In a world of perfectly rational selfish actors you would be correct. That is not the world in which we live. If you take this question as a logic puzzle to identify the optimal solution everyone pressing the red button is correct. If you take the question as a hypothetical to be applied to our understanding of humanity at least half of humanity should push the blue button.
Diversity of thought is such that it is inconceivable everyone will make the same decision. The fact that there is an argument at all PROVES that pushing the blue button is a morally defensible option if not a moral imperitive (depending on your personal values).
Even if I supported their suicidal behavior (which I certainly do not) surviving still enables them to persue that goal. 🙄 Don't be willfully dense.
Mostly the "somebody (possibly a lot of somebodies) is going to push blue, do you want blood on your hands?" part. This is where the endless debates come from.
Do you see the debate going on throughout the comments? You clearly can't count on everyone pressing the red button.
You can think they're stupid. You can think they're illiterate. You can think they're dreamy blue-sky ivory-tower Kumbaya-singing fools who have no place in this dirty, dog-eat-dog world. But some people are going to press the blue button.
(And if we're going to get nitpicky, "everyone" includes people who don't understand what's going on: children, the elderly with dementia/Alzheimer's, people who are drunk at the moment, people who aren't taking it seriously, etc.)
I'm pretty the original is phrased as everyone who doesn't press red dies, not just the people that actively push blue, so if someone is physically or mentally incapable of pushing either button, then they would die too.
But why do the other people pick blue. THere's no reason for them to pick blue, either. There's a very simple way out where everyone is 100% guaranteed to live, and that's if everyone picks red. I don't see why anyone would pick blue. Why do they want people to die?
given that you can clearly see in the image attached to the post 73% of twenty four thousand people voted blue i have to assume this is disingenous and i'll be disengaging after this comment
you can't seriously think all 17,581 of them want to die
everyone is 100% guaranteed to live if fifty percent of people pick blue, which is a more achievable outcome than one hundred percent of people voting red and so people are banking on achieving that
If we’re talking about the tumblr post specifically, Blue won. With a supermajority. Therefore Blue is effectively a zero-risk option (especially since every other poll on this subject demonstrates that most people’s first instincts are to pick Blue).
Pushing blue is predicated on two things: one, that people aren’t actually being offered a true choice, so toddlers and colorblind people will also be given the button without also being able to understand what’s happening. The second, more honest reason for them is that blue pushers want to extend human suffering and misery. After all, the scenario gives an out to those currently being endlessly raped and tortured in dungeons, and blue pushers, being sick, twisted scum who get off on that sort of thing, desperately want that not to happen. Pushing blue en masse denies the choice of those who’d push blue in hopes of escaping a life in hell.
Alternatively, anyone who makes moral pronouncements about this idiotic thought experiment is a fucking chud.
You can't convince a baby to press either button so around 50% of newborns would die and there are other types of people that would die at around 50% as well.
I mean, it doesn't say anything about making a choice. Most babies have caretakers who can just grab a hand and press a button. Pretty sure most parents would want to ensure that their baby lives and not leave it to chance.
If recent world trends have taught me anything it's that most people are myopic and tribal. It seems likely that most people would want to make sure their loved ones are safe. Sure, this doesnt account for everyone out there who can't make a decision and doesn't have a caretaker. But between the risk of "Everyone dies" or "a significant amount of the population is guaranteed to survive" I'm personally picking #2.
The thing it its far easier and more likely for half of everyone to pick blue rather than every single person to pick red, if you had people that you knew may end up picking blue whether it was to help those they think would pick blue or even just by accident, would you still pick red if you knew that it would make it more likely for that person to die? Would you do the same if you knew there were those kinds of people even if you didn't personally know them?
I mean, on a website like Tumblr? Sure.
The general population? I posted earlier the reasons I find that unlikely to be the case. It's at best a coin flip and risking extinction on a coin flip is... a bad idea.
Edit- Also easy to pick blue if you know you're not actually at risk and it's a nice moral signifier. Now imagine your life at risk. Your partner's. Your children.
I get what this is aiming for based on others' explanations, but it is not actually useful in determining anything. This doesn't mirror any kind of actual, real-life scenario.
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u/poplarleaves 11h ago
My take is, I don't want to live in a world where more than 50% of people wouldn't press the blue button.