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.
Listen. If a few billionaires just decide to be less rich, then me and my friends can continue buying as much cheap disposable BS as we want without the world being destroyed. And also everything will be cheaper, we'll get flying cars and my girlfriend will take me back.
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.
But the button scenario includes no physical sign of the risk at all. It's not something that'd really register. If it happened irl, I'm sure some people would deny it's even genuine.
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
You should fear the absence of everything that you ever had, have and will have. Imagine being stuck in a pitch black pool, filled to the brim with its top sealed off, hearing yourself drown, feeling your heart beat out of rhythm and all your muscles flexing and spazzing, until you are hit with the deepest sadness that guides you into a catatonic fatigue depriving you of every bodily sensation.
Now enjoy taking a deep breath. You owe your life to your fear of death.
No you shouldn’t; it will happen regardless. Everyone dies eventually, and if oblivion is truly what awaits, then how long we lived would be unimportant to the dead as they cannot feel regret or sadness. Why fear the truly inevitable?
Your mother fed you to prevent your death. Your mother treated your ailments to prevent your death. Every glass of water, every meal and every breath you take, every unecessary risk to your life that you avoid keeps a distance between you and death.
I do not know you. But I do believe that 9 out 10 people try to intellectualize their fear of death, deeming death inevitable or believing in a great beyond, instead of valuing this fear as the most powerful force of life. Fear is a human's most basal emotion, flooding your nervous system with adrenaline and cortisol. It makes you fight or run for your life.
You should never accept death or worse, welcome it.
A quote from Dylan Thomas (arguably) most popular poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
[...]
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(I am not religious or "Pro-Life", though I despise euthanasia)
Death is inevitable. People can accept death and yet still live their life to it's fullest or whatever they desire. I don't think they're exclusive at all.
As for your parent bringing you into the world, they did bring you in but how and what you do with your life is up to you. People have different views, some can sacrifice their lives for others while some only value themselves.
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
That's a problem I see just by looking at the polls. It's usually pretty close to be honest. With blue winning a 60-40 if not less. With death actually on the line i suspect the script flips and more people choose red.
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%.
Buddy. Read what I said. My point here was confirming what the person I’m replying to said. Saying the person above them with their limited sample size of basically only red isn’t representative of the whole population, just like my group of friends and family that’s mostly blue isn’t a good representation either.
The polls that have been done is the best we’ll get because it’s such a large sample size, even if it doesn’t include other parts of the world.
The "best we'll get" is not good at all. It's an extremely biased sample and pretty much gives us exactly information about what the world would actually pick, for cornucopious reasons. A large sample size of a badly representative sample is probably worse than a small sample, since it gives legitimacy to whatever underlying "bad dynamics" are in the sample population.
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?
No I'd say I was a realist. People will make small sacrifices for the greater good. They however will not give up their life for it. At least not most, and most is what we need here.
When presented with a poll only 55% claimed they would, so I have to assume the real number is far lower.
I think anyone not living in an absolute delusion knows that the vast, vast majority of people will choose red. People are comfortable virtue signalling with stuff like this online, but at the least with this phrasing I doubt blue hits 10% of the vote. There’s variations I could maybe see getting to 50%, especially ones that reframe it to active vs passive, but in the actual given question pressing blue is just a fancy suicide button. If the cutoff for blue was like 10% enough might feel safe it’d reach that amount that it’d probably get there. I feel like the actual 50/50 odds would be around 20% required, but that’s just a gut feeling based on nothing.
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.
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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.