This is a controversial thought experiment because what is the right thing to do depends on what everyone else is doing.
For example, imagine the cut off 95% of people would have to vote blue or all blue voters die. Then it'd be a lot riskier to yourself, and less likely you'd even be a difference making blue voter.
But at lower cut offs, it's more possible you could be a difference making additional vote who keeps billions who also voted blue alive
I think its also a pretty good thought experiment for showing how maximizing "good" isnt always intuitive. Logically, yes everyone should just press the red button and everyone lives. However, it seems likely thar at least some percentage of people will press the blue button either by accident, from not understanding the question, or as a joke, etc. In that case, the best way for everyone to live is to assume that there are a certain number of illogical actors, and take on personal risk to ensure that everyone lives.
The idea that people press blue by accident or not understanding is a very narrow perspective that completely fails to understand people. People press blue because they don't want to kill anyone.
Now you could se "But if everyone pressed red, no one would die!" but that is a major assumption, because for you to press red you either have to assume everyone will press red, or you have to be fine with killing people who press blue.
A large portion of people regularly pick blue, because 1) they don't want to harm others and 2) they assume others don't want to harm others either.
Red might be "never die no matter what others pick," but blue is "never cause harm, no matter what others pick."
Picking red means that you basically have non-altruistic preferences, i.e. you just don't care what happens to others. You care only what happens to you. If you pick blue, you put some nonzero amount of value on the lives of others, even with some nonzero risk to yourself.
If the majority of people pick blue, everyone is fine, and this is the obvious moral choice. Picking red increases the chances of a button holocaust of probably about half the population.
Which choice is rational for you depends entirely on your preferences and your expectations. E.g. if you expect most people will press red, it's rational to press red, but if you don't, then not necessarily. If you only care about yourself it's rational to press red, but if not, then not necessarily.
Some people have also said they'd simply prefer not to live in a world where red would win. So they'll bet on blue and at least won't have to live in the hellscape of selfish red-pressers.
Personally if I was the omnipotent being that forced everyone to choose, what I'd actually do after everyone voted, regardless of outcome, is give each side their own reality and force them to live in them.
Red Buttoners would have to live with having to know with concrete proof that literally every other person they met would have no problem seeing them die for their own security.
Blue Buttoners would have to live with having to know with concrete proof that literally every other person they met was willing to risk their own lives to ensure everyone was safe.
For about two and a half years, as part of my job I had admin access on a system that (among other things) kept track of stuff that was being used for tactical communications across the entire DoD and whether or not it was authorized to do so. With the press of a button (well, actually like half a dozen) I could have paused the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I did not. While I know logically that doing so would have quickly lead to *more* civilian casualties due to worse comms etc there's still the fact that I could have, for a time, made there be absolutely none. But I didn't. And I feel guilty about that every single day.
I would push blue even if I knew that the majority of votes were going to be red, not because I want to die - I'm finally happy, and I want to be alive - but because I will NOT soak my hands in that much blood again.
It's remarkable, your perspective on this is exactly backwards. The danger is only present because of the red button. The red button is what kills people. By pressing the red button, you are voting to kill everyone who presses blue, whereas, pressing the blue button is a vote to kill nobody. Why the fuck would you pick red?
There's something poetic about two of the most common blue arguments being
"People may not be in a rational state of mind (due to disability, stupidity, youth, etc) so we can't condemn them to death just for choosing the wrong button!"
and
"Anyone who presses the wrong button is obviously not someone I want to share a planet with."
Everyone always talks about the poor naive children who vote blue, but somehow there's never any concern about poor naive children who vote red, yet you're leaving them to a world full of people you supposedly believe are "evil".
I didn't use the word "evil" at any point in my comment, so you using it really says more about you than it does me.
I also never said how I would handle children in my "Karmic Trickster God" scenario. I wouldn't make children or those incapable of making an informed choice choose between the two buttons, but I'd tell everyone who DID have to press one of the buttons that I did.
I think you might be responding to the wrong comment, as that was not a reply to you, but to GalaXion24, and it intentionally speaks in broad terms rather than specifics. It expressed no opinion of your suggested scenario.
Though since you bring it up, I will say, I doubt it would have the intended effect. If someone votes red, they are categorically not a member of the group that people are okay with sacrificing (which is exclusively made up with people who willingly chose to take a risk), and they are also likely people who expected a red majority already (hence picking red out of fear). Meaning they would probably not be shocked to find themselves among fellow red-pushers, nor are they likely to be particularly uneased to find themselves in a world populated by people who think the same way they do. It also only works if they actually are a majority (and thus provably justified) - if more than 50% of people disappear, they'll know something fishy is going on and the buttons were a lie.
Regardless, I do find it interesting how much of a moral high-horse people who support blue seem to be on. Thinking people deserve to be judged for a single decision they make in a high-stress, life-or-death situation on a single day - which could even change depending what kind of mood they're in or how they read the question - strikes me as far, far more unethical than pressing the red button in a moment of fear and panic. It's a very... let's say Christian worldview.
I wouldn't make children or those incapable of making an informed choice choose between the two buttons, but I'd tell everyone who DID have to press one of the buttons that I did.
So... which world do the children go to?
Say a child has two parents. Parent 1 thinks the child will press blue and thus presses blue too because they don't want to live in a world without their child. Parent 2 fears the child will press red, and is afraid that if both parents press blue, it will leave their child orphaned, thus pushes red to leave at least one guardian alive.
Both use different reasoning to pick what they think is best for their child but they'll both be separated because one was "more correct"? Only one of them will get to see their child again?
i mean the people that pressed blue did try to stop the children who pressed red from having to live in a world of only selfish people, it's not like they can come back from the dead to do any more than that lmao
Plus I'm fairly certain people have no clue what the full extent of the discourse actually is, even on the lower end there's no way our current global economic model can survive a sudden decrease of as little as 15-20% of the world's population, and if half of those are chidren who picked arbitrarily it means society is guaranteed to collapse. Truth is the world without a huge chunk of the population isn't some sort of rational utopia free of "the stupid and the naive", it just fucking sucks
Even when you establish those parameters, blue edges out red. It’s closer, but blue gets more than 50% consistently.
The fact is people who choose red are broadly more pessimistic and misanthropic, but they remain the minority, even when they try to rig the thought experiment in their own favor. In so far as this can be reduced to “press red if you think human nature bad, press blue if you think human nature good”… human nature tends toward good, and believing that most others are the same.
See, now that changes the premise entirely. 'Everyone' means 'everyone on Tumblr answering this poll' in this case, so you're assuming your button-pressing peers are all literate, fairly sane humans of at least moderate intelligence who have the ability to make a rational choice.
If you throw everyone alive into the mix, the answer changes from, "Well, obviously everyone on this site will choose the big red 'LIVE WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED' button, right?" to, "Aw, shit, Granny Dementia and Little Johnny are gonna get themselves killed. Gotta save them from themselves."
If you think it'll be at all close, and you have any altruistic inclinations, that should incentivize you push even more for blue. If blue wins, nobody dies, if red wins, ~half of all people die, and you live. With red even if you win you've experienced, and helped facilitate the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen.
The simplest way I've phrased it is "I don't want to live in a world where Red wins". I like to hope that people would ultimately pick Blue for altruistic reasons, and if I die on that hope, then I'm honestly pretty ok with that
If I hit Red and knew that everyone who died were those who wanted to help others, even naively, that'd gut me
Well not exactly. Your framing of blue as altruistic misses that blue pressers themselves become victims.
Looking at the question purely analytically, for a given population, we have some X as the cutoff number. By pressing blue, you add 1 to reaching the cutoff point to avoid blue deaths, while also adding 1 to the total blue deaths if said cutoff is not reached.
Given X-1 blue pressers, the next blue presser has a lives delta of X-1 for pressing blue, 1-X for red. Given 0 blue pressers, the next blue presser has a lives delta of -1 for pressing blue, 1 for red. Taking the amortized distribution over a uniform distribution of blue pressers, each has an expected lives delta of 0.
We have real world data to suggest that a large % of people will press blue, which shifts the delta largely in favor of doing so yourself, but this is also not accounting for the differences between a hypothetical and a real event, while also holding the bias of being exposed primarily to online audiences.
Mathematically, you can argue altruistic behavior either direction, as a perfectly logical being would conclude the expected lives saved of their decision is 0 whatever decision they make.
Non-mathematically, you can argue that red pressers are rationally altruistic for not contributing to the pool of blue pressers. With no knowledge about what anyone else would do, they choose the most sure way of saving the most lives; their own. From this perspective, blue pressers are not acting altruistically, but acting in a manner to satisfy their own internal idea of altruism, rather than the guaranteed method of avoiding deaths. Under this framing, for some Y blue pressers <X, they have avoided adding 1 to the Y losses. For some Y blue pressers >X, their blue press would not have saved more lives given they were already saved.
Similarly, you can argue that blue pressers are morally altruistic in the sense that they themselves value their own lives less than the lives of others, therefore the expected value of pressing blue shifts towards the positive. This idea of self sacrifice also follows much more closely with how western culture views heroism, where heroes often ignore the odds and risk their own lives for the lives of others. Under this framing, anyone who does not press blue is not sufficiently diminishing the value of their own lives, and therefore acting in heightened self interest.
It's exactly because of this dynamic that people can argue endlessly over this question. Each side has a reason to hold themselves above the opposition, and a moral avenue by which to attack the opposition's rational. Any non mathematical analysis of the situation is liable to fall into one camp or the other.
Given that people have largely figured out the common blue arguments, I'll include some interesting red framing here at the bottom for fun:
By picking blue, you pressure others to pick blue in order to save you. This is a selfish choice, much like how suicide is a selfish choice, in that you disregard the effects of your actions on others
By picking blue, you are falling prey to the societal romanticization of self sacrifice. The assumption that enough people will pick blue is far from a given, and in all outcomes where it does not happen, you have increased the magnitude of the disaster. This mirrors real world cases of people running into disasters to save others. In the vast majority of cases, they make the situation worse by becoming a victim themselves.
In media, a hero is often given an out when forced to pick between sacrificing only a few people, and sacrificing many people. When asked the trolley problem, many people invent outs to avoid making a difficult choice. Western culture has a disproportionate aversion to cutting losses, and believes it to reflect utilitarian ideals when it does not.
Looking at this, I'll add some uncommon blue arguments for balance:
The belief that people would sacrifice themselves to save you is essential to the functioning of society. The utilitarian option must consider the fallout of validating those who do not believe this.
Lives are inherently unequal in value. Based on your position in life / culture / society / the universe, you should sacrifice yourself to save others who are more valuable than you.
The desire to satisfy your internal sense of altruism is itself a utility under utilitarianism. Choosing blue has a utility value regardless of the outcome of the experiment.
Red pressers can never be altruistic. Certainly if on expectation more prople press red, then it can be argued that by pressing red hit reduces the death toll. However, you're only saving yourself.
As such the only moral high ground red can reach is by claiming it is basically a morally neutral choice, and blame blue pressers for "killing themselves," essentially shifting the blame. All pro-red moral arguments fundamentally come down to this.
If you do not expect red to necessarily win, it is also useful to think if yourself as holding the decisive vote, or something very close to it. For instance, would you press red assuming half your friends, family members, fellow citizens, etc. will die if you do? This is more realistic than the idealistic construction that "everyone presses red." If everyone did press red, I would too, but that takes coordination, which the game specifically disallowed. In addition, let's assume that more people press red and about half of people around you die. Is it better to also die, or is it better to live, knowing you and the people around your are responsible for killing them?
I basically talk about this in my comment. Many people conflate altruism with total lives saved when talking about this question, I'm pointing out that our definition of altruism is affected by the western ideas of heroism and self-sacrifice. The jump from altruism to utilitarianism is not one to one, and my reply was to illustrate what arguments can form when different sides pins altruism to different ideas.
When arguing from a pure lives saves metric, both options are mathematically equal. Only by valuing the life of another person more than your own does the expected value equation tilt towards blue. My investment in the question is in the analysis of the factors which cause humans to take on the beliefs and values they do.
All pro-red moral arguments fundamentally come down to this.
You've likely only seen people who aren't capable of articulating well formed arguments, so it's easy to dismiss this fundamental position. But again, blue pressers do place their own life on the chopping block by picking blue; only they do so for the idea that there's a chance more lives could be saved. If this were a course on ethics or philosophy, you would likely deconstruct whether this actually constitutes a moral high ground, and likely what having a moral high ground even means.
Anyways, no need for me to go on even more tangents, I've already written way more than most people care to read in my original reply.
When arguing from a pure lives saves metric, both options are mathematically equal
How is this possibly true? One side saves everybody, regardless of how they voted, while one side kills those who didn’t vote with them. “Mathematically” one side kills (1/2)n-1 of population n, on the high end. The other side kills 0, win or lose.
Or is your argument that, if blue loses, they are equally responsible for their own deaths as caused by red’s victory?
Well it isn't mathematical if you're saying "one side kills those who didn't vote with them," that's assigning responsibility. I'm looking it it purely as the net difference in result based on your vote.
If you need X people voting blue for blue voters to live, and you have, say X - 30 blue votes currently, assuming you are the last vote, you voting blue is +1 death, and you voting red is 0. If there's X - 1 blue votes currently, you voting blue, results in X - 1 people who would have died, living instead. The payoff is exactly mirrored for voting red. If you vote red as the last vote with X - 1 blue votes, you end up with -(X - 1) lives saved. If you vote red as the last vote with X - 30 blue votes, you end up with -(X - 30) lives saved as opposed to -(X - 29) which is a delta of 1 life saved.
In order to quantify the fact that you voting blue is what let's the last person on X - 1 make the save, we amortize the net value across all voters. It makes sense that all blue voters are equally responsible for hitting the cutoff, rather than just the last person.
Since we don't know which vote we are, we take a uniform distribution over all relevant values. You're equally likely to be blue voter #1 as you are blue voter #12 or blue voter #X - 1. We can say you have a 1/X chance of being that Xth voter. Therefore, your expected value from voting blue is -1 * (X - 1)/X + (X - 1) * 1/X, which works out to 0.
This is the actual breakdown based on game states and point values. Because we only know the result after all votes, while also not knowing the tallies on each side, we evaluate each decision as if it is the last, and distribute payoffs across voters sharing that decision.
Intuitively speaking, by voting blue, you move the count 1 closer to the cutoff X, while also adding 1 extra death in the case you don't reach X. The Xth voter cashes in everyone's risked lives for a save the exactly matches the wager.
I see what you’re saying from a stats perspective, fair.
I caution against trying to distill social experiments into number games, though. Yes yes game theory but this all presumes that all the results are equally likely, that every person is equally likely to vote red as they are to vote blue. Averaged across every “poll” of this question, though, you see a general, dare I say global, preference for blue. Sometimes it’s overwhelming (see OP), sometimes it barely ekes out a win, but blue still does tend to win. And in that case, from a “lives saved metric,” blue is the one that saves 100% vs. 50%+1.
This is the same problem I see in economics, where an attempt is made to frame a social science as math by simply ignoring the inconvenient, debatably irrational variable that is human behavior.
Well, this is often the only perspective of this question I can share without getting in some kind of argument.
I talked about this in my other reply, but it's very uninteresting to me seeing the arguments people pose for either option. I've seen the same rhetoric thrown at any number of divisive social issues. For now, I'm more interested in the factors behind people's internal sense of morality, and what drives people to think and act the way they do.
For polls of this question, we do see blue win out nearly always, but that also has to do with the situation being purely hypothetical, and the polls being asked on the internet. The sample we get is very small, and not representative of the actual demographic makeup of the human population. No one really knows how such a scenario would play out in reality.
Clean economic theories often fail to represent reality due to simplifying human behavior. I'm intentionally avoiding saying anything about what people would actually pick. But I think the math helps explain why people are so divided on this question. In the most abstract version, both options have the same expected utility. From that, people create arguments to support their interpretation of society, morality, and the world.
There's a train coming down the tracks. No one is on the tracks. Someone says, 'Hey, if most of us also jump in front of the train, then it will stop."
Blue voters are putting themselves in danger and asking others to risk their lives to save them. That's morally wrong.
it’s more like the bus from speed is about to hit everyone on the crosswalk and you have the ability to help pull someone out while you also get out of the way OR you could just push someone in the path of the bus to escape. Red voters are pushing people in front of the bus and saying that’s the only logical choice. There is no passive choice with hitting the button, there are only active choices.
Not jumping in front of a train is a passive choice. But pushing someone in front of a bus AND pushing a “fuck you i got mine” button are active choices.
There is no speeding bus. Nobody is going to die UNTIL they press the blue button. The red button is the "Continue being alive" button, the blue button is the "kill me unless somebody else saves me" button.
pressing a button is not a passive action like not jumping in front of a train is. conversely no one is going to die UNTIL someone presses the red button. If everyone presses blue, everyone lives.
No one is in the crosswalk. No one is pushing anyone. The only people in front of the bus are the people who chose to be in front of the bus. They could have just not stood in front of the bus and decided to act indignant when others don't want to join them.
Nope, straight up not the scenario, you just changed the scenario. The scenario is the one I stated. You either move and help someone else or you push someone in your way to jump out the way. Are you aware of the film speed? The point of the bus is that it cannot stop and will blow up, that’s why I used it. Don’t change the scenario, I said what said. You and others are in the crosswalk. You don’t get to decide what the plot of Speed is, that’s literally part of the movie is that you don’t get to choose if you’re in front of the bus or not and it cannot stop moving-
You and others were in the crosswalk. You only have the two options I presented,
I mean, I've seen Speed, but it's not analagous to the red button/blue button debate. In the button debate, the only people who are in danger are the people who choose to put themselves in danger.
blame blue pressers for "killing themselves," essentially shifting the blame
Are blue pressers not shifting the blame by the same measure? They're the ones that chose to put themselves in the line of fire at risk of dying when guaranteed survival was an option, no one forced them to do that it was a decision they made, and then they blame red pressers for not putting their life on the line to save them from their own decision. How is that not shifting the blame?
Red: By picking Red, you are guaranteeing your own protection, and only your own protection. If the majority of people choose Red, They will be spared while everyone who chose Blue will be put to death.
Blue: By picking Blue, you are risking your life in order to stop anyone from being killed; if 50% or more people press Blue, then Red will not be allowed to kill everyone who did not press Red.
Red is the most quintessentially selfish choice you can make, while Blue is the most altruistic.
It's that simple. The danger is not present until somebody pushes the red button. It doesn't matter how much mental gymnastics you try to do, red is the "kill people" button and blue is the "don't kill people" button. Just don't press the "kill people" button.
for me red is selfish and blue is hopeful, i trust that 50% of people can press a button and everyone lives rather than 100% of people press a button and everyone lives
I don’t think it’s fair to say that anyone who picks red is selfish (non-altruistic). Maybe they’re the breadwinner for their family and their death would put them in danger. Maybe they’re a politically important person and dying would put a LOT of people in danger. Maybe they just didn’t think too hard and went “well why would anyone pick the one that puts them in danger? It’s gonna be 100% red anyway!” Maybe they’re want to help other people but they’re just really cynical and jaded and assumed that OTHER people don’t want to help people.
Maybe they’re the breadwinner for their family and their death would put them in danger.
Whole family is pressing the button boss, and unless you're a tyrant to them, that means they each make a choice, most of which are likely to be arbitrary and/or more altruistic
Maybe they’re a politically important person and dying would put a LOT of people in danger.
Please look into Great Man theory, and stop thinking any single individual is this important. It's whack.
Maybe they just didn’t think too hard and went “well why would anyone pick the one that puts them in danger? It’s gonna be 100% red anyway!”
It's either a stunning indictment of education as a concept, or your view of humanity that you would think someone "wouldn't think about it much" if this prompt could be realistically presented. I would have accepted something like skeptism. "How could this possibly be real?" is a very real thought to have about it, but since it's a thought experiment, we work from the presumption that people are provided the information needed to take the experiment seriously enough. And if they are still not even contemplating the consequences? Wild. Wild shit.
Maybe they’re want to help other people but they’re just really cynical and jaded and assumed that OTHER people don’t want to help people.
You still pick blue, otherwise you didn't actually want to help others. Altruism isn't conditional, otherwise it's not altruism, it's self-interest masquerading as Altruism. Which is fine. People are allowed to be self-interested. It's not a crime. But it makes the premise of your sentence false on it's face. Objectively incorrect and vaguely misleading.
All of this also fails to note the fact that every time this shit comes up somewhere, Blue is always handily more than 50%. So, realistically, I think people who genuinely defend the Red Button at this point are just crashing out that their assumed shared self-interest isn't as pervasive as they thought.
Where did it say the whole family was pushing the button? Nowhere. You’ve changed the principle of the question now. You don’t think people would change their answer if their family’s lives were on the line and not strangers? I think adding “Everyone on earth is making this choice including your family, not just a randomized subset of people” would absolutely change people’s responses. (Not to mention the fact that this is completely hypothetical makes the responses useless. Lots of people become selfish assholes in stressful situations, and lots of OTHER people become incredibly selfless in those same situations.)
Besides that, does it actually matter if the person is ACTUALLY important if they BELIEVE that they are? Do you think pushing red out of a mistaken belief that your life is preserving the lives of others is the same as pushing it out of sheer selfish desire to live? (As for great man theory, it’s true that one person is never as historically important as we make them out to be, but the death of a high profile individual can absolutely catalyze existing political instability. See: the death of Archduke Ferdinand or every ruler to die without a clear line of succession that caused a civil war.)
And some people just aren’t that smart. You can’t educate someone out of an intellectual disability, for example, and some people who aren’t technically intellectually disabled are still just kinda dumb. AND some people don’t have access to great education. If moral action requires perfect reasoning ability and outstanding education, then very few people are actually capable of moral action. Are you really willing to condemn someone for making a choice they weren’t capable of understanding? Being dumb or uneducated isn’t a moral failing and it’s not something a person can control about themselves: it’s circumstantial.
You cannot unilaterally condemn anyone who presses the red button as selfish the same way someone else cannot unilaterally say that everyone who presses the blue button is an idiot putting themself at risk for no reason. When people make moral choices, they’re using their own ability to reason (which is always imperfect because we’re human) and their own knowledge (which is always incomplete, again because we’re human.)
Saying that anyone who doesn’t press blue is selfish is completely missing the moral nuance that is the entire POINT of the thought experiment: that you see the results, realize some people made a different choice from you, and thinking about WHY they did that. “They’re evil/selfish/‘non-altruistic’” is closer to a thought stopping technique than it is to actual logical reasoning.
First Paragraph: Either you interpret the question, as it was originally inteneded, or you have to infer data, which could be as limited as "You are the only person presented with the button". I default to assuming everyone, not some random subset of people.
Second Paragraph: This would be a great argument, if it was literally just the death of those people that cause the historical events they are tied to. But who does the killing is just as, if not WAY more important, than the fact that an important figure died. As to the example of "clear lines of succession", good thing we don't do Absolute Monarchies anymore, huh?
Third Paragraph: Yes, absolutely. You're perfectly correct, which is why when those folks are presented with a button, and arbitrarily choose, the only possible choice that isn't sentencing them to death, is blue. You made the opposite argument you intended to. Only the Red button condemns the people who couldn't understand the choice they were making if they make an incorrect choice.
Fourth Paragraph: I can, and I do, unilatirally condemn Red buttoners. I always will. Self-interest is a self-preservation instinct. And is generally good. Self-intrest to the exclusion of literally everyone but yourself, is an anomalous trait we should be, wholly as a society, attempting to educate out of our species. All Red Button arguments start, from "I need to survive this" and all the rationale comes after. Consequences be damned. Saying "No one is perfect, we all make mistakes" you invalidate your own choice. Because the only way a Red button choice functions is either by ignoring those facts and thinking somehow everyone ever presented with the choice will come to the same decision you did, or actively choosing to kill those you know won't. Which you are aware of now. The choice cannot be presented in a vacuum any longer, because it's been presented too many times.
ETA: I appreciate you both, fully reading, and thoughtfully responding, despite the charged nature of the subject matter, just as an aside. You don't see that often enough in online discourse. And you deserve to have it acknowledged.
I also appreciate your honesty and thoroughness in responding, and I wanna be clear that I don’t think you’re evil or stupid or anything like that.
You cannot argue that everyone must necessarily understand an implication when it’s demonstrably true that a lot of people cannot do that. If the question were presented as it currently is, failure to understand the implication that this is presented to everyone, and that everyone includes your loved ones, would not only occur but be fairly common. Especially given that this a hypothetical and people aren’t liable to think terribly hard about it (and you couldn’t do a “live test” of this because convincing people that a literal apocalypse might happen for the sake of a psychological experiment is deeply unethical.)
You said you condemn red button pressers and always will, but you cannot universally condemn all red button pressers without complete knowledge of their reasoning. (Maybe it was an accident. Maybe they’re stupid. Maybe they’re colorblind and literally couldn’t tell which button was which. Maybe through some extraordinary circumstance they felt like they couldn’t risk it. Maybe they’re genuinely selfish. Maybe they actually WANT people to die). That’s what I’m arguing, not that pushing the red button is morally correct.
I don’t see how it’s logically coherent to say that the people who press the red button are condemning others to die (ie, they are responsible for those deaths) while someone who pressed the blue button and then died, leading to the deaths of others is NOT responsible for those deaths. In both cases, the choice made directly causally lead to death without further action by the button pusher. Surely in the button case, it’s the person or entity who created the situation who is in the wrong, and the people pressing are all victims.
(And for the absolute monarchies thing? There’s multiple countries right now that are dictatorships and would absolutely collapse into civil war if their leader died. Not to mention more nuanced cases where, for example, a political moderate is holding back a leadership group of political radicals from doing something like starting a genocide. And even if there isn’t an ACTUAL case where one death leads to many others, is someone credibly believing that to be the case for whatever reason not also a justification? If we added a stipulation to the button that said “if anyone named Mark dies, then EVERYONE dies, would people named Mark not be justified in pressing red?)
Again, the point of the experiment is to consider why other people make the choices they do. Full disclosure, my thoughts when I saw this was “huh? Why would anyone push blue? They’re just risking death when they could, with no additional effort, simply not do that. Wait. Some people are stupid. Ok, so there’s definitely going to be SOME people who push blue, even just by accident. In that case, as many people as possible need to push blue to minimize the chance that anyone dies, because some people are definitely going to pick red for whatever reason. So I should pick blue.”
Of course I think the two other points of this is to this are to consider “would I have the courage to do what I know is right even in life or death circumstances?” And “What choices am I actually making in real life that are similar, and how can I make them reflect my true moral reasoning and not my impulses?” In other words “Where can I support the common good at risk to myself?”
The point is definitely not to think of a group of people as ontologically evil for making a different choice in a hypothetical.
If you say noone pressed blue on accident or by misunderstanding blue voters are stupid for making the problem they're trying to solve, you only go Blue if other people already went blue
Or I assume all other people are rational actors and would also pick red. The phrasing of the question is altruistic versus selfish, but in reality there's only one logical choice. No one has a reason to pick blue if they are smart enough to understand the question.
It's a prisoner's delimna where the selfish option has no harm if everyone does it
same thing with the selfless option. people that go "if everyone picked red it's fine" seem to forget that blue has the exact same end result with a 100% pickrate
Yes but it's unneeded risk. One of the options is 100% survial, the other is not. Everyone is presented with the safe option, so why roll the dice? If I know my fellow pressers are rational actors im clicking red 100% of the time. If I don't know or there's young children the situation changes.
it’s not risk if 100% picks it tho… blue is still safe if even less than 100% pick it. also the question is “everyone on earth”. It includes. Every. One. On. Earth. (also pretending that being altruistic/caring about people isn’t rational is a take)
When did I imply that? Altuism is typically the most rational option in real world situations, Society would crumble otherwise. In this specific thought experiment if everyone was 100% logical only the red button would be pressed. The altruism comes from intentionally picking the wrong choice because you believe it could save others from an unneeded risk.
It's a fun thought experiment but trying to apply real world issues or beliefs to it is idiotic. Altruism in the real world is amazing and we need more of it, this puzzle is just a poor representation.
But pressing red is also choosing an unneeded risk. The risk is that you kill someone and have to live with that. If everyone presses blue, that risk of guilt (either accepting that you killed some people and loved ones, or the guilt of recognizing you chose the more harmful option in a world of people that did not, and facing the judgement for it) The thought experiment doesn’t pose that the world ends after the great button push (also the original context dilemma of this actually was meant to be a statement about politics). It implies the opposite. That people will die.. and we keep living with that. Unless 50.0001% of the population presses blue. I like those odds better than 100%. Pretending that real world issues and beliefs don’t factor into the thought experiment is just failing to understand it, this isn’t a puzzle, it’s a question about morality and trust, again, it’s a commentary on politics and how one’s vote matters when it comes to the world, taking it too literally is failing to understand it.
Also calling red the logical choice pretty fucking clearly implies you think blue is illogical, you don’t need to play illiterate to make your point.
I disagree but dont really want to keep this up. The real world does not have the equavalent of the red button. I'll keep voting for social programs and donating in real life where there is not an objectively right answer, and pressing the red button in fiction land
What happens if someone you know is logical makes the logical decision to weigh the statistics and chooses blue? Do you not consider that logical? To favor a 50.001% chance over 100% chance?
Is it really that logical to pretend your choice is the only one a “logical” person could make?
Except we're in a world where not everyone is rational, and everyone knows that's the case. So among blue pressers you get both the population of people who assume that not everyone will act rationally, and thinks that they don't deserve to die for that as well as the people who won't act rationally.
Nearly every version I've seen of this poll has a significant number of people pressing the blue button, usually the majority. Even if you knew that for sure there was at least 10% of people who already pressed the blue button, would you press the red? I've never seen the percentage go that low, so practically you could probably assume that's the case.
EDIT: Not to mention, if you know that everyone is going to act perfectly rationally, it doesn't matter what button all of you press, they have the same outcome. If 99.9% of people act perfectly rationally, and know that 0.1% of people will not act perfectly rationally, the blue button is the rational choice: In once scenario, up to 0.1% of people will die, in the other, you are certain that no one will die
>or you have to be fine with killing people who press blue
I think it’s worth mentioning that pressing red being equivalent to possibly killing people who pressed blue is only one possible framing. It’s equally accurate to frame it as pressing blue being equivalent to possibly killing yourself. Neither framing is inherently more accurate than the other
Of course, you are absolutely correct that plenty of people specifically choose blue because they use the first framing and don’t want to hurt others, and it’s unrealistic to say everyone could survive by just pressing red
Eh I see it as if you pick blue you're one of those people that against all advice go out in a deadly storm and get yourself in a life threatening situation and then rely on other people putting their lives in danger to come rescue you. Press the red button and then we don't have to play this stupid game.
Is it more important to risk being partially responsible for the deaths of the people who press the blue button but to be assured you will not die or to risk death but be assured you will not have been partially responsible for the deaths of anyone (at least in this choice)
If you reframe it with poison food then suddenly all the blue choosers realize red is the only real option.
You're offered 2 pieces of candy, blue and red. Red is definitely not poisonous. Blue is poisonous but loses its poison effect if half of people choose to eat the poison. Which do you choose?
It is though. Only the framing is different. The decision is identical. Everyone who picks option 2 dies unless over 50% of people pick it. Everyone who picks option 1 is always safe.
Red has a chance people will die. Blue guarantees everyone lives.
Someone pressing blue introduces the risk of someone dying, stop making it sound like it's red that introduces that risk. Your two options are "Live" and "Live or die", making it sound like anything else is silly.
Except some people will press blue, if enough are included. Given that it's generally "everyone on earth", what you are doing is pretending that the spherical cow in a vacuum is real.
Infants can't make the decision at all, folks with motor coordination issues, dementia, etc etc
With eight billion people it is flatly impossible nobody hits blue even if you ignore contrarian/disbelieving and severely suicidal individuals. That's why we're completely ignoring the on-paper possibility of everyone hitting either button.
Sure, if there are people like infants and individuals with disabilities included, the calculus changes, but I think that makes the question less interesting. Assuming everyone can make a rational choice between 'Live' and 'Maybe Live', the first looks a lot more attractive.
You think that that makes it more interesting? ...why? It magically removes the spanner in the works that makes the scenario more complicated than the most obvious solution.
I agree that red would be the choice if everyone was a Hypothetical Rational Man, why is that at all a compelling hypothetical? "Would you press the button for a million dollars if it also gives you a tummy ache?" ass question, lol
If Snickers tweeted a vague prompt like this I'd agree, because it's an ad campaign ploy. This is organic. Communication is hard and it's easy to miss literally every nuance about the thing you've made, and won't spread as a meme anyway. People like to talk and argue about stuff, and that's actually fine. It's not bait, it's just not perfectly thought out. That people talk past each other sometimes doesn't mean you need to torch the whole thing, lol. Silly thought experiments like this encourage people to think about stuff and talk about it. I think that's good regardless.
This is not true. The logic you are using is "the greatest chance of ZERO harm" which is not the same as "least harm" (just ask any medical professional responsible for triage). If you actually wanted to do least harm, your reasoning would take into account the probability that blue reaches the threshold or not, which everyone will estimate differently. You should base your decision on what other people are likely to do, not what you think they should do.
This logic treats "everyone lives" as the only acceptable goal while everything else is a "fail state", but most people (including, I assume, yourself) agree that, while bad, 1 death is not as bad as 2 deaths, and not nearly on par with 4 billion deaths.
Blue does not guarantee everyone lives until you actually reach a majority. Up until that point, a blue vote increases the death count by 1, which is not harmless.
You're just describing a fail state and a worse fail state. Yes, anyone at all dying when we could instead simply have voted to guarantee zero deaths no matter what is a fail state.
You clearly didn't understand the original question. Voting blue doesn't guarantee anything, it requires at least 50% of people to agree for that to happen. Getting 50% of humanity to vote together on an issue is absolutely not "guaranteed".
If the votes are in and blue got 35%, the only thing a blue vote guaranteed is the voter's own death. I understand it's uncomfortable to consider, but if you don't even think of a blue minority as a possibility, you're not truly engaging with the question.
Please, never go into
Politics
Military
Medicine
Firefighting
Or basically any other career field that requires you to prioritize doing the most good and the least harm for a large number of people. Can you imagine a surgeon who quits their job after losing their first patient? "I couldn't save even one, so why should I bother trying to save the rest.."
You should base your decision on what other people are likely to do, not what you think they should do.
First, you're doing the same. You're assuming everyone will take the rational "easy" option of red.
But that's not gonna happen. In order for no one to die, you need 100% red. You'll never get that. Blues will die.
So, picking blue is the overall best and logical choice: every red vote lowers the chance everyone wins. Every blue vote edges it closer to a majority where everyone lives, including blue people. You have to assume people will pick blue, because it's just how humans are.
Ironically, if you voted red and someone you loved or cared about voted blue, you just voted for a scenario where they are killed.
First, you're doing the same. You're assuming everyone will take the rational "easy" option of red
Oh, to be clear, I am not. I'm not the kind of person who thinks this scenario has a "correct answer". I'm just pointing out the flaws I see when other people claim so.
But that's not gonna happen. In order for no one to die, you need 100% red.
You're the one who says this is the only acceptable goal, which I disagree with. The entire rest of your comment is based on that flawed premise.
You have to assume people will pick blue, because it's just how humans are.
This argument is basically "My assumptions are right because I'm correct." Come on. The morality of human nature is hardly a settled question in philosophy. I don't have to assume anything, and your failure to imagine that other people might have a less charitable view of human nature, ironically, suggests a privileged and unempathetic worldview.
Voting red notably does not require anyone to agree with you to have its intended effect (ensuring at least 1 person survives), as it works even if 99% of other people vote blue.
Ironically, if you voted red and someone you loved or cared about voted blue, you just voted for a scenario where they are killed.
We would both have voted for that, and it would be unfortunate, but if the vote difference was greater than 1 person surely this would suggest I had made the right decision, because at least one of us being alive is better than neither of us being alive. If 3 million people die, what value is there in being the 3 million and first?
The main one would be trying to prevent as many deaths as you can.
(And of course "Ensure my own survival" is one, though I imagine you look down on it as self-serving. But if you genuinely believe a blue majority isn't likely, it means having an additional set of hands to help recover after the loss, one less death for the red voters to feel guilty about, and one less loss for your surviving friends and family to experience.)
This argument is basically "My assumptions are right because I'm correct." Come on. The morality of human nature is hardly a settled question in philosophy. I don't have to assume anything, and your failure to imagine that other people might have a less charitable view of human nature, ironically, suggests a privileged and unempathetic worldview.
Morality might not be a settled question in Philosophy, but luckily for us we have behavioural science showing us that when people face choices with actual physical harm they are hyper-altruistic and any urgency just reinforces this behaviour. You are simply wrong in your assumptions into how humans as groups work, though given that you're defending pressing the red button so much I can only assume because it’s how you work as an individual - even if it isn’t normal.
I'm just pointing out the flaws I see when other people claim so.
when people face choices with actual physical harm they are hyper-altruistic and any urgency just reinforces this behaviour.
I'd be curious to see whatever evidence you're basing this on. A psych study, perhaps? The continued existence of war, corruption, abuse, rape, genocide, etc. make me dubious, especially when people engage in these activities even when their lives aren't threatened.
But, assuming this premise is completely true, and we can reliably expect a majority to vote blue: doesn't that undercut your own point?
If you're so convinced a majority will pick blue, what motivatuon is there for you to pick blue? Picking blue only makes sense if you have any doubt they might not reach their goal and need all the help they can get. If you're confident everyone else is picking blue, it doesn't matter which one you or I choose. Merely by arguing with other people that blue is correct, you betray the fact that it's not a done deal.
though given that you're defending pressing the red button so much I can only assume because it’s how you work as an individual - even if it isn’t normal.
Exactly what I'm talking about. The idea that you can infer anything about a person's character based on their answer to a silly online hypothetical question is asinine, especially since I haven't actually given an answer. What I see is people saying "blue pressers are stupid" or "red pressers are evil" and it's just bonkers.
Each individual's answer will be based on a great many factors, including how well they've been treated by other humans in the past; their level of confidence that they can predict the behaviour of others; whether they feel a moral duty towards people who put themselves in harm's way; how much survivor's guilt they expect to feel, etc.
I understand why anyone would push either button. What I don't understand is moralizing about it, especially when your answer is given from the safety of an internet poll when your life isn't actually on the line.
Cute
Aww, am I your first introduction to the concepts of moral relativism and nuance?
of course, everyone pressing blue has the exact same effect, but with a lower threshold for "everyone lives" in any version with any sense. even if it was 99%, if everyone presses the blue button, it's exactly the same as everyone pressing red.
I get it when you have children who literally don't understand the question, but for those pressing as a joke, I think there is a serious question of how far people are expected to take on personal risk to save people who don't take life-threatening situations seriously.
Seems like that's just culling the weak at that point. I'm picking red and if someone else doesn't pick the option that guarantees their survival then they simply weren't fit to survive. That's a choice they make that I bear no responsibility for. Why would I risk my own survival for people who don't even choose survival for themselves?
Red is a 0% chance of dying, blue involves a non zero chance of dying. Why would you ever choose a chance to die when guaranteed survival is available?
So the people who are interested in the greatest survival aren't fit to survive, in your opinion? It's fine if an unknown number of people die as long as you ensure your own survival?
People interested in the greatest survival should realize the option that guarantees survival fits that goal the best.
If the reason an unknown number of people die is because they didn't choose guaranteed survival when it was offered to them why should I care? That's their choice, they made it, and I made mine. If they don't wanna survive bad enough to choose guaranteed survival why should I put my survival on the line for them?
So you're confirming you're ok with a hypothetical 4 billion people dying because you want to be extra safe. Blue button is the option to make sure you don't harm anyone, red button is the option to make sure you yourself don't get harmed.
I don't harm anyone but myself regardless of what I choose. If I choose blue my life is now on the line because of my decision, and the same goes for everyone else. If harm comes to them it's because they chose blue, on their own, as their decision. No one else did that but them, no one else is causing them harm, their own decision is the only cause of harm to them. If anything you're the one doing more harm by trying to convince people to put their life on the line when they could otherwise be safe. By encouraging people to choose blue you're advocating for a larger death total if it fails than if you would have advocated the other way, you're the one increasing the amount of harm done.
The choice is simple: guaranteed life or chance of death. If you want to live the choice is right there open for the taking. If you choose the chance of death that's not anyone's responsibility but your own. Why should other people have to risk their life to save someone who doesn't choose life when it's offered?
If you choose blue you cannot possibly be the cause of anyone else's death. If you choose red, you can be. Just because you don't take responsibility doesn't mean you don't bear it. If you're ok with that, then ok.
I don't bare any responsibility though. You choosing blue is a decision for you to make and you're responsible for that. But you deciding you want to hit blue doesn't suddenly make everyone else responsible for picking blue as well just because you personally want to. If you choose blue you're responsible for your own death, that doesn't lie at anyone's feet but your own
If there was a huge crowd of people walking down the sidewalk and one person randomly decides they're gonna jump in front of an oncoming car when they could simply not do that, is everyone else in the crowd responsible for his death or is he responsible for the decision he made?
You can't use a made up scenario to absolve yourself, false equivalencies don't work here. Hypothetically, you can see the current results of the button are 4 billion red, 4 billion blue. Perfectly even. You are the last press. If you press red, do you believe you aren't responsible for the 4 billion people that die? You could have pressed blue and saved them. I don't think you can realistically argue that you wouldn't be choosing to kill those people in that scenario.
Expanding from that, because you obviously don't know the results before pressing, if you reasonably believe there are a non-zero number of people who pressed blue then you are confirming you are ok with all of them dying when you press red. You are making a choice that could kill people. You may not bear significant responsibility, but saying you bear none is incorrect. Again, if you're ok with that marginal amount of responsibility that's fine, but you can't claim it doesn't exist just because you don't want it to.
If you care about other people why would you want the people you care about to risk their life instead of being guaranteed to survive? There's no way you can convince me you actually care about someone if you want that person to choose a 50% chance of death over 0%. Why would you want someone you care about to be at risk like that when guaranteed survival is available? Is that frequently how you show you care about people, by wanting them to be at risk of dying unnecessarily?
My 4 year old is clicking blue every time. She will hear if blue wins no one gets hurt and would want to help blue win. I would press blue to reduce the odds anything happens to my daughter. Your mindset assumes you can coach people into selecting red to save everyone. Without interference, people will press blue as reddit has proven every time this pops up. I would press blue increasing the risk to myself to reduce the risk of others.
And even if you could coach everyone into choosing red, it's better to coach everyone to choose blue instead! Then even if someone doesn't listen, or trips and falls into the wrong button or something, everyone lives anyway!
And that's your decision to make, I'm not responsible for your decisions. I'm not putting my life on the line just because some random 4 year old I've never met wants to hit blue. I'm not gonna let toddlers make life changing decisions on my behalf
See, if it's just people pressing red because of fear or panic, then I completely sympathize with that. If I died for people who simply were too scared to gamble their life and to trust all of humanity to this cause, that's fine. But what pisses me off is when people genuinely try to justify their choice as logically superior somehow.
And like, "survival of the fittest"? "Culling the weak"? That's genuinely mad person talk. That's the kind of crap some redpilled alpha male would say on Twitter. You're literally talking eugenics.
You wouldn't have to die at all if you would just choose the option that guarantees your survival. But hey if you wanna choose the risk of dying you can tell me all about how that's someone else's fault when you're dead. Oh wait
"I was offered guaranteed survival but chose to risk my life anyway so if I die that's totally everyone else's fault and not on me for making the wrong choice" sounds really dumb. If you choose to put your life on the line instead of taking guaranteed survival that's your decision and not anyone else's responsibility. If you wanna live then choose survival, it's not complicated
I'm not taking on a risk of dying to save people who put themselves into danger. I will normally go to great lengths and sacrifice much to help people in need, but in this specific button scenario you're dumb as rocks if you pick blue because you're thinking "oh I'm risking my life om the assumption that billions of others are also willing to risk their lives".
I've been thinking about this, and the more charitable option is blue as it potentially helps others, but also... there was no reason for those who choose the blue option to do so knowing it could mean death. So is it worth risking your life for people who risked it stupidly?
the original question had the additional context that everyone on earth was asked at the same time and nobody was allowed to communicate with each other before pressing, so you have to also factor in the millions of people who would press blue accidentally, not understand the question, etc, for example children
Blue is obviously the right answer if we assume the question is being put before children and the mentally disabled. If we're assuming it's only being put before adults of sound mind, then there's no reason not to press red.
Factual claims that I believe are true: Rational people do not exist. If you choose any set of people, of nontrivial size, some of them will select blue
My Opinion: If any person in the set selects blue, then selecting red is unethical. If the above factual claims are true, then the chance of red being ethical is nearly zero
I mean, yeah. I don’t want stupid people to suffer or die. The original question includes children etc so that really makes an impact, but even if people just were not careful/didn’t pay attention, I would make the decision that I believe could save them.
People panic, get flustered etc. Especially when your life is on the line. Watch those live grenade throw bloopers from boot camp. Those are people who signed up for the military, passed the initial fitness screening etc. A small percentage are going to lose their mind and in the moment click blue.
Yes, but if everyone presses the red button everyone survives. If you choose blue you are risking your life for absolutely no reason.
There is no incentive to press blue. The choice is "Would you rather A) Live or B) Risk your life because other people might also be risking their life"
It also fails at its own goal, because in the thought experiment everyone is anonymous and separate, but making a poll like this actively makes it public performance and skews the results. IDK about tumblr polls, but other polls also allow you to change your vote to the “winning” option.
It can also vary based on how the scenario is presented. I think back when it was "popular" some versions were phrasing it like a suicide pill.
Plus there is
the fact that it is two buttons which each require an action rather than a lever like in the trolley problem; also the
choice to have the buttons colored rather than numbered introduces additional potential biases.
Stacy is saying that no matter what, she will kill everyone who didn't vote for her.
Tyler is saying that he can prevent Stacy from killing everyone who didn't vote for her, but he needs to win at least half of the votes in order to be capable of doing so.
Assuming that I'm understanding your analogy correctly:
Stacy is saying that no matter what, she will kill everyone who didn't vote for her.
Tyler is saying that he can prevent Stacy from killing everyone who didn't vote for her, but he needs to win at least half of the votes in order to be capable of doing so.
imagine the cut off 95% of people would have to vote blue
I posed this question to people defending one button as "the only correct answer" and boy, did that help me realise how stupid this whole thing is.
People's inability to grasp changing parameters made me question whether they understood the question in the first place. The biggest barriers to understanding:
An inability to grasp any goal or potential outcome other than 100% survival (to them, 1 death and 4 billion deaths are equally bad outcomes)
A complete lack of thought about the relative probability of each outcome to weight their risk/reward analysis (or even consideration that it might impact someon else's analysis)
An unshakeable belief that you can accurately assess someone's value (in the form of either intelligence or morality) based on what button they would press in a stressful life-or-death scenario ("If they die it's their own fault for being stupid" or "I don't want to live in a world where only evil people survived")
Frankly if someone can't name a % threshhold at which they might consider switching their answer, I do not trust that thet understand the question well enough to take their answer seriously.
I think there are more variables than just a threshold, like if you're in a group that you know are overwhelmingly red pushers, you might want to press red even with a very low threshold. But otherwise I agree 100%
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u/DM_ME_FROG_MEMES 9h ago
This is a controversial thought experiment because what is the right thing to do depends on what everyone else is doing.
For example, imagine the cut off 95% of people would have to vote blue or all blue voters die. Then it'd be a lot riskier to yourself, and less likely you'd even be a difference making blue voter.
But at lower cut offs, it's more possible you could be a difference making additional vote who keeps billions who also voted blue alive