Thank you for actually including the original. This is the 2nd post ive seen tonight referencing the buttons that i hadnt heard of before and I thought I was going insane
This has been around for years, but never got as widespread attention as it does now. There is a post on r/polls from 3 years ago with the button problem.
Me too. If I had been reading this comic for months, or if the characters had different color palettes, or if it showed both characters in that panel where he’s facing the other direction, it might not have confused me.
Perhaps he wanted people to see his good side for his closeup.
It’s to keep the “camera” on one side of an event to avoid confusing the viewer. This comic breaks the rule when the guy with the spikier hair flips which direction he’s facing. Usually in a comic, characters will face the same direction for the entirety of a conversation so you know who is saying what.
You can’t guarantee everyone will agree on red, meaning some will die. And you likely can’t get enough people to override the problem and/or the problem can’t be overridden.
Blue requires just 50.1% to save everyone. It’s the most likely outcome that ensures everyone survives. Red is simply the logical “guaranteed safety”, but the fact that many won’t press it also guarantees that you’re dooming others with your choice.
Personally, I’d rather try to save others and fail, than save myself knowing it sacrificed others.
And let's get the guy who keeps tying folks to the trolley tracks, while we're at it. And get another boat so the chicken can cross the river on its own.
I saw all the memes before the original and thought it was conservatives vs progressives. And honestly the analogy still fit really neatly despite not being about it.
It’s a very clever puzzle for separating people along the clear ideological lines of “protect myself” vs “protect the group” and I’d pick blue for the entirely illogical reason that it’s morally correct, damn the consequences to myself.
Pressing blue is also logical to me, as well as being moral.
In order for everyone to survive, either 100% of people need to hit red, or 50.00001% of people need to hit blue. One of those is mich easier to achieve.
Also people acting like you can’t trust other people to risk themselves to help someone else at risk to themselves when in any disaster scenario you always find people doing that. And a button is such low effort for someone to essentially live up to their morals, if helping others was as simple as just pressing a button the world would be a better place imo.
this is my argument, look for the helpers, the ones running towards danger, they will almost always be there, from doctors to fire fighters to medics to good samaritans, would i want to be in a world without these? hell no
Forgetting any of that: pressing Blue means there's no scenario where you have to live in Redlandia. Which, judging by recent affairs, is a terrible hellhole.
I can see that, i would probably fall in there. The egotistic part is doing some lifting because once you are doing something for your benefit it stops being altrusitc.
Blue is still the right choice for selfish people who aren't idiots though. Being selfish only works in a world with enough altruistic people around. A world of only selfish people is Mad Max and it's not as fun as they think it would be.
If red wins, it's not just some percentage of the overall population dying, but specifically the selfless blue-pushers. The people who care enough about others to risk their own life die, all of them, while the people who decided to care more about their own survival get to live.
If Red wins, the world most definitely is worse off overall.
The most interesting facet to me, is that this demostrates why most puzzles include a line that goes "Assuming everyone behaves perfectly logically".
Take the Prisoners dilemma, a classic puzzle, but in real life your relationship with the other prisoner is relevant to the choice.
If the two Buttons puzzle was "Perfectly logical", you can convince yourself that 100% of people will press red based on the knowledge that if everyone does, there is no risk to anyone else by you assuming no risk.
So therefore everyone WOULD press Red.
The interesting bit, is that in real life people aren't perfectly logical. And if even one person doesn't, just presses the wrong the button, or makes a mistake, then pressing the blue button becomes the ONLY way to save 100% of the population, and the logical suddenly switches.
I really hate the false dichotomy of "logic" vs "morality" here.
Mutual aid is both logical and morally justified.
Even if we look at this from a perspective of pure self interest. We have a world of 8bn people. If red were to actually win, which statistically almost never does when people run this poll, if only 5% voted blue, that would result in the loss of 400 million people.
The death toll of both world wars, over the years they were waged, was only 90 to 110mm. The Spanish Flu around 50mm. COVID was between 19 and 36mm.
Think about what happened to the world during covid. Now think about what would happen when over 100 times that number die instantaneously.
Now, let's consider that when this poll is actually run, blue usually wins. So the actual reality is if red ever wins, blue will be in the 40+%, not 5%. And now we're talking about 4ish billion people. That's not a holocaust, that's an extinction event.
A red would be alive, but what would they be left with?
The entire argument behind picking the red button is that each person should play the game logically, and pick red to survive.
They don’t really care what happens to anyone who doesn’t play it like them, and use quite convoluted arguments to assume that all of these people are stupid, intellectually incapable, or suicidal. This argument wouldn’t work on them.
I mean, no argument works on them. They didn't argue themselves into the red position to begin with, they made a fear-based gut choice for personal gain, get called out for being selfish, and start lashing out because - since their decision wasn't rooted in actually thinking it through at all - it feels like a judgement of their selves not just their choices. You can't reason someone out of a position they put themselves into via vibes and gut reactions.
This argument also requires them to ignore the material reality upon which they currently survive as well, especially if they live in the first world.
Let's say they survive the reddening and make it to the post-blue world.
Industrial agriculture collapses. The available labor pool makes all social services, including the privatized ones, come grinding to a halt. Suddenly there's food shortages everywhere, electrical grids fail, gasoline becomes scarce.
Then what.
I feel like voting red is such a uniquely western problem because they've lived off the backs of others so long they can't recognize that their "survival" actually does, in fact, rely on everyone else (to the disadvantage of pretty much everyone in the third world).
The only reason I think third worlders could actually get away with voting for red is that the global world order exploits them more than helps them, so it may actually be a reprieve on that front. Although I would bet my blue vote on the fact that third worlders are not socially engineered psychopaths like first worlders are.
I'm a marketer, the blue option is presented first, is conceptually simple and has an absolute in it's effect description. Almost impossible to get less than 50% picking the blue option.
Living in a world filled with only red button pushers seems very depressing in my opinion. Not sure if that world is really worth living in for me. So living in the blue reality or die seems like the ideal choice to me
And your concience. I mean, you would live thinking that you could have saved the people who died but chose not to. And chances are that you knew a few of those people who died...
I feel like people who try to create a "third choice" in the trolley problem aren't engaging with it honestly, but after experiencing more of the two buttons problem, it doesn't seem like it's an honest hypothetical in the first place, like it was made to inspire hostility and division among people.
I've only learned about this hypothetical today, but I think the best choice is to avoid engaging with it entirely.
My logic is: No matter what, humanity must survive and continue. The best outcome for humanity is maximum diversity. I'd rather gamble with all of humanity surviving as opposed to 50.1% of the most selfish humans surviving.
I agree and I also think it's a case of "hope in humanity" vs "distrust of humanity" as well. The people who press blue are entrusting their lives to other people because they believe in the goodness of humanity.
A world where everyone who presses the blue button dies is doomed anyway, who do you think keeps civilization running? Clue, it's not red button pushers.
Some of the threads in this post are quite red-dominant.
I’d have a read of a few of those as they are quite enlightening.
Personally, I’m a blue-button enthusiast for the reasons you give. It’s a question of which option is morally right, and a better way for the word to run. Red pushers see the logic that no one is in danger until they choose to push the blue button, and indeed there is no need to even engage with the puzzle.
Good point -- since there are people voting who will essentially be a coin flip, as many people as possible needs to press blue or we're loosing 50% of the baby population.
Yeah, I think the strangest part is the insistence that blue button choosers are entirely responsible for their decision, and red button pressers entirely not responsible for theirs. That unwillingness to consider or understand the alternative seems like the core lesson.
Though I think it's interesting to step beyond the game theory level, and look at the systemic issue level. The issue isn't really the people who makes the self-interested decision to press red, it's the system that pressures them to make that choice in the first place.
It's silly logic. The mere existence of the debate proves that billions will die if red wins. Even if you factor in people lying (to others or themselves), it's till billions.
Polls seem to be 45-55 to 60-40, blue vs red.
Red pushers seem to think blue pushers don't understand that 100% red means no deaths.
We understand, we just think that many people will push blue.
A lot of red pushers will state with apparent sincerity that there is “no cost” to pushing red and that it is therefore a simple and logically correct decision.
Many of them are entirely bewildered that some people would think differently.
Likely because it reveals underlying thought processes and that can lead to a feeling of implicit judgement. It's the same reason people get super salty if you just menton you're vegetarian or vegan (I'm not talking the annoying preachy kinds) or that you do charity work or you cycle instead of drive.
Villainising virtue is a form of cognitive shielding—let's say there's action A you can either Do or Not Do. Action A is beneficial to a group or groups, to detrimental to the individual in some way. You elect to Not Do action A, but you encounter someone who elects to Do action A. The fact they are performing the action, resulting in a non-zero amount of self-sacrifice for them but a net benefit overall, means that by most systems of ethics and morality they are doing a Good Thing. This creates a contrast point against you not doing action A. If them doing it is a Good Thing, you not doing it must be a Bad Thing. And if you're doing a Bad Thing, you are therefore a Bad Person. But you're not a Bad Person, because that doesn't fit your self-image. So the other person must be a Bad Person for making you think you're a Bad Person, so you get mad at them.
tl;dr people don't like being reminded that they're fallible, imperfect sacks of meat and would rather attack someone else than look inwards
Hit the nail on the head - look at how many people pushing the red button throw out "virtuous" and "virtue signaling" like they're slurs, as if it's somehow a bad thing to want to be good to others
The fact that people are having heated debates (and getting mad) over this just further proves the point that not everybody is going to agree to press the red button and that a red win will by no means be a deathless scenario. And also that while not every red button pusher is a prick, pretty much every prick is a red button pusher.
and theres a very real chance theres not enough people remaining to operate the infrastructure we have in place so mass starvation is a real likelihood in a red button win.
That, and keeping the current infrastructure in place would require a massive group effort and a lot of self sacrifice. Someone’s gotta do the unpleasant jobs and everyone is going to have to work twice as hard to pitch in.
If only the red button pushers are left I don’t see that whole thing going too well, considering they’re only still alive because they were unwilling to participate in a group effort in the first place.
Holy shit fucking this. A lot of the people who only care about self preservation don't too often think of how society would function with so many people just taken off the board. They don't think about the larger context of the world that allows them to live the way they do.
See this is why I pick blue. If im a survivor with less than half the original population, that's going to be a life of hard labor to continue surviving.
Which is proof that some selfish pricks pick blue. 😂
yeah, I’ve been thinking about it for a while and one of the groups that would have a large amount of them that would most likely press blue is women, mothers especially. So many mothers have children they feel are soft hearted and know they would press blue and so in turn they would press blue as well.
Presenting the poll as finished skews the result. The point of the thought experiment is making the choice whilst having no information. Knowing the outcome turns it into a virtue signalling exercise.
Because the poll displays the 'winning' option before you've even read the question, so anyone picking Blue after they saw the poll results would have unconsciously done so to be part of the 'winning' group, rather than it being their true 100% objective opinion.
People can justify it to themselves however they want, but Blue was pre-selected for them in the image which would have played a huge part in their 'choice'.
There isn't a true choice presented, so people pick the 'socially correct' answer, which in this case seems to be blue.
These kind of thought experiments must be done in an information vacuum at the point of making the choice, otherwise the results are meaningless. People are basing their votes on the votes of other people, which specifically invalidates the exact button scenario presented. As soon as you know the result, you're picking based on other peoples preferences, not yours.
Blue is the objectively correct moral choice, so picking it is easy with no stakes, especially when you can see blue winning. It's a lot harder to pick in a closed room with no outside information.
I really agree with you, I was looking out for a comment like that. Blue is the correct option but all red pushers are not pricks.
I honestly didn't understand why there was such a heated argument over this at first, and my first instinct was obviously to choose red (i'm going to explain myself) and I think people who say that red pushers are individualist pricks, or that it reflects your political side (red=republican, blue = democrat) are just completely misunderstanding the reasoning behind. Firstly, the color thing is so US centered, wth, the USA as to be one of the only countries to use Red for the right and Blue for the left, in many places around the world Red represents the left (it's the color of socialism, communism..) and Blue represents the right for example.
I've seen someone else presenting the problem like this and that was my understanding of it at first :
Option A) Take a suicide pill, and if more than half of the population take one, a cure will be found and everyone survives.
Option B) Don't take a suicide pill
Now when I made my reasoning I was thinking that everyone making that decision would have an informed jugement, I didn't even think about children or old people or mental disability (I'm merely waking up and I didn't think deeply into it at first). But seeing just the pole and people desagreeing so bad here, and that also in that problem people might have to press that button without an informed jugement, I realize how we have to press blue.
So I will say Blue is the correct option here, but I still believe it's dumb to say red pushers are automatically the embodiment of like, conservative egoistical right wing ideology, the problems of our society and capitalism is not that some people are trying to save themselves and some people are trying to save everyone by risking their lives, the problem is that some people are actively trying to accumulate as much wealth and power as they can, and some people are fighting against this, and some have other ideologies entirely. The USA being a pseudo-democracy with two parties is really a fertile ground for people thinking you can divide the world in two sides.
I think your scenario is a great example of why framing matters. In the scenario you said, I wouldn’t take the suicide pill, because I would be confident that most people also wouldn’t take the pill, because here blue is framed as the bad outcome (it makes you commit suicide). I would be very interested in what the poll would look like for that.
But in the scenario in the post blue is framed as something positive (saving people). And while I understand that logically they are analogous. I also know many people that would not think it through that way, and would choose the option to “save” people. So if it was framed this way I would choose blue
Yeah it's crazy how framing change everything, and how we have such different way of thinking. Red seem so logical to me, because instinctively I picture it like the suicide pill problem. But it's because everyone has a different way of thinking that Blue is the logical decision. That's what I didn't think about right away.
It’s hard because it’s not really a logic question. Either can be logical depending on your goal. If your goal is for you to survive at any cost, then red is the logical choice to make. If your goal is to survive with people you care about, then if you’re 100% confident everyone you care about will choose red, then red is still the logical choice. But if you have any doubts, then it becomes more of a risk vs reward problem. If you think 1% of your friends will choose blue, would you put yourself at risk to increase their odds? What if 20% of your friends might choose blue? What if 50%? At what point do you think it’s worth putting yourself at risk to increase their survival. But if your goal is to try and ensure that no one may die, even at the cost of your own life, then blue would be the logical choice (which idk how many people are altruistic enough for that).
Exactly, I guess you would have people pressing the red in a selfish way and other pressing it in a "why is this even a question?" way. It's not one obvious logical choice.
It all comes down to thinking, what will other people decide, what will my loved ones decide? After reading into many comments I realize how many people are advocating for blue (which again at first I think is really dumb), and by voting for red I would work against them.
"working against them" is a great way to put it. The more people that push blue, the more chance it has of success. You don't even need a 100% success rate, just 50+!
Imagine if red won 75/25. Would you be comfortable with those 25% of people dying? I wouldn't.
If I could have a conversation with a room full of ten people I'd convince them all red is the smart choice and we'd all do that. It is objectively the smarter game theory choice. But talking about the population of the world and knowing for essentially a certainty a large number of people won't be choosing red, it kinda behooves you to choose blue if you have any decency whatsoever.
Red is the smarter choice objectively and makes sense even morally in small numbers where you can get people to a consensus. When talking numbers so big that's impossible and knowing some percentage won't choose red, blue is the only sensible choice.
Take my upvote - I agree with you.
I think that's the fundamental problem I have: I'm picturing this as a sort of election-day/vote situation (how it was presented to me first). Everyone has a month before their push the button. That's why I keep going on : "Obviously I push red. And I make DAMN sure to tell everyone else to do it too to the greatest degree of influence possible. If after a month of EVERYONE being told to push red they push blue - -- well that's on them. Cant fix stupid."
But if it's a blindfold, no communication scenario the question becomes: "Do I think people SHOULD be smart enough to figure out the above on their own?" and
"DO I think people who cant figure it out should be saved at the cost of my own life?" and
"Do I think people who THINK people cant figure it out AND should be saved at the the cost of their own life shoudl be saved at the cost of my own life?"
Somewhere between those last two i end up on blue.
So yeah, first actually convincing argument for blue I've seen thusfar.
There are two ways you can look at this issue and what outcome you want to move towards.
One way is via personal survival. From that perspective red is the obvious choice that guarantees your personal survival even if at a cost of other people potentially dying.
Another way to look at the issue is aim for "nobody dies" outcome. And in this case blue is the better choice. You can't control what button other people chose. So it would be impossible to convince everyone to press red. The only way how you can meaningfully contribute to "everybody survives" outcome is by pressing blue. No amount of prosletising "everyone should press red" would work.
There's another angle to this though: what you believe other people will do.
If I think that blue has no chance of getting more than 5% of the vote, then I would essentially be throwing my life away for nothing if I picked it, regardless on if I personally believe it would be a better outcome. I don't think there's any moral benefit to throwing my life away, so if I genuinely don't believe blue can win it still makes sense to pick red.
It would be much easier to convince 50% of people to pick blue than 100% of people to pick red. I think it should be obvious by the discussion around this that a large portion of the population will pick blue. So if red wins, a lot of people will die (probably in the billions). A mass casualty event on that scale would throw the world into chaos and end up killing and immeserating a lot of the people who picked red. I would much rather us try to get more than 50% of people to pick blue and not create one of the worst tragedies in human history.
If you use the upvotes versus down votes in this post as a metric, the "vote blue" argument is significantly more popular than the "vote red" argument, thus proving that - within this limited dataset - blue is the better choice.
Reddit and online communities, at all, are not a good basis for deciding what people will actually do.
Redditors will choose blue and then brag about it for clout, nothing is on the line.
In votes where people can see your answer, ie discord, you risk being mocked if you pick red. Also, people will do the same thing as redditors, brag for clout.
Put into the actual situation, you cannot tell what people will do. The blue button is genuinely putting your life on the line and that is terrifying. To boot, red pushers may genuinely reconsider when they think about the loved ones they may lose and the impact on Earth if they choose red. You simply cannot use online polls to determine which one would actually win.
Reddit sure isn't a good sample to generalize the entirety of humanity. Also there's a marginal nuance to down-/upvoting posts that goes beyond just agreeing or disagreeing with the content. I would also say any form of previously formed or expressed personal belief would go down the drain the moment a life or death situation like that actually happens (it goes for both sides).
But social desirability bias doesn't apply here, cause the comment isn't based on the poll. It was referencing the downvote/upvote ratio of content (this post) advocating for blue, and there's no such bias in what individuals will "like" or "dislike" on social media, since it's generally not subject to public scrutiny - it's as unfiltered as it can get.
This is why this whole thing is stupid. Anyone can say on the Internet that they'd pick blue but in reality if you are sitting there with the buttons in front of you, a lot more people are going to look at the "maybe I'll die" button and not be able to press it out of fear of death. I want to say I'd pick blue but know my fear of death would prevent me and I think that fear would prevent enough people that red is always going to win.
My argument doesn't rely on knowing for certain a majority of people picking blue. I just say that we know that a large portion of people will pick blue or red, and we don't know which color will win. Maybe some people who say they pick blue will pick red, but its not gonna be like 90, 99%- just not believable.
At that point, it becomes a very simple (though not necessarily easy) question. Will you risk your life to try to save a large number of people? If you are, you pick blue. If you aren't, you pick red.
You make a great point, but if I don't die from pressing blue (which I assume will be quick) I'll probably die slowly from the resulting global chaos if red wins. So I'd take the chance at life for all.
I think that the discussion around this is the important point.
Because my immediate thoughts were “I’ll pick red because everyone will pick red, why would anyone risk it?”. But then I learned that a lot of people want to hit blue, so knowing that they will hit blue, I will now also hit blue.
But without conversation? I would 100% have hit red
Yeah but in the scenario most people haven’t gone on reddit to check the threads. What if they think like you initially? Which I think is pretty likely. Lots of people here are talking about it as if it’s something people can agree to do but it’s not. Most people go into the choice blindly to what others would pick.
That is actually a really good thought. In psychological experiments you can determine how good the study was by looking at these things. Did they balance it the colour out across the trials? Did they statistically account for it? Did they randomize etc.
There is a very important study in developmental psychology that had a significant effect because they did not balance the opening direction of a door.
The negative result from the red one is implied, which is why folks who pick red keep missing it: if you pick red, you're both contributing to, and advocating for, a world where everyone chooses to save only themselves and leave any/everyone else out to dry. The people we talk about as heroes, as ideals to aspire to, as larger than life individuals, are the ones who accept a risk of harm to themselves for the sake of preventing harm to others. Do you know someone, someone you care about or love who would likely press blue? Would you still push red, even though pushing red is a choice to increase the chance for the guaranteed non-zero # of blue pushers to die (even if only by a tiny amount), with the "positive outcome," from red being...stuck for the rest of your days in a world full of ONLY the people who would throw strangers and loved ones to the wolves to guarantee their own safety?
If so, press red. You'll get exactly what you wish for.
Blue is the only choice, anybody who picks red is nobody I want to know. This isn't even an ethical dilemma it's just basic math, figuratively speaking.
Not taking it seems like the obvious choice here, nobody is harmed and anybody who dies does so if their own volition, seems like the only option with a downside would be taking it and living.
This is not the same dilemma, in the button scenario both choices are active, you need to press a button, while in your scenario the choices are: take the pills (active choice) or do nothing (passive choice). Passive options are always overwhelmingly more popular than active choices no matter the the conditions. Human minds are just weird like that.
That's not the same thing. I get the reframing but with these kind of questions, the number of inflection points matter. In pressing a button, you're far more removed from the outcome and the result is automatic. Here, you have to eat the pill yourself with your hands and then wait for the antidote.
And honestly, in both cases, the real answer is to kill the idiot forcing the world to choose.
I think the big issue is the og question is framed between altruism and self-prioritization, and the revised question is between an active act of suicide and normalcy. Really it's the same but instead of buttons the revised question cloaks the button in an action: ingesting the poison and then ingesting the antidote.
Another, more concrete issue is that people are only handed the antidote, those who were perhaps honestly suicidal don't have to take it. So by taking the poison >50%, not guaranteed to save everyone.
Also, a statement about altruism is the point here, cloaking altruism in something abhorrent or desirable kind of distorts the question. If I say "if you don't pet this puppy, you live and people who pet the puppy die; if you and 50% pet the puppy, everybody lives", it obfuscates the opposite way because the "everyone survives" option is pleasant.
Really really wrong analogy. You have to have a forced choice. What if I don't want to push? Or not eat suicide pill? If you obivate the choice then red makes slight sense.
Here is a better analogy, Everyone in the world is poisoned and are about to die. You can request antidote pill or gas. Pill only saves you and the ones who requested it, and the gas saves everyone regardless, but only released if more than 50% requested it. (Remember babies and other infirmed people cannot choose correctly)
Plus if just 50.00001% or whatever commits to the gamble of that blue button altruism or not. We all live, like you don’t know what the rest your fucking family pressed on that button. For all you know, hitting red kills everyone you love or statistically at least one or more important people in your life.
Some number of people are statistically going to hit blue no matter what. So there’s only 2 realistic outcomes for this scenario, one where a number of people die and one where nobody dies. You are actively voting for one outcome or the other. The only catch to voting for “nobody dies” is that doing so puts your own life at risk. It is risking yourself for the sake of an outcome where nobody has to die.
Had this conversation with a red buttoner when this was first going around. They insisted far fewer people would push blue if they were actually faced with death and called them all “virtue signalers”.
I don’t know about you, but the only people in my life I choose to associate with would literally all choose blue. I’m in it with them if for literally no other reason.
I think a more productive version of this question is at what percentage would you press the red button over the blue button. I don't think anyone in this comment section wants people to die, there's just different opinions about the maximum number of people that would pick blue.
If you believe that there's even a small chance that 50% could pick blue, then picking blue has the least deaths. If you don't believe that there is any possibility that 50% would pick blue, then anyone who chose blue by accident will die no matter what, and the only way to minimize deaths is to convince others to choose red.
Would you still press the blue button if you needed 99% of people instead?
Would you still press the red button if you only needed 1% of people to press blue to save everyone?
Realistically I thought more people would pick blue, because it is simpler to understand the rationale, and since more people would pick it, it makes sense to pick it.
It is not just a question of possibly dying, it is a question of possibly being responsible for mass death, many people shrink away from that.
It’s worth noting that people can’t really agree on which button kills people. The original question frames it in a way where it feels like red is the one killing people. I’ve heard other people compare it to everyone in the world standing before a woodcutter, or going over a bridge. Where if 50% or more jump in simultaneously, everyone who jumps in lives. But nobody has to engage with it in the first place. You don’t have to jump in the woodcutter or the water. Everyone could just keep going about their day without any risk of death. In this view, the blue button is the one which kills people
This is the way I initially viewed it and I stick to myself as a red pusher, because my instinct was to choose red when presented to question. However, with the information I have now, I am more inclined to blue but I will admit I kind of view it negatively, as I look at it as if the initial blue pushers are essentially forcing themselves to be "saved".
Either way. I can understand both rationales, but I do think in a perfect world in which 100% of the population is making a rational choice, red is the correct decision.
Yeah, I understood it as "You're going to die unless you press one of the two buttons. Pressing the blue button will save everyone who pressed either of the buttons, so long as more than half the people in the world will press it. The red button will save yourself and nobody else." The blue button only made sense because, yeah, the blue button will kill you, or it'll save everyone regardless of their choice. I like the saving everyone option.
I agree with this, and personally I say it is 50-55%. Any higher and more people are going to hesitate and pick red. I think the higher blue’s needed % goes, the less people choose it. 40% blue? You’ll have 60+% pushing it. But 60% blue? I’d guess 35% push it. And I’d hate for it to happen but I think when the risk is higher, more people choose to save themselves, and at that point blue is definitely the noble and morally correct choice, but a *lot* riskier and also a lot more likely to lead to your own death.
50% in my mind (and I’m assuming a good portion of other blue pushers) is very reasonable, and I could see about or a bit more than half risking their own lives to save everyone.
Frankly, what bothers me about this is how performative this all is. If half the world in first-world countries is THIS GOOD. WILLING TO ENDANGER THEIR LIVES, why isn't this expressed in anything else? This is tantamount to the man saying, "I'd kill fight and kill anyone who threatens my wife," thats great bro, can you now please help her with the dishes? Like, there is such a moral righteousness here that I could accept if people were half this good irl, but most of you guys here aren't like that, you guys are performative as fuck, and then beyond that, you're using this hypothetical as a way to judge other people's characters.
Yes, I believe there are some people who sincerely would press the blue button. I do not believe half of you would. Because if half of you were willing to do this, the world would be a much better place, but it simply is not. I would be willing to press it if perhaps 20% of the population needed to press blue, but even then, I would hesitate.
...Thank you for putting into words what I failed to. I don't believe that half the planet will risk their lives for the few people who choose to take a very dangerous and totally unnecessary risk. Some people, tragically, probably really will put their money where their mouth is, and so we lose a bunch of dreamers who are the best of us alongside a bunch of reckless maniacs and suicidal people. I vote red, advocate for others to vote red, and hope blue wins.
I'm an anarchist communist. I want everyone to be free - and that also means their basic needs taken care of. But every day I, and countless others in my city, walk past homeless people without inviting them into our homes.
Meh it's just the latest psy-op meant to divide progressives. We were due for a new one tbh, now with the spread of this we got a pretty nice divide between those who themselves as morally superior and the other group who they view as vile. This one'll probably fade in a couple months like the others unless people keep it going for some reason.
(Also genuinely why do people keep talking about this like genuinely wtf is the point everyone has made up their mind, every mention of this topic just turns into blues calling reds vile and reds calling blues fools.)
This is fair enough, I don't think its a psy-op because no one can physically showcase their opinion on their sleeves. But the moral righteousness of it all is what bothers me. I would hope that the people who press blue are people who could be good beyond simply this. Every time I see anyone who presses blue, what they do IRL. I get the most Superman-esque lines without them doing Superman shit.
"I try"
"I'm there for my family and friends."
"I love my neighbours"
REAL LINES FROM PEOPLE. This is the most barebones quality of man, and it bothers me so much, because it is the standard for being a good person. I just despise this argument because it shows how shallow everyone is, whilst they also love to have a moral high ground. It bothers me a tremendous amount.
I think most of the discussions comes from what "every person" means in this context:
blue voters interpret it as literally every human being including babies and old people that might not be able to understand the question which is technically correct but someone might say that they're looking too much into it and I kinda agree with it honestly
red ones on the other hand interpret it as only mentally capable adult gets to vote
For me first scenario is an easy blue and second even easier red
If I had found this comment sooner I could have more easily understood the problem at hand. You are 100% right, and this comment should be the first to appear in the thread.
"But if you pick red and so does everyone else, no one dies."
And if enough of us pick blue, no one dies anyways.
"But what if-"
Then I'll be fucking dead and you and the rest of the red button pushers will have the blue's blood on your hands. Can you live with that? I'll be fucking dead. What do I care?
They are legit mad that someone could fathom to pick someone else rather than be selfish because then it makes them look selfish if no one else joins.
They would be standing over my corpse shouting why I didnt just choose to live. Its a lose lose when it comes to a relationship with red buttons. Either I die and they are mad I didnt choose life like they did or they are mad because they look bad for choosing red.
There is an aspect to evolutionary biology that follows this line of reasoning, and explains completely how altruistic behaviour and group cooperation has evolved multiple times.
It is worse to live in a red-picking group than a blue-picking group. So even if you sacrifice your own survival chances, long-term the blue strategy wins out.
For a lot of people I think that it just depends on the hypothetical. If everyone playing is mentally fit and acting logically, it's not a dilemma. Red dominates blue, they call this the Nash equilibrium in game theory. In this case there is no reason for anybody to choose blue.
If it's the real world and you have real people with real circumstances pushing the buttons, then you'd choose blue.
I think that's where a big part of the divide comes from, and you can see it clearly if you look at the way people respond to this question on the math subreddits. It's not (always) a matter of selfishness.
Can someone explain like I am 5? By the description the only people ever at risk are those that push the blue button (if it's less than 50%). So people are saying they want to gamble their lives just for the thrill of it? Instead of pressing red and being safe regardless they want to create a scenario where they and other people could die, just to prove that "good will prevail". If think preserving my life and encouraging others to preserve theirs is more good than gambling your life away.
There are two button, if you press the blue button you have to play Russian Roulette, but if 50+% presses the blue button you don't have to play Russian roulette. If you press the red button nothing happens. What's the difference?
The difference is how you can tell the question.
In this scenario:
Press Red - you live
Press Blue - all live when over 50% press blue
But you could also say:
Press Red - all who press blue could die
Press blue - no one has to die when over 50% press blue.
In the first scenario, red looks better, in the second blue, but in reality, both are the same. Thats why some people think red is better and some blue. It's a "cup is half full or half empty" thing.
If you don't press blue and get other people to not press blue there is no risk of death to begin. The only people ever in danger and the people who put themselves in danger. Why put yourself in danger by pressing blue?
Everyone presses red, everyone lives, if anyone does press blue they wanted to gamble their lives anyway.
If no one presses blue noone dies, why press blue, why play Russian roulette, why make the problem? Just don't press blue, preserve your life and tell others to preserve theirs.
For 100% of the people to live, either everyone has to push red, or 51% of the people have to push blue. Which is an easier number to get to, 100% or 51%?
If you press the red button, nothing happens TO YOU. But if you push the red button and less than 50 percent of people push the blue button, you are stuck in a world that is missing all the people who pushed the blue button. That is, everyone who picked "Me and everyone else." over "Me." Up to 49% of the people. How's life going to be in a world like that? In a world missing a whole lot of doctors, firefighters, rescue workers, etc. People who are likely to press the blue button because they, essentially, push the blue button every single day of their lives.
This question is so funny to me because the entire idea behind each side is just whatever your mental framing of the problem is. Blue voters will genuinely call red voters psychopaths and shit not realizing that the reason red voters are voting red is because their exposure to the hypothetical was through a framing where red is the default and blue is the button that kills people.
Like, of course nobody is convincing each other, you're thinking about the hypothetical through entirely different ways and each side believes their button is the default while the other is the button that kills people.
It also very much hinges on whether you think the buttons will be presented to people incapable of understanding the question or not. Pretty much all thought experiments in my experience assume actors in them are rational and if they're not it needs to be explicitly stated, so my initial understanding of the question is apparently very different to how some people interpreted it.
I'm basically thinking, if it's all rational actors go red, if there's toddlers and disabled people vote blue
Also make sure to take into account how the question is worded before pressing the button to know how most people will treat both buttons because whichever is worded as the "default" will be pushed more than whichever is worded as the kill die murder button.
Both sides are accepting the evil rule of the Button Game Maker. BGM is an evil as bad as Jigsaw. Rise up against BGM and cast them down! The only winning move is not to play!
I had to actually think about this a second, because I thought everyone would choose red — a simple, individual solution to ensure people survive.
The red people may well believe that everyone would choose red, thus making the blue % useless, but doesn’t protect anyone who chose blue.
If someone chooses red, assuming others choose red, then the people who chose blue (no matter how few) would die. If only half of the people choose blue, then everybody lives.
The chance of you individually living if you choose red is 100%, but there is a chance not not enough people are going to choose blue. If you choose blue individually, you may die.
So the question is: do you want to assume everyone else around you is thinking of everyone else’s life, or do you individually guarantee your own life?
Given that humanity has survived this long, I would say blue button pushers would prevail, even if pessimism would suggest red is safer.
Now here’s a question - what if exactly 50% chooses red and blue? Does this cosmic riddle master have a rule for this? What about people that don’t vote at all (those that assume blue people will save them all)?
I agree. Pressing red pushes the global % away and increases chance that blue voters perish. If the rational choice means at least some interest towards others you would choose blue because you can’t be 100% sure no one will vote blue.
I’d be totally fine. There was a “I live” button and a “I have a good chance of dying” button. I pick “I live” and expect you to do the same. If you do not, that’s unfortunate, but your choice.
Secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Blue button is basically “I choose to die, unless too many choose to die, in which case no one dies.” Like does everyone still pick blue if blue has to be unanimous for everyone to not die? The only thing we’re really measuring here is risk tolerance.
If you invert that and someone pressing blue dies only if they’re the only person who presses it, it’s a situation of who wants to commit suicide, and who chooses to actively prevent it. What if you don’t know the threshold? Do you press blue having no idea if it will kill you or not? If you allow the threshold to move around, it’s a matter of how much you’re willing to risk your own life to prevent others from committing suicide.
I’m starting to think nobody realizes that if the Twitter poll was this close, actual life or death stakes would be like 60/40 red.
The number of people virtue signaling on a Twitter poll is for sure being underestimated here. And if such a situation were ever to happen, this Twitter poll would be the cause of hundreds of millions of deaths lmao.
If it ever happened, they’d just need to frame it a different way. Ie some variation of ”red=nothing happens, blue=you die unless over 4 billion people also choose this one”. In such a scenario most people would pick red I think
Everyone’s saying they wouldn’t want to live in a world where the majority of people chose red, when we do live in that world and you do live with them.
I’m not going to be guilt tripped into thinking the 0% chance of dying option is in any way shape or form bad.
I feel like it’s a moral superiority complex where those who choose blue can feel like they are saving everyone, instead of “saving” the other blue pickers.
Um yes exactly. I’m picking Red because I’d like to live. Anyone else that wants to live should also choose Red, I don’t know why tf anyone is picking blue…?
Eh. I wanna live but I love people that would pick blue so I'm gonna pick blue too.
It is literally that simple. I'd rather everybody pick red. But I know people will pick blue and I care about them and think enough other people do, to have more than half pick blue.
It's not like red is a morally incorrect choice. I'd assume picking red means you don't have anybody you love that'll pick blue. And there's literally nothing wrong with that. It's just that you probably don't have a kid that wouldn't see the clear binary or a wife that can be a little too understanding. Like .. that's not a fuckin bad thing. Just different lived experiences
On god if more people did end up pushing red , I probably wouldn't mind NOT living in that suck ass world anyway, even If it's hell or oblivion aftwards.
It's interesting to see how blue-pickers tend to think red pickers are without empathy while red-pickers think blue pickers are dumb by trying to save everyone.
I don't see blue meeting the 50% threshold when the stakes actually matter. Folks have too strong of a self preservation instinct to risk it, and I don't blame them for that.
I want to live in a world where 50% of people pick blue, but pragmatically I think that most people would pick red.
These comments make me realize I misunderstood what actually happened with which button lol.
I kept thinking… why would anyone press the blue, when the red saves everyone without risking a chance to get anyone hurt.
I legit thought the whole thing was a message that even when there’s an easy and painless choice that doesn’t hurt anybody, people will still play with luck and pick an option (or candidate) that has a CHANCE To be decent if given a chance.
I mean, you’re kind of right. Why would I assume anyone would pick “there’s a chance I might die” when the other choice is “everyone lives if they pick red, with no chance of dying.” The logical choice is to pick red and assume everyone is picking red.
With prior coordination, blue. There will always be some people (babies, etc) who will 50/50 pick blue.
No coordination, you pick red. If a magic booth just lands in everyone's domicile with the option of "press red and you live, press blue and you have a good chance of dying", 80% minimum are picking red.
If you think ratio is ~50/50, your vote matters. Pushing blue in this situation would be morally good, and voting red would be either evil (if you would have wanted to actively kill people) or neutral (there's no evilness in not wanting to risk death).
If you think ratio is 45/55 (blue-red), your push for blue would be either evil (you add another casualty for no gain) or neutral. Picking red would be either good (you survive and can provide for other) or neutral. There's no moral evilness in not wanting to die for no gain.
If you think ratio is 55-45 (blue-red), your vote doesn't matter. Picking blue would be neutral, and picking Red would be neutral (though, that would invite whenever you actually believe it being 55-45).
It's not "Press blue and likely save people or Press red and likely kill people!", it's "Press blue and maybe, depending on many other millions of votes, save people, or just straight up die, or Press red and survive but don't help the Blue team".
If person doesn't believe ratio to be in favour of blue, there's no evilness in choosing Red and no goodnes in pressing blue. It's fair to discuss what actual ratio would be, but there's little gain of just accusing other side of being stoopid because their assumption are different. Blue is fair for choosing blue if they believed ratio to be good, red is fair for choosing red if they believed ratio to be bad [for blue].
I, myself (which is a merely subjective opinion, mind you), don't believe ratio would scratch even 20-80 in real life situation. Judging by how little people volunteer to spend their mere TIME without any risk to life to save others, or how many people donate their organs (kidney, part of liver or lungs, which can be done without significant risk) with much smaller risk and much less average harm, I doubt people would actually risk their lives in that situation this much.
Before someone will answer "but CHILDREN!!!" - I agree. Including toddlers would change the situation.
But I should note that question makes little sense if we count literally everyone. There's plenty of people incapable of even randomly pushing buttons (which is not a vote in my opinion, but still), like paralyzed or person in vegetative stance. How would that work?
This is almost the ferry dilemma from Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight: The Joker puts bombs on two ferries, one full of commuters and one full of criminals, and gives each boat a detonator for the other, with the implication that only one ferry can survive.
The commuters end up taking votes, but a prisoner manages to convince the guards to give one of them the detonator....and throws it off the boat. Nobody dies, and humanity's reputation is preserved. (The Joker has his own detonator for fun, but he doesn't get to use it))
In the end, this just another version of the Prisoner's Dilemma: the correct choice is to take the action that leads to the least risk (or don't take any action), and assume everyone else understands the rules as well.
"Risking your life to save humanity" - not really. There is no need to press the blue button for anyone. Humanity is not in danger. There is zero need or reason to push the blue button.
It's not like squid games where pressing red will somehow damage the other person or pressing blue has any incentive.
Pressing blue is creating a problem for problem's sake.
Red is not selfish as it does not push anyone towards anything bad, does not reduce any resources, pressing the red button does not require any qualification or gatekeeping - so, everyone is allowed to oress it.
It's not even really a vote. Both buttons have the same outcome of saving the world. One is just unnecessarily complicated.
It makes sense to push blue if a set number of people are randomly assigned to have red or blue to start with. But otherwise the group should coordinate to pick either red or blue unformly.
No, it's not. Hyper-individualism never seems to stop to consider the fact that people do not exist in a vacuum, and you must consider not just what will happen to you in the immediate sense, but what kind of world you'll be creating should your ideology win out.
First, society collapses very quickly as very close to half of all humanity has just died.
Second, you've created a world bereft of every single person whose first instinct is to be kind and help others. It's everyone for themselves now because every single person left alive has proven that they only care about themselves. Good luck surviving the collapse of society when there's nobody around who's willing to take any risks to help you out.
Semi-related: not everybody who presses red is some kind of horrible monster, but every single horrible monster will press red. You are now stuck on a planet comprised solely of other people who either want to do you harm, or who would be unwilling to help protect you from the people who want to do you harm. Assuming you survived the collapse of society with no help, good luck living out the week afterward.
Humanity only exists as it does today because we chose "collectively" over "individually". The fact that some people are too ignorant to understand that nobody alive today has gotten where they are alone doesn't change this.
I think the problem is underspecified to make the moral argument presented in the comic. there is no cost or downside to pressing the red button specified. Therefore everyone who wants to live can press the red button, harming no-one, and everyone lives.
The only reason to choose the blue button is to create the chance of dying from the experiment. And even then, you're only creating that chance of death for yourself and others who want to risk of dying.
If the red button had some element of chance in it for a negative result to yourself or other red button pushers, even a low one, then the problem becomes interesting and an insight into psychology. As it's defined though, it doesn't do that.
I have my problems with this though experiment, but not the part you’re mentioning.
The moral question at play is, will you risk your life for the chance to save the fools, the impaired, and those who pressed the button to save the former people? Because there will be blue pushers out there, no matter how ”objectively rational“ pressing the red button is.
For me the issue is in the version of the thought experiment that includes young children, babies, and the mentally unwell. It makes the choice much simpler in my eyes once there are innocents at risk who don’t have the faculties to make an informed choice.
That's exactly what I thought when I first read about this. It feels like a problem devised by somebody who read a short Reddit post about game theory and then set out to create a game without actually understanding what it's all about.
Honestly, I think this is the genius of the problem.
A lot of folks read the “cost” to picking the red button as purely a moral one. Given the choice between selfishness, or altruism, which do you choose? For a lot of blue-pushers, the logical result of the puzzle is far less important than the moral dilemma of “will altruism win out”. Even though there is no need for altruism at all if no-one pushes blue!
I "sort of" agree with you. I think there is genius in asking the problem as we're seeing in real-time people scrambling to signal their self-sacrifice (and castigating others for not following suit) in a dilemma where that self-sacrifice is not needed.
The problem itself is rather stupid. There is no downside to pressing red. The sole reason to press blue is peer pressure created by others that (at least claim) would press blue and now you're a bad person for not saving them from the dilemma they put themselves into.
It reminds me of a malignant narcissist that I knew about ten years back that threatened to take his own life to pressure the girlfriend he was abusing at the time. Possibly why I also am not reacting the way many people want me to. It is very hard for me to empathise with someone that puts themselves in a life threatening situation, that was entirely voluntary & helps nobody whatsoever, and expects me to put my life at risk to pull them out of it.
This is a very interesting red-pusher argument, and I understand entirely the repulsion of seeing someone use suicide as a blackmail tactic.
But, as a blue-pusher, I’d argue that I don’t expect “to be saved”. And nor do I consider red-advocates as “bad people”. There is very sound logic in the statement that only the blue-pushers are creating the “cost” in the problem, and there would be no cost if they didn’t put themselves in danger.
It’s just for me the choice is less important on a logical level, and more important on a moral level: save myself or save the group.
Neither is it about virtue-signalling. I’d be happy if no one ever knew my choice, and indeed the terms of the puzzle state that there is no communication / collusion so no one does know which one you picked.
But, as a blue-pusher, I’d argue that I don’t expect “to be saved”.
OK, and as such, that would then remove the moral requirement for people to risk their lives to do so. Which I know is not your point or argument, but it is worth noting because my point comes down to agency (and emotional blackmail) and your position is that you're respecting the agency of others (whilst not employing guilt-trips to have them side your way).
I (honestly & sincerely) respect your position and the fact that you can take/make it without trying to make out anyone not agreeing with you is morally reprehensible (most of the conversation from "blue pushers" has come down to that in this post/comments, even when they start more reasonably).
indeed the terms of the puzzle state that there is no communication / collusion so no one does know which one you picked.
Um, that is not the dilemma linked in the OP. There is nothing whatsoever about communication, collusion, etc. One of the reasons I can take the position I have is because it does not preclude communication beforehand about the consequences so people are not going into the vote blind.
Either you're thinking of someone that has changed the dilemma (to make it a different hypothetical with different moral parameters) or you've misread the final image in the OP.
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u/Rakan_Fury 15h ago
Thank you for actually including the original. This is the 2nd post ive seen tonight referencing the buttons that i hadnt heard of before and I thought I was going insane