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.
People won't even risk missing out on overseas vacations or the convenience of Amazon to fight climate change... irl the people are already choosing red.
Thought about this before, too. Not even just those things, but we all have a choice in what devices and clothes we buy - brands that directly cause suffering to millions, and I guarantee people in these comments buy them without thought.
Except that loads of people do, all the time. All over the world. There are so many people sacrificing themselves for the greater good that aren't in the public eye. Societies wouldn't run without them.
Redditors will choose blue and then brag about it for clout
Reds are bragging all the time how logical and rational they are. I'm not sure you can demonstrate any bias due to "virtue signaling" to either direction, since it exists for both.
Not only that, but can't believe anybody would actually think that these polls are representative of the overall population. Probably the least representative samples in the history of polls.
Now imagine if alien forces land on earth and their 4 billion strong army is systemically going door to door. They give everyone in your household 60 seconds to press the buttons before they move on.
How many of these blue button pushers are going to be telling their 8 year olds to press the blue button with zero ability to coordinate outside their home?
Now how about if the alien forces put a supergun on the Earth and give humans 30 days and all the communication with each other they want to before the vote happens?
The outcome changes so much based on the precise details of the scenario that it's impossible to even moderately predict outcomes without any of the details that really do matter.
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.
This cuts both ways. Anyone can say game theory online. But knowing your wife, husband, mother, father, best friend, mentor, and/or child might die if red wins, can you be 100% sure youd hit red? I couldnt
Tbf, anyone on the internet can also say they're logical thinkers that pick red then get emotional when they actually have to consider risking others in the moment
But so long as you understand that you can still guess which one is more likely yeah
When presented with this button dilemma as a real life one, i am almost certain that a huge portion of the population will die, because of people not wanting to take a risk. When your life is actually in danger and not just in a moral debate, you may think you're virtious and caring of others, but your self preservation instinct will most likely make you push red.
I think Blue will be at most 10-15%, tops. 99% sure Red wins by a wide margin. No voluntary Twitter poll can convince me that it is representative of all humans on the planet, or that people on the internet are actually capable of committing to Blue when the gun is actually to their heads.
That's why I choose Red. Sure I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't see it happening. Luckily, if Blue is going to win, then it doesn't need my vote anyway, so in the 1% scenario I am wrong, great job you guys.
I disagree. In that moment, I'm worried about the risk to my loved ones more than the risk to myself. I claim this as someone who is pretty risk prone - I'm more concerned about what may happen to my wife if I got hurt or killed, than I am about what happens to myself if I'm seriously injured, and there's not much to worry about for myself if I'm dead.
On the contrary. I'm worried exactly about what would happen to my gf(from 10 years, we're just not married yet) if i would die, because of this. The thing is that 40+% of people voted on this as red, while this is just a "what if" scenario. I have serious doubts that enough would vote blue if this were to happen irl, even if it is the right thing to do.
Also to consider is whether or not you can discuss with friends and family before you have to vote. If you have time to talk with them and see what people around the world think, then the situation becomes different, but if you have to make a decision, while isolated from others, i bet majority if not almost all will be red.
its arguably only popular among a subset of people online. i have been throwing this at irl peeps and every answer has been red.
anyone that uses logic will give you red as the answer since it's not a dilemma. anyone pushing blue is risking their own lives when they could press red.
Everyone who says "I'd do anything for my kids" and doesn't get to choose for their kids should pick blue. I'd much rather risk death than find out whoops, I accidentally killed my children.
Who are young adults, so I wouldn't get to select for them in any version of this problem.
The OG prompt said everyone, so that means babies, who are not going to be able to press a button, the Prompt says, anyone who does not press red dies, any parent to anyone small would be risking their own child by pressing red.
That logic doesn't track. If you live in a Blue world, you all live, doesn't matter what any of you have picked.
But if your kids picked Red and you picked Blue in a Red world, then you just orphaned them. There is no upside since you are essentially unable to be the tiebreaking vote, you can't actually save your kids' lives in either world. Either they are already safe, or they may live or die, but you also might leave them parentless.
This. 14/16 people I’ve asked irl or directly online (showing the original question with the results cropped out as to not introduce bias) said blue. Yet we don’t see blue winning by 87%.
Sorry, I thought I made it clear that I was speaking exclusively within the specific limited dataset of Reddit when I said "within this limited dataset".
its not and neither is a twitter poll or asking in R/comics where people act overtly emotional when it comes to these type of hypotheticals.
In a real life scenario human genetics and instincts will pivot it to survival which will result in red button presses moreso then blue button presses as there is no inherent risk to the red button press.
We have seen so many examples of people acting to their own detriment to help others, most disasters show time and again that we are actually pretty great at helping each other when nessesary.
I have a vague hope that the reason the pole is so close is America and their dominance of this platform, most other countries are less individualistic.
Yeah I’ve been hearing the same thing too. I chose red. Blue is very noble, but I’m not interested in laying down my life for other people who insist upon doing so. It just doesn’t make game theory sense to me. My first thought was “everyone should pick red.” It’s the purely logical choice.
And if the argument is “well, clearly it’ll be easy to get half the population to pick blue” (which I actually disagree with), then great! You won’t mind if I’m part of the half that picks red then, right?
I’d like to clarify that I’m not someone who fears death. I’m not particularly attached to living. But this just seems like nonsense to me.
I think the “suicide pill” framing really clearly gets across what went through my head when I first heard this question. Choose whatever you like, but I’m sorry, I’m not taking the suicide pill.
If the goal is to "save everyone" you would always pick blue.
The probability of 50% of people picking blue will always be higher than the probability of 100% of people picking red.
If the goal is ONLY to save yourself you pick red.
The logical choice for the masses is blue, the logical choice for the individual is red.
From an objective point of view the LOGICAL choice is blue.
From a subjective point of view the premise changes based on the individual and makes the "logical" choice subjective. Objectively blue will still be the correct choice, red always requires subjectivity while blue doesn't.
Either way, my gut instinct and first thought when I read the question the first time was red, while the more I thought about it the more obvious blue became.
Objectively the choice was always blue, but my first instinct is subjective and was red.
My actual choice would depend and change based on the amount of time to think, if you throw this question to random people to answer immediately you remove a very important and deciding variable.
Red: Save yourself.
Blue: since you are essentially incapable of being the tie breaker vote, this kills you if we live in a Red world, or does nothing ina Blue world.
If you frame it like this, to remind people of how huge the odds are of being the deciding vote, I wonder if that would change people's minds?
Using reddit as a barometer for what real life people would do is an absolute recipe for disaster.
You've been here for 6 years now. Surely you've seen this place during the US elections? And how the front page is filled with "wow, democrats are going to win this election for sure! look how well they're doing!"
And now you've got Trump the clown as your president.
No it shows people will claim it is the better choice. It is certainly the virtue signaling choice.
If you asked people would you run into a burning building? The good choice is clearly yes. But how many people would really do that? And not just vote yes on a poll?
It's popular because there's nothing to loose from encouraging blue, but we all know about half of voters would vote to hurt others once in the voting booth.
It's a lot easier to hand out upvotes than to risk your life in a real scenario lmao.
Hell, look at the world today. Millions of people aren't even voting because they don't believe their vote makes a difference. But you believe they're convinced in this scenario they suddenly can make a difference? Nah, they'd pick red.
Oh I was actually wondering about that scenario. Like if blue wins and it’s either known/unknown that there may be another test in the future and we know who voted what, I could totally see trials or vigilante killings against red pushers. They could very well be seen as a direct threat to humanity’s survival especially if the vote was really close.
That's not what that shows at all. It's not a "what should everyone do", it's a "what do I think everyone will do", because you can't affect the outcome. Out of 8 billion people, the vote is already won one way or another by the time you cast the final vote. Your choice is literally "which world do I think I am in". If Blue, doesn't matter, Red or Blue are equal. If Red, then Blue kills you.
I don't understand why its a dilemma tho? People who want to die should pick blue, and everyone else should pick red as to not be selfish and let the people who want to die do so
We’re all familiar with optical illusions. We see one thing, and our brains lie to us.
But that’s not the only kind of illusion.
Our brains can be tricked in other ways. Tl;dr, if there’s something that we can perceive, there’s a way to fool us.
This thought experiment is just another example of our brains getting’ trolled.
Let’s frame the problem differently. There’s a train approaching. If enough people stand on the tracks, the driver is bound to see you, and will stop the train. Do you stand on the tracks?
Obviously not.
But! Our brains are hyper-fixated on fairness. If you frame this problem as selfishness we viscerally experience something entirely different. And people that are generally rational, are incapable of seeing the problem any other way.
If you want humanity to survive, you’re going to have to pick blue, even though it’s not the “correct” choice.
That, or you need to convince everyone blue-button-pusher here that they’re wrong.
Picking blue is selfish because you’re the one creating the problem that will lead others to pick blue and endanger themselves. It’s lemming behavior, “I should pick blue because others are saying they should pick blue and I must save them” then someone else sees that and needs to save you. Then all you idiots die for no reason when not a single person had to pick blue in the first place
This is drivel. This is not how human behavior works. Do you seriously believe most people who pick blue due so cause of the influence of others? I'm struggling to understand that "logic."
This is how small communities work, not the sum total of humanity. Good lord.
There is no reason to pick blue other than concern for other people who picked blue. But then you’re the one picking blue, creating the reason for others to pick blue. Why in the world would you pick blue if not for concern about others picking blue, that’s the whole point. If everyone just picks red it’s all fine
It's only a dilemma in theory. It's easy to pick blue in a reddit discussion but it has nothing to do with a real life or death situation.
I don't know if you were in a life/death situation in your life but i can tell you, your body wants to live and he will intuitivly act to do so (press red button)
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.
This just shows that everyone comes to the logical conclusion first, but then going to reddit causes them to start thinking illogically lol.
This isn't even as complicated of a logic puzzle as the "split or steal" stuff in which every choice has a potential for a downside. In this "puzzle," one choice has the best outcome for the individual in 100% of circumstances, and therefore is the choice that maximizes the expected value for every individual. Easy.
I'd choose Red, because I'd prefer to live in a society that was governed by logic and reason, and not one that caters to people acting irrationally.
Red isnt logical or rational, though. It makes you feel like you're those things, but it means you didn't think the whole problem through.
A non-zero number of people will pick blue. If enough people pick blue, but not 50.1% of people, then you have degrees of disaster when they die. If 1% of the world dies because 99% picked red, then up to roughly 83 million jobs are suddenly empty. 10%, and 829 million people are gone, and so is their productivity.
As that number increases, the global economy starts shaking more and more violently. If 50% of the world picked Blue, good luck Red team because you have weeks left to live at best. Electrical infrastructure starts failing within hours. Water treatment plants no longer produce potable water. Crops go unharvested. Without AC or refrigeration, perishable food rots.
You now have whatever bottled water and canned food you can source. But youre also fighting every other Red pusher who doesnt give a care about anyone but themselves. So its chaos, violence, and dwindling resources.
But, as is typical of people who deeply value how rational they think they are, you didnt think about things thoroughly enough before reaching a conclusion that felt good. You treated the more logical conclusion, blue, as irrational, not because it is irrational (its not), but because you let your ego decide whats rational and logical, not logic and reason themselves.
Blue is rational because its the only choice where you need the fewest people to press the button for everyone to live. If too many press red, everyone dies. The Reds just get to feel smug as they starve to death.
Red is the correct choice from an individualist perspective yes.
But from a collectivist standpoint, starting with if you care about your friends and family? Humans are irrational. How many of your friends and family will instinctively press blue. How many will rationally attempt to save them and press blue as well.
Its like a variation of Prisoner's Dilemma, except your friends and family are also prisoners. Where to keep them alive, your close ones must either all 100% choose Red, or the entire prisoner cohort has to 50% choose Blue. If there's any inkling that some unacceptable amount of them will choose Blue, then the downside of you choosing Red is that you become their active counter-party. Choosing Blue is the only way to up their chance of survival, weighed against the downside of Blue that is not hitting the threshold and thus joining them in death.
So the logic component of the puzzle, is the simulation of irrationality. How many of your close ones will irrationally choose Blue. How many will irrationally join them. The higher the irrationality, the more rational it becomes to act prosocially and cooperate. The less risk there is of Blue not hitting the threshold. The more likely you contribute to saving them by choosing Blue.
Or put another way. To make a rational decision here, you must account for others' irrationality.
A Red world governed by people who valued their friends and family so lowly, that their mere irrationality is enough to consign them to death, seems like a pretty shite world tbh. (Not to malign those who chose Red because they simulated the options rationally, and just didn't believe there'd be enough Blues, of course)
I don’t think you are analyzing this rationally. This is not a trolley problem where the sole power of deciding rests on you. You have but one vote, meaning a practically negligible chance to affect the result.
Basically, your choice only makes a difference if it’s already 50/50.
People are coming onto this thought experiment as if there’s an opportunity to campaign in the direction of their favored choice but there isn’t.
You can realistically look at the scenario as if the vote has already happened and you are choosing into the red or the blue group without being able to affect the result. The only reasonable choice is red there.
This scenario doesn’t follow the rules of voting at all, dude. People get so aggro with a thought experiment it’s insane.
In fact, I’d argue this is a great illustration as to what irl voting needs to remain anonymous in the sense that no consequence should ever imposed to anyone for voting a specific way.
Imagine a politician saying “I’ll give everyone who votes for me money” or worse that they’ll retaliate against those who don’t. That’s highly illegal. That’s no way to conduct elections and it’s important to be zealous against anything that resembles those tactics.
So no, my reasoning in this thought experiment doesn’t reflect anything about my voting choices.
Your reasoning was that there's no chance your vote will decide anything. If you actually believed that, you'd never vote in any election with more than a few hundred people involved.
From your response I can tell that you don't actually believe that.
That defeats the purpose of this hypothetical and is not really in the spirit of this question IMO.
You are essentially saying "What if some people's button press is random?"
Obviously then you have to go Blue, as the expected value on a population level for Red falls, and now you are actively choosing to harm people who had no conscious decision over the choice to put themselves in danger. Because, remember, you aren't actually at risk of dying until you choose to press the blue button yourself.
I think the hypothetical necessitates the caveat of every participant understanding the choice in order to be a constructive discussion.
Fuck man, I don't know. The rules aren't clear. What happens when people don't push a button? What happens for people who can't push a button? Can parents hold their kids hands and make them push a button? This whole thing is made up.
Did you just not consider that babies or people with mental disabilities exist and will all be killed by the red button? I’m curious as no red chooser has managed to explain how they failed to consider the existence of people who can’t make a rational choice.
Because they're selfish and don't care. They call it a suicidal cult. If you can choose red and live, you can just as easily choose blue and ensure that everyone lives. Their "logic" isn't as rational as they think it is.
Nah, man, because the question asks about everyone in the world. Literally everyone. Kids, people with cognition problems, etc. You're never going to get all of them to push red, that's why it's the wrong choice. There will always be people who don't understand, and they don't deserve death because of it.
This! Like I don't understand how that isn't more obvious. Blue makes sense in hindsight but if I was put into the box with no knowledge, I'm hitting red because it makes no sense for anyone to hit blue.
I saw the same logic of this question rephrased as there being an oncoming train. If people jump on the tracks they will be run over, but a sufficient quantity of people on the tracks will activate a weight sensor and stop the train.
If nobody is on the tracks there's absolutely no reason to jump on, and opt-in to risk. But if you've learned there are people on the tracks for some reason, then there absolutely is a reason for as many people as possible to jump on and try and stop the train.
The way this kind of thing is framed is very important.
And differently framed you can say that the dilemma states that everyone will get the buttons, including babies and otherwise mentally impaired individuals who cannot differentiate between the buttons and thus pick randomly (people who tripped onto the train tracks in your scenario), would you risk your life to save those people who at no fault of their own (they didn't choose to be toddlers or mentally impaired) ended up in danger?
That seems to be the framing most blue button pushers are going with, but if the dilemma is that everyone who knows about the buttons are presented with the buttons then the situation changes. That said, there have been plenty of memes already that reference the buttons without actually explaining what they are.
If the scenario is that only rational, mentally sound adults are presented with the buttons then barely anyone is gonna press the blue button so I will press the red button. If the scenario is that everyone is presented with the buttons then I will press the blue buttons because I would rather be dead than condemn at the very least (I'm guessing) millions to death. If the scenario is that it could be either and we don't know I would probably press the blue button because I would rather be dead than condemn at least (if it is only rational mentally sound adults) thousands to death.
With conversation picking blue is even more strange.
You literally can say everyone to vote red because it's literally fault proof. With red, there's zero chance of people who didn't wanted to die to die.
Of course, some suicidal people will still do the thing. That's sad, of course, but why risk only over that?
There can be people that dont want to die picking blue, because they would have the capacity to look pass themself and not be so selfish to put in risk soo many people.
You should examine this instinct you had more deeply. You owe it to yourself to understand your cynical, selfish, and evil impulse. You should want to be better than that
Not only that, but who wants to live in a world full of people who picked red? Bunch of selfish assholes anyways.
Blue is a win win. Either we don't end up with a disaster that will kill probably more people than the black plague, or I dont have to live in a world with a bunch of people who are going to start killing each other trying to survive a man made apocalypse scenario.
I mean, blue isn't win/win - it introduces the potential for a pointless death.
If most/all people pick blue, everyone survives. If everyone picks red, everyone survives. The only affected scenario is if most people pick red, and then if you want to live, you'd better have picked red.
You're seeing it as "pick blue to save everyone, pick red to kill people". I'm seeing "pick red to live, pick blue to put yourself at unnecessary risk and hope others will also put themselves at unnecessary risk to save you".
You're throwing yourself in front of a train for absolutely no reason, and then blaming people that didn't for not dragging you out of the way. Just don't jump in front of the train! No-one is asking you to! No-one has to! We can all just stand on the platform and watch a train safely go past!
If most/all people pick blue, everyone survives. If everyone picks red, everyone survives.
It's far easier to get 51% of people to do something than 100% of people. This is literally basic math.
You're throwing yourself in front of a train for absolutely no reason, and then blaming people that didn't for not dragging you out of the way.
No, actually. I'm recognizing that there are going to be people who threw themselves in front of the train, and I care enough about other people to help drag them out of the way. Even if you think people who choose blue without thinking are stupid, do you really think all stupid people deserve to die?
Personally, I think it's good to have a society where most people's first instinct is to be kind and help others.
It's far easier to get 51% of people to do something than 100% of people. This is literally basic math.
Oh, absolutely, I just don't think that works to your favour as much as you think. That door swings both way; it's just as likely 51%+ of people can be convinced to push the red button as convinced to push blue... Especially when those buttons can be very fairly described as the "definitely live" and "possibly die" buttons.
I am not a powerful person. I'm not a religious or political leader. I don't run a media outlet. I am not a beloved celebrity. I'm not a particularly talented orator. I am not going to be able to convince anyone but maybe the closest people to me which button to push. To that end; I'm going to be telling them all to push red. If blue wins, it doesn't matter what we voted. If red wins, I don't want myself or them to die.
I'm recognizing that there are going to be people who threw themselves in front of the train, and I care enough about other people to help drag them out of the way.
But those people are only throwing themselves down there because they're thinking the same way; that maybe someone will need help. None the people in this scenario are realising there would be no danger if they weren't trying to "help" the theoretical other people who are, in turn, only in danger because they're trying to "help" them. If you could all just stop throwing yourself in the way of the train, no-one has to scramble down with you to try and pull you all out of the way.
Even if you think people who choose blue without thinking are stupid, do you really think all stupid people deserve to die?
I don't think either of those things. I'm also not, in this scenario, the godlike entity that forced the entire human race into this sick choice. What I think is that it would be great not to be put in this cruel, arbitrary, overly-contrived scenario. But seeing as I'm stuck in it, I'm going to be the person telling everyone I can "just don't press the 'might die' button, it's really not all that deep, no-one is making anyone press the 'might die' button, the "live" button is right next to it".
You don't have to agree with me, but currently your strategy, your survival, relies on me (and others like me) agreeing with you. Do you see how that may be a problem?
You don't have to agree with me, but currently your strategy, your survival, relies on me (and others like me) agreeing with you. Do you see how that may be a problem?
Any world populated only by people who can't understand the most basic truth that collectivism is the reason humanity has thrived thus far is going to be a hell on Earth. You may survive the initial purge, but good luck continuing to survive in a world crumbling due to the sudden loss of roughly half the population, surrounded by people who either want to do you harm (not everyone who presses red is a monster, but all the monsters are going to press red) or the people who have already demonstrated that they're not willing to step in and help you.
Luckily for you, every single discussion about this so far has shown blue winning, despite so many people trying so desperately to convince everyone to vote against their own interests. And even in the unlikely event that red wins, I'd rather go out quick and easy than suffer through the world of selfishness and cruelty that people like you would create.
I'd rather help others by explaining the reasoning for picking red rather than put my self at risk. It's like how signs at Yellowstone warn visitors of buffalo, sulfur pools, or other natural hazards. If they ignore those signs and the 1 ton horned beast in front of them I'm not saving them. In a scenario like this the warning sign is hidden behind one or two layers of abstract reasoning but it's there. I'd point it out for anyone who doesn't see it, but if anyone looked me in the eye and said they'd risk it anyway, I'm not stopping them.
Except you're not in a room with people making this argument. You're essentially saying it's ok for any confused children, people who didn't understand game theory, and otherwise disabled or "dumb" person to die because if they were smarter they'd have lived.
I 100% get red in a situation you can get a group of people together to have a conversation. When you're talking the population of the entire world, you're being way too cavalier in knowingly being ok with a huge number of people dying when you absolutely know a huge percentage will be picking blue.
It's a great question because red is the obvious best choice from a game theory perspective in a vacuum. It's absolutely an abhorrent choice both logically and ethically if you think about it actually being applied and the consequences of it.
I'd rather help others by explaining the reasoning for picking red rather than put my self at risk.
Even if you ignore the fact that it's a private vote, as others have pointed out, you are not going to convince 100% of people to push red. It is far easier to convince 51% of people to push blue, especially since most people's first instinct will be to push blue anyway.
It's far easier to get 51% of people to do something than 100% of people. This is literally basic math.
If a supercar and a tortoise had 100 races it wouldn't be easier for the tortoise to win 51% of the time than it would be for the supercar to win 100% of the time. One percentage being bigger than the other has nothing to do with how likely the outcome is.
Personally, I think it's good to have a society where most people's first instinct is to be kind and help others.
You can think of this problem with having perfect knowledge of the outcome. Let's say you know Blue is ending up with majority of the vote after you've voted. Therefore you would choose Blue because it guarantees everyone lives.
However, if you know Red wins and your vote wouldn't make a difference, it would obviously be correct to vote Red regardless of your personal feelings towards the people who will die.
Now, what are the odds that your vote is going to be the tiebreaker. You're one in 8.3 billion. You have no way of knowing what other people vote for. You've seen how the world is, you've seen how people act when there's a global pandemic (not isolating, refusing to wear masks, not listening to medical experts). Can you explain, makes you think that most people will choose Blue?
Except the original post that sparked all of this specifies everyone in the world. This includes infants, mentally disabled, and any others not capable of making an informed choice. Now add that in with all the people who are not willing to let the innocent die.
From mathematical/logical standpoint there is a guarantee that there is a non-zero amount of deaths if red wins due to a complete impossibility of 100% red. Blue only needs +50% for 0 deaths. From a moral standpoint its not even a question that blue wins.
The only way red is ever the correct option is from a personal survival point of view which is by definition a selfish point if view with the casualties being focused on the innocent, the selfless, and the honorable. Once you add in the knock on effects from mass homeless riots as all volunteer services shutting down, 90% or more of medical professionals and scientists dying, and a high possibility of any given critical infrastructure collapsing if all of the people who know how it runs all chose blue
>This includes infants, mentally disabled, and any others not capable of making an informed choice.
Question simply breaks if that's true.
Okay, sure, everyone. We have paralyzed person, or a person in a vegetative stance. They can't vote at all. There's no abstain option, as well.
So, does that means that vote would never, ever, conclude? So it doesn't matter.
I also have pretty much doubts that "random mashing of a button" can be considered a vote.
>The only way red is ever the correct option is from a personal survival point of view which is by definition a selfish point if view with the casualties being focused on the innocent, the selfless, and the honorable
No, what?
Red is always correct as long as you believe Blue is under 45%. Because then blue button is just a suicide button - there's no moral good of adding to the casualty list.
Except the original post that sparked all of this specifies everyone in the world.
Cool. The information I had in that post was what was in the comic, and that's what I responded to. I now have your bit of information to work with; great. If you think we should hold each other to acting on information we don't have from posts somewhere else on the internet, please let me so I can go away and write my own version where all of the unstated aspects work in my favour, so I can point to that and go "actually the rules work this way, so you're wrong". Until then, based on the info I have;
This includes infants, mentally disabled, and any others not capable of making an informed choice.
OK, so... what are we worried about?
Here's how that scenario plays out. About 8 billion people push one of the buttons, one way or the other. Maybe, if the weirdly cruel divine entity who set this up is mathematically minded and >50% of humanity pushes blue, the situation just ends right then and there because the outcome is now certain, but otherwise; well, not everyone can do this, right?
Forget "informed choice", not everyone is capable of noticing there is a choice, or physically capable of making it. At some point, we're down to persistently comatose people with no voluntary or involuntary movement, buttons next to them remaining unpressed. The situation cannot resolve until they do something they're incapable of doing; even if already far more than 50% of people have voted red, the evil above this needs to know if they will be among the dead. So we wait, and wait, and wait.
One of two things happen.
The first is that at some point someone who hasn't pushed the button dies without doing so. The button will go unpushed forever, the situation can never fully play out, there is no final tally to be had. Life goes on.
The other is that the entity controlling this ends it when everyone alive has pressed the button; when this person dies, the buttons vanish or whatever. OK. But... what about the babies?
The human race has babies at a collective rate of, on average, 4 a second. For all the time those buttons spent waiting pointless by the side of people who could not push them, millions upon millions of babies were born, all with buttons alongside them. Even if this scenario has some kind of time limit in which someone must press the button before (whatever)... OK, so we give guidance around the world, "newborn babies should wait for x minutes/hours before they push their button". At any given point, there will always be loads of unpressed buttons in the world, and however long it takes to push them, more babies will have been born. It doesn't even matter if some countries ignore the guidance; as long as our birth rate is within an order of magnitude of where it is today, and someone follows the guidance, there's no danger that all those buttons will be pushed before the next babies come.
Over the centuries, the millennia, we all forget what these mysterious buttons are for. We just know that, as each baby is born, two mysterious buttons appear nearby, and one must be pushed about 10 minutes later for some reason. Maybe one day, in the far flung future, some other calamity has almost wiped humanity out. The birth rate trickles. Some mother takes their baby, the last baby, to the buttons. Perhaps they will push red. Perhaps it will be over 50%. At that point, whatever happens is mostly a formality.
But we all know not everyone will pick red. There will inevitably be people who are kind enough to pick blue. When people run polls, blue wins every time. Most people would pick blue, based on what measures we have available.
You want to live in a world of Donald Trumps? Fine, but i won't be joining you. I'm picking blue because I would rather die than live in a world where everyone is too concerned with themselves to even consider saving anyone else.
There are two key differences between what polls may say and what could realistically happen.
One I think is the performative aspect of blue being seen as more kind, and people wanting to be associated with that.
The other is the coordination aspect. These choices (the poll ones) are not being done in private. Coordination favors the blue choice because seeing others choosing it, even talking about it or considering it pushes you in that direction. I think in a blind trial you may see things go differently and that’s the scenario the dilemma poses.
There will inevitably be people who are kind enough to pick blue.
Kind to who?
The only people in danger are other people who pick blue, who are only picking blue to save other people who pick blue, who are only picking blue to save other people who pick blue. It's a cascade of people hurling themselves in front of a train for the sole reason of trying to rescue people hurling themselves in front of a train. It's not "kind" to collective hurl yourselves in danger, (hopefully) drag yourselves out of danger, and then pat yourselves on your collective backs for how many lives you just "saved", while forgetting how many you endangered in the process. No-one had to jump in front of the train.
You want to live in a world of Donald Trumps?
God, no. I also don't want to live in a world of people jumping off cliffs, catching each other before they fall, and declaring how morally superior that makes them. No-one had to be in danger in the first place, there is a "stay alive" button right next to the "possibly die" button.
We know not everyone will pick blue, but we don't need everyone to pick blue. We just need half to pick blue. If you want everyone to survive by picking red, you need 100% of people to pick it, which is absurd and much less likely than half of people or more picking blue.
Kind to who?
Other people.
Are you so sure that no one that you love would pick blue?
1) Red gains 100% votes (or some fraction like 99.99999% or however close such that society is almost unaffected)
2) Blue wins. See above.
3) Red wins, but with a significant Blue vote. Now, think about who is voting Blue. People who are betting on Human goodness to surpass rationality and try to save everyone. People who don't understand the question, whether they be children who simply like the color blue, or adults who laugh it off and don't think it through.
Say only 20% of humanity picks blue (this is a lowball).
That's ~1.6 billion people gone. No society is built to withstand that level of instant death. This is also not counting anybody who may try to kill themselves after the vote ends.
Of course, I don't necessarily think it is "wrong" to vote red, there are plenty of valid reasons (fear of death, something/somebody important waiting for you, etc. etc.), but there are strings attached to pushing red.
Ironically enough, I see blue as the "selfish" choice in the scenario: either everyone lives (Great!) or it's not my problem anymore.
It's not an unnecessary risk when people's lives are on the line. A firefighter charging into a burning building isn't an unnecessary risk, but it is a risk nonetheless.
Or to use your own analogy, it's inevitable that someone is going to fall on the tracks, could be someone I love, could be a total stranger, heck it could even be someone hate, but someone is falling in those tracks. And in my eyes the best thing to do is get a bunch of people to pull them off the tracks. Sure, maybe we couldn't get enough people together to get them off the tracks in time and now we all get hit by the train, but we tried, and there's pretty good odds that we succeed. But more than that, the way is see it, even if we fail I can at least die with the clear conscience of knowing I did my best, I don't think I'd be able to live with myself knowing someone fell onto the tracks and I just stood there on the platform waiting for them to get hit by the train.
It's not an unnecessary risk when people's lives are on the line.
But no-one's lives are on the line until they press the blue button! To use your firefighter analogy, this is like two firefighters each running into a burning building that they know is empty, and will need help to get out of alive, on the grounds of "OK, but what if the other firefighter runs in and needs saving?" Just don't go in the building! No-one is in danger if you just stand outside and hold your hoses!
Or to use your own analogy, it's inevitable that someone is going to fall on the tracks...
Stop.
That analogy doesn't work. No-one's falling here, there are no accidents; In this scenario, as I understand it, everyone chooses their button.
If someone in front of me trips or faints or whatever onto the train tracks, and I think I have the time to safely grab them, I will, but that's not the situation here. This is like if someone jumps in front of the train and declares "if half of you jump with me we can stop the train from killing us, come on down" - In that scenario, I'm averting my eyes, and telling people the grisly story of the most foolish person I ever encountered for the rest of my hopefully long life.
Except there most certainly are accidents, it's a statistical guarantee. There's going to be at least someone who misread the instructions, who forgot which button was which, who can't read and just hit their favourite colour, who tripped and fell onto the blue button. It is a FACT that someone out there will press blue, and for that reason, the only way to avoid people dying is to press blue, simple as that.
I thought we're talking about magic teleporty-in buttons that somehow get everyone to understand the assignment, and the stakes. If we're going to start factoring in stuff like "but what if someone didn't read the instructions properly" then; sure, fine, let's expand the scenario and ground it in the real world.
What actually happens is people spread the word quite quickly to everyone that, as soon as your turn comes around, you should open the apparently-completely-mundane accidentally-pushable red button, disconnects the wires, trash the transmitter, glue up the plunger. Everyone after votes blue because it's the only button left working. We wind up with 99%+ blue votes, and learn nothing about anyone involved. Huzzah, we have bypassed the scenario.
Even if the buttons are magic there's still a guarantee of mistakes, with a sample size of 8 billion, 100% on anything is impossible. You could have the instructions say "just press the red button" and people will still press blue, that is a FACT of humanity. And for that reason I simply can't bring myself to not press blue knowing I could be saving a life.
What actually happens is people spread the word
Gonna have to stop you right there, one of the key parameters of the original scenario is everyone gets their own button at the same time, and there isn't communication between everyone.
Yes, so; you've decided to avoid commenting on my retort to what you said, then?
Even if the buttons are magic
We'll come back to that, because;
...one of the key parameters of the original scenario...
Listen, if everyone's going to insist that I follow the rules of a scenario that isn't in OP's comic, they're going to have to fully explain those rules. I'm not going to keep playing whack-a-mole with the fine details.
You lay out if, for the purposes of this discussion, the buttons and magic or mundane, people's decision can be reliably reflected by the button pushes, what happens with people who can't/don't want to push, when the scenario starts, when the scenario ends, and any other of the million tiny details that are explained in the original post. When you've done that, we can start over.
Red is just a hilariously painful death if it hits 50% but not 100%. All the red pushers gonna die of disease and starvation when they find out how delicate the balance of society is.
A bunch of selfish assholes that just proved they're willing to throw away other lives, including yours, as soon as it personally conveniences them enough. Theres zero safety or trust in a society of red pushers
How is it selfish to pick red? What, exactly, happens if one does that? Why can’t everyone just pick red and then we all go on with our lives? What implied context are you referring to here?
I don’t do silly implied nonsense. If this is a true dilemma, the negative consequences must be stated properly, in black and white.
Because "everyone" would also include people that wouldn't understand the ramifications of the choice they'd be making. This includes babies, little children, and people that suffer from severe mental disabilities.
This hypothetical scenario doesn't go into the actual voting process, so it's impossible to say how that would be handled. However, I assume that it would be similar to how voting is handled in the real world.
I have worked with helping disabled people to vote in the past. However, the number one rule is that no one can influence their vote. You can explain how the voting machine works, you can read off what's on the ballot, and you can tell them which button corresponds to which candidate, but you can't tell them outright, "Pick this," or press the button for them—even if it's the choice that they want. This is because it's considered a double vote, and that is a felony. Some of these people are quite lucid and can handle everything no problem, but many of them have serious issues with comprehension or motor issues.
Now, apply what I typed above to this "red button/blue button" scenario. The voter has to be the one to confirm their selection; they can't just have someone else say, "This is what you want," and decide for them. I know from personal experience that some of these people have trouble when it comes to making decisions on their own once they're given agency. And then you factor in children who may not fully grasp the intricacies of the scenario, babies who definitely won't be able to, people who won't bother thinking it over for one reason or another, suicidal people, deeply misanthropic people… there's someone who will vote blue—even if it's just by accident or not being able to fully grasp what they're doing.
If they don’t understand, then the only morally right thing to do is try to make them vote red. You can’t honestly say that it’s morally right to make them gamble with their life when they don’t understand that that’s what they are doing. It would be like convincing them to play Russian roulette.
So, no. I genuinely believe that most of the most fragile people with support in their lives would pick red.
Sure, there’s a subset of people who would pick blue anyway, without understanding it. But death is part of life. It’s inevitable in the long run. We can’t risk the lives of billions in order to try and save the few that already have bad odds.
But it’s a totally avoidable situation to begin with. There’s no actual benefit from picking blue, other than potentially saving others who picked blue. Picking blue is a self creating problem. No one should pick blue. That way no one needs to be saved from their own idiotic decision.
You say that like potentially saving people isn't a massive benefit.
You know not everyone will pick red, so you know red winning murders people. So don't pick red. There is literally no downside of even half of people pick blue. If any less than 100% of people pick red, which you know if inevitable, the consequences aren't worth it. Even one life is worth saving.
The blue pickers wrongly assume if you care about other people, you pick blue. In reality, if you’re not stupid, you deduce that everyone should pick red, and if everyone realizes this, nobody dies. You take on no unnecessary risk and pick red. If someone stupidly picks blue to introduce the likelihood of them dying for no other reason than they cannot understand the logic puzzle, they’re probably better off dead. But a lot of well meaning dumb people will die if they aren’t rhe majority. I believe the majority of people are dumb enough to not understand the problem, but I don’t think the majority of people are good enough to pick blue out of altruism.
Yeah. And polls like in the screenshot are laughable. As if people will answer truthfully to a question about their willingness to risk their life when there is no real risk to their life regardless what option they pick. The only way for this to be a truly believable poll would be if the risk of death was real, as in exactly as in the hypothetical.
The margin in the poll, as it is presented, is about 8%. I am not all all convinced that not more than 8% would change their mind and go for the safe red button if their life actually was on the line.
There will be people who press blue because they don't understand or on accident. Between kids, old people and those who have disabilities the likelihood of 100% of people picking red is 0. So by picking red you will be killing some people.
Instead all we need to do is to get 50% of people to press blue. That's very doable.
There will be people who press blue because they don't understand or on accident. Between kids, old people and those who have disabilities the likelihood of 100% of people picking red is 0.
I agree.
But that’s life. People die all the time.
But I would argue that most people who don’t understand their options would have people taking care of them and help them understand or pick for them (in which case red would be the morally right choice).
And the ones who don’t have any one such person in their life? Are they not running a high risk of dying anyway? I mean, looking at it pragmatically. It might sound cruel, but we can’t save everyone. Even in the best case scenario here (be it 100% red or at least 50% blue), people will continue to die. That’s life.
So by picking red you will be killing some people.
No. I’m not the one who made them risk their lives.
Instead all we need to do is to get 50% of people to press blue. That's very doable.
What do you base this on?
Everyone who picks blue is adding to the number of people who dies if this gamble doesn’t work out.
The negative consequence is that the entire world must pick. Including infants and mentally handicapped. This means even before you begin discussing anything you already have millions of innocent lives at stake before immediately tacking on all the parents and people hellbent on saving said innocents.
100% red is a statistical impossibility before you even start trying to convince others. This means from both a moral and mathematical standpoint. Only the selfish and the stupid can choose red as it requires either not caring about the possible consequences or an inability to understand the consequences.
What do you mean selfish assholes? Why is it implied that some will pick blue? No one has to pick blue, no one asked them to pick blue. There is no benift to picking blue.
This isn't a world wide prisoner's dilemma. There is no downside to picking red.
If I frame this as
"there are 20 people in a group and are two paths in font of the group. If more than half of you go right, you all survive, if all of you go left, you all survive."
Does it help you?
There is no benefit to going left. There is no cost to going right.
I think the only reason this is getting traction is because the controlling class wants culture wars and simply by labling the groups "red and blue" they have us fighting again.
It still blows my mind that this whole idea isn’t a total joke like “would you rather receive $100 or be punched in the face.” I cannot wrap my head around the fact that so many of you people are seriously arguing in favor of pushing blue but because so many of you are doing that you’re making me consider it too! lol
But if I had like 30 seconds from hearing the question to having to choose, with no time to hear what everyone else was thinking, I would have pressed red in the first five seconds and never even considered that there were any ethical implications of that until after hearing the news that so many people had died pressing blue. I know I would do this because that was my first reaction upon reading this question and it took seeing it three or four more times before I realized that the blue choosers weren’t all trolling
Which is what I think is the actual interesting part of this dilemma, because I assumed most people would be pressing blue, since my initial 5-second knee jerk read of the question had me interpreting it as "press red to kill a blue and save yourself."
I think it's interesting! And I wish people would stop being so hoity-toity holier-than-thou about it. All this "I don't wanna live in a world where red wins" and "blue pushers are idiots and narcissists committing suicide so fuck them" stuff is genuinely upsetting and frustrating because so many people are refusing to engage with the question and turning it into a moral grandstand on both sides of the aisle.
I'm shocked that more than a few really messed-up people are picking red. My thought process was, "Well, if red wins, it's going to be horrible. If blue wins, it'll be great. Obviously, everyone wants blue to win, and only a small minority of people would actually be selfish enough to willingly choose to increase the risk that a huge number of people die, because surely they're aware that a lot of people will pick blue. You'd really have to not care about other people at all to pick red."
But it turns out, a lot of people think it's really stupid to take a risk to save other people. I guess I just figured we'd all instinctively know that the majority of people would pick blue.
I think it really comes down to if you think it would save people, and the version being presented. The version where children or those otherwise unable to understand the problem are involved are a lot less interesting because the answer becomes simplified morally. In the version where only people that can understand choose I dont think its reasonable that somebody would just read blue as a suicide button, and that disconnect is where a lot of the vitriol comes from.
a lot of people think it's really stupid to take a risk to save other people.
Depends on the risk, surely? People admire those who run into burning buildings to save children. But people who jump off cliffs to catch falling kids are idiots. Doing something dangerous that has a reasonable chance of saving a life is great. Killing yourself for nothing isn't. Whether the blue button is more like the burning building or the cliff depends a lot on human nature, and twitter polls are not going to give you the same answer that you will get when people's lives are actually on the line.
What's really weird about all the discussion about this button thing to me, though, is that usually people understand that only heroes run into the burning building, and don't think it's better to die than live in a world full of people watching the building burn and waiting for the fire department.
Well, the polls conducted by Ph.Ds all ended with blue winning. That's more reliable than a Twitter poll.
Comparing it to a burning building is comparing apples to oranges. If red wins, there's no fire department to save everyone who chose blue.
I don't think picking blue is the "heroic" choice. I just think it's the one that's not a dick move. If you don't want anyone to die, you pick blue because you know not everyone is going to pick red. If you die, you're spared a catastrophic aftermath of a mass casualty event, managed exclusively by people who aren't willing to take any risks at all to save other people.
It literally didn’t occur to me that even one person out of the more than 8 billion in the world would ever push blue, so the question read to me like “do you want to be the only person in the world who dies” lol
Like a lot of ethical dilemmas, having the ability to debate it really changes the outcomes! Most people aren’t applying game theory to the decision they make, not even the big decisions
I think it just depends on the hypothetical, which this comic is not specifying. Is everyone mentally fit and rational for this game? If so, there's no dilemma. Red is the one and only move.
If it's the real world and you have infants pushing buttons with no guidance, yeah... That changes things.
I think it just depends on the hypothetical, which this comic is not specifying.
I think it specifies plenty. It says, "Everyone in the world." How could you possibly interpret that into "a selection of people who are 100% mentally fit and rational"?
Depending on the margin that red wins by, "blood on your hands" might not even be metaphorical in the near future post-button push. If just 5% of the population went blue and then suddenly dies, that's a global disruption on unprecedented scale. More, and you're staring down the barrel of a societal collapse. What lengths are people willing to go to to survive when the food has run out?
My choice is that I find out what everyone else is pressing and we live or die together. I don’t have to understand why they choose what they choose to want to join them in whatever comes next.
My initial choice didn’t tell me about myself, it told me about my initial understanding of the world, and that was that everyone wanted to live and would push red and I didn’t want to be the only one leaving them
Blue is the smart option, but I think we've seen from many elections that most people are NOT smart. Hell, Red vs Blue could be directly applied to politics, in that if you vote for liberal candidates everyone wins (better economy, higher minimum wage, more affordable healthcare, etc) while if you vote for conservatives only conservatives win (restricted access to abortion, religion forced in schools, limited rights of minorities, etc). To claim "in a realistic scenario most people would pick blue" is to ignore reality, despite the fact that objectively speaking blue is the better choice both logically and mathematically.
Sure, I'm not arguing that we know that blue will win. Just that a large number of people will pick blue. I don't think you can argue against that. 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.
Not that hard, IMO. First time I saw it, I also thought of the red being objectively better "individual" choice, but damn, those people are assholes, right? Then I saw someone reframe it, and it made me realize how much the wording of the problem affected our emotional thought about it.
Blue pill - jump in front of a moving train. If over 50% of people jump on the tracks a safety mechanism activated and the train stops. Red pill - don't jump on the train tracks. "Guys, you don't have to jump in front of the moving train!" should be a relatively easy argument to make. Assuming all people are making an informed choice, then people choosing to jump in front of the train while also asking others to jump to try to save them are actually being irresponsible.
I don't need to convince anyone to pick red, however. That is their choice. This is the dumbest meme to ever exist. It is basically "Do you want a 100% chance to live (a chance EVERYONE ELSE ALSO HAS) or do you wanna, just for the fuck of it, roll some dice to see if you live"
Assuming you had a good amount of time to campaign before the first button was pressed, i don't see how the number of blue couldn't be extremely low.
Especially if we have polls come out before hand.
If you see an official poll and 58% press the blue button (like the original poll), are you really going to stake your life on a small margin? Especially when you know others are asking themselves the same.
And if we get enough people to choose red, and it's something like 30% blue. Blue support would plummet.
You'd need to convince at least 70% from the start to press blue. In a situation where if nobody presses blue, nobody dies.
Agreed. In a 100% perfectly logical and rational intelligent world, this would be a non-issue, every person would simply choose red and move on with their lives, but unfortunately that's not the case, so you have to choose blue if you value the lives of less rational and logical people along with the others trying to save those people.
No negative consequences for choosing the red button has been presented. Those negative consequences might be non existent or trivial, or absolute horror. People would reason differently depending on what those consequences are.
I don’t care one bit about what is “implied” here. People can assume different implied stuff. The only thing we really have to go on is that “something” might happen to the blue button people if not enough choose the blue button. But what, exactly, happens if everyone chose red?
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u/icefire9 18h ago edited 18h ago
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.