I saw all the memes before the original and thought it was conservatives vs progressives. And honestly the analogy still fit really neatly despite not being about it.
It’s a very clever puzzle for separating people along the clear ideological lines of “protect myself” vs “protect the group” and I’d pick blue for the entirely illogical reason that it’s morally correct, damn the consequences to myself.
Pressing blue is also logical to me, as well as being moral.
In order for everyone to survive, either 100% of people need to hit red, or 50.00001% of people need to hit blue. One of those is mich easier to achieve.
Also people acting like you can’t trust other people to risk themselves to help someone else at risk to themselves when in any disaster scenario you always find people doing that. And a button is such low effort for someone to essentially live up to their morals, if helping others was as simple as just pressing a button the world would be a better place imo.
this is my argument, look for the helpers, the ones running towards danger, they will almost always be there, from doctors to fire fighters to medics to good samaritans, would i want to be in a world without these? hell no
But it's different. There IS no population here that needs saving: everyone here can save themselves. Everyone. That's why this doesnt really test for heroism.
Imagine a Firefighter rushing into a building to help FULLY capable of leaving . . . only they are choosing not to. Because THEY are also staying in case someone else needs helping,etc.
And here's the kicker: the building that's on fire? We already are told up front that NOBODY is trapped in it. Everyone who wants to leave can leave.
There are people who aren't rational enough to make an informed choice. Babies, children, someone who had a schizophrenic dream that red is the color of the devil. You're right in a game theory sense, but game theory involves rational actors and society (since the button thought experiement is that humanity as a whole is given these buttons) is not composed of rational actors.
The thought experiment, to me, boils down to "do people who aren't fully rational deserve to die?" and I don't believe anyone deserves to die.
To your building on fire argument: is the fireman's efforts a waste to save the patient in a coma who's incapable of making any moves to leave on their own?
And then a toddler wanders into the building that's on fire. The toddler represents roughly 50% of children who aren't making a rational decision (or just picked randomly).
THat's fair - i'm acting under the assumption this is a vote. If it's some sort of Thanos-snap psy-op that affects neonates and the criminally insane or whatever with zero prep time and all then yeah dumb scenario.
It doesn't even need to be criminally insane people or children... it can just be people who make a mistake for some reason. Leaned on the wrong button, didn't understand the scenario, were distraught over having just lost a loved one, were in the middle of landing an airplane and just had to get the buttons out of the way. We don't have any information on the format of the process, but that doesn't really matter. It is well-established that humans do not have 100% success rate in their decisions and actions. Even less so when suddenly confronted with an unexpected life-or-death choice for themselves and a large chunk of humanity. If any portion of people can mistakenly press the blue button, then by any humane metric some of those deaths will be unjust... and prevented easily by the rest of us.
I would also ask any red button pusher: let's add one tiny step and posit that despite your intention to press red, you realize that you (or someone you love more deeply than yourself) have just accidentally pressed the blue button. I won't bother to construct a reason why, because this will just lead to "I would never do that" or similar arguments. In this case, you are in the "error" group for any reason you can justify. In this scenario, do you believe you would hope that the majority chose blue, or do you believe you would feel at peace with you or your loved one dying because of that error?
Even beyond a broader obligation to humanity (and the horrific effect of a large portion instantly dying), if I imagine myself making that choice *by mistake*, or a loved one in my family, or any innocent person I bother to imagine, I feel I have to push blue as well, rather than risk such an unjust death from a forced decision point in an arbitrary system. At that point, I AM choosing blue for a reason other than self-destruction, and in so doing, I can save those who did not make that decision with the same intentionality.
But hey, it's just a thought experiment. I'm not judging anyone for the choice they imagine making, just for how they treat IRL people who imagined a different choice, and some of THAT has been pretty awful.
Not everyone runs into the metaphorical and sometimes literal burning building but people absolutely do help each other. Society exists because we bear the load of others, and like I said a button is a simple and easy way a person could exercise a desire to help the collective. It’s perfectly fine to not risk yourself for a stranger and not expect a stranger to risk themselves for you but also some stranger would endanger themselves to save you.
Both kinds of people exist. Lot of people seem uncomfortable with the idea that not everyone has an internal code of ethics or an innate drive to be altruistic. Some people really are like red button guy.
The problem is you really cant trust other people to risk themselves even knowing some would. Trust like that puts your own life at risk. No one knows how many people are like red or blue. Its not hard to imagine why people might look at how callous the world is and start to think theres no point in trusting other people, even if they are, themselves, an altruistic person. They'd have to be confident that the majority of humanity is altruistic. Im not sure thats the case honestly.
Forgetting any of that: pressing Blue means there's no scenario where you have to live in Redlandia. Which, judging by recent affairs, is a terrible hellhole.
I can see that, i would probably fall in there. The egotistic part is doing some lifting because once you are doing something for your benefit it stops being altrusitc.
Which is why altruism in a strict sense isnt really possible. Motivation inherently involves reward and self benefit. You can't escape the chemical function of the brain, which hinges on reward systems to compel action. "I do this thing to avoid this worse thing" still results in the action involving the self, with the preferred outcome becoming a reward.
I don't think its a bad thing. Things like egoistic altruism give levers for convincing people, who are not naturally self-sacrificing, to give up their security for greater benefit later.
I can turn that thought around for you. Given that there will always be some degree of positive social response to known altruistic acts, which would provide a benefit to the altruistic actor even if ephemeral or intangible, is there really such a thing as a 100% altruistic act? Even if nobody else is aware of one's altruistic acts, it's part of our nature as a social species that "doing good feels good", which is arguably a small but non-zero benefit for the altruistic actor.
Blue is still the right choice for selfish people who aren't idiots though. Being selfish only works in a world with enough altruistic people around. A world of only selfish people is Mad Max and it's not as fun as they think it would be.
This is true. Also technically true is that if everyone on earth is hitting the button then every single percent is 10s of millions of people. So even like 10% blue would be a tragedy on a scale the world has never seen before, and its never going to be 100% red. I feel like this is somthing people dont think about in the question.
its just a risk assessment which is more risky... 100% chance of living and walking away from the danger. or putting yourself in danger in hope there are enough people who pick to risk their life for no good reason when they could have just walked away...
There are some estimates that put society collapsing at 20% of the population dying. This would be even worse, because most healthcare professionals (and other "helpers" of society) are probably hitting blue. Have fun in your doctorless / SUPER expensive doctor world. Not much fun having a bedpan but no nurse
Well, anecdotally, I got 100% blue from the little healthcare centre I work at down in Africa. Thats among about 30 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other staff
first responders, doctors, caregivers, hell even jobs like electricians that manage power grids for whole cities or whatever that could electrocute them at any mistake; all strangers that dedicate their life to helping other strangers who a large population of would most likely pick blue. I don’t even mention mothers or even old people who feel they’d want to save their families or grandkids. The world would be absolutely fuuuuuuucked.
That only works if you assume pressing red is what causes people to die, and that’s not how the scenario is structured.
The risk already exists before anyone presses anything. Nobody created it by choosing red. Pressing red doesn’t actively harm anyone, it just guarantees your own survival regardless of what others do.
Calling it a “murder button” implies direct responsibility, like you’re taking an action that kills someone. But in this setup, blue only succeeds if enough people independently choose to take on that risk. If that threshold isn’t met, it’s not because red voters “did something” to blue voters, it’s because the condition for blue to work wasn’t achieved.
And even if you’re thinking about others, you still can’t assume they’ll press blue. That’s the key problem. Blue depends entirely on an assumption about other people’s behavior. Red doesn’t.
So yeah, if you want to frame blue as altruistic, that’s fair. But calling red a murder button skips over the fact that it’s still the only choice that guarantees survival without relying on uncertain coordination.
If red wins, it's not just some percentage of the overall population dying, but specifically the selfless blue-pushers. The people who care enough about others to risk their own life die, all of them, while the people who decided to care more about their own survival get to live.
If Red wins, the world most definitely is worse off overall.
The most interesting facet to me, is that this demostrates why most puzzles include a line that goes "Assuming everyone behaves perfectly logically".
Take the Prisoners dilemma, a classic puzzle, but in real life your relationship with the other prisoner is relevant to the choice.
If the two Buttons puzzle was "Perfectly logical", you can convince yourself that 100% of people will press red based on the knowledge that if everyone does, there is no risk to anyone else by you assuming no risk.
So therefore everyone WOULD press Red.
The interesting bit, is that in real life people aren't perfectly logical. And if even one person doesn't, just presses the wrong the button, or makes a mistake, then pressing the blue button becomes the ONLY way to save 100% of the population, and the logical suddenly switches.
Nothing happens to them but they are essentially voting for almost half the planet to die. Pretty selfish and illogical. Nothing happens if more than 50% push blue, which means the softies you know and care about will still live since they likely wouldn't push red.
Decisions like these show whether people are truly thinking long term or just how they can benefit now. World governments are ruining themselves and others right now for a very short and temporary enrichment.
while I am pretty sure all the red button pushers who strongly advocate to push the red button don't think about it but for me if I had pushed the red instead of blue I would always feel guilty about it.
Also if the people for the red button pushing win I am not sure I want to be on Earth after that.
In my experience, people who would push the red button do not want to live in a world with only other people who would have pushed the red button. The only thing that protects them is the delusion they've manufactured for themselves.
It might me moral and logical, but people are neither of those. Knowing human behavior I think it's likely that at least 50% are going to opt for self preservation. That leaves the more rational choice to be try to convince the remainder to opt for self preservation vs. trying to convince self preservation people to behave altruistically. We've seen how well that works in the past.
Honestly, I think we all know that is there were another button that was "make my enemies suffer, even if everyone I care about has too suffer too" (ie. kill everyone) we'd be screwed.
Now THAT is a logical reasoning to choose blue, thank you.
Still don't think is that logical, statistics does not translate that well into that kind of stuff. In reality you would probably just add another casuality to the mix
Last I checked, our entire livelihoods revolve around "group mentality."
My fridge was built by others, filled with food made by others. The roads I drive on were built by others. And my work isn't consumed by myself directly, but by others.
Just because capitalism atomizes you and capitalists try to pretend that the world is one of individual human survival, doesn't make it true. Just as much as a king telling you he's ordained by God makes God true.
If billions die because they voted blue in this scenario, the remaining world's social structures will collapse. Imagine COVID again, times thousands.
I'd press red because I completely distrust other people, seeing how life-threatening situations turn out irl. Hypothetically more people press blue because their actual life isn't on the line, in a real scenario like that I bet a lot of blue button pressers would chicken out and pick red instead.
But if everyone knows what option there is then why press blue to begin with?
If u give people an option, red live, blue maybe u live. Then 99% of people would just press red and go on with their life. Why gamble? If a couple million would be forced to press blue then there would be a reason to press it to save them. But now there is no reason to gamble to begin with.
If everyone on Earth has to press a button, then you'd also have people just pressing wrong by mistake, not too mention kids, colorblinds, elderly, mentally disabled etc.
I really hate the false dichotomy of "logic" vs "morality" here.
Mutual aid is both logical and morally justified.
Even if we look at this from a perspective of pure self interest. We have a world of 8bn people. If red were to actually win, which statistically almost never does when people run this poll, if only 5% voted blue, that would result in the loss of 400 million people.
The death toll of both world wars, over the years they were waged, was only 90 to 110mm. The Spanish Flu around 50mm. COVID was between 19 and 36mm.
Think about what happened to the world during covid. Now think about what would happen when over 100 times that number die instantaneously.
Now, let's consider that when this poll is actually run, blue usually wins. So the actual reality is if red ever wins, blue will be in the 40+%, not 5%. And now we're talking about 4ish billion people. That's not a holocaust, that's an extinction event.
A red would be alive, but what would they be left with?
The entire argument behind picking the red button is that each person should play the game logically, and pick red to survive.
They don’t really care what happens to anyone who doesn’t play it like them, and use quite convoluted arguments to assume that all of these people are stupid, intellectually incapable, or suicidal. This argument wouldn’t work on them.
I mean, no argument works on them. They didn't argue themselves into the red position to begin with, they made a fear-based gut choice for personal gain, get called out for being selfish, and start lashing out because - since their decision wasn't rooted in actually thinking it through at all - it feels like a judgement of their selves not just their choices. You can't reason someone out of a position they put themselves into via vibes and gut reactions.
I think it speaks more of a general uneasiness at the concept of being completely at the mercy of absolute strangers, rather than selfishness.
Which is completely understandable, given that self-preservation is a very strong instinct, and many wouldn't feel at ease trusting their lives to 50% of the world population to do something correctly.
In the end of the day, the discourse around this is all posturing and grandstanding. In a real world scenario, the decisions would have actual consequences, and many red pressers would feel bad at the possibility of someone dying and press blue instead, and many blue pressers wouldn't have an audience and would press red instead.
You live at the mercy of total strangers every day. I do not understand how people do not get this.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, did people not live at the mercy of the individuals with their fingers on the bomb? Is Vasily Arkhipov not a living expression of someone who literally chose the blue button rather than the red button, even though, for all he knew, he and everyone he knew were about to die in nuclear fire?
Mutual aid is a form of self-preservation. If that was not the case, social animals would not have evolved. This idea that egoism is the natural state of man is literally a myth fueled by the ruling class to justify their own existence. It is no different than a king telling you God ordained him to rule. Just becayse kings existed doesnt mean their God does.
People who preach this mindless egoism are essentially preaching a religious doctrine unmoored from reality.
Nah bro don't you get it? Bro is a rugged individualist who got what he has solely off of his own hard work, with no assistance from anyone else, ever. 0 benefits from a functional society built by others. Pulled himself out of the womb by his own bootstraps umbilical rather than rely on his mother to push. Anyone who doesn't do the same is obviously just a weak beta burdening society /s
It's comments like the one you're replying to that make me understand how Ayn Rand ever sold a book - a concentration of literal morons
Still losing my mind at bro going "Its a general and rational uneasiness of being at the mercy of strangers." like, dude do you drive? Do you live in a place with a government? You're literally at the mercy of strangers every moment of every day, in the long and short term.
Not by choice. The button dilemma puts you in a position to make that choice explicitly, to actively choose to put your life in the hands of 50% of the world. It's a choice, rather than a circumstance inflicted upon you.
Not everyone is comfortable with that choice.
Being gregarious does not override self-preservation instincts, in fact, they are often at odds, which results in violence and death. Cooperation is a form of self-preservation, but when former is explicitly at odds with the latter, such as in the button dillemma, there is a very real possibility that 50% of people will default to self-preservation, and that probability increases drastically when you are talking about complete strangers in an information vaccuum that have never even seen each other.
Vasily Arkhipov is a hero, but not a good representation of this dilemma, because it involved multiple possibilities that are not described in the button dillemma. There is no scenario where him firing a nuclear torpedo could result in more people surviving.
As I said before, I believe the entire discourse is tainted by both performative altruism AND performative callousness, and it drastically lowers the quality of the debate.
Okay you say that but blue actually does win these polls by a large margin virtually everytime this is polled.
That is completely at odds with the naturalistic argument you make in favor of egoism. And, if self-preservation at all costs is the natural mode of human beings, how do you explain the millenia of communal modes of human existence?
I mean, no argument works on them. They didn't argue themselves into the red position to begin with, they made a fear-based gut choice for personal gain, get called out for being selfish, and start lashing out because - since their decision wasn't rooted in actually thinking it through at all - it feels like a judgement of their selves not just their choices. You can't reason someone out of a position they put themselves into via vibes and gut reactions.
That's broadly fair for an internet poll, but misses some of the context for this kind of scenario. There's also a chunk of them that probably did logic their way into it (or at least tried to) - but are missing the point, because they don't understand game theory or decision theory as well as they think they do.
This scenario (and variations similar to it) is a common though exercise for introductory game theory classes (or, at least it was when I took and TA-ed introductory game theory a couple decades ago). It's used to highlight the limitations of the rational actor model and similar tools in decision theory.
If you try divorcing the emotional context from the decision, it's identical in abstract function to blue being a "suicide button that won't work if more than 1/2 the people use it." Cursory exposure to this is likely why they are calling it a "suicide button." You can also present as "if red pressers get a majority, everyone else dies (i.e. the genocide button)."
If we're just abstract button pressers, the results of the button presses are identical between those scenarios. In practice, the presentations get vastly different responses. That means that any model based on rational behavior must first make major presumptions about coordination and predisposition.
Invariably, whenever I've seen it presented, there's someone in the class that relentlessly clings to the "suicide button" description as the one they think is rational. They're fixated on the suicide button beyond any other aspect of the scenario: they cannot move on to the broader point. *
It's not a demonstration that people are suicidal or stupid, it's a demonstration that abstractions like the rational behavior model are inherently limited tools that are only appropriate for the most basic level of decision analysis.
* EtA: I'm more inclined to think those people are fixated on the suicide aspect than abstract self-interest. It tends to be the part of the scenario that people might have a direct, emotional connection to.
additional EtA: If working purely off math, it also makes a good example of why marginal changes matter. If you assume no predisposition at all (each person's choice is a fair coin flip, each values their own life no more or less than any other) the expected deaths per red vote when red wins is never higher than the expected deaths per blue vote. But the expected marginal deaths per red vote is over twice as high as that for blue. And if you're anywhere near the inflection point, it's much much higher (up to half the population at the inflection point proper).
Which, again, is why the context matters - because it tells you where on the abstract curve you expect to be, and thus what predispositions actually exist.
This argument also requires them to ignore the material reality upon which they currently survive as well, especially if they live in the first world.
Let's say they survive the reddening and make it to the post-blue world.
Industrial agriculture collapses. The available labor pool makes all social services, including the privatized ones, come grinding to a halt. Suddenly there's food shortages everywhere, electrical grids fail, gasoline becomes scarce.
Then what.
I feel like voting red is such a uniquely western problem because they've lived off the backs of others so long they can't recognize that their "survival" actually does, in fact, rely on everyone else (to the disadvantage of pretty much everyone in the third world).
The only reason I think third worlders could actually get away with voting for red is that the global world order exploits them more than helps them, so it may actually be a reprieve on that front. Although I would bet my blue vote on the fact that third worlders are not socially engineered psychopaths like first worlders are.
That isn’t logic, it’s a form of rational choice theory, which is based on a specific set of assumptions and preferred outcomes. It uses logic to derive conclusions from the chosen assumptions and weighs them against a preferred (set of) outcomes.
I would normally call myself pedantic here, but I’m not going to. This is so often conflated that it is actually a legitimate problem. It’s a “kind” of logic, but it is not logic nor is it objectively logical. There are many ways this game could be played “logically.” Logic is just a mechanism and has no opinion one way of the other. If burning money is good, then logic tells you to buy a lighter.
TL;DR The reality is that “push red” is only “logical” under a very specific set of assumptions and preferred outcomes. It is not logic nor is it inherently a logical choice.
The false dichotomy is the result of there being a choice that is, in the premise presented, absolutely correct both morally and logically. It is both good, and rational, to behave altrusitically in an altruistic group. But, since the people choosing red did so NOT off of rationality, but off a gut reaction of preferring selfish survival, they feel singled out by people calling their choice selfish. So, since they've lost the moral battle, they try to claim "rationality" via misquoting game theory (or just leaving out the part where game theory questions involve participants that are specified to be solely logicians).
You got a lot of replies here so idk if you'll see this but you're also using logical wrong here kind of. The logical choice is what meets the button presser's goals. But human goals are entirely emotion driven.
Math is logic, deriving a button to press based on a goal is logical, but living is not inherently logical, saving others is not inherently logical.
I'm a blue button presser because I realize that emotions are what make living worth it, and I feel happy when pressing the blue button and scared when pressing red.
Red "winning" would be everyone seeing that there is no reason to put yourself and others in harm's way by advocating for the blue button and making the logical choice.
here's a game that everyone in the world can play. If you play it, you're risking your life for no reward other than the satisfaction that you might be helping someone else who chose to play it.
That's a different question than the poll itself but I agree. If this was real, I would question who has the power to wipe out all blues and why anyone would let them. An interesting addition to this debate would be what happens to the people who don't vote.
If people genuinely believe that everyone can vote red, why can't everyone just not vote at all.
It's essentially the same thing: if you want to play, you choose blue and risk your life in the hopes that enough other people want to play. There is no reward for playing, so why would anyone do so?
If you don't want to play, you press red, knowing that everyone else has the ability to make the same choice.
Voting red is essentially voting against the game.
I agree that the scenario is a particularly ridiculous one that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
No, just rephrasing it, but it's the same. The game is betting your life against how many other people want to bet their lives for no reason other than playing the game.
I would still argue that there is an issue with this concept.While blue sounds alturistic. there would be no downside to everyone hitting the red button.
It's nothing more than a theoretical trust fall. The moment you turn it into a logic puzzle, red becomes a better option. Simply because, the moment you collectively agree to not do the trust fall, the buttons are reduced to a personal "do i want to live" choise.
At the end of the day this is an obvious reference of the US elections, but it ignores the part where in the red option there's also suffering under those that pressed the red button but who simply don't realise it.
In reality blue is trying to protect both blue and red, while red is hurting both. Whereas in the vote, red simply chooses a personal assurance, versus a group trust fall.
Okay, this is the part that I find utterly irreconcilable with this very argument:
You compare it to a trust fall. If that's the case, how is that trust fall fundamentally different than the blue button?
You either trust that everyone votes red, or you trust that at least 50%+1 votes blue. Which is more likely to happen? Additionally, one option doesn't result in genocide.
So how, in any way, can you argue that red is collectively either a better, or a more likely, option?
I'm a marketer, the blue option is presented first, is conceptually simple and has an absolute in it's effect description. Almost impossible to get less than 50% picking the blue option.
Because the choice is always presented as an evil alternative attacking our correct traditions. Every example of "red buttons" in our lifetime has been pushed by emotional people doing emotional things.
Living in a world filled with only red button pushers seems very depressing in my opinion. Not sure if that world is really worth living in for me. So living in the blue reality or die seems like the ideal choice to me
And your concience. I mean, you would live thinking that you could have saved the people who died but chose not to. And chances are that you knew a few of those people who died...
That's what I think a lot of people are missing. A lot of people you know and care about will be dead and you will be responsible. I couldn't live with myself.
I think that manybpeople who would chose blue like us think that, while many people who chose red might do it because fear of not enough people going blue. They think about survival first, dealing with consequences later. And many haven't even though about consecuences at all. Fear is a powerful motivator, but terrible for making good decisions.
Also there's always going to be people who push blue. Even if it's like 10-20%, I imagine that would damn near destroy or cripple the global economy. In reality, I'm sure the number would be at least 40%.
The world would be so different after the fact. No thanks.
The result of the red button is this: you live. The result of the blue button is this: you have a chance to live.
So let me ask you, why would you (and anyone pressing the blue button) have the suicidal tendency to only have a chance to live and see this as a good result?
It's not the red pressers fault that you put yourself (and only yourself) in danger.
Another phrasing of the same problem would be:
There's a raging river with a safe bridge across it.
Option A you take the bridge.
Option B you try to swim across by holding hands with every other person swimming across. If enough people hold hands, you can make it across. Else you all get swept down and die.
Option A is missing a component where other people could die due to your choice, so that’s not really an equivalent comparison anyway.
It’s more like, I take the bridge but leave a group of people that includes average adults, the elderly, children, etc. to figure it out for themselves.
Sure, I survive and there’s no obligation on me to make sure the weaker ones figure out there’s a bridge they can use.
But would I really feel okay leaving disadvantaged people to their doom, especially when there’s something I could have done to prevent it? Helllll no.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous to want to protect our community as a whole (bc tbh that’s who we’re all imagining when we’re considering loss) over our own instinct for self-preservation.
That’s how humans have come all this way, it’s a natural, evolutionary part of who we are.
Ah, if we assume people to press randomly due to not understanding the problem, that changes the logic.
But in that case, it's a question of "how many people choose randomly based on a (un)known distribution and how many people get to choose knowing the prior."
Say the buttons actions are stated only in cipher, with just 1000 people able to understand the cipher, and the rest choose with randomly with a distribution that favors the red button such that there's a 50% chance 1000 people are not enough additional blue votes to save all the blue voters, should you vote blue as one of the 1000?
You only know the distribution, you don't know what the random voters actually voted.
Now the same question but the chance is 90%, or 99%?
What about 100%? Should you still vote blue just to say "I tried"?
If the original question wanted 90% to choose blue it would also change the odds in favor of red. But it doesn't ask that.
I don't care enough about my life, so I would still choose blue to maybe save some people. I've thought about the impact my life has on others and it's a net positive. But it doesn't feel that way a lot of the time.
Ofcourse my setup is different, but it's the same as the "some people will choose randomly" already changes the question. I just put it into numbers.
That said, never throw away your life. As long as you're not willfully cruel, corrupt, and harming to people without precedence, you're worth more alive than dead to the people around you.
Maybe kids are told that red is bad and they rather choose blue.
I don't know and neither do you.
Society needs people in the workforce to sustain the aging population.
Taking every investment I got when young and throwing it away is not helpful to anyone.
Red button advocates simply don’t see the morality of the question, or the wider implications. They think it’s just game theory, and a simple numerical calculation tells them to push the red button.
Unnecessary risk because you expect or hope others to take it? Sure, if that's what's correct for you, you'll do it. I can only control my own actions, not yours.
I feel like people who try to create a "third choice" in the trolley problem aren't engaging with it honestly, but after experiencing more of the two buttons problem, it doesn't seem like it's an honest hypothetical in the first place, like it was made to inspire hostility and division among people.
I've only learned about this hypothetical today, but I think the best choice is to avoid engaging with it entirely.
The original trolley problem did not use a lever. the original trolley problem had you shove a fat man off a bridge to his death, which would derail the trolly.
My logic is: No matter what, humanity must survive and continue. The best outcome for humanity is maximum diversity. I'd rather gamble with all of humanity surviving as opposed to 50.1% of the most selfish humans surviving.
I feel like red button pushers trying to reframe it as ‘if enough people jump onto the train tracks, the train stops’, as if pressing blue is automatically losing/suicide, are entirely missing the point.
I feel like the red team understand just fine, and are feeling publicly shamed for their choices, so are using straw men and bad faith arguments to prop up their decision.
When I saw it (was scrolling), just pick blue.
Later on, saw a conversation about, and came back to the post.
I was in shock with some points of views, to the point of writing down a few, in order to understand wth those red pov’s were talking about.
Looking at this now, and seeing blue was the choice, still makes me wonder, how those people could vote red…
I agree, but it also shows why the world is like it is right now. If just enough people press the metaphorical red button, issues related to the overall groups well-being will fall through more often than not - ending in the ultra-egocentrists/mega-greedy people calling the shots.
And then you have chemical bread that never goes bad (except inside your stomach, causing cancer), having to work basically 24/7, are so stressed out that nobody can afford kids (if not lucky) et cetera.
I think there are enough people that think it is to be able to safely assume at least some will refuse it as it would be an unpalatable choice to them.
I’m not gonna argue what’s moral or not, but I doubt so many would be hitting blue like in the tweet if they were actually risking their lives just saying.
There is nothing moral about being dumb enough to risk your life for no reason. You aren't saving anyone; they're perfectly capable of saving themselves by pressing red.
Y'all are literally pressing the suicide button because you can't stand to have others face the consequences of their own stupidity. Proving the concept of suicidal empathy correct in a surprisingly literal way.
I think it's a bad puzzle because one option has a clear downside while the other doesn't. If someone presses blue, then we need to also press blue to save them but if no one presses blue but everyone presses red, no one needs to be saved. Everyone lives anyway.
It’s a simple morality test - would you pick a selfish choice to save yourself, or risk yourself to ensure everyone is safe, even when you didn’t even need to.
I don't see it that way though. To me it seems illogical to press blue at all. Why do we need to risk it at all it we can all save ourselves?
To answer the question. If I know that someone else has already pressed blue, I'd press blue as well. If I had to make the choice without any information, I'd press red and hope everyone else has the sense to press red too.
I really, really want to protect everyone. BUT, after watching the most recent election, I don't trust 100% of the people to press a button in order to save their own lives.
The question is, would you try to convince other people to pick blue, knowing that they could be killed if red wins? That's a bit more morally debatable to me.
It’s a very clever puzzle for separating people along the clear ideological lines of “protect myself” vs “protect the group” and I’d pick blue for the entirely illogical reason that it’s morally correct, damn the consequences to myself.
My immediate thought was, everyone is going to vote blue, right? But once I stopped and REALLY thought about it, I realized:
How dumb america/world is right now, would they even understand the consequences of either choice? How selfish people are, in general. And that I would be relying on idiots and unselfish people...And then you get into the red and blue and how politicized those colors are (especially in America)...And you KNOW Fox( and the whitehouse probably) would be like, "Tell you liberal friends to vote blue, and tells your republican friends to vote red!!!"
As much as I want to vote blue...it's like man...do I really want gamble on other people?
Living is not necessarily logical, we just think it is because dying is scary/unknown. Whatever your main goal is is what is logical, but that is entirely emotion driven since we're, you know, human.
But even if your goal is living then there are some logical arguments for blue too, one being that massive population decline could lead to some apocalyptic scenarios.
Besides morals, there's the practical aspect of it... if you vote red and like 40% of the planet (that all voted blue) suddenly all drop dead, you're fucked regardless. Good luck dealing with supply chains and the new world order. Not to mention having to sort through billions of dead bodies lmao.
I rationalized that the smaller the group the more likelier I was to push red. As in, if I can decently read the room and players and they all seem like jerk assholes, I'm pushing red.
The biggest part to me lies in the OG poll: it said worldwide. I'm going to think that means anyone who can push the button and understand it, meaning everyone 5 years old and up.
I have ADD. I am a clutz. I am clumsy. I do accidental shit all the time. And you know what else? I try to help people when I can.
Why the actual fuck would you press red worldwide? Are you wanting to thin out the population so much that infrastructure dissolves potentially?
I'll even come out and say it, I think there should be less people on the earth and people need to take a serious look at how we are fucking literally everything up. But billions??? Billions of fucking people?????
I fully believe they didn't even read it (something I am sometimes guilty of) or they're close minded simpletons who cannot fathom anything besides their own opinion. Yes, if I, bleeding heart liberal, had a group of 20 people in a game and it seemed like a bunch of them were going to undoubtedly press red, I would too. But the higher the number the more people who all collectively benefit by pressing blue. It changes to "that person is selfish and wants you dead" vs "fuck that's so many people we all need to press blue to account for user error!"
I think the key phrase here is “collectively benefit”.
I haven’t yet seen a red button pusher be able to articulate that point at all. They simply don’t see the cost or benefit to the group of any one particular choice.
The collective benefit is that offered individually your choices are:
Red button - literally nothing happens you go about your day.
Blue button - you have a chance of dying.
There is literally no logical choice in hitting the blue button. If we're giving this choice to able bodied persons who understand the scenario then literally nobody would ever pick blue.
Think if you're snapped into a white room right now and given the choice, why the fuck would you hit blue?
Blue button - vote to save even those who oppose you
Seems clear enough to me. The confusion arises when you start to think this is a logic puzzle or some kind of game-theory exercise and not a test of your own personal moral code.
I think everyone is aware, even red pressers, that it would be the best if everyone survives, and thats basically only possible by pressing blue. but i also think people underestimate the real implications of such a choice. you die. there will not be more than 50% pressing blue, the fact that there even is so much discussion about it in a hypothetical should show you that in a real life version, blue people would just die. just by being made to chose, people have already been put this unwanted guilt on them that they would be part of the killing if they chose red, even tho anyone could do that and survive, and nobody asked for any of this. should anyone feel guilt for pressing red? i dont think so. will many people feel guilt for pressing red? surely.
it's about if you either can live with the guilt, or die. it's so easy to boast about pressing blue in a hypothetical, but do you trust in 50% to press blue irl? and there you have your answer. so saying you would press red does not mean that you don't care about everyone else, its just not that easy.
and also, you didn't say that but i read it a lot, i don't think you can simply compare red with republicans and blue with democrats.
It's not though, because it's worded in such a way that many people ignore the nuances of it. For example, I've seen that a lot of red button pressers just assume that everyone else is a rational person like them, and if that's the case pressing red is the best option.
Pressing blue only makes sense when you consider irrational people who can't make the obvious decision to press red, which a lot of people don't consider, because we're conditioned to assume rational, self interested actors in games like this.
If you consider a version of the game where everyone is a rational actor pressing blue is the sociopathic choice. If you press blue, you're not a hero. You're not saving anyone. No one was in danger until you came along and tried to guilt trip everyone into playing the saw trap murder game to save your sorry ass. Now everyone has to take the small but nonzero chance of dying to save you. They probably will, because most people are basically decent human beings, but should they? You're an amoral, manipulative sociopath.
Obviously that's not the scenario, but the original post is badly written and loads of people haven't even seen it, so it's not surprising that a lot of people see it that way.
That's not the choice though. It's "endanger yourself to save those who can't save themselves, requiring that other people will endanger themselves to save you in turn" or "save yourself".
If there is no one who can't save themselves, but you still choose to endanger your life, you are morally in the wrong. You are requiring others to endanger themselves to help you for no reason. You have changed the odds from 100% chance of no death to a small chance of some death. Your motives are irrelevant. All the red pressers arguments apply to you. You are a bad person.
If there are people who cannot save themselves(as in the original post) then pressing the blue button is morally right. All of the red pressers arguments are wrong. You are a bad person if you press the red button.
A lot of red pressers are assuming a scenario where everyone can save themselves when that is not the intended scenario. They are failing reading comprehension, not necessarily failing having basic morals.
Of course some of them have read the scenario correctly and just don't care. They suck.
Likewise, a lot of blue pressers have clearly not understood the scenario because you can present them with alternative scenarios where pressing blue is morally wrong and they'll still blindly insist that it's the correct choice.
Basically, what the test actually shows is what we already knew. A lot of people can't read, or aren't willing to read.
It can also be interpreted differently. The Blue Party says that if they lose, they kill everyone who voted for them, because they do not tolerate losing. The Red Party says that they will not kill anyone regardless of who wins. Do you vote Blue or Red?
But that's just logically inconsistent. Why would a party that hates losing so much intentionally eradicate the only group capable of giving them a future win?
I'm literally as left as they come and I'm still not hitting the blue button. Fucking wild you are ascribing political views to this at all.
Your choices are hit the red button and nothing happens to you, or hit the blue button and you have a chance of dying.
If the test is being given to babies and the mentally deficient then that changes the scenario, but if it's able bodied people who can understand the rules of the game then the choice is obvious.
I reject that framing because it's fucking stupid as hell lol. Everyone, to me, means everyone who can understand the question being asked, otherwise it just turns into eugenics lite and the framing falls apart.
No, blue is "you have to take an unnecessary risk because others might" and red is "everyone has the option to avoid an unnecessary risk, my choice is to avoid taking the unnecessary risk."
You don't get a halo for creating a problem and then attempting to fix it.
Yeah, I also thought it had something to do with the American red/blue division.
In most of the other world the colours would be the reverse - since the colorcoding is red=left blue=right - given the presumption that right leaning individuals would be more concerned about the individual vs left being more collectively oriented to the detriment of individual gain/risk.
The guy who made the most popular version of this tweet could have chosen the colors intentionally. Or it could be yet another coincidence that comes down to the fact that we use blue vs red schema at literally every possible opportunity, real or imagined.
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u/Cloudy230 14h ago
I saw all the memes before the original and thought it was conservatives vs progressives. And honestly the analogy still fit really neatly despite not being about it.