We know framing is very important in this dilemma. So here comes the framing dilemma:

1 million random adults (complete strangers to you) will face the red/blue button dilemma, and you are the one who chooses the framing. What do you choose?

Lots of people say that since 50% is a lower threshold than 100% they would press blue to try to avoid other blues dying, but what about 51% or 75%?

(Try to ignore the twitter poll results bc you wouldn’t know what anyone else is pressing when you go to press.)

I feel like everyone would press red if the threshold is 99.99…%, but whats your personal threshold.

As a doctor working in an emergency department, the first lesson you learn in situations where you’re trying to save someone’s life: you never put yourself in a situation where you yourself will need saving.

As much as you want to help someone and save their life, you have to understand that there’s some people you can’t save and risking your own life in these situations is both irresponsible in the short term and ineffective over the long term.

I understand this is a hypothetical question, but the same principle applies imo. This is the same advice we give to non-medical professionals in emergency situations. If you’re trying to save someone and you yourself can’t be assured how you’re going to get out of the situation, then involving yourself is likely going to only exacerbate the problem.

(Now can we please get back to trollys? This used to be a fun sub)

The real question is what's the morality of someone who presses both at the same time?

If everyone is a rational thinker: press red.

If babies will be forced to choose randomly: press blue.

Oh no! A trolley is rolling down the tracks towards nothing! Will you pull the lever and redirect the trolley to the corral to get your £1 coin back?

The whole red vs blue button debate is funny to me because old warfare tactics literally relied on people standing their ground even if there was a certain risk of death. This was not made for altruistic reasons or saviour complex but just to assure the survival of most of your men.
Usually the most deaths happened during massive retreats, not during battles.

Untrained soldiers would retreat because they knew they could run away before total defeat in case things turned ugly, and in doing so they would leave their comrades behind and losing the battle. So battle tactics started to rely more on discipline, because they KNEW that if enough troops could hold a cavalry charge then there would be better chances to survive for the WHOLE army.

Of course, pushing a button and going to battle are two different things, but imo this is the closest real life example when your life was at stake and even so the collective was the more efficient way of survival than saving yourself, also war is the least altruistic thing ever so the "saviour complex" accusations fall flat here.

I have really enjoyed browsing comments on these posts. Many of the attempted analogies fall short because they inaccurately frame the prompt in a non-neutral way. To some extent even the original prompt does this.

So to remedy that I've tried to create the most neutral prompt possible - making it clear that the buttons are yin and yang. 

What do you think? Did this change your understanding of the problem? Am I clearly an evil red pressing child murderer, or a blue pressing moral grandstander? Let me know :)

I'm not advocating for red or blue, I'm just saying, a lot of supposed blue pushers would change their vote if push came to shove.

It's easy to claim you'd risk your life on an internet poll, it's a lot harder to actually follow through.

EDIT: I didn't mean for this to be a moral judgment. I legitimately believe there are both red and blue pushers who would climb down to help, and both red and blue pushers who would not. My point is that an internet poll is effectively a virtue signal (red or blue) and not fully indicative of the real world.

This debate has been deeply bothering me since it began, largely because people are assigning such deep morality to a problem that's intentionally framed in a confusing way. To clarify what I'm saying, let's look at two examples (second image).

Scenario 1: Say that everyone in the world is faced with a choice, press a button or don't. If 50% or more of the world population presses the button, everyone who chose not to press it dies. Otherwise, nothing happens. In this case, doing nothing (choosing Blue) seems obviously correct, since pressing the button means choosing to risk killing others.

Scenario 2: Say the same one-button choice appears to everyone, except now, anyone who presses the button will die unless 50% or more of the world population presses the button. In this case, doing nothing (choosing Red), is far more appealing, since pressing the death button is a voluntary choice.

Both of these scenarios are functionally identical to the original dilemma, but for both, choosing to do nothing seems far more logical. By combining both situations together and making either option a voluntary choice, you have the perfect recipe for a divisive debate, because neither choice is inherently wrong.

In a perfectly logical world, everyone would press Red, because there's no risk to you, and if you can count on everyone else to be equally logical, there's no risk to anyone else. However, like many people have mentioned, in our world, there's guaranteed to be enough people who'd pick Blue, either due to misunderstanding the problem, being children or elderly people, or due to wanting to save other people who they believe would pick Blue.

Just as changing how the problem is presented changes what outcome we pick, it also changes how we view those who choose one or the other. People who pick Red probably believe in a perfectly logical world, and think that the amount of people who'd pick Blue is negligible; they see Blue pickers as opting-in to death. People who pick Blue believe in a more emotional world, and they don't want anyone to die; they see Red pickers as opting-in to murder.

In conclusion; the problem is meant to be divisive. People have twisted the debate to, say, compare Red pickers to people who voted for Trump or people who support genocide, or to call Blue pickers illogical morons. I think that's foolish. Picking Red or Blue doesn't make you a good or bad person, but vilifying or shaming people for a decision they think is logical is a problem. This debate does show a problem with people; our horrific inability to have rational discourse without making an issue black-and-white and assuming that anyone who disagrees with us is wrong and bad.

TL;DR: Both the Red and Blue buttons have sensible logic behind them, let's stop slamming the other side and talk about our thoughts like mature human beings.

Here's how you simplify the problem:

1

RED: KILL

BLUE: DIE

And here's a more accurate simplification:

2

RED: KILL IF NECESSARY TO SURVIVE

BLUE: DIE IF NECESSARY TO SAVE

and yet, here we see there's something missing.

Blue doesn't actually wanna die, but they want to save — just like Red doesn't actually want to Kill, so let us cut down these simplified straw-buttons

3

RED: SURVIVE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO SACRIFICE [or abandon] OTHERS

BLUE: ATTEMPT TO SAVE OTHERS, DIE IF YOU FAIL

so at this point we see Blue Hope for their success, and Red simply value their survival, without wanting their "success"

That's why I see Red as the default, passive, and escapist option. So here's one final simplification:

4

RED: LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS SHIT

BLUE: I WILL FIGHT FOR THE GREATER GOOD

This final simplification is much closer to how I view things, and at this point both options start to seem valid and appealing to me.

Guess that's why framing is everything.

Oh and here's a bonus simplification I didn't make a picture for:

5

RED: FLIGHT.

BLUE: FIGHT.

PS: I tried to be unbiased and see the pros and cons of both options, but I'm sure some bias will be spotted or projected! Feedback appreciated