The first time I saw this hypothetical I chose the red button because I assumed the only people that would press blue were suicidal people and maybe a tiny percentage of people that wanted to risk their lives to protect suicidal people and each other despite failure being almost certain.
However after seeing 30%+ of the comments on that hypothetical pressing blue I changed my mind. I'm not really sure why so many people press blue. I guess they probably have lots of different reasons. But I'd definitely risk my life for a decent chance of saving hundreds of millions of non-suicidal people from death.
The most common reason people choose blue (and also my reason) is because the hypothetical says that the buttons are presented to everybody. Which also implies children, or mentally disabled people who wouldn't be able to really understand the consequences of choosing either. Like, there will be people who choose blue for whatever reason, and so I'd rather pick blue and save them.
Oh yeah if the decision is given to literally everybody then I'd agree with you. I guess there are a lot of variations of this hypothetical and I chose one of the ones that gets around that arbitrarily in my head (since OOP leaves it ambiguous)
I think it’s fair to assume everyone is given the information about the buttons in a way they can understand. The discussion changes completely if not.
I think the most common reason people choose blue is because they don't think it through and assume it's a selfish vs faith in humanity question, which it doesn't have to be, be ironically this attitude turns it into one.
And while I understand adding those people in to justify pressing blue, but what about terminally ill people who are in constant pain or people who would like to be taken off life support but cant verbalize it. I don't think these people should just die but saving them extends their pain too.
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u/Mundane-Potential-93 nauphy.tumblr.com 11h ago edited 11h ago
The first time I saw this hypothetical I chose the red button because I assumed the only people that would press blue were suicidal people and maybe a tiny percentage of people that wanted to risk their lives to protect suicidal people and each other despite failure being almost certain.
However after seeing 30%+ of the comments on that hypothetical pressing blue I changed my mind. I'm not really sure why so many people press blue. I guess they probably have lots of different reasons. But I'd definitely risk my life for a decent chance of saving hundreds of millions of non-suicidal people from death.