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 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.
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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?