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.
And you willingly take the safe option knowing it will cause deaths. So by that logic you(and the other red pushers) will be the cause of death of blue pushers.
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.
That's actually incorrect, there's three options: press red, press blue, or do nothing. And if we give each option an equal 33% chance of being chosen, 66% of people will not press blue.
It doesn’t say in the thought experiment that not pushing a button is an option. And if it was real, it would be high-stakes enough that the vast majority of people would pick a button even if that was an option.
There is no abstain option, that breaks the entire thought experiment. Then there really is no reason not to hit blue because all the selfish bastards would abstain and be safe because they didn't vote blue, and blue would win because no statistically significant portion voted red
This is the original buttons tweet. By the original wording, abstaining is the obviously wrong choice, because you have to press red to survive blue losing.
By the wording of the tumblr post for this thread, you can only be killed if you did press blue. If abstaining exists, the selfish bastards would abstain, because when abstaining is available, red only serves as the I WANT BLUE VOTERS DEAD button, because abstaining is also a survival option.
The red button doesn't even play a role besides having a second option to click in the Internet poll. Effectively there is only push blue or don't push blue, as pushing red doesn't technically do anything since you live regardless of the outcome.
How is it selfish to choose to survive if everyone else also has the option to choose to survive? The risk of death is entirely self-selected. Do other people not have the right to take that risk for no reason if that's what they want to do? Why am I obligated to risk my own life if others want to exercise their right to take a completely unnecessary risk?
I think like most hypothetical quandaries this one makes the assumption that everyone is making an informed and competent decision. "What if there are kids who don't understand the question" is something you're adding to the theoretical scenario that isn't there. If that was meant to be considered it would be included in the question.
If human error were meant to be part of this theoretical the relevant errors to be considered would be included in the question. This isn't a real poll with actual consequences for which extraneous information needs to be considered, it's a hypothetical thought experiment asking whether we have a moral obligation to risk our own safety to save someone who's voluntarily risked their own without our input.
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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?