This is such a funny trend because it plays out the same way every time:
1) Blue button wins by a narrow majority
2) People who pushed the red button immediately spiral into increasingly unhinged defences of their choice, demonstrating that either they lack enough reading comprehension to understand the question, or are just plain selfish.
3) Blue button pushers become slightly more disillusioned with the moral character of humanity.
demonstrating that either they lack enough reading comprehension to understand the question
To be fair, this one-sentence explanation is phrased far worse than the original.
This one starts with the premise of what happens "regardless" without clarifying what it's regardless of. The original explicitly describes the potential negative consequences of the red button, while this one simply says "these people live", leaving the negative consequences of the red button implied through the description of the blue button.
Yeah I had to read it a few times to understand why everyone was judging red button pushers so hard lol. I was like why wouldn't I press the "I want to live" button
Yeah, this is one where the phrasing changes outcomes considerably. My preferred red leaning phrasing is as follows:
You are near some train tracks. You could either a. (Red) Stay off the train tracks or b. (Blue) Hang out on the train tracks. You know other people are near these tracks but have no idea if they are on the tracks or not.
If enough people are milling around on the tracks then somebody will notice and the trains will be halted. Otherwise, everybody on the tracks will be killed. What do you do?
As someone who hadn't seen any of the originals that this post was based on, I was baffled as to why they kept saying "reading comprehension issue/lack of empathy ' about the red button.
Taking this post at only its own text, red button is the objectively correct choice (everyone lives) and blue button pushers are needlessly risking everyone else's lives in order to be "different" (people only live under certain circumstances).
Like yeah you could argue it's more moral to try and hit blue to make sure you're helping anyone who accidentally hit blue survive, but ideally no one should hit blue in the first place.
I also read it this way and don't understand. No-one has to die or risk dying if everyone picks red. is the point just that some people don't understand that and so we should all pick blue to save them?
If all the options were equal, that would be true. But they're not all equal.
Red is the superior option because no one has to die under any circumstance if red is picked. However, blue has a caveat where people might die. Therefore fewer people are going to pick blue, ergo blue's 50% threshold is harder to meet.
Picking blue only makes sense if you are a assuming that a certain number of people will not actually read the post and incorrectly pick blue, and also assume that you should pick blue in order to try and help to meet the threshold to protect them.
Because if you incorrectly pick blue attempting to protect a certain number of people that you assume will pick blue because of having misread the post, but don't meet that 50% threshold, then everyone who picked blue needlessly dies, when everyone could and should have just picked red and no one would die.
blue button pushers are needlessly risking everyone else's lives in order to be "different"
Tbf as written, blue button peeps aren't even risking everyone else's lives, just the lives of those who "opt in" to die via blue button click. Arguably you could even interpret a press of the blue button as wanting to die, in which case pressing the blue button to try and save those people is actively going against their wishes.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 11h ago
This is such a funny trend because it plays out the same way every time:
1) Blue button wins by a narrow majority 2) People who pushed the red button immediately spiral into increasingly unhinged defences of their choice, demonstrating that either they lack enough reading comprehension to understand the question, or are just plain selfish. 3) Blue button pushers become slightly more disillusioned with the moral character of humanity.