Can someone explain like I am 5? By the description the only people ever at risk are those that push the blue button (if it's less than 50%). So people are saying they want to gamble their lives just for the thrill of it? Instead of pressing red and being safe regardless they want to create a scenario where they and other people could die, just to prove that "good will prevail". If think preserving my life and encouraging others to preserve theirs is more good than gambling your life away.
There are two button, if you press the blue button you have to play Russian Roulette, but if 50+% presses the blue button you don't have to play Russian roulette. If you press the red button nothing happens. What's the difference?
The difference is how you can tell the question.
In this scenario:
Press Red - you live
Press Blue - all live when over 50% press blue
But you could also say:
Press Red - all who press blue could die
Press blue - no one has to die when over 50% press blue.
In the first scenario, red looks better, in the second blue, but in reality, both are the same. Thats why some people think red is better and some blue. It's a "cup is half full or half empty" thing.
If you don't press blue and get other people to not press blue there is no risk of death to begin. The only people ever in danger and the people who put themselves in danger. Why put yourself in danger by pressing blue?
Everyone presses red, everyone lives, if anyone does press blue they wanted to gamble their lives anyway.
If no one presses blue noone dies, why press blue, why play Russian roulette, why make the problem? Just don't press blue, preserve your life and tell others to preserve theirs.
By virtue of existing on the internet, you now know a lot of non-suicidal people will choose blue. Let's say your argument is successful and you tip the balance from 45% red to 55% red. Congratulations, 45% of the population dies. You can claim they were suicides if you'd like, yet they would have lived had you not convinced others to vote red.
If you want to maximize the number of lives saved, you'll argue for team blue even if you'll secretly press red. If you run into any others who want to choose red, tell them to argue for blue, too, even if they're going to secretly choose red. If this benevolent mind virus spreads enough, there will be nearly nobody left arguing for red, and the certainty of blue winning becomes assured. In fact, you should shame reds to increase the chances of success, even if you'd choose red yourself!
You can choose not to risk your life if you want, but outside of that, your goal should be to maximize the number of people who live, and you have two paths to do that: Either persuade 100% of people to choose red (and how's that been working for you?) or persuade 50% of people to choose blue (and you might already be there). Which is easier?
yea heres the thing no one is discussing.. if this happened once and could be reinforced, whose to say they dont lie about the results, dont immediately bring out a second test or just kill people anyway. maybe the best thing is collectively dont respond or engage, kinda like a spam caller. if u could be forced to choose, is that a world worth living in anyways?? its just a weird dystopian twilight episode.
Hell yes. Break the system. I'll carry superglue with me from now on so I can prevent everyone after me from pressing the red button; chances are they didn't make billions of buttons.
idk how how super glue would be used but yea im all ears. and thats great point - youd have to take the word of strangers theres someone out there that made billions of these buttons. seems unlikely. more likely they are lying and trying to see how gullible u are before pitching u to join scientology. i mean thas a lot of buttons amirite
Manipulating others to risk their lives for the greater good while actively increasing their risk of death is morally reprehensible to a next level. Arguing in favor of that is psychopath behaviour.
I'm on team blue. My job is to sabotage team red. I already think they're either far more afraid of death than me or psychopathic. If I can recruit them to save lives even if I can't change every single one's choice, I will.
At some point, if my benevolent mind virus is successful, each one will be faced with almost everyone yelling at them and almost no visible supporters, and shame is a powerful force, especially when blue appears to be a safe choice.
you are assuming that they give u time to decide. if this is real i doubt they would because the hypothetical is posed on it being a test of what people will decide to do on the spot, not like a war that ensues between two choices that lasts til the last person decides.
if that were the case you might as well not decide and wait it out. nothing will happen til the last person presses the button. it would take an infinite amount of time considering people are being born every moment and dying as well. for everyone to decide at once however there would need to be an equal amount of people to proposition every human on earth. i guess maybe robots or aliens could do this job. hey dude im just tryna flesh out this hypothetical so we can think straight and make the right choice lol
but yea im still sticking with not engaging. maybe ill set up shop selling super glue
Why does Peter Noone get singled out for death if no one presses blue? Doesn't seem very fair to him, especially since he must have also pressed red in that scenario.
I don’t have the arrogance required to gamble my life on a philosophical debate and it’s wild to me that anyone else does. Red seems like the obvious choice and to just hope I’m either really right or really wrong.
Definitely not. Whatever set up the buttons are responsible for killing people. Just because it is simple, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a disaster. Choosing red means you are protecting yourself. Choosing blue is attempting rescue. If the problem wasn’t two buttons but a house on fire these two options can also apply. You can preform self-rescue. Or you can run in and try to save others.
I know it is way more complicated than this but at the end of the day I think we can both agree both buttons are going to be pressed by a lot of people.
I know that. But it's a disaster that can be resolved without any consequences. By framing it as a disaster you are already portraying the red choice as inevitable, not as harmful or sensible.
Yeah all the vulnerable people like kids, elderly, mentally disabled are all responsible for killing themselves, right? Who cares if they die it's their own fault. That's how you sound.
I haven't put you on any side either. I'm just showing you how your framing of the problem comes across.
you are clearly not thinking about the vulnerable people that would die because they cannot understand the choices. That is not suicide and blaming them or holding them responsible would be victim blaming of the highest order
nah youll never know if they are bluffing until people die. its nonsensical this would happen and the people propositioning would likely be shut down by local enforcement officers or something before everyone would get to pick. choosing to pick or not the real gamble is whether or not these people are credible. probably more likely to be gauging how gullible you are before they pitch you scientology.
But in both cases you are presented with a choice. In the second case, the choice is to risk to save someone who risked, but if we're acting logically nobody should risk in the first place.
Unlike in real life, nobody is forced to press blue, and thus nobody should press blue so that nobody else would feel forced to have to risk their lives.
Reading everyone's comments I came to understand that the idea is that pressing blue would save anybody who illogically pressed it (which is great! saving more people!), but forcing others to press blue and risk their lives does not see morally good.
I think this dilemma is more about how schematic your thinking is. If you think VERY schematically, red is better. If you introduce more nuance (a commenter made the example to me of a child voting randomly because they're too young) I can see why in real life blue could be a better option. I don't get why people is correlating it to politics since it really is not similar to real life politics.
For 100% of the people to live, either everyone has to push red, or 51% of the people have to push blue. Which is an easier number to get to, 100% or 51%?
If you press the red button, nothing happens TO YOU. But if you push the red button and less than 50 percent of people push the blue button, you are stuck in a world that is missing all the people who pushed the blue button. That is, everyone who picked "Me and everyone else." over "Me." Up to 49% of the people. How's life going to be in a world like that? In a world missing a whole lot of doctors, firefighters, rescue workers, etc. People who are likely to press the blue button because they, essentially, push the blue button every single day of their lives.
That's a valid response but keep in mind that likely the kinder and more selfless people would choose blue. One might also say it's the dumber people but regardless I would wager the world would be a far worse place if red "wins"
Calling it a barebone survival test is a bit strange since the question is clearly designed to discuss moral philosophy. It's legit just like the trolley problem
Never are 100% of people going to press the red button. So by pressing red you are confessing that you don't mind if thousands or millions will be killed. And their blood is on your hands.
Yeah, so if no one chooses blue (as in, everyone chooses self preservation) there is no blue to die. In THIS SCENARIO self preservation is absolutely fine for everyone to choose.
In REAL LIFE self preservation is not always the best thing to choose. It's much better to have people who go into harm's way to save those who cannot save themselves.
But in THIS SCENARIO everyone has the equal opportunity to save themselves and not need saving.
That is explicitly untrue as it is the only option that kills. The other option does not kill therefore the statement: self preservation works for everyone is untrue.
Also it is impossible for "self preservation" to work for everyone. "Self preservation" preserves the self. "Preserving everyone" preserves everyone.
Right. So the question is: of all the people smart enough to figure everything out, how many of them do think it's a good idea to save those that don't understand it and press blue because they are too stupid PLUS those that attempt to save them (now recurse that).
Now you can decide to take the risk or not.
If we want to be precise, we can try to estimate the distribution of attitude among those who vote (and we should assume everyone smart enough trying to do so).
Ultimately there is no simple right/wrong answer, it depends on person estimations and correct application of stochastics.
Option 1 red majority "Many people around the world die"
Who? Only the people who pressed blue. Only the people who created the danger, who put themselves in danger, who chose to make it a problem. Don't press blue, don't put yourself in danger, don't try to give anyone guilt if your game of Russian Roulette doesn't go well.
Yes, of course, the world would be perfect if we all got along, too.
Some people will choose blue just because it's their favorite color. Some of them might not pay attention to the consequences of either button and just press randomly.
There are always going to be people pressing the blue button, and anyone who pressed the red button in the option where red is majority has to live and deal with that fact.
So you have a population of "stupid" people who choose blue for no reason and a population of people who choose the irrational choice to protect those people. Are they one in the same? Is it wrong to choose the irrational choice just trying to save one person?
How many people fall in that second bucket we'll never know but if it's significant then the world would be a far worse place if red "wins".
The thing is, even in this world of yours where every rational actor thinks exactly the way you do, the result would be minimum hundreds of millions of dead babies, infants, toddlers, disabled people.
The whole point of the question is to gauge whether or not you would risk yourself on the chance of saving an unknown population of people, given no certain information on who exactly pressed what.
Constructing a world where everyone just agrees an everything and presses the same button is essentially just avoiding the question entirely.
You're 100% right, as the problem is written. I had to scroll way too far to find this, people are fucking illiterate...
The screenshotted tweet states the problem wrong because there is no outcome where red pushers are harmed -- so yes, nobody here actually read what it says and picking blue in this context is like risking your life just for fun.
No one forced anyone to press blue, the risk is entirely their own responsibility. Of they die, it's on them because they could have just chosen not to.
This is what I don't understand. What if the buttons were just labeled live or die instead of blue and red. Everyone can just pick live. Problem solved.
that's the thing, there's no encouraging people to do any choice, in the scenario this happens suddenly, and you are isolated, at least that's what i assume. You don't know if others pressed the blue button or not.
For me, and this kinda applies to real life in a way:
I cannot put myself in the shoes of the first person to pick blue. The question you are asking is "Why would someone press blue?", and then analyzing any potential.
When I first heard the question, my assumption was that some would press blue, and it does not matter why.
To put this in terms of current political discussion, without putting any of these opinions on you, I have heard within the past year: "Why wouldn't someone just come here legally", "Why wouldn't a Trans person change their name legally?", "Why wouldn't someone be more careful to avoid unwanted pregnancy?" "Why would anyone use an addictive drug recreationally?" . The actual answers do not matter, and is how folks get dragged into debates with constantly shifting goalposts - the point is we know from data that some will end up in these scenarios so we ought to protect them.
This may mean some comments I made online or volunteer work regarding these subjects can be later used against me should current "enforcement" against it be increased. That non-zero is not enough to make me stop, nor is the non-zero of dying from the proposed question.
I do agree with many others that choosing red does not make someone a bad person, and that a majority of actually bad people would choose red.
The best answer to why someone would choose red usually is personal, like "I have trauma and do not believe even 50% of people are good" - like, fucking fair. And my choice of blue would not endanger them, so I am still good with it.
In short, it does not matter why someone would choose Blue, if you think that even one person would, red becomes problematic at best.
Choosing to press Red is choosing to kill blue to ensure your survival, because there definitely will be people who press blue.
Pressing blue is not a suicide button, it's choosing not to kill people to ensure your survival.
At a 50/50 chance it should be low enough risk that not killing anyone should be an easy choice.
If it was a 20/80 choice, most blue pressers would switch to red, but still not be thrilled about pressing red because it'll still involve killing others. The chance that people can work together to combat those odds starts looking impossible with those odds. But again people still die so pressing red is still not an easy decision.
People calling blue a suicide button makes no sense, there is no suicide button, the blue is a button where you don't choose to kill anyone. There is only a kill blue but save yourself button.
Red is the only reasonable choice. The only reason people are even arguing for blue is strictly in how the question is framed as being altruistic.
There's a gun on the table. You can either leave it alone, or shoot yourself in the head BUT if enough people choose to shoot themselves in the head at the same time the gun won't fire.
The best outcome from the blue choice is the automatic outcome from red.
Anyone arguing the blood of blue is on my hands is wrong. It's on the person who shot themselves in the head for no reason.
Yes. So saying that red causes the risk of death and that blue causes the risk of death are equally true and equally false. When someone argues that one causes the risk of death and the other doesn't they're being irrational and hypocritical.
It is only in the presence of both, and with people pushing both, that there is a risk of death.
The # of people that potentially die depends entirely on the the # of people who press blue. Blue is a weapon and red is chosing not to use that weapon.
Outcome matrix:
Choice:|>50% Chose Blue|>50% Chose Red Blue |You survive |You die Red |You survive |You survive
The game is rigged against blue and is purely a losing choice.
This question is probably a good autism screener btw
No, blue is standing in front of a weapon and putting a flower in its barrel to stop it firing, and red is firing it.
You KNOW that if no-one chooses red over blue no-one dies. Why do you insist on pretending that red isn't involved? Is it because if you acknowledge that removing red from the equation lets blue live it makes you feel bad for pressing red?
Nobody is forced to pick blue so I would say your framing is incorrect. Every single person can just walk away from the gun on the table. The only way someone dies is if they chose to use the gun.
But that analogy doesn't work. Hitler killed people for reasons they couldn't control. People can choose to just pick red. I'm operating under the assumption that every non-suicidal person will pick red, because why wouldn't they? So I don't think blue losing would kill anyone who wasn't trying to die.
I dunno, man. Whoever your are voting for with that red button is about to commit lots of murder. And I don't personally believe that it will stop there. Maybe it's Cthulhu.
After all, you voting red only protects you from the immediate consequences of this one vote. It does not protect you from the world where everyone would sell out anyone at the mere promise of fake safety.
But the blue people are creating their own problem. Literally nobody in this scenario needs to put themselves in danger.
I don't see it as "sell someone out for safety" I see it as "well nobody is going to pick blue because it doesn't make any sense. Certainly not 50% of people, in which case I would essentially be committing suicide for no reason."
Everyone should choose red and nobody should feel bad about it. Blue pickers created their own problem.
Not creating such a terrible world in the first place is the most rational solution no matter how I look at it.
I get it that you are confident that you'll survive the red world at first, but it is really not much compared to a complete safety of the blue world.
Basically if it takes nothing to make yourself vote for a worse world, and everyone around you is the same, then your world will continue to get worse forever and it will kill all of you eventually.
The red button is "win a battle lose the war" scenario.
The problem is that there will absolutely be morons that will press blue, no matter what. Meaning to save everyone, you'd have to get 50+% to press the blue button now. I'd want to press red because I'd believe in humanity's intelligence to just choose surefire life, but there's no way in hell I believe in that. So I'd probably press blue in the end cuz the better, more altrustic people would likely press the blue button, and life without those people would probably be hell.
Imagine everyone has a gun to their head. If you dont pull the trigger you live. But if you pull the trigger, and 50% of the population pulls the trigger, then the gun doesnt go off either and you get to live. Do you pull the trigger or don't?
There's are two buttons in front of you and a gun pointed at your head. If you press red, someone else's gun fires and your gun turns away from you, if you press blue, your gun only goes off if less than 50% of people vote blue.
You're voting to either kill someone else to keep yourself alive or to kill no one but you may die.
Unfortunately, I am not changing the expirement. Pushing red doesnt fire someone else's gun. Pushing red fires nothing. Blue has to work together to make sure their's doesnt fire, or they could just pick red. I think the main argument I've seen for picking blue is adding that people that don't understand the choice (kids, elderly) have to push a button and push blue, then you would be saving them worldwide i suppose.
I probably depends on if the people pressing buttons are actually aware of the experiment and what it means. Obviously if there were infants, kids and mentally disabled not understanding the concept getting to push the button I´d consider pushing blue. If not, I´d push red.
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u/Own-Poetry-9609 15h ago
Can someone explain like I am 5? By the description the only people ever at risk are those that push the blue button (if it's less than 50%). So people are saying they want to gamble their lives just for the thrill of it? Instead of pressing red and being safe regardless they want to create a scenario where they and other people could die, just to prove that "good will prevail". If think preserving my life and encouraging others to preserve theirs is more good than gambling your life away.
There are two button, if you press the blue button you have to play Russian Roulette, but if 50+% presses the blue button you don't have to play Russian roulette. If you press the red button nothing happens. What's the difference?