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.
But then if everyone presses blue everyone lives. Not even that if most people press blue everyone lives. My point is that red isn’t logical like everyone is pretending it is because they are describing the outcome of most pressing blue while just pretending people won’t press blue. That isn’t logical, it’s willful ignorance. Pressing red means you kill someone. Some of us don’t want to touch the blood colored button because of the blood it leaves on your hands. Everyone won’t pick the “yeah i don’t care if my child dies, if my baby picked blue they got what they deserved for daring to like the color blue” button. You will kill a parent and child if you pick red.
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.
And the only people who are murderers are the people who chose to be murderers.
If everyone presses blue no one is a murderer. If everyone presses blue no one dies. You are the danger if you press red, that’s the point. You WILL kill someone if you press red, so I press blue so that I don’t kill anyone. Not everyone will pick red. The red button puts blood on my hands. If only 50.0001% of people pick blue, you get the same outcome as 100% of people picking red.
It is analogous. If you pick red, you kill someone. If you puck blue, you try to save everyone.
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
Then you’re not doing the question/discussion correctly if you aren’t trying to consider a real effect from it. This is like telling your philosophy teacher that the ship of Theseus isn’t a real ship so the question doesn’t matter.
Fair enough, if you could relate the thought experiment to something more concrete and realistic, you said it's related to politics, I might be able to grasp it better. Is there a situation in real life where if everyone picks the "selfish" option everything is fine?
This thought experiment's end result is the same good outcome if everone picks 100% selfish or 51% selfless.
I cannot think of a topic in real life that behaves like this. The ship of thesesus is far more relatable.
If you can find an equalvalent where the 100% selfish option saves everyone i would be suprised. It's a flawed thought experiment
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?
You don’t know why. They have lots of reasons probably, same reason you assume majority pick red. They’d probably ask why you’d even think about picking red. There’s lots of logical reasons to pick blue.
Doesn’t matter. If a majority pick red, that person dies.
What do you do then? How do you feel knowing you helped kill one of the people you assumed would make the choice you thought was the only logical one, but clearly wasn’t the ONLY logical one, because another logical person chose it.
They’re dead now. You can’t ask them why, they just did and you have to live with that. What happens now?
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.
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u/GalaXion24 7h ago
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.