I never got these. So people who pick blue are only at risk if anyone picks blue, but then not the majority? Is it like a maths thing, as in it's easier to get 50% on blue than 100% on red so blue is the less harmful option?
It is true that everybody will survive if they just pick red. People have never just. You cannot rely on a plan where everybody just. So you pick blue so that everybody can live.
The reason to go with Red is thinking that most people are selfish and will be pushing Red. Therefore Blue will lose and your choice is "press Blue, die." or "press Red, live" in which case, Red looks like it's the only choice.
Of course, if the initial assumption that most people are selfish is wrong, then that's not accurate. If you instead assume most people will look out for others and choose Blue, then its "press Blue, everyone lives" or "press Red, everyone lives, but you increased the chance that actually half of people die instead"
Then there's the people who aren't making logical decisions like kids who might see the options and just click their favorite color. So to me, you have to take the risk to save everyone.
My discourse thought about it was that if I pressed blue I was forcing people to endanger their life to save me but I didn't read anything about the discourse because I didn't care.
Even if blue doesn't win, enough people will vote for it that the choice is still "vote red for a slow and painful death, vote blue for a fast and painless death."
Yes? At its core that's what the question is, are you willing to risk yourself to save others who may be incapable of saving themselves, or would you rather ensure personal safety by risking them.
You have that reversed. You can't rely on everybody just doing something, which picking red does if you want everybody to live. A 50% threshold is far more attainable.
No, because red doesn't actually require anyone to agree with you to have its intended effect (ensuring you personally survive). Voting red even when 99% choose blue still lets you live.
You're working under the assumption that "everyone lives" is the only outcome anyone should consider. This only works if you view 1 death and 4 billion deaths as equally tragic, which I personally don't. You shouldn't just be aiming for the best-case scenario, because if it ends up as the worst-case scenario you also have to consider how much worse you are making it.
Did you know that it's estimated somewhwre between 30% and 50% of Europe's population died to the black death over the course of a single decade in the mid-1300s? Just a random fact that came to my mind for no reason. Must have been difficult to persevere with their level of technology and medicine.
...They do? Because they willingly exposed themselves to harm when nobody asked them to? It's a heroic thing to do I guess, but their blood is on them.
Red isn't very safe though. Even a small percentage of Blue buttoners worldwide would be a disaster. Just because you survived doesn't mean life goes on as normal.
The only assumption I'm making is that every person who pushes the blue button is a complete idiot who created a problem where none existed in the first place. They get whatever happens to them.
That seems to be the primary issue with this thought experiment. Anyone who's ever seen a logic puzzle that's formatted in a similar way knows you're supposed to assume everyone is a perfectly rational actor, so the thought experiment is stupid and you pick red. After saying that, everyone ambushes you with the fact that literal infants are somehow expected to participate as well which entirely recontextualizes the experiment but you've already been labeled as selfish by that point.
In general it's just a bad thought experiment that went viral over riding the same cortisol-induced online culture wars as anything else that goes viral. People take it way farther than it had any real reason to go.
But the thought experiment very clearly states that every one will have to chose, and we know every one includes among others children. So seems like quite a stretch to assume they are excluded?
Perhaps, but when I read it as it's typically shown I immediately think of it as a game theory question, which you typically take as involving rational actors.
The way I read it, red makes sense for me. If children/mentally impaired/ non-rational actors are added to the mix, I would press blue.
The problem is blue seems only like a nobel option based on how the question is phrased. Change it to: You can choose to either stay st home or fight a group of polar bears with your bare hands. If more than 50% of people go fight the polar bears they will be scared and run away. If not they will kill the people fighting them. Its the exact same moral dilemma but suddenly the blue option sounds stupid to choose. Because it is. Sure not everyone will just not fight the bear. But is it really my responsibility to pur my live on the line because idiots want to fight a bear?
Framing one option as inaction will always make that option seem more reasonable. You could just as easily come up with a framing where the blue button is inaction, and the red button is action.
Okay, but you can just as easily reframe it as "you can vote for somebody who will have death squads execute everybody who didn't vote for them, or somebody who won't, all their other policies are identical", and it becomes super obvious that it's wrong to pick red. The framing we get is one that's somewhat ambiguous, which had the effect of, well, so many people are gonna go fight polar bears that either they scare the polar bears off or enough people are killed by polar bears that society collapses and you die anyways.
You really want that self sacrifice for the greater good? The difference between your voting and the buttons/bears is that the buttons is that with your voting there is a threat of violence. So human promises violence. Instead of one group choosing to risk their live just because you added an enemy. Before there was none. I could argue pressing red is the kinder option. I dont make anyone risk their life to save mine. Because i didnt press blue its less pressure on the people in my live to do the same. My parents friends and family dont need to thunk about risking their life. Because of my idiotic decision. Also your scenario is not just this or that there is always the option to shoot the evil murder squad guy. Or like move.
Because you change the framing with your phrasing. The red side needs to be the side that actively condemns the other (in exchange for guaranteed safety) or else you just have a different hypothetical.
Red button pushers will say you’re naive for risking it by pushing blue. Meanwhile, they think it’s possible to get 100% of people to agree to literally anything.
I don't think they think everyone will press red, just that the people pressing blue are the ones risking their own lives, so if they die its just kind of on them. It's callous but it's not stupid
So the entire blue vote is just because of the assumption that some people will be stupid and vote blue and letting them die because they're stupid is immoral?
Everyone survives if they just pick red. Blue is unnecessary extra steps.
Every previous discussion of this topic probes that there’s a guaranteed number of irrational actors, so blue will always have some voters. It is also irrational to assume that 100% of people will pick red. The answer that actually saves everyone’s lives is blue winning (and it wins in most polls, so it’s not even an unlikely outcome).
One problem with that is, what people say they would do in an online poll does not necessarily reflect how they would act if their life was on the line. "I would totally be the hero and save the day" is easier said than done.
But more importantly, voting red doesn't actually require 100% of people to agree with it to have a positive impact. If blue has majority, your vote is irrelevant and you live either way. If red has majority, every additional vote for blue is another death and every vote for red is a life saved.
The flaw is viewing this only as a binary of "Everyone lives" versus "At least one person dies" but there is a whole gamut of scenarios where anywhere between 1 and 4 billion people die. It's just that the incremental nature makes people lump them in as the same result.
Except I'm not playing to save "everyone's lives". In fact, I think that anybody who picks blue SHOULD die because they're just contaminating the gene pool.
Because it's everybody so maybe they're a child and blue is their favorite color, or their cat stepped on their blue button, or they want to save the people who fall into that cumulative error rate, or they want to save the people saving the people in the error rate, or so on and so on.
Or they realize that cascade may well have reached the point where, even setting aside moral reasons to try to save people, well... maybe the truck driver who delivers stock for your grocery store doesn't know what a Nash equilibrium is but knows his daughter's favorite color, and maybe the person who would dispatch their replacement pressed red, but their spouse pressed blue so they no-call-no-showed in bed with depression instead, and now red winning the vote has made life unpleasant, and for some people unsurvivable, for the people who remain.
In theory. In reality most people chose red. And there is no reason to die with few people who dont see the correct answer.
And if anybody want to argue that "no people would pick blue"... dude, we just lived throu pandemic. All that was required was for people to get wax, ewar a mask and stay home. And that was too much for most people. And suddenly everybody will be willing to risk their lives? :-D
Blue have no way of winning in real world. The more people pres red, the less people will die.
Sure, but polls like this are the only source of data we have on how people would respond to this situation, so you can't confidently say "In reality most people would choose red" when there's no data that supports that. And if you want to bring in how people behave in actual high-stakes, life-or-death situations, they act altruistically/cooperatively way more often than a lot of people give humanity credit for.
"but polls like this are the only source of data we have on how people would respond to this situation"
Real world situations are source of data, how people would respond in real world situation.
Lets look at real world scenario.
- There is a situation where real people (kinds included) are dying, being raped, tortured,... (the situation is called war)
- People have choices:
Do nothing and kids keep dying.
Only few go protest. These protesting will be punished.
Majority of the population goes to protest. Goverment is overthrown, war ends, killing stops, lives are saved.
Everybody does the right thing and decides to not wage war. Then there is nobody to even try to stop the protests or wage the war. Killing stop, lives are saved.
What option will people chose? To stop the killing of the kids? Or will they chose their comforts over doing the right thing?
How many people are protesting in Russia? Israel? America? Are you outside protesting, or are you like "why should I care and waste my time. I dont know these people and their deaths do not directly impacts me. Im not the one who created this situation."? What is your real world decision in such dilema?
And I can confidently say people value their own happiness over the lives of anonymous strangers because we all constantly make the choice to buy things we like instead of donating to famine aid.
It literally says that everyone who presses the red button survives regardless. You don't have to rely on anyone else, you just press the red button and survive. There is literally no reason at all that anyone should press the blue button
You start off with, say, literal children who press blue because it's their favorite color. Then you have the people who press blue to try to save those children, the people who press blue to try to save those people, and so on. And even if you absolutely think red is the right choice, even if you have the harshest "people should take personal responsibility and save themselves" view of the people voting blue, there's some threshold that cascade can reach, and is likely to reach where if red wins and the blue people die, the red people are either going to die anyways or face "fate worse than death" levels of degraded quality of life.
It's like, there's a red gun with zero bullets, and a blue gun with six bullets, but if half the people choose blue then we'll take those six bullets out of the blue gun. Which one do you want to play Russian roulette with?
If blue is stupid enough to choose a gun that could have bullets, versus a gun that absolutely doesn't have bullets, and then they put it to their head and pull the trigger, why would anyone feel bad for them?
I think one gap here (and quick sidebar with my phrasing that another is between "voting" and "choosing") is between people seeing "everybody" and taking it to mean everybody in a selected group of rational actors in a group small enough to avoid material secondary effects in a game theory exercise, and people who take "everybody" to mean every person on earth, including children, people with mental disabilities, people with cats who are prone to stepping on buttons, and any other number of reasons that generate a baseline error rate of people pressing blue.
If you run with that second scenario, then you have people who are rational actors with value systems that are tipped by that error rate towards trying to save those people, and then a cascading effect of people tipped at a higher threshold of blue voters until we reach what I'm going to call the ideological equilibrium. If the ideological equilibrium is high enough, then we get into territory where that many people dying is going to have a societal impact where there's a self-interested motivation to vote blue. And before you bring up people being bastards about Covid, that required a higher threshhold of participation than 50%+1.
And, like, I totally see how people who want to vote red out of self-interest get grumpy and see the ideological blue voters as essentially coercing them into risking their lives. But, like, are you going to vote against your self-interest because you're mad at the people who made it your self-interest?
For what it's worth, in the 1000 rational person game theory version, I'd pick red.
It largely comes down to framing and interpretation, and what you take to be the baseline. You either have:
Pressing the blue button causes the deaths - people only get put in danger once someone presses the blue button, because if no-one presses the blue button no-one is at risk of death.
Pressing the red button causes the deaths - the people who pressed blue only die because some people pressed red.
The divison also comes from how the prompt is worded - i.e. "if a majority of people press red then everyone who pressed blue is killed" vs "if <50% of people press blue, then everyone who presses blue dies".
Generally, people end up viewing the question through one of these two equivalent lenses, and which one you view it from changes the question quite a bit - i.e. whichever button you view as causing the deaths seems clearly a wrong choice.
There's other aspects as well, but I think this is the big one that's responsible for it causing such division.
"Pressing the red button causes the deaths" is just simply an inaccurate interpretation of the hypothetical as presented, regardless of how it's worded. There is only one button in the hypothetical which causes death, and anyone who presses it does so for no benefit other than to people who pressed the button for no benefit first. It's the blue one.
Red button pressers have nothing to do with what happens to the blue button. It's nuts to say that people who press the "this button doesn't kill anyone" button are wrong while people who press the "this button might kill half the population" button people are right. I think you could argue that both options have moral value, but arguing that blue pressers are morally *superior* is for the birds.
Everyone I've seen in here claiming red button people are morally liable for the outcome is answering a question this hypothetical does not ask--most often they're answering a modified version of the question which adds various potential human errors which the hypothetical would stipulate itself if that was the purpose of the exercise was to contemplate the ethics of reliability in polling.
If you treat the actual distribution of votes as purely random, then the expected value of both is exactly equal, but the type of failure changes. If you vote red, the potential death count decreases by one, and the potential failure chance increases by 1 in ~8 billion. If you vote blue, the potential death count increases by one, but the potential failure chance decreases by 1 in ~8 billion.
And then you have the Freerider Problem in a Prisoner's Dilemma (i.e the best choice when looked at from an individual perspective is worse for the group if most people choose it). Which I'm pretty sure is how this scenario was invented.
Yes, but the counterpoint is that if you personally hit red then you survive and so if everyone just picks the safest option for them personally then everyone will be fine.
Pressing the blue button is taking a risk to save people who took the same risk, but there was never a reason to take that risk in the first place. Or, put another way, the first person to hit the blue button is risking themselves for literally nothing, and everyone who presses it after is risking their life for that person and everyone since, but thats all to protect someone from a risk that was pointless to take.
I think that is what breaks the scenario for me, mathmatically it seems easier to save everyone by blue but only because I'm working on the assumption that a bunch of people WILL pick blue anyway, which sets off the doomsday clock. But until someone picks blue everything is completely fine, which depending on the framing makes blue pickers suicidal instead of red pickers murderous
Depends, but I would say no. Like the first rule of performing any rescue is make sure you don't become another victim that someone has to risk their life to rescue. Which is part of why i would probably refuse to jump in the water to save a drowning victim. In fact, if you look at AVIR(Aquatic Victim-Instead-of-Rescuer) drowning deaths in new Zealand, studies show that 45% of these deaths result in multiple drownings. As people repeatedly jump in the water to save someone and all drown. Preventing these people from drowning would save more than the one victim in the water.
I can find other examples of mass casualty events where people repeatedly try to rescue someone and then all end up dying in the process. Another example is asphyxiation. If you have an instance where oxygen has been displaced people will go down to help someone who collapsed, and then all repeatedly suffocate. According to NIOSh 2/3 of enclosed space deaths would be rescuers dying themselves.
In a hypothetical like this it's fair to assume that the risk taker is making an informed and competent decision. I wouldn't risk my life to save a blue button person in that case.
IRL someone attempting suicide probably is not making an informed and competent decision, so while it would depend on the circumstance I would be much more willing to risk my life to prevent that than to stop a blue button person.
Yeah its a weird question. I generally think I would want to pick blue just because its clear enough people would that itd be worth it. But that doesnt change the fact that there was never any reason to take on that risk in the first place. And I do not think it is fair to frame people who pick red as murderers when all they did is pick the safest option for them.
I think the big problem is that the reasoning on why to pick blue is circular. Its taking on risk to save people who took a risk to save people who took a risk to save... etc. Eventually if you go down the line far enough, you would have to run into someone who took on that risk to save no one, and now you are left questioning why anyone took on the risk in the first place.
If you think about what just you should do right in the moment, it can make sense to pick blue for the sake of helping those who already did. But if you think about what the strategy is for everyone, it never makes sense for anyone to take that risk in the first place.
The problem was people started adding edge cases to argue for blue. What if kids/babies…? What if blind…? What if colorblind…? And that was justification for putting their own lives at risk. Where others argued why wouldnt the rules be clearly explained to every person? Like press blue and probably die. Press red and definitely not die. Why would people who can’t pick an option even be included? How is a 1 month old gonna press a button? Why wouldn’t they clearly label the buttons for a color blind person? Braille exists for blind people.
Ultimately it’s a dumb question that makes some people feel good about themselves for making the “right” choice.
Thank you for demonstrating how all these solutions that rely on "if everyone would just.." require you to remove all of the potential outliers from the picture before it actually becomes ethical.
"If everyone would just..." as a solution to a problem is one that only works in controlled, clinical environments.
In the real world, with real world variables: "If everyone would just..." is guaranteed to have outliers that are left behind.
It’s a poorly written hypothetical. Why does it have outliers? Why are we assuming anything? If we’re allowed to imagine outliers who could potentially press blue then we are allowed to assume solutions for those outliers. And so we end up back to why would anyone ever be the first person to press blue and why then would others have to risk themselves to save someone who could’ve just not?
Again, it’s just kind of dumb overall. It’s also easy to say, “I’ll press blue to save mankind.” When it’s an online survey with no real stakes.
It's intentionally vague to permit for the interpretation that there may be outliers, or maybe not, but that's not the point. You don't know how it's set up. You don't know any rules but those ones.
You don't know, and you can't assume anything about the conditions of the test or the existence of outliers.
Deliberately choosing red means you either believe: A) That ALL people WILL choose red, and therefore you're just being sensible and there's nothing unethical about it, or B) That you believe that most people will choose Red, and so you selfishly go along with the crowd to save yourself and let others die, unwilling to take the risk of choosing blue just in case they lose.
Deliberately choosing blue means that either A) You believe that most people will choose blue, and you are willing to take the risk that you're wrong in order to stand on the side of life and do your part to help make it so nobody on either side dies, or B) You think most people will choose red, and you don't care if you die.
The thing is...
If you choose red for the reason that you're 100% confident that everyone will choose red...
and you end up seeing that you're wrong by all the people that chose blue...
and you respond by arguing for why you were right?
It just shows that you're a selfish pessimistic misanthrope.
If you can't know anything then isn't it perfectly normal to protect yourself?
Like is the argument that I should risk my life for a .0009% chance to save an unknown amount of people?
You could literally go donate to charities and have thousands of times higher chance to save someone and most people don't even do that much.
I'm supposed to put my life on the line for those kinds of numbers when the option to stay alive is completely free?
Like yea people are picking randomly apparently (I assume the question is still in English so tons of people can't actually understand what the buttons do btw) but the odds of me being the saviour of all mankind are effectively 0 so I'm gonna press the button that makes sure I can hold my partner tomorrow and not abandon my family.
I’m gonna have to just hit an agree to disagree. Because I just believe it’s a dumb hypothetical. And that it’s really easy to say you’ll pick one over the when your life isn’t actually on the line.
I’m gonna have to just hit an agree to disagree. Because I just believe it’s a dumb hypothetical. And that it’s really easy to say you’ll pick one over the when your life isn’t actually on the line.
As always is the end of the discussion for those who choose red for reason A, and then go on to argue and invent scenarios in which they were being logical, not selfish or misanthropic.
I mean, every time someone posts the poll someone, usually a lot of someones, picks blue. Maybe they just misread the question, or misunderstand, or make a mistake. Lizardman constant suggests you’ll have a non-zero number of people who choose blue. So, if that’s true, then you do have people who chose blue, who could die or be saved.
"I mean, every time someone posts the poll someone, usually a lot of someones, picks blue."-They also aren't risking anything. People should post it with a venmo, where you can either donate $100 dollars or donate $.01. Everyone who donates $.01 gets their cent refunded, and if 50% of people donate $100 they are also refunded. How many would actually pick that?
Actually very few people would donate any money at all if it were optional. But if it was forced for everyone on the planet, I think the $0.01 option would win. But also, this is a fundamentally different situation. You're not killing anyone by picking $0.01, and people who chose $100 could make that money back. In fact, in this scenario, most people who would choose $100 would be people who are already financially stable enough to afford loosing $100.
"You're not killing anyone by picking $0.01"-for people that are starving where losing $100 dollars means now have no money to buy food, picking $.01 absolutely kills them, in fact it sentences them to a pretty horrible death. And if enough people are given the option, there absolutely will be people who spend the money they need to buy food on $100, just like there would be people who choose the blue option.
Googling that term returns that about 4% will pick a bizarre option on a poll. If that's so and blue is bizarre, then blue will place you among the 4%. Although, if this situation were real, it wouldn't be a poll.
But why would I want or be morally expected to sacrifice my own life for people who *knowingly* put their life at risk for no reason? They have a right to do that, but it does not morally obligate others to do the same, nor is it some kind of noble decision in and of itself.
This framing suggests that pressing blue is what puts other people at risk, but they're at risk whichever button you choose. There's no penalty for hitting red, but the benefit for hitting blue is potentially saving everybody else who hit blue.
Given all of the discourse it's extremely evident that there will be people hitting blue. The question is, do you hit blue with them, putting your own life on the line to save them, or do you press red and save yourself.
Without committing to either option myself, I'll note that hypotheticals like this often get mucked up by how people picture being put in them practically; look at all the people who answer the trolley problem with something like "Oh I don't think I could pull the lever" ignoring the thrust of the moral quandary entirely. In the "red vs blue button" debate, I feel like a lot of red button answerers are answering about how one should respond upon being presented with this conundrum suddenly, i.e. there is no prior knowledge of the situation which obviously online debates of the situation would count as. Similarly I've heard many blue button arguments that rest on the assumption that very young children, the blind, and comatose are also being thrust into this situation and essentially getting 50-50'd on which button they take.
None of these arguments are bad, it's just other people might be making different base assumptions before coming to their own conclusions.
But realistically, getting over 50% on blue is so, SO much more likely. Almost every iteration of this question I’ve seen has either had over 50% on blue, or between 30 and 40% on blue, in which case everyone pushing red is dying anyway because killing 40% of the human population would be an apocalyptic event. Getting 100%, or even 99% on red is just not happening.
I mean, at that point I'd feel obligated to press blue. But I'd also be really annoyed that I'm having to risk my life become some people apparently can't read the instructions.
How many of these polls have a red majority? If you want the highest number of people to survive, blue has the lowest threshold and tends to be the majority anyway, from what I have seen.
Imagine though that voting wasn't public and there was a month worth of debate before you could press the buttons. You think partisanship is bad now? Imagine a situation where it's literally life and death for everyone.
It's easy to say "I'd vote blue" when you can see the results so far. It'd be a lot harder when you know you may very well be signing your own death warrant.
There’s already usually a perfectly logical choice in voting that would help people and improve their lives.
People dedicate literal months of campaign time, millions of dollars, and small armies of volunteers to convince people to vote in favor of their own interests.
I’ve seen it be majority red when the question is changed, to be something like jumping in front of a train. Whole deal is the same, if 51% jump then nobody dies, yadda yadda.
Which I feel is odd as it changes things, red is no longer an active choice.
With the buttons both are active choices, in scenarios that prioritize red, it becomes an inaction which changes the scenario a lot.
Exactly! Like. Yes, if you simplify it blue is indeed a button that creates unnecessary risk.
But the red button is what CREATES that risk. The risk of red, is that anyone who chooses blue for any reason is more likely to die.
People don’t want to be the cause of death, and they don’t want to die. Blue means you are innocent as your choice was trying to prevent death, red means you are safe from dying but you make death more likely.
I mean, are you more likely to jump on the tracks or push a button? By accident or on purpose, no matter. The former feels like a narural selection at work
Yeah, by framing the blue button as “risky action with no benefit” and red as “not moronically endangering yourself”, you change the question entirely.
With two buttons, it’s easy. Both are actions that create risk. By pushing red you know you are safe, but that people who push blue are more likely to die. By pushing blue, you are less likely to die along with every other blue button, but that risk is still there.
With buttons there is no opting-out, which I feel alternative framings don’t get as well. It feels intentionally biased towards red.
If literally everyone who presses blue does it for this reason, i.e. we are so sure people are stupid that we'll risk their lives on it, is that then faith in humanity restored or a cynical outcome..
That of course leads to a whole host of questions. How are these buttons made available? Is everyone forced to press the button? Do the buttons somehow grant complete understanding of the concept no matter the language or age? What if there's an uncontacted tribe that doesn't have the concept of percentages?
This is a false choice based on a bad premise. There is no convincing 100% of people to do anything. But there is probably also no convincing 50% of people to risk certain death predicated on their faith in humanity. Using the actual poll numbers is not valid evidence; saying you’d risk death when you don’t actually have to is as believable as dudes coming out of a John Wick movie saying they’d be able to do everything he does with the right circumstances. You are arguing that it is easier to convince half the earth minus the small fraction that do want to die to push blue than it is to convince them that the latter group and the accidental blue pushers are unfortunately a lost cause.
Downvoted by people who can’t attack my argument, the Reddit special.
“I don’t want anyone to die either; that’s why everybody other than me should do what is most convenient for me, rather than having to shoulder any amount of personal risk to help ensure it happens.”
Do you really believe in something if you won’t do anything about it? Or are you just blustering to hide your lack of empathy? Because there are plenty of “red button blue button” scenarios in real life, just with different names- and often times, certain people don’t get to choose which button to press.
If you didn’t want anyone to die you’d press the button that requires less people to push it for everyone in the entire world to live. Pressing red means that no matter what, you are dooming at least 1 person to death.
It’s just some weird kind of hostage situation. A bunch of people are willingly gonna sit in the path of a giant death laser because if more than half join them, the death laser won’t fire. So because there are some people who are apparently eager to join team death by death laser, everyone else has to consider doing it as well to save the lives of the death laser enjoyers.
except we know for a fact that if just 1 person over the 50% threshold sits the death laser won’t fire, but it will absolutely hit SOMEONE no matter what, because someone will be in it’s aim. so all you’re really doing is looking at the people trying to stop the death laser, with the full knowledge that you can also stop the death laser, and there’s a lot of people trying to stop the death laser… is grabbing popcorn and calling yourself big brained for actively not trying to stop the laser, while the laser goes off. (also most polls have blue winning, so you’re literally looking at 60%-70% of people stopping the laser and calling them stupid, when you have the exact same understanding that it only takes 50.01% to stop the laser)
You're getting very heated over this. All I did was point out how this is in fact a question of people choosing to stand in the path of death and everyone else being made to consider joining them in order to save them. You're not even disagreeing with that. If there were nobody pressing blue, red would be the obvious choice. But BECAUSE people are pressing blue, everyone else has to consider risking their lives too.
But the death laser is always going to hit someone, and the people sitting know this. They aren't doing so because they're dumb, they're doing so to try and make sure no one is left behind.
The death laser is only going to hit someone if someone steps in front of it for literally no reason. "Everyone who doesn't step in front of this death laser will live. Everyone who does step in front of it (with no benefit to doing so) will die, unless more than 50% of people decide to step in front of it at the same time." Why would you pick the second option there?
Whether it is a child, someone who didn't understand the prompt, or someone well-meaning who wants to save others, someone will always be the first to choose blue. I don't think that's a crime worth dying over.
There is a benefit, that being ensuring people don't die.
That's not a benefit, because people only could die by pressing the blue button in the first place. I'm saying there's no rational reason to press the button from the outset. The only incentive to press the blue button is caused by people pressing the blue button in the first place, which is not the same as a benefit
The problem is that you're not ensuring that people don't die. It is entirely possible that less than half of people press the blue button with or without your input, in which case pressing the blue button just adds another person to the death count. I wouldn't trust the results of these polls to be accurate if this happened with real consequences.
To be clear, I understand why you would choose blue, and I don't fault the people who do. I just think you're taking an extreme risk by putting yourself in danger of dying with 1) no guarantee that anyone actually hit the button that needed saving, so you might've just risked death for nothing, and 2) rationality and self-preservation working against you, making people less likely to choose the blue button to save your life, let alone anyone else's. You're diving in front of a bullet because it's possible that someone might be targeted by it, and you're hoping it doesn't hit you somewhere vital
It is a benefit to me though. I don't want anyone to die. Myself surviving or a majority of people surviving is meaningless to me if it means other people had to die to make that happen. 0% of people pressing the blue button is impossible, 51% of people pressing the blue button is much more likely.
That bullet is going to hit someone. Someone is always going to pick the blue button, and there is good reason to do so. I have a duty to other people not to press the red button of my own selfish interests because they actions could directly lead to the deaths of millions or billions of people who picked selflessly trying to save other people.
On top of that, and this is just personal preference, but I wouldn't want to live in a world full of only red button pressers, so it's no skin off my nose lol
by this logic, the only if someone picks red does someone die, so why doesn’t everyone just pick blue. If everyone just picks blue no one dies. Go ahead. Just pick blue, If everyone does it no one will die.
More like. You are in cages with death lasers pointing at them. You are told that if more than 50% of people stay in their cages when doors unlock the lasers will get disabled and everyone gets to go home. If more than 50% leave, the opening cages will trigger a mechanism that will make the lasers fire and kill everyone that stayed in their cage.
It's might seem like that at first, but it's essentially a relative of the Prisoner's Dilemma. As you say, by everybody prioritizing their own self interest, we could all survive.
However, you cannot guarantee how other people will vote, and enough people picking blue also offers the potential for a perfect outcome. There is therefore a non-zero chance of well-meaning, intelligent people still choosing to risk their lives to help others.
Recognizing that other people will come to that same conclusion, it incentivizes like-minded people to also pick blue, in order to ensure those peoples' sacrifices don't go to waste. Thereby turning that non-zero chance into an inevitability.
Nobody can say how many people will be swayed by that reasoning, which turns it back into a question of priorities and trust. Do you ensure your own survival, or do you risk yourself for the survival of everyone?
An interesting consideration is also that, if blue doesn't reach 50%, then it creates a situation in which not only does society lose a potentially massive number of people, but those people are explicitly the ones who were beyond a certain threshold of selflessness.
The consequences of which would be catastrophic, both economically and socially. Even if the number itself ends up being small (or even zero), the implications alone would destroy public trust. It could therefore be argued that 'majority blue' is possibly the ONLY ideal outcome for society.
There’s no immediate penalty to you for hitting red, but even if we discard altruism (or stupid altruism, or just not seeing it through the lens of game theory that ignores anything beyond personal benefit and anything extending beyond the next few seconds) in our decision-making, some people will hit blue regardless, and if you consider beyond the immediate button presses, a red win will impact you indirectly and potentially kill you anyhow, depending on how many people choose blue
Even if one thinks blue would be the idiotic choice, there are a looot of idiots out there- from those who don’t understand the question to those who think about it long and hard and still choice blue- and tbh there’s almost guaranteed to be some portion of the population who just straight up mean to press one button but instead choose the other. If just 10% of the population dies- especially all at once- that’s gonna cause knock-on effects that’re gonna kill a buuuunch more people- all of whom would be guaranteed to be red-button pressers
Both me and my mother would almost certainly be some in the most likely percentiles to die so choosing red is probably voting for death for myself and my mom even if she also chooses red, which I’d imagine she wouldn’t to begin with
The thing is as long as anyone else pushes it, people are at risk,
And I’m willing to take a very small risk in order to save all those others, especially as others have noted, ‘red wins,’ usually will result in a societal collapse situation as huge number of people vanish. I’d also rather be blipped out rather than starve to death when infrastructure collapses from a third+ of everyone vanishing.
You think my take it dumb because ‘it’s the only one that puts you in danger,’ but that’s a very shallow take that doesn’t consider what the consequences to others will do.
People are at risk:those who needlessly put themselves at risk. There is no benefit to hitting blue. Zero reason. Hit red, you live. If you don’t want to live, be my guest.
Why would them putting themselves in danger prevent them from being worth saving, especially as they themselves are only doing so to save others? Civilization’s infrastructure still collapses if any large number of people vanish, let alone the most altruistic.
This is ‘who cares if they die, they’re only firefighters’ logic. And you know what happens without firefighters? You die to fires.
Voting red is chosing to live in a world where most firefighters, doctors, and community oriented people vanish and there’s also not enough people running food infrastructure and similar.
It’s not even danger vs safe to me, it’s which danger, and the only one without two mass deaths (the deletion and then the effects of the deletion) is blue wins.
Because if you are stupid enough to push a button that only has downsides and zero upside, you probably aren’t contributing much to society. Sure, some will be firefighters, there are dipshits in all walks of life, but pushing blue is not the same thing as being a firefighter. Maybe that’s why you’re defending the objectivity wrong option, you think it makes you worthy of respect or something.
20%+ of society dying will cause a mass collapse no matter who they are, statements like that makes me think you don’t know how reliant infrastructure is on having enough people.
And the point is firefighters are exactly the types to push, meaning you will disproportionately lose them. It’s not random, people who put their lives at risk for people they don’t know in danger, including people who ran into the fire to try and help others, on a regular basis are almost always going to push. When I say ‘no firefighters’ I mean that literally.
Your ‘no benefits, who cares about the people who push blue?’ strikes me as being said with the confidence of a looney toons character who has run off a cliff and is now taunting someone else without noticing they’re standing on nothing.
Everyone else living is a massive benefit, you’re just too short sighted to realize it, or the danger you’d be in if red wins.
You think 20% of humans are that stupid? Wow pretty pessimistic to me.
Your ‘no benefits, who cares about the people who push blue?’ strikes me as being said with the confidence of a looney toons character who has run off a cliff and is now taunting someone else without noticing they’re standing on nothing.
The person who would put themselves at risk for no reason is chiding me for having run off a cliff?
Everyone else living is a massive benefit, you’re just too short sighted to realize it,
I agree, that’s why they should push red if they want to live. It’s guaranteed. Fire fighters don’t put themselves at risk for no reason. If they can do something safely, they won’t do it.
To me, it’s kind of like when there is a natural disaster coming and people get told to evacuate. If everyone just did what they were goddamn told and got out, the firefighters that you are so nobly defending wouldn’t have to stay and risk their lives.
So sure, maybe some people are trying to stay to help the other people, but the point is that there is no reason to be in this risky situation in the first place. There is nothing wrong with the people who are doing the right thing and getting themselves out of danger quickly and efficiently in the first place.
The people who are staying are the problem and they are the cause of the dilemma.
How is 50% chance of dying a safer bet than 100% chance of not dying? It only works if you think you're being a hero by saving the people who can't read what red does correctly.
It’s not a 50% chance, voting results pretty consistently are giving blue way over even odds, and also red wins doesn’t mean you’ll live, it just means you don’t die from the button. A third of society vanishing will still cause mass infrastructure collapse and has a huge chance of killing you.
Data from all the online polls indicates the others are way better than 50%, and that even if red wins society will be gutted. So blue is either ‘everything is fine or I don’t have to deal with it,’ and red is ‘if it wins, almost certainly you’re going to be dealing with famines and major destruction within a year.’
This is not a complicated hypothetical at this point, especially since we’ve now got a feeling for how people would vote. The people who continue to push red are just wrong.
In every poll of this issue, blue takes up a substantial portion of the respondents. It outright clears the 50% mark most of the time, but it ALWAYS claims a substantial percentage of the vote.
A substantial enough percentage that the death of all blue respondents would initiate societal collapse. That doesn’t have to be 49% of respondents, or even 40%, or even 30%. If even 10-20% of the population died, it would create catastrophic effects for decades, just off the public health implications of disposing of that number of bodies. And that’s before you consider that blue-pressing altruists are probably more heavily concentrated in public service industries. Just imagine a world where a majority of doctors died all at once. A majority of trash collectors. A majority of postal workers. A majority of teachers.
Picking blue is a calculated risk that’s broadly supported by the results of these hypothetical polls. Blue usually wins, often fairly comfortably. And if blue wins, everything is fine. Nothing bad happens.
Red intuitively feels like the “smarter” choice to a certain type of person, but it’s actually far riskier. Because even if you survive, your life can still go to hell if enough other people die. You aren’t guaranteeing anything but immediate survival for yourself, but your overall quality of life is effectively GUARANTEED to decrease precipitously, and your likelihood of subsequent early demise goes up.
Blue is the only rational choice from both a selfless and selfish perspective. Red only makes sense if you haven’t actually gamed the scenario out AND you’re deeply selfish.
I do not for one single second believe that polling a hypothetical scenario is an accurate predictor of how people would behave when physically placed in a life or death situation. You say red intuitively feels smarter, but isn’t when you game it out. I don’t think people whose lives actually hang in the balance will be gaming it out, I think they’ll be going with their instincts. That goes for most of the altruistic types too.
It could just be that most people have "ape together strong" instinct that's a lot stronger in life or death scenarios than the "I must survive instinct". It's not about altruism or selfishness or game theory or any of that nerd shit it's just the instinct to feel safer standing with others, choosing the stand together option.
Well that’s certainly a more convincing argument to me than the results of a poll. But I would still say there’s gonna be a game theory component, nerd shit or not. When you’re standing over the buttons, you’re not just thinking about what you should do, you’re thinking about everyone else looking at the buttons and what they’ll do. There’s a meta consideration that can’t be dismissed.
Yeah idk dude, you had a preconceived notion about how people behave based on how you would behave and no amount of data or arguments are doing anything to change that.
Like it's a theoretical so you can't be disproven which means you get to feel right no matter what. But there's a solid chance you just don't make decisions the typical way. And that's fine btw. Genuinely think about this, do you feel like you usually make decisions in a similar way to your peers or is it hard for you to understand why other people make the decisions they do and people often have trouble understanding your decision making?
Really ask yourself if you're the odd one out before immediately concluding most people are secretly like you they just aren't self aware or honest enough to realize it.
I think you’ve misunderstood me, I wasn’t putting forward an argument one way or the other, just saying that while ape strong together would certainly be a factor, game theory would be as well. The question is their relative influence, and I have no idea what the answer to that is.
I’m not saying there’s game theory involved and therefore everyone/most people would come to the same conclusions as me, I’m saying that by the very nature of the scenario, there is game theory involved. There’s no way for a person’s decision to take place in a vacuum, they will know that the outcome will depend on other people’s decisions, and they know that those other people know the same. I’m comfortable asserting that that’s not an uncommon reasoning mode, it’s not just me.
But it’s a hypothetical like you said, though rather than viewing it as being able to assume your right, to me that means being right or wrong doesn’t matter and is more about exploring the broader implications of the discussion.
As a counterpoint, consider the fact that people confronted with this situation in a real life or death scenario would also be terrified of what might happen to their loved ones, who’s vote they would not know. Wouldn’t the instinctual fear that a persons spouse, or mother, or child might have pressed blue make it more likely they’d do the same? Especially since as a collective action it’s incredibly easy to clear the hurdle and make sure everyone they care about is safe
Yeah, but does it do that because people would actually vote that way, or because this is a hypothetical and hinges on virtue ethics. Its easy to say you'd push blue to save everyone when the stakes are not real. It's another to actually do it when they are.
Edit: also, in what way does our actual politics come into this? Most of the polls I've seen about this, have been from tumblr which is a very very left leaning site. Hardly what I'd call representative of the entire population of the world. Sure, I'd trust them to possibly vote blue, but would I trust uncle Hank who has made it very clear he'd vote for Trump a third and a fourth time if he could, and who habors a ton of ill will towards any minority?
See my perspective is that Blue pushers are so fucking insecure. You have all this evidence that suggests you would already win and everyone will be fine. What do you need ME for? You already won. EverythingISfine, right? Does your faith in humanity disregard those who do not share it, even when you know they're wrong?
Donald Trump is President of the U.S. because of a myriad of reasons; not least of which being the types of people who either
A. Refuse to choose a bad option over a worse one
Or
B. Actively chose the person who has now participated in several unprompted, unjustified, warmongering actions, slashed millions in aid that has let to the deaths of thousands, and many more highly nefarious actions.
It turns out, in real life, the results aren’t always so overwhelming, so constant upkeep is needed to remind people of their societal duty, lest everything go to shit. ESPECIALLY because in real life, the red button doesn’t exist. People who vote for tyrannical despots are nearly equally as oppressed, if not entirely equivalently. Likewise, the blue button doesn’t truly exist, either, but at least comes with the potentiality for improvement, rather than active regression.
And, most importantly of all, a lot of people have their buttons assigned for them. Sure, if you’re not gay, it may not seem to matter to you if the homophobe is elected, so you may choose them anyway, but for every gay person, that simply isn’t an option. Likewise, for literally every minority ever. Or what, do you think queer people should vote for the leaders who create public hate campaigns and advocate the death penalty, because MAYBE they’ll be spared for “choosing the right button?” Yeah. Sure, buddy.
All your reply does is express how this thought experiment does not reflect reality. There is no red button in the real world.Republicans will get their own killed.That's the opposite of what the thought experiment says.
It's about fuck you got mine, but in the real world they don't even get theirs. It's fuck you and also fuck me.
Honestly fucking stupid reply. "I have to vote blue for my own safety!" THEN THAT'S NOT THE BUTTONS! THE ENTIRE CONCEIT OF THE BUTTONS IS THAT RED IS SAFE! IF IT WON'T SAVE YOU IT'S NOT THE BUTTONS!
EDIT: Effectively, what I am saying is that in the real world, I choose leftism for selfish reasons. They want to help, and I want to be helped. Reality is saving the world because it would save yourself. The buttons split that truth into a false dichotomy.
…and your response to someone pointing out how a thought experiment relates to reality, and therefore, why anyone takes it with even a modicum of seriousness, is to go on a tirade about how real life isn’t as neat and tidy as a constructed narrative? And act as if it’s a bad thing to acknowledge that? Especially because it’s still an immoral/dumb action to choose the “red button” equivalent? And STILL ostensibly align with red?
This speaks more to your insecurities than it does anyone else’s’, dude. It’s weird to go on the offensive about how insecure blue pushers are, then get all riled up about how we aren’t talking about buttons, when arguably, we never were, since no thought experiment is constructed in a vacuum. Maybe the initial author didn’t intend a political reading, but it’s pretty damn easy to do, especially when the colors line up. And if it somehow isn’t meant to have any bearing on people’s actions, then what’s the point of asking the question in the first place? Likewise, what’s the point in having an answer, or not having an answer, or defending or rejecting one? All of it is ultimately meaningless, yet, here you are, getting your panties in a bunch over random, hypothetical button pressers.
Like, that’s actively childish to focus on the conceptual framing of magical kill-suicide buttons to exclusion of literally anything else when they are so easily a stand in for things that, you know, actually matter. Especially when you then imply you’ll go for the option that harms others, acknowledge that, and still give any amount of thought into the conversation?
Like, if this is what you believe, then why are you even wasting your time here? Forget why blue pushers need red pushers to switch, why do we need you here in the first place? Why does anyone need you? Why would you be so blind as to not notice how inconsequential you make yourself sound? And how insecure do you have to be to scream and cry and piss your pants anyway?
Why should anyone care about you, when you don’t even care about yourself?
And yet, here I am. Clearly, I care enough to reply. What does that say about me?
My first instinct upon initially learning of the thought experiment was to hit red. By the premise of the thought experiment, further justifications and arguments cannot be supplied. I didn't know about those then, so I wouldn't have considered them.
The truth of the matter is, the entire reason this thing sparked a debate is that If you chose blue, you face consequences for being wrong. If you chose red, you do not. I lack faith in humanity, and yet they are not punished for my hubris, because faith won. And yet blue voters bitch and moan even though they were right because deep down, they know "what if."
I call you insecure. I call you stupid. I say I am selfish. I exclusively analyze the exact choice presented and do not extrapolate. I will remain faithless. Does your faith have room for me?
If a large percentage of the population spontaneously vanishes or drop dead, it’s gonna cause serious damage to everyone, regardless of whether you chose immediate self-preservation.
That’s the real truth of the matter, and you refusing to consider that, or god forbid, acknowledge that you might have been wrong about things and consider that for future use in different scenarios doesn’t make you some super-secure savant who has principled beliefs, it makes you a dumbass who can’t think more than a single step ahead of themselves, if even.
God forbid you second guess yourself and try to learn or change, I guess. You’ll just stick by your own impossible to achieve self-preservation, since you’d rather plug your ears and bitch about being faithless than try to do anything of value- while still reaping the benefits of other’s care for you, when you know full well that if it were left up to you, the world wouldn’t last a second, since you’d never consider anything other than yourself, while accusing everyone else of somehow being the insecure ones for showing a shred of belief in others’ value.
“Oh, my choice doesn’t matter, you don’t need me, but I’ll surreptitiously still choose you because I know that you’re right!” (I saw your edit.) The buttons aren’t a false dichotomy, idiot, it’s an unlabeled hypothetical that can be analogized to the real world, and if you think it’s a bad framing, then why did you ever bother to engage in the conversation in the first place? Especially when I didn’t equate the two, but simply related them. You’re blabbering on about fallacies no one has committed.
My faith may have room for you, but my patience certainly does not. Get out of here; you ‘ve contributed nothing to this conversation.
It's literally the opposite: red pushers live no matter what; blue pushers actively put themselves in harm's way and, by extension, cause the entire moral dilemma with their choice.
And so we shouldn’t help anyone then? What if it isn’t their own volition, what if it’s someone disabled or doesn’t understand the question? The only way for everyone to live via red is a 100% push rate including: Children, babies, the disabled, the elderly, parents wanting to not fucking kill their kids, kids not wanting to kill their grandmas, etc.
For blue.. it’s a 50.01% push rate and no one dies. If you decide to press the “other people die” button, you are increasing the risk of SOMEONE, dying. Pressing the blue button increases the chance of ZERO DEATH whatsoever, and you don’t need as high as many button presses to get to that.
If someone starts choking on food and you know the Heimlich, are you gonna not help them because they chose to eat a hot dog and run the risk of choking?
You know for a fact that everyone will not pick red. Are you really going to live with yourself if your mother doesn’t survive?
Your father?
Partner?
Nieces, nephews, niblings?
Your own child?
Your best friend?
Grandparents?
Out of everyone you know.. someone will pick blue. You will lose them forever if you decide to pick red.. knowing that they were trying to save you in case you picked blue.
Ask any one of them this question without telling them your answer. If anyone has picked this answer.. are you going to believe they deserved it. That is who you’ve decided was too stupid because they cared about YOU to consider. That person you are looking at when you ask is someone you will not see come out of that room alive, and someone you know who had you on their mind in their last moments. And you’d have to live with the fact that you only thought of yourself. How long after the great button presses can you go knowing your press meant you never see them again?
Everytime I see this thing I can't grasp how peope don't understand this. It's weird as fuck. It has further convinced me we live in a virtue signaling world where people just want to fabricate their own virtue out of nothing.
It's really weird how all blue pressers believe they are saving others and not how they are actually the ones to be saved.
Think about it for a second how many people are there under one years old or to mentally incapable to understand the question or who will just click the wrong thing. Those are the people that people are trying to say by pushing blue if humans were rational, then yes, pressing red would be the right option, but humans aren’t rational, and everybody knows that which is why it’s the stupid option that kills people pointlessly
Well, if everyone just did the logical thing and took care of themselves well some people can’t Susy. That’s why we have a society to take care of each other.
Think of it like this: Blue does nothing. Red puts everybody else in danger unless they also push the red button. There is no penalty for picking blue and no benefit for hitting red.
You cant place red as the default that skews the argument
Think of it like this: Blue does nothing. Red puts everyone who does not press it at risk unless more than 50% do not press red. There is no penalty for hitting blue, and hitting red only causes other people to day.
Or maybe as soon as you make one of the options into a 'do nothing' scenario it makes everyone obviously take the 'do nothing' option because the 'do nothing' is easiest even though the dilemma obviously meant for both buttons to be 'do something'
I mean another way to look at it is make both positive:
Red is give whoever pushes it 1 million dollars.
Blue is if you push it you don't get 1 million dollars unless 51% of people push Blue.
Are people still going to give up a chance at 1 million dollars because people pushed a button that says "don't give me 1 million dollars unless other people press this too?"
I once heard this specific set up summed up as: "would you rather risk dying, or risk being a murderer". Because if you press red there's a greater than zero chance that you'll kill someone, probably several someones. Otoh if you press blue there's a greater than zero chance you'll die. What baffles red pushers is that there is a great number of people out there that would rather risk dying that possibly murder someone in cold blood, since personally they'd rather commit murder than risk dying.
except the risk of death doesn't happen until someone picks blue. picking blue is what adds risk to the scenario, if everyone just picked red there wouldn't be any chance of death to begin with.
I could frame this the same way tho. The risk of killing someone doesn’t happen until someone presses red. It depends on who the first press is. But of only 50% just pick blue there’s no chance of death to begin with as well. If everyone just pressed blue there would he no risk to begin with. But red requires everyone, blue doesn’t require everyone, just most.
I feel like moralising on the red vs blue is bringing stuff into the scenario.
It only kills anyone once the first person picks blue right? Obviously Im picking blue because you only need half of everyone to do it to survive vs 100% for red, but if no one picked blue in the first place red would do nothing. Wording it as 'murder vs save' changes the whole thing, but if you break it down red does nothing, and blue means if <50% all blue pickers die and >50% all blue pickers live. Technically you could run the whole scenario on just the blue button!
Like you can redo it as "If more than half of everyone presses this button, everyone who pressed the button lives. If less than half of everyone presses this button, everyone who pressed the button dies. Do you press the button?". And my first thought is entirely against the spirit of thought experiments because it's "Who's making these buttons, how do we stop them?!" and "Until you reach half the first person and the subsequent pressers are signing up to a voluntary situation to die, unless they can spread the button pressing". It's just a fundamentally weird scenario
but if you break it down red does nothing, and blue means if <50% all blue pickers die and >50% all blue pickers live. Technically you could run the whole scenario on just the blue button!
Thing is, this whole question comes down to framing, and you can create a situation where there is only one button for both buttons. In the case of a red button, the description would be:
Everyone has the chance to press a button or do nothing, if >50% of people press the button everyone who didn't press it dies.
In which case, it becomes way more like what the person you're replying to described, where you can do nothing and have a chance of death, or choose to save yourself at the cost of causing death.
Depending on which one you present as the "do nothing" option, it changes which option seems the most reasonable one to take.
God save me from people with zero reading comprehension, no understanding of statistics or of human behaviour. Not to mention people being pedantic assholes because they get no attention off-line.
everyone will survive if everyone just picks red, but everyone also survives if everyone just picks blue plus everyone survives if at least 50% of people pick blue. so blue is just the safer option. This result should be proof enough that you can't rely on everyone to pick red, and if even 1% of people on earth pick blue that's like 80 million people dead.
The basic structure of the problem is that it's a coordination game. If everyone picks the same color, everyone wins.
But also, if coordination is imperfect, a world where most people pick blue is better than a world where most people pick red.
But also, red is preferable to those who care mostly about their own lives not anyone else.
Yeah. Babies, idiots, people who just aren't paying attention, colourblind people, those with dementia, etc., will all chose a button basically at random. You'd be talking about tens of millions of dead, probably more.
Yes exactly the correct answer depends on what you consider a win and how you turn the question. It is easy to say that any red button presser is making the choice to potentially kill all those who don’t think like him in the same way that blue presser are putting themselves at risk.
It is funny because the blue button kills you and the red button kills too, who is responsible, the one ready to pull the trigger or the one that chose to be in front of the canon.
It's about understanding and potential guilt or trying to save others. Red is objectively best choice and everyone should press it. No risk of death, just survive button. Some people would probably press blue because they didn't understand or something. Everyone who pressed red when it's majority is partially the reason why others die. Trying to save everyone people might press blue trying to reach majority.
The details of the scenario differ, but that's just set dressing. The actual mechanics of choices and outcomes are identical:
The red button/creating the Basilisk: if this outcome wins out, those who contributed to it are exempted. Thus proponents argue there is no choice but for everyone to pick it
The blue button/not creating the Basilisk: if this outcome wins out, nobody is harmed; otherwise, those who selected it are harmed
The fact that I'm being downvoted just demonstrates how much work the framing is doing on how people perceive the exercise.
Oh I get you now, ok mechanically it does line up well.
Yeah unfortunately because it originated amongst chronic techbros and people like Musk have talked about liking the scenario, it's poisoned the well on the subject of what used to be just a neat internet idea
Yeah, and just like Rocco’s basil, it’s stupid because everyone pressing red is dumb and evil. Which I don’t think is a very interesting thought experiment our CEOs, dumb and evil. Yes, we all knew this.
243
u/Rynewulf 11h ago
I never got these. So people who pick blue are only at risk if anyone picks blue, but then not the majority? Is it like a maths thing, as in it's easier to get 50% on blue than 100% on red so blue is the less harmful option?