that you've been chosen to prepare humanity for the impending apocalypse. In 5 years, an alien invasion will begin. You're expected to mobilize and unite humanity to be as ready as possible for this threat, the nature of which is currently unknown to you.
The note also explains that the vials grant psionic powers to anybody that drinks one, drinking a second will temporarily supercharge one's powers to the point of being a one-man army, but a third will be lethal.

What do?

[Frumple]

... depends on what "psionic powers" entails, really. There's conceptualizations of the stuff that could get some folks together, spend five years cracking open something like a wormhole, and then move the planet to another galaxy or whatev'. Or hide the solar system or somethin'. Or use the vial granted junk to forcibly enable the rest of the species to use the stuff, and then tap a few (hundred) million psionics to do... whatever, probably. The list just kinda' trundles its way into the distance. Indefinite space magic is indefinite.

[Neonivek]

I feel like I don't really have enough information here.

Psionic powers means little... and "Supercharged" lacks context.

As well FRANKLY... if aliens did invade... I don't think even super charged psionic powers would help much.

[McTraveller]

Here's a new hypothetical:
You have a briefcase. It appeared on your bed(or equivalent) this morning, out of nowhere. In the briefcase are 5 vials, a million dollars, and a note.

You'd probably have to try at least one vial on yourself in order to convince people that they actually grant psionic powers.

So assuming you had the psionic powers, you will earn far more than $1M by using the psi powers for something, so the money is kind of... meh? I guess you could use it to pay your bills why you try to establish whatever psi power business you were doing.

There are some serious questions though - if the vials are from the alien force, they are already beyond humanity so I'd just live it up for the next 5 years - it's not like we'll be able to do anything to stop them, right, even with the psi powers - you'd have to assume all the aliens have them too?  If the vials are *not* from the alien force, from whom are they? And who cares?

Or is it some kind of goofy "hah we was just testing humanity, bro!" kind of thing?

[FallacyofUrist]

Psionic powers: initially weak(small scale), but grow with time, eventually capping at "I can blow up Hawaii" range, though this would take at least a decade. All psionics users get some basic abilities(telekinesis, extrasensory perception, telepathy), and one special ability that can be just about anything. It's possible to give other people psionics without the vials, but this is time consuming(1 year to awaken 1 person).
~~~
Aliens: You aren't told what the aliens are, but you are told that they're fightable. They aren't "ascended" types that could, say, destroy the entire human resistance in a day with a single shot of a doom laser.

[Draignean]

Hypothetical:

You've found a formula that proves P = NP.

What do you do?

For reference, solving the P=NP problem would allow certain algorithms to run millions of times faster, enable the prediction of protein folding, and provide a quantum leap forward in computation.

It would also invalidate all current non air-gapped software security systems and would tear through encryption like it didn't exist.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

World conquest, obviously.

[ChairmanPoo]

Here's a new hypothetical:
You have a briefcase. It appeared on your bed(or equivalent) this morning, out of nowhere. In the briefcase are 5 vials, a million dollars, and a note.
The note explains that you've been chosen to prepare humanity for the impending apocalypse. In 5 years, an alien invasion will begin. You're expected to mobilize and unite humanity to be as ready as possible for this threat, the nature of which is currently unknown to you.
The note also explains that the vials grant psionic powers to anybody that drinks one, drinking a second will temporarily supercharge one's powers to the point of being a one-man army, but a third will be lethal.

What do?

Steep by step plan:
1:Drink one vial
2:Keep another vial as backup
3:Choose  three liutenaunts of fanatical loyalty
4:the same thing we do every night Pinky...

[misko27]

With regards to the early question, I feel like my first action would be to hire a lawyer. Or an intern. Or something.

I feel like most of the people (Loud Whispers excluded) here forget that you have to prove that your cure actually cures cancer before anyone believes a word out of your damn mouth. Anyone (and everyone) who claims they have cures for cancer get ignored. You shout that out loud, you're basically guaranteeing that people will never believe you. I mean what is to distinguish you from literally every other crazy in existence? And what would your story be? "Oh, I just found it somewhere". Yeah, sure random people find miracle cures all the time. People would ignore you straight up. It's not easy even to get so famous as to even get invited to some medical lab to get proven false. I mean if someone walks up to you and claims they've got the cure for cancer and want to cure your sick kid, you don't trust this fucker one bit. And as for publishing it on the internet, how useful is that? At best it's relatively simple to cook up, but then you are just relying on people sick with cancer making some spooky looking concoction that some half-ass image set on imgur is telling them works. And even if they do it, there's no guarantee they tell people about it. And if it's not very easy to make, you are depending on some medical student somewhere someday deciding to cook up a random recipe on the internet. Yeah. Bad idea. So bloody G-Men coming in and abducting you should be the bottom of your worry list until at least one other human being believes you.

3 doesn't appeal to me. What of the many benefits of cultural diversity?

Presumably the magic genocide box maintains the diversity, just gets rid of the tension and borders and similar such messes. All the benefits of cultural diversity without the xenophobia and murder.

This

It's kinda funny to say "Oh yeah it preserves diversity without bloodshed and is great and all" while at the same time killing 2.3 Billion people.

Why do people assume that the magic-murder-genie-box people have our best interests at heart? I mean seriously.

Here's a new hypothetical:
You have a briefcase. It appeared on your bed(or equivalent) this morning, out of nowhere. In the briefcase are 5 vials, a million dollars, and a note.
The note explains that you've been chosen to prepare humanity for the impending apocalypse. In 5 years, an alien invasion will begin. You're expected to mobilize and unite humanity to be as ready as possible for this threat, the nature of which is currently unknown to you.
The note also explains that the vials grant psionic powers to anybody that drinks one, drinking a second will temporarily supercharge one's powers to the point of being a one-man army, but a third will be lethal.

What do?

Ideally? Take over the world. Barring that? Use it to convince certain world leaders (or potential world leaders, who could be world leaders if given phenomenal power) to obey my will long enough to worry about da aliums. Five years isn't a lot of time though. It'll take five years at least to thoroughly cement my grasp on power, and buildup, itself, would take much longer. Hmm. Five years is a short period of time. In the interests of time, I'd develop my abilities to allow me to subliminally message large sections of the population; which I will use to whip them into an angry frenzy demanding more militarization and fear of aliens (if people without psychic powers can do this, surely a psychic person has the power to kick it into overdrive). No matter what I'd ideally like to keep one vial for research purposes.

Failing all this, pull a Watchman.

[Egan_BW]

Here's a new hypothetical:
You have a briefcase. It appeared on your bed(or equivalent) this morning, out of nowhere. In the briefcase are 5 vials, a million dollars, and a note.
The note explains that you've been chosen to prepare humanity for the impending apocalypse. In 5 years, an alien invasion will begin. You're expected to mobilize and unite humanity to be as ready as possible for this threat, the nature of which is currently unknown to you.
The note also explains that the vials grant psionic powers to anybody that drinks one, drinking a second will temporarily supercharge one's powers to the point of being a one-man army, but a third will be lethal.

What do?

Drink one vial and start training magical healing. When invasion comes, chug the other four vials and use my newfound godly power to keep myself from dying to overdose. Vaporize ayylmaos.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I mean if someone walks up to you and claims they've got the cure for cancer and want to cure your sick kid, you don't trust this fucker one bit.

If you're referring to my plan, I was going to emotionally manipulate the parents of terminal cases. People try to use homeopathy and autism cures, the desperate will believe anything. Or at least one of them will, which is all I really need.

[Folly]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New Hypothetical Situation.

You, and only you have access to a specific machine.

The machine will permanently remove major obstacles to human civilization, but for a price.

The options are
1. - permanently remove the ability for diseases to develop antibiotic resistances (and remove all current medical resistances)
2. - humanity is provided with an infrastructure system and detailed schematics for the building and operation of fusion power generation plants.
3. - Remove all national distinctions and cultural tensions (unite the world)

Each option you choose will result in the spontaneous death of 1/3 of the world's population. (you are excluded)
You may substitute your life in payment for one of the options.

No one will ever know about your access to the machine and the decisions you make.

1 and 2, humanity would be better off in the short-term, but worse in the long term. We need to figure out how to solve these problems for ourselves so that we will be prepared to tackle the problems that come after.
3, that would just make the world boring.

That being said, as long as I am excluded from the spontaneous death clause, I would arrange for the general population to vote on what to do with the machine. Sheep do love their democracies, and I might be briefly entertained by the resulting shitstorm.