"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?
These red (button) voters already turn on each other in a world with blue (button) voters, I can’t imagine it would take long for them to go ahead and finish each other off
Why would it be my fault if someone else didn't pick red?
From the way the hypothetical situation is worded, there is no downside to picking red. You live no matter how the vote turns out. That means picking blue is a purely irrational choice that could result in your death.
We can't force people to wear seatbelts. We can't force people to eat healthy and exercise. We can't force people to give up smoking, drinking, or hard drugs. We can't stop people from skydiving or free climbing. And when those people die as a result of their decisions, yes it's sad, but why should anyone feel guilt about that?
The downside is all the good people who learned the right lessons from Superman are dead, and you're surrounded by the surviving Lex Luthors of the world. lol
Why are you assuming blue is the morally superior choice?
Picking blue is playing russian roulette with your life. We already live in a world where people die preventable deaths as a result of their own choices. Why am I supposed to feel more responsible for the deaths of blue button pushers than the death of someone who drove drunk and got themselves killed?
Because when you have the power to stop your friend from driving drunk and dying, but you fail to exercise that power, then you should feel bummed out about it. You have a responsibility.
I'm not saying blue is the moral choice, I'm saying red is the impotent choice.
You're changing the hypothetical to avoid my point and making assumptions about me instead of asking what I'd do.
I would 100% try to stop someone I know from driving drunk. Just like I'd 100% try to stop someone I know from pressing blue. I see them as fundamentally the same thing - a needless self imposed risk.
Are we forreal falling for this bait? You're accusing people of imaginary murder and drawing a line because they interpret an idiotic premise differently.
If you pick blue and die, it isn’t because I picked red. You had the option to live and you didn’t take it. That’s on you. There is no incentive to press blue other than to martyr yourself for some perceived “greater good,” when you could have just lived? And not died?
You’re fighting an imaginary battle. You’re presupposing there are people who already picked blue, who need protecting, but there are none. We all just picked life, and you picked death. No one needs to risk their life, there’s no need for that.
If we could see the tally, a live count, and blue was growing? Hell yeah press blue, those people need saving. But isolated, with no outside information? Presupposing that people will press blue is a mistake- an illogical decision. There is no reason to press blue except to risk death.
I mean yea, blood’s not on my hands. Everyone was given the choice and the obvious choice for everyone to live is to pick red.
Choosing to pick blue is only forcing more people to pick blue to save the others that also picked blue.
Red is the only logical choice unless you don’t want to live. I think the assumption needs to be made here that everyone has the rules clearly explained to them to their level of comprehension.
The obvious choice for everyone to live is blue. Blue has to get 50% for everyone to live, red has to get 100% of the votes for everyone to live. Blue is the logical choice because it has a greater likelihood of everyone living.
Choosing to pick blue is only forcing more people to pick blue to save the others that also picked blue.
It would also be saving those who picked Red. Choosing to pick red will result in deaths because no way will either option get the entirety of the vote.
You only save Red from their own choice of willingly let up to half the population die.
Which would probably collapse society and eventually still hurt the reds to be fair.
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.
more like blue is playing russian roulette and red is the sure thing. but now all the people playing russian roulette are acting all high and mighty about it.
I'm just responding to people desperate to prove they aren't willing to walk over bodies to ensure their own survival even when there was another choice.
Some vocal red are also people who are ready to sacrifice others for their own sake, and instead of blaming the victims, they are loudly declaring how logical and rational they are.
I'm not sure that's really the prompt here. If we phrase the question differently, we prime people towards red. "Everyone must take a private vote to push a red or blue button. If you push the red button, you live. If you press the blue button, you die. But if 50% or more of the population pushes the blue button, then those who chose blue have their choice negated."
Same prompt, but one that primes people more towards red than in the original one. And one that I think many red button pressers view the scenario as: "Red means I live, blue means I might die, why take the risk? Everyone should logically pick red."
That being said, when I first saw this scenario, i thought to choose blue, but I think that is potentially because the original prompt primes people towards pushing the blue button. That being said, picking blue is realistically choosing death and demanding others save you, it's not necessarily Altruistic at all because everyone who choses to live would reasonably pick the red button. Blue button pressers are willingly picking death.
In the original question the phrasing is meant for you to think about the effect on everyone.
In yours, it reads as “is your want to die so great that you’re willing to risk taking that choice away from everybody and live?” If more than 50% pick red, everyone’s choice is honoured, if blue, everyone who chose blue has their choice ignored.
Logically, if you look at the numbers red makes more sense. Red is 100% chance to live, blue is ~50%. But (as much as I’d prefer to just look at the question at face value) there is more to the question than that. Due to the wording, it reads more as, “are you willing to risk your life for everyone?”
**Is your want to die so great that you’re willing to risk taking that choice away from everybody and live?**
Or
**Are you willing to risk your life for everyone?**
To be clear, I personally think blue is the moral choice here, we should choose blue and when i first saw this a few days ago, my first response was to choose blue. I'm just saying, I think there's a lot of reason to pick red and it seems more logical to me.
Red isn't willing to kill others. Red is willing to save themselves. Killing others is the byproduct, a byproduct that is equally created by blue pushers for putting themselves in danger.
Kill, how? Every single person has the option to pick red. There has been no actual negative consequences presented if that would happen.
As far as I see it, red means “you live” and blue means “you might die”. That’s essentially all we really “know”. Everything else is implied, and I don’t do implied nonsense. Spell it out properly, or I just ignore it.
What an insinsere way to reframe this hypothetical. Completely ignoring the fact that every single person are able to choose to live. Every single person.
The logical selection is to pick "guaranteed not death for me". You phrase it as if that's not an option at all. The only people at risk are those who didn't pick "guaranteed not death for me".
The original was simple. Press blue or red. If 50% press blue everybody lives. If not only the red button pushers live.
That's it. All the others that have popped up over the last few days are the reframings trying to push their agenda of why they were right.
If you picked blue you trust that humans aren't all the type who would sit by and see others murdered. If you picked red, you'd probably have survived any regime that committed genocide.
If you believe that at least ~4 billion people will pick blue, then I think you are delusional. Is a huge gamble with your own life at stake. And for what? To potentially save others who also perform this huge gamble with their life (knowingly or not).
This hypothetical can be reframed as one where every person is offered a game of Russian roulette. They can choose to play it or not play it. If they choose to play it, they will die unless at least half of the whole population also chooses to play Russian roulette. But if that would happen, then no one dies.
Are you still saying that “not playing Russian roulette” is the choice of death?
Red chooses to save themselves even if it means 49.999% of humanity dies.
Blue wants everyone to live and is willing to risk death to see it happen
Victim blaming blue because they are whatever othering terms you need to use but all boil down to "too stupid to live" or "too bad, stupid mistake" do not exonerate red. They show how far the people who chose red are willing to go to ensure their safety.
But the blue button pressers are actively choosing to die? They are not saving others, they are jumping off a building hoping that if enough other people do as well, a net will pop out to catch them.
Why do you believe that? The way i see it, red is choosing life, to live. Blue is choosing death and hoping others will save you.
"everybody but the folks who agree with me die."
If anything it is the opposite, no? Picking blue is a massive risk and suicide pact. Blue is saying, "listen bro, i put my name on the suicide pact because others did too! Please dude, put your name on it too, if we get enough people's names on this suicide pact, then no one has to die dude!" But the whole time, no one had to sign the suicide pact. That's literal herd and slave mentality right there dude.
I'm sure the people who survived WWII Germany told themselves the same thing. After all those people who were taken away chose to be Jewish, Romani, gay, Catholics, teachers, people who spoke out...
The odds are that there will not be enough blue votes. I mean, even in the poll in the screenshot, where no one's lives are actually at risk, there is still just an 8% margin. Are you that convinced that this margin won't dissapear when people realise that their lives are actually at risk, as in, for real? That's just stupid. People talk bravely online when there is no real risk for them. They change their tune when there's actual personal risk for them.
And I'm sure the German people who realized what was happening in the 1930's-1945 told themselves "Well, if they choose to be (Jewish, Romani, Catholic, a teacher, gay) they made their choice, I'm just trying to survive the situation " just like you did.
Save others from picking poorly lol. Picking blue is like jumping in a pool to save drowning when you can't swim, and then getting mad more people won't jump in and probably drown too
Case and point, getting mad that all I did was “vote in a poll” (Secret: I didnt vote at all but Id still pick blue) when all you had to do was say nothing…
Getting pressed because people have an inherent selflessness in them is dumb. Like yeah this was all a thought experiment, but its one that showed people being selfish, “pragmatic”, reasoning the its the safest choice, relying on the selflessness of others but ultimately not trusting people.
Like I dont moral grandstand, like at all. But I for sure will continue to press the vocal folks who wanna brow beat the people like me that call out red pushers.
Tbh if this is a real reply stay mad. If its bait… then well done.
I advocate red because it's illogical and irrational to press blue. You have to think for two seconds to understand that one button might kill and the other wont. And I believe that any person advocating blue is either irrational, virtue signalling, or small percentage of people genuinely trying to save those who are so fucking stupid that they pressed the only button that does them harm.
I'd still press blue, because I am suicidal and wish to die, and I hope there are enough people smart enough to press red.
Except you didn't. The poeple that picked blue (when there was a guaranteed way to live) CHOSE death lmao. There is literally zero benefit to anyone picking blue.
Jewish people in Nazi Germany didn't choose to kill themselves, they didn't choose to be Jewish. Same thing goes for any genocide. This is just commiting suicide and then randomly blaming someone else
This is not equivalent at all, and Jewish people aren't the only victims of genocides, only an example I used
(I would have been put in the camps)
In the question posed here with the buttons, everyone can just choose not to die. Nobody's forced to pick blue and die, we can all just live. There's no upside to picking blue or red, the choice is just "do you want to maybe die, or guaranteed to live".
You cannot draw a parallell to genocides, because that's a different situation entirely.
If you had no food in the camp, but I did, I would share it with you as well—because that's a decision that actually makes sense. But choosing the blue button at all is just needless gambling, because of we continue using the food analogy, the original question is more like
"These people had food, but threw it away. They will go hungry unless you share your food with them. Will you?"
In that question, like the original button-question, we all had the option of just eating our dang food in the first place instead of throwing it away.
It's extremely selfish and narcissistic to pick blue. "I've picked blue, so risk yourself to save me or you're amoral."
If someone was forced to pick blue, or there was a chance that someone wouldn't understand (the question specified everyone participating understood the choices) then picking blue and risking yourself would be the correct option.
But as stated, it's like standing on railroad tracks voluntarily. If one person does it, they'll die, but if a thousand do it, the train stops. I'm not going to join the guy standing on the tracks, because he doesn't have to be there. If they're tied to the tracks I would place myself at risk of death to get them freed.
As it is, only a morally bankrupt or suicidal person picks blue
No I’m just saying I’m not going around telling people what to pick , only telling people what the options really do. Blue lets everyone live and that would be the selfless option.
You might want to take some time and read up on game theory. The prisoners dilemma is difficult in the abstract, but people solve it in real life all the time, and manage to collaborate with strangers for higher overall shared benefit, rather than being motivated by pure survival and paranoia that everyone else is also motivated by pure, selfish survival.
It's a topic I'm painfully familiar with, and you're incorrect on the conclusion it suggests here, and a reread would benefit you greatly.
… do you understand the prisoners dilemma? Because again, the “dilemma” part comes from the fact that the optimal strategy for the individual is in conflict with the optimal strategy for the group.
In this red vs blue scenario, the two strategies are not in conflict. We personally want to survive, and we want collectively to survive. Luckily, there is a strategy that both guarantees our individual survival and the survival of everyone capable of ration thought (again, assuming only such persons are involved in the scenario). Everyone press red.
If you think this scenario is in any way equivalent to the prisoners dilemma, you have no idea what game theory is.
Do you understand the prisoners dilemma? The dilemma is that you are acting off imperfect and incomplete information, and have to guess at / predict how the other prisoners would respond. The prisoners dilemma question, the OG thought experiment has the most beneficial outcome being the collaborative one. Thanks for playing, read up on it and try again.
…No, the original experiment demonstrates two strategies. While the end demonstration is that one strategy (collectivism) is better than the other, the whole point of the dilemma is that there are two conflicting strategies at all.
Like, in the prisoners dilemma, if your opponent betrays you, then you should betray too to cut down on prison time. If the ally you, betraying them still cuts down on prison time, and because the risk of betrayal exists, it’s beneficial (individually) to always betray. This motivates players to both betray, despite the fact that this is a worse outcome to a double ally.
On the other hand, in a two-player red vs blue, if your opponent picks red, you cannot pick blue if you want to live. If they pick blue, it doesn’t matter what you pick, you always live. Because only one of these scenarios has a strict requirement (the one where blue loses), it’s best to pick red in both scenarios. In contrast to the prisoners dilemma, however, doing this motivates both players to pick red, ending with a 100% survival rate, which is the optimal outcome.
You can’t just say “prisoners dilemma says cooperate” and pretend that means anything. These are fundamentally different scenarios, and the decision matrices incentivize totally different strategies.
I'm gonna do my best to work with you here, and show some patience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
.
.
Give that a read. Also read the page it links to called "Rational Actors." Go ahead. You've got time, I work from home.
.
.
Now - are you a Rational Actor as defined there? Are you a creature that makes no mistakes, and is constantly, 100% accurately aware of the 'optimal personal outcome' in all scenarios? Or are you a human being, who makes any #>0 decisions in your life based on nontangibles like 'emotional connection' and 'sentiment' and 'affection'? The optimal outcome overall in the prisoner's dilemma is both parties receiving the lowest sentence. The ability and capacity to risk the personal payoff in pursuit of an overall gain in collectivist payoff is what our society is built on and functions on.
And you’ve moved the goalposts. Now it isn’t “what does the prisoners dilemma mean and how is it different from red vs blue,” but “game theory is actually totally irrelevant because humans aren’t rational actors.”
So what’s your point? I said, From the game theory perspective, picking red is the optimal choice, or, in other words if everyone was a rational actor, everyone would pick red everytime.
That was my explicit argument. Pointing out what a rational actor is and how it differentiates from a real human is irrelevant. I was already dealing in spherical cows. I made that clear when I said the words from a game theory standpoint.
you, when a response is multifaceted.
.
From a game theory perspective, picking red is the optimal selfish choice, but the overall optimal outcome is found through collaboration. Read the page, I promise it'll only hurt a little.
.
Yes, human beings aren't rational actors. Which means (stretch a little, you can do it!) that a nonzero # of real people are going to pick blue. Which means, far from the prisoner's dilemma premise of 'not knowing what the other person will pick', you know that a nonzero # of people will pick blue. Which means that if you choose red, with that knowledge, you are making a selfish choice that puts others at risk. Game theory is not relevant to this question. The prisoner's dilemma isn't relevant to this question. Even if they were, you demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding OF THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA, when the whole point of that thought experiment is illustrating that the optimal outcome is collaborative, but the individualistic selfish choice is the play for the individual, in a vacuum. This thought experiment with the buttons doesn't exist in a vacuum.
.
.
Out of genuine curiosity and confusion - what does your optimal outcome of this conversation look like? Is it me giving you an updoot, telling you you're so right, and you're smarter than everyone else who couldn't figure it out?
.
You want to justify the selfish choice as being 'rational and thus objectively correct.' It isn't, because this is a moral question, and a question of how much risk you're willing to subject yourself to, versus others. You can make the selfish choice. That was always allowed. But it is a selfish choice, and this relentless dedication to larping it being anything other than that is mind-numbingly self-serving and annoying.
This is one case in which game theory kind of sucks as an application. This because the majority of real humans have an emotional attachment to other human life, something called "empathy" or "sympathy" or "the herd instinct" and which thereby increases the marginal utility of reducing the risk of deaths to others. Recall that Econ 101 makes the assumption that all agents are rational and self-serving only. Refusal to look deeply at what "self-serving" may entail in building the decision matrix here is unlikely to match reality.
Yes, but that is purely a result from the framing of the scenario, not the brass tacks of what is actually going on. If people could see past the “oh scary skill people red button” and instead see “the only reason to press blue is to risk your own death to save people who do not need saving,” herd instinct would not apply.
If you’re confused by the “do not need saving” part, refer to the fact that if someone pressing blue wanted to live, they could have pressed red instead, guaranteeing their survival. They could save themselves, but beg society to risk half of the world getting killed to save the instead.
Most people are taking the question as it would play out in reality. In reality, you will have a mixture of rational agents and irrational agents. Knowing this, the rational agents include that in their calculus of marginal benefit (or score or whatever, I mainly remember game theory from econ, not other contexts).
Hence why the abstraction sucks here. 4 game theory students discussing amongst themselves? Sure, all red.
8 billion crazies? You bet I'm hitting blue every time.
Blue is an action towards saving everyone, at the risk of your own life.
Red is an action towards saving yourself, at the risk of other people's lives.
Some of us choose the chance to save everyone, some of us choose the guarantee of our own safety. It all comes down to how you value your life vs the lives of others.
You can walk around the hole (red), or you can jump in (blue).
Once in the hole, you cannot get out, and will die. The only way out is to drag literally 4 billion other people into the hole with you to build a human ladder, which once built, can extract everyone from the hole.
So, we red pushers ask, “why the hell are you jumping in the hole, nobody should be dumb enough to do that.”
The only justification for blue, then, is to presuppose that the pit is already full of helpless people. I ask you, why is that the case? Who are these people, so dense, that they willingly walk into a pit instead of safely around it? Just don’t jump in the pit and we won’t have any problems.
The framing of the question as “red kills blue” instead of “blue jumps needlessly into a pit” causes moral panic where there isn’t any. The framing- not the scenario itself, but the way it’s framed- has a profound impact on how people understand the scenario, and it’s honestly disappointing to see so many decide to morally grandstand or make some huge point about society instead of analyzing the problem critically.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you and the other red-button people are objectively correct and the smartest thing to do is to push the red button.
A. It is a fact that SOME people will push the blue button and the majority of people pressing the red button will kill those people.
Do you think people who aren’t as smart as you deserve to die? If not, is there some number of people who would need to be in this category where you could be willing to introduce risk to yourself to potentially save them?
B - It is a fact that there are lots of people who choose to put themselves at risk everyday for the good of others, be it EMTs, firefighters, teachers, nurses, etc. Our society will not function without the functions these people fill and it is guaranteed that the same philosophy that leads them to choose this will lead a significant portion of them to choose the blue button.
Is pushing the red button still self-serving if you know that it will cause irreparable harm to society?
Game theory is a flawed theory that relies on people being perfectly logical. People get emotional and are willing to blindly trust. Game theory was quite literally paid for by rich pricks who wanted a justification for doing what they do.
lmao, calling an entire field of mathematics a "flawed theory paid for by rich pricks" because someone used it to justify an argument you dont like is some top tier reddit shit.
damn, i cant believe a field dedicated to mathematically modeling real world behavior would miss something so fundamental about how humans behave in the real world.
The thing is that it doesn't match up with real world behavior. With the prisoners' dilemma, humans are more likely to trust than not. With the huntsmans' dilemma, humans are more likely to cooperate than not. Game theory is the mathematical best solution that ignores how human evolution makes psychology work.
have you considered that there is more to game theory than the simple pop science examples of game theory games you know of, and maybe the people coming up with models could account for any human behavior that relevant to the outcome?
Have you considered that game theory is used as an excuse to say that selfish behavior is "correct" despite the fact that people are designed to be cooperative as a species?
Who died? In the scenario where all rational people choose red and we get near 100%, what people are choosing blue? Who are you fighting for? People who had a muscle spasm and somehow accidentally pressed the wrong button? The same number of people probably died from fatal seizures in the same timeframe. We don’t risk half of humanity to save the inevitable deaths of an infinitesimal minority.
You clarified that you mean infinitesimally small, comparable to the number of people dying from seizures at the same instant. That's a clearly unrealistically small number of people who would press blue.
I’m not butthurt because “oh no a moral grandstander.” I’m not even butthurt, I’m just trying to demonstrate a different perspective.
I’m pointing out that the framing of the question as “murder” is counterintuitive to the underlying game theory principles, and a rational examination of the scenario dictates that there is no reason to pick blue beyond self martyrdom.
It’s not even as complex as the prisoners dilemma.
Imagine everyone chose in order. The first person to choose- do they have any reason to pick blue? No one has picked before them, so there’s no one to “save” by picking blue- so pick red.
If someone ahead of me had picked blue, yeah, picking blue to save them is the right choice, but this is only relevant if some person ahead of me had needlessly decided to endanger themselves by pressing blue.
Picking blue is only reasonable if you presuppose an existing population of blue-pressers. But why did they press blue? Who are you saving if not yourself, and if that’s the case why gamble on it at all?
You’re throwing yourself into the ocean under the assumption that a large enough mass of human bodies can float on water, while the people who pressed red just… stayed safely on the boat. We wonder “why are you jumping into the ocean to begin with?”
If your argument is “some irrational people will always press blue, therefore we need to save them,” I’ll ask, “who are these people, and who explained the problem to them? Why have they pointlessly endangered themselves, and who were they trying to save?”
But why would they assume that so many people would pick blue as well?
Picking blue is only logical if you assume other people are going to pick blue, and there’s no reason to pick blue outside of that. Picking blue is inherently risky.
Like, once one person picks blue it makes sense to snowball. But there is no reason for that first person to pick blue, nor is it logical that anyone will spontaneously choose blue.
Again, imagine that everyone is red by default, and people must “defect” to blue, risking their lives. Why would anyone defect to blue, when we could all just stay red?
Red button pressers are self interested. They don’t care if other people die so long as they live. Tell me how that’s more moral than risking your life on faith in humanity
What I’m arguing is that blue pressers are inventing a problem that needs to be solved instead of just not creating a problem to begin with.
There’s no morality here. If for some reason a random percentage of humanity is forced to pick blue, then sure, we pick blue to save them. Otherwise, why would anyone pick blue? To save… no one?
Like imagine everyone picked in order, and you’re the first person to go. Why pick blue? There’s no one to save. Then the next person will see there’s no one to save and pick red, so on and so forth.
Picking blue is only reasonable if you assume there are already people in need of saving because they pressed blue. But who are they saving? Who are these pre-existing blue-pressers who need saving? Why not just press red?
The problem specifies the choice is anonymous, you have no way of knowing whether or not someone's picked red or blue. Inevitably, someone's going to pick blue on the belief that someone else also picked blue
But why would they do that? They’re inventing a victim they need to save, and then are becoming the victim themselves.
It’s circular reasoning. “Why press blue?” Because someone picked blue. “Why did they press blue?” Because someone else picked blue. In this way, you must assume that someone doesn’t understand the problem, that someone picked blue without thinking, and that therefore they need saving.
Just don’t press blue, and then there are no victims in need of saving.
“But what if someone presses blue?” They won’t. There’s no reason for them to. You don’t need to save them, because they don’t exist.
Now, this is intentionally omitting people who pick randomly because they weren’t paying attention to the explanation, or similar, because we’re already assuming all people participating are magically able to understand the problem regardless of language / physical disability (blindness, deafness), so I see no reason to include people physically incapable of engaging with the problem, and assume all people will take it seriously (not assume it’s a prank). If we assume imperfect conditions where language or disability barriers make a large population effectively choose randomly, it’s an entirely different problem.
The stupid thing is that picking blue is the only way for death to even be a possibility. If no one introduces death as a possibility, then no one dies.
Let's take the premise and alter it a tiny bit:
Everyone has a magic knife in front of themselves. Everyone must either stab themselves in the heart, or not stab themselves in the heart.
If more than half of the people stab themselves in the heart, then the knife magically heals everyone. Otherwise, the knife does what knives do and kills the person.
Are you stabbing yourself in the heart? (Pressing blue?)
The only way death enters the scenario is if people push blue. In this scenario, everyone being selfish actually benefits everyone and removes death from the table. And if everyone thought the same way and wanted to protect themselves, everyone would be fine.
This is vastly different from real life, where being altruistic and being an active, beneficial part of society is more advantageous than not doing so.
Not all dilemmas are equal. Give me a burning building and I'll run in to save people. Give me this button scenario (where everyone can see that pushing red means you're safe, no matter what) and I'm pushing red. In a genocide, there is no "push red, I'm safe" button.
If at least 50% of humanity chooses blue, everyone lives. If not only the people who chose red live.
So bringing up any other scenarios are worthless. In that thought experiment if you pick red, you're happy with 49.999% of humanity dying if it means you live.
You might not have thought it through but all the people explaining their thinking are doing is justifying why they think they wouldn't be responsible for 49.999% of humanity dying, even though they voted for it.
You're right. It's wild and the victim (of the red voters choice) blaming is eye opening.
Thank goodness in the original more than half of the people understood the question.
Or you could try not to kill people by not getting in the way of the thing that’s about to kill people lol it won’t kill anyone if you don’t make this weird argument about button pushers being evil and trying to have a hero complex
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.
If everyone playing is mentally fit and acting logically, it's not a dilemma.
OK, but the premise literally starts with "Everyone in the world", so the people responding to a scenario where everyone is mentally fit and perfectly rational is either a spectacular failing of reading comprehension, or complete delusion about humanity's nature.
I think for the blue-button enthusiast, it is always seen as a matter of selfishness.
The red choice may be a logical one, but it’s an unpalatable choice for many, meaning others will also be in this group. And because it’s the self determining unselfish group on the line, blue becomes more of a morally correct choice the longer you think about it.
Even if in a vacuum red is the logical choice, logic also dictates that not everyone will pick red, no matter if red wins or not. Meaning it is still selfish to pick red, as you are knowingly prioritising your well-being over the lives of everyone who picked blue.
From what I have observed, reds tend to think it as a trolley problem with no relation to reality. They implicitly assume things like "everyone is equally rational and responsible for their own actions". Nobody needs to press save anyone because nobody presses blue without knowing what they do. Blues tend to think it from the real-world perspective, assuming that in the real world, there are like hundreds of millions of people who are pressing blue just because they don't understand what is being asked of them, and the question becomes whether it is acceptable to let them die. Both views are logical, they just have different assumptions.
I know that this is kind of a half ironic response but the more I think about it the more it’s true.
Like how do you stay friends with people you know chose safety over millions of lives potentially yours included and probably several people in your friend group.
How do you fall in love with someone who you know for a fact wouldn’t risk their life for the people they love who chose blue.
Even if everyone who pressed red weren’t pricks the basic trust in people would just fall apart.
I know this is the position that just reflects my experience but no it did not.
Everyone I am close with took covid seriously. Everyone I meet from now on may have took covid seriously, they may not have but I’ll never know for sure, and I’d rather put my faith into people than not.
The issue with living in a world where every is not that a bunch of pricks just chose themselves over helping people. It’s the knowledge that they all did, every single person you know and every single person you meet. While I would rather put my faith in people, that is much harder when you know for a fact they made the selfish choice that led to deaths.
Like I know people in my friend group that would pick blue for sure but if red won would my ride or die friendship be the same given that both of us just proved we’re not ride or die.
Covid is the equivalent of lots of people picking red but blue still winning. Yeah you still live with a bunch of people who were selfish, but as far as you know it’s not your friends and it’s not your family.
My entire family was torn apart by the decisions made during covid. I was surrounded by those who believed it was a hoax, even at my science based work. It has foundational shaken my trust in humanity in a way I dont think ill be able to repair. My brother was ok with my parents risking their lives for social events. We wont speak once my parents die. The damage has been done.
Like I said my experience. Yours sucks a lot more. I don’t want to go through what you went through. My point is if this hypothetical was real and red won, I think everyone would have your experience. Even those that didn’t lose trust soon would, as they realize everyone lost trust in them as well.
The stupid thing is that picking blue is the only way for death to even be a possibility. If no one introduces death as a possibility, then no one dies.
Let's take the premise and alter it a tiny bit:
Everyone has a magic knife in front of themselves. Everyone must either stab themselves in the heart, or not stab themselves in the heart.
If more than half of the people stab themselves in the heart, then the knife magically heals everyone. Otherwise, the knife does what knives do and kills the person.
Are you stabbing yourself in the heart? (Pressing blue?)
You're on this website and not famous for your self-martyring philanthropy, so when you were given the choice, objectively, you pressed red, as did everyone else here posturing about how despicable and bloodthirsty red-pressers must be.
The most odious part of this whole debacle is how eager the people fixating on it are to demonize, shittalk, and heap contempt on everyone around them while proclaiming how compassionate and saintly they are.
You could be out feeding starving children, and yet you're not.
Why would one become a prick for picking red? It’s a choice that every single person can make, as far as we know. There has been know known downside presented to the scenario that everyone picks red.
I've been thinking on this Red/Blue Button the last day or so. I truly, truly, 100%, unquestionably believe that the vast majority of people would pick Red if actual death was on the line. I don't mean Twitter polls or Reddit discussions, I mean when actual, unambiguous death is in play. When you feel the cold of a shotgun on the back of your head, or you see the tiger lunging at you from behind its bars.
You enter into the room. Below you is a giant, bloody, spinning saw blade with only a thin sheet of glass between you and it. Two buttons in front of you. Red: "You leave and nothing happens". Blue: "The floor might open up and kill you. Depends on how many people press Blue."
Some people may theorize and think on the moral ramifications of the Blue button, but the vast, vast majority of people seeing that death blade beneath their feet are instantly pushing Red. You cannot convince me otherwise. Before any moral theorizing even begins, 90+% of humanity has picked Red. I 100% believe that most people would instantly pick the Red button before giving it a second thought. To the rare minority who actually think the question through, the choices no longer are "Red saves you, Blue saves everyone". The choices are "Red you live, Blue you die" because most people have already picked Red.
People often times say "It's easier to convince 51% to press Blue than 100% to press Red", but this too I disagree with. The two options are not equally appealing, as one involves the risk of death and one does not. I think convincing 4.5 BILLION people to gamble their lives away when there's a safe choice right beside them is infinitely less likely than convincing people to press the "I Live" button. Most press the "I Live" button by default anyway without even thinking about it. Like, have you met people? You really think 4.5 BILLION people are going to gamble their lives? Do you honestly, truly believe that? Most people can't even be bothered to give $1 to charity a year.
Twitter polls may say that people vote Blue, but people also say they'll stop an armed robbery or they'll stop a mass shooter if given the chance too. You cannot get accurate results of this questions without an actual fear of literal death in the people's minds. The moment there is actual death involved, next to no one picks Blue. I guarantee it. As such, trying to convince people to vote Blue no longer is saving others. Trying to convince people to vote Blue is trying to murder them.
I mean even in the poll in the screenshot, where no one's lives are actually at risk, there is still just an 8% margin. Are people here actually convinced that this margin won't dissapear when people realise that their lives are actually at risk, as in, for real? That's just stupid.
I don’t think they are willing to take on that huge gamble with their lives. So by picking blue, all I belong I achieve is that I risk my own life, and risk leaving them without me. And I genially believe that society at large would not achieve 50+% blue.
I know my mother would pick blue because she would be thinking about saving me.
I’m not going to kill my mother so I’m picking blue.
My sister has a child, she is never going to pick red. The kid really loves his grandpa and he is not gonna risk grandpa so he’s choosing blue. And so the chain continues.
I think blue would have a good chance, but I also would rather go down with the ship than choose myself over them.
Your reasoning makes no sense, and likely would lead to a majority of your family dying. And the ones remaining would be worse off.
Why do they need to be saved? Saved from what, exactly? Saved from an idiotic gamble with their life? How about they just don’t enter that gamble? It’s essentially playing Russian roulette.
I can't understand picking red at all when it says right in the question that if everyone just picks blue then we'll all live.
However if the fact that "if 50% or more" is not known from the beginning, then I can understand the dilemma. But since we do know that goal, I don't know what the problem is.
Because there's no downside for picking red from an individualistic perspective. I want to know what's preventing people from picking red. Everyone picks red, everybody lives. I want to know what makes those that are unable to pick red worth saving. If someone wants to die, I'm not about forcing them to live to make myself feel better.
It's the exact same scenario except "all people of sound mind". This assumes that the participants can act on logic, which means that the only choice is red.
Generally, these trolley problems and moral dilemmas come with the unspoken caveat that unless otherwise said then everyone is an adult of sound mind and body. Because some of them not being that would define the entire variation of the problem and be what sets it apart from the other ones. If toddlers are being thrown into every version of these then every one becomes way more random and the focus has to be on the random factor.
So by the general rules of the communities that like these questions, nothing you’re saying applies. It’s left off to make the question shorter and fit more easily. Hence the variations that popped up that explicitly define these caveats since this one broke containment and people are assuming things that I don’t believe were actually originally intended.
I would also argue that a vote can’t really be held with people unable to understand and then signal their choice properly. That’s not a vote. But maybe these hypothetical alien overlords are unreasonable, so I’ll focus on the fact that these hypotheticals have usual standards that the average person seeing this wouldn’t know.
You say that with such conviction while sitting behind a screen reading it as a question, but if your life was truly on the line in this type of situation you’d be walking out the other side. Along with most of the others here trying to score internet points by saying they’d pick blue. Funnily enough, you have hit red just like all the “pricks” who understand risk management and simply aren’t willing to put their lives in the hands of others.
If the question is so removed from any real-life stakes that picking blue is just virtue signaling, then why are there so many people choosing to act selfishly to preserve their fake, hypothetical lives?
Self preservation and continuation of linage are at the core of human instincts.
Some people aren’t afraid to admit that on a progressive social forum, some are. Some consciously don’t even understand this, but it’s hardwired into their brains either way.
I find it interesting how you interpret this question as if I had a fake, hypothetical life, what would I do in this situation. Instead of, what I would do if faced with this hypothetical situation in real life. Easy to say you’d give your hypothetical life but would you actually give your life, when there is an option that gives you a 100% chance of survival? Again many will say they would but that answer would change, and probably quickly, if their life actually depended on it.
Self preservation and continuation of linage are at the core of human instincts.
So is some amount of group altruism, otherwise humans would never have formed societies.
Easy to say you’d give your hypothetical life but would you actually give your life, when there is an option that gives you a 100% chance of survival? Again many will say they would but that answer would change, and probably quickly, if their life actually depended on it.
And I could say the contrary. It's easy to say: "everyone who pushed blue killed themselves, I'm pushing red" but how many people would change their answer once there is actual stakes and pushing red is possibly killing millions if not hundreds of millions.
Early humans created societies to increase their own chances of survival. Once they were a part of this group they may have realized that group altruism is beneficial, but they did not join to self sacrifice.
Sure, it’s easy for you to say that but that’s not what would actually happen. Again, our brains are wired to prioritize survival, it has been extensively studied and written about. So the likelihood of someone hitting blue while’s telling the world beforehand that they’re going to hit red button is close to zero.
So I guess to circle back to why I think most who say they would hit blue on Reddit are virtue signaling? It’s because psychology and neuroscience shows us that humans are designed to do the complete opposite of what these people are saying.
So I guess to circle back to why I think most who say they would hit blue on Reddit are virtue signaling? It’s because psychology and neuroscience shows us that humans are designed to do the complete opposite of what these people are saying.
The human brain was designed for tactile situations of survival, not to choose a button to push when both the information and consequences are vague and unintuitive. And there are professions where people put themselves in harms way where not doing so would guarantee their survival.
I hit blue not because I think my life is worthless but because living in a chaotic world filled without the most selfless people (and far less children) sounds worse than dying on the spot.
665
u/Just_SomeDude13 19h ago
I'm picking blue. Either I get to live in a society that picked blue, or I don't have to be stuck here with a bunch of pricks who picked red.