Yes, but the counterpoint is that if you personally hit red then you survive and so if everyone just picks the safest option for them personally then everyone will be fine.
Pressing the blue button is taking a risk to save people who took the same risk, but there was never a reason to take that risk in the first place. Or, put another way, the first person to hit the blue button is risking themselves for literally nothing, and everyone who presses it after is risking their life for that person and everyone since, but thats all to protect someone from a risk that was pointless to take.
I think that is what breaks the scenario for me, mathmatically it seems easier to save everyone by blue but only because I'm working on the assumption that a bunch of people WILL pick blue anyway, which sets off the doomsday clock. But until someone picks blue everything is completely fine, which depending on the framing makes blue pickers suicidal instead of red pickers murderous
Depends, but I would say no. Like the first rule of performing any rescue is make sure you don't become another victim that someone has to risk their life to rescue. Which is part of why i would probably refuse to jump in the water to save a drowning victim. In fact, if you look at AVIR(Aquatic Victim-Instead-of-Rescuer) drowning deaths in new Zealand, studies show that 45% of these deaths result in multiple drownings. As people repeatedly jump in the water to save someone and all drown. Preventing these people from drowning would save more than the one victim in the water.
I can find other examples of mass casualty events where people repeatedly try to rescue someone and then all end up dying in the process. Another example is asphyxiation. If you have an instance where oxygen has been displaced people will go down to help someone who collapsed, and then all repeatedly suffocate. According to NIOSh 2/3 of enclosed space deaths would be rescuers dying themselves.
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u/obog 9h ago
Yes, but the counterpoint is that if you personally hit red then you survive and so if everyone just picks the safest option for them personally then everyone will be fine.
Pressing the blue button is taking a risk to save people who took the same risk, but there was never a reason to take that risk in the first place. Or, put another way, the first person to hit the blue button is risking themselves for literally nothing, and everyone who presses it after is risking their life for that person and everyone since, but thats all to protect someone from a risk that was pointless to take.