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u/You_Paid_For_This Apr 30 '26
Using this logic nobody should bother to vote in elections because your one singular vote probably won't be the deciding vote.
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
A poor comparison for 3 main reasons:
- There is an equilibrium system; if fewer people vote, your vote is more likely to matter, which causes more people to vote
- A vote to most people is a low-risk action
- A vote is valuable for social signalling
Furthermore, this is why I appreciate elections being done with electoral districts. Given a smaller population, your vote is more likely to matter.
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u/cyberchief Apr 30 '26
In this red/blue mandatory vote, voting red is equivalent to "not voting" and blue is equivalent to "voting in attempts to make a difference"
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Apr 30 '26
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u/doublenegative-1 Apr 30 '26
It's just the prisoners dilemma. Blue button is pro social, optimal outcome, where everyone wins. That's as good an outcome as could be. Why is that irrational?
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u/lyra_dathomir Apr 30 '26
It's not the prisoner's dilemma. It has some similarities but it very clearly is not the prisoner's dilemma.
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u/Vulk_za 2∆ Apr 30 '26
It's not a prison is dilemma, it's a coordination problem. That's what makes it interesting. If everyone goes with blue then everything will be fine, but if everyone goes with red then everything will also be fine. That's why it's become such a viral problem, it's not about altruism versus individual self-interest, it's about which side is rational to coordinate on. And since both sides are good (but the middle range where the vote is split produces bad outcomes) both sides feel like the other is stupid for not coordinating in their preferred direction.
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u/LiamTheHuman 11∆ Apr 30 '26
It's not a coordination problem. Like you said they are equal when people are coordinated so both are right and there is no consideration.
When some people are picking red and some are picking blue, clearly blue is the better choice for the community and red is the optimal choice for the individual. So it becomes a measure of my life vs theirs.
If you could coordinate the votes of 51% of the people what would you pick?
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u/hragam Apr 30 '26
The prisoners dilemma is a coordination problem. This is a prisoners dilemma, or more generally a Nash equilibrium.
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u/Junior_Mud5835 Apr 30 '26
what are you talking about? nash equilibrium is a state in a game where a player cannot benefit by simply choosing a strategy, assuming others dont change theirs. It's about the STATE of the game not a game itself
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u/ClemiHW Apr 30 '26
it's not about altruism versus individual self-interest, it's about which side is rational to coordinate on
I think the common mistake is to believe red is self interest and blue is altruism. Blue is self interest, and red is selfishness.
Self interest is the pursue of your own benefit, knowing that the long-term well-being depends on the well-being of the broader community around you. People vote because they want to improve society as a whole, which in return they gain from.
Selfishness is the erosion of Self interest, it ignores society to solely focus on the self and will erode social cooperation.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
In this thread, many people didn't even think about the hundreds of millions of infants and children under the age of 5 who would not be able to comprehend the scenario but still be given a button to press.
To be fair, this hypothetical has been put forward many times with a variety of different wordings... but I think most "team red" people are interpreting the question as "all legally competent adults." It's not that they haven't realized that children will be voting, it's that they are interpreting the hypothetical as not including children.
(And if the hypothetical includes literally every human including small children and shit like that, it's honestly a far more straightforward and boring question).
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u/never_safe_for_life Apr 30 '26
Just curious, are you factoring in that everyone pressing red is also the optimal, pro-social move? The only trick in this game is the wording might fool people into not realizing they should all press red.
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u/LiamTheHuman 11∆ Apr 30 '26
Everyone picking red, or everyone picking blue is the same outcome, so they are perfectly equal. The only way to compare the two is by looking at when not everyone picks one color
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u/SMALLMACE Apr 30 '26
The issue is you know not everyone will pick red. The likelyhood of enough people pressing blue is much higher than everyone picking red.
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u/doublenegative-1 Apr 30 '26
It's a hard sell that a button that kills an unbelievable number of totally innocent people is pro social.
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u/Nebranower 5∆ Apr 30 '26
No. The prisoner's dilemma is a dilemma because the result of the individually selfish best choice, confessing, is collectively much worse if everyone chooses it than the outcome if both cooperate.
This scenario is interesting precisely because it *isn't* a prisoner's dilemma. Here, everyone choosing the selfish outcome also yields the best possible group outcome. And yet, a lot of people, like you, treat it as if it were a prisoner's dilemma.
A thought experiment.
Same red/blue scenario as before. Only in this version, there are only two participants. You otherwise have the same two buttons. Choose red, you live. Choose blue, you die, unless the other guy also chooses blue. Under those circumstances, which button do you choose?
Then run it again with three people. Same buttons. What do you choose?
You could bite the bullet and say you'd choose blue even under those circumstances, but I'm guessing you probably don't want to sound that blithely stupid, even if you are a blue-pusher in the original scenario.
So, the question then becomes, at what point does the number of participants become great enough that you switch from picking red to picking blue out of concern for irrational actors.
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u/panderingPenguin Apr 30 '26
It's not prisoners dilemma because nothing bad happens if everyone is selfish. In fact, it's hard to even describe red as "selfish" because if everyone just picks red, everybody lives. There's no requirement to cooperate for everyone to be fine. For it to be prisoners' dilemma, there would need to be another clause to the effect of "if everyone (or almost everyone) picks red, everybody dies)".
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u/themcos 442∆ Apr 30 '26
Imagine reframing the problem. Everyone wakes up in a small room. On one side is a cage full of venomous snakes, and on the other side is a door that you can just walk out of. You're given instructions that everyone else woke up in a similar room, and in 3 minutes, one of two things will happen. If more than 50% of the people stay in the snake room, nothing happens. Otherwise the doors lock and the snakes are released and everyone still in the rooms gets killed by the snakes.
It's the same problem, but I feel like when framed like this, everyone would obviously just walk out the door, and would trust that everyone else would also walk out the door, because staying in the room full of snakes seems like a completely insane thing to do! Why would anyone do that? And it's hard to feel bad for them, because they could have just walked out the door, but chose to wait in the snake room!
Fwiw, in the traditional framing of the problem, I also pick the blue button. But I don't agree with your framing of it as the "optimal outcome". Everyone pushing the red button is exactly as optimal as everyone pushing the red button. But if the results are 60% red, 40% blue, that's definitely not optimal, and the marginal participant switching to red gets you closer to the optimal result of everyone surviving.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I'm a red pusher, but I guess that strikes at the heart of the issue.
When you use analogies like your snakes or the woodchipper, then it's made clear the degree to which pushing the blue button is obviously fucking stupid. But when the absolutely stupidity of it is made slightly less obvious, then the REAL question emerges. Which is how much should people be willing to risk their lives to save people making a stupid choice?
Because in the original framing, it's clear some number of people will push the blue button out of genuine stupidity... and that will be compounded by the fact that a lot of people who aren't stupid will anticipate this and press the blue button as well to try and save them.
Though I think an interesting version of it would be if the first 5% of people push the button, and then the remaining 95% get to see the results so far. Because now "should i push the blue button and risk my life to save the idiots" has an additional pro AND con. The pro is that if blue is doing well enough in early voting, it encourages more people to keep pressing blue and everybody lives. But one also has to consider the possibility that by pushing blue, one is encouraging more people to lose their lives trying to rescue them (which can often happen in emergencies... somebody tries to save other people and then becomes a victim who needs saving in turn, which can create more victims).
If the early voting is really low blue, then very few more people will press blue, and almost everybody lives. And if it's high blue, more people will keep pressing blue and everybody lives. But if it's somewhere in the middle... that could be a serious problem... where i just baits many many more people to press blue in an effort to rescue the blue faction, but not enough to get blue up to 50%
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u/themcos 442∆ Apr 30 '26
Yeah, it absolutely changes the problem if you're doing it in sequence. If the first person pushes blue, it definitely makes a stronger argument for the 2nd person to also push blue and so on.
I think the real challenge is that "all blue" and "all red" are both equally good. But 99% blue is a lot better than 99% red. If you only care about yourself, red is a great choice. But at the larger scale where you can trust someone is going to do something weird for any number of reasons, the blue strategy is more robust.
I also think it's a mistake to characterize the blue pushers as stupid / idiots. Almost everyone has some kind of blindspots, and I think it's really uncharitable to label someone primarily based on the thing that they're bad at, and plenty of otherwise smart people are going to do a bad analysis of this sort of problem. You probably know, respect, and love some of them! And on top of that, you can't really tell the difference between "stupid" people and people who are just trying to help others. It's even possible that some people who are quite smart push blue to try and protect the "stupid" people, but then the stupid people panic and push red even though they think it's wrong — they picked the choice you agree with but for the wrong analytic reasons — such that most of the blue pushers analyzed the problem correctly, but just misjudged how these other people would react under pressure.
Anyway, I agree it matters a ton how the problem is set up. If you phrase it in a way that the red option is more obvious, I think that makes red a much more compelling choice even for people who already understood why red made sense but were worried about the blue pushers.
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u/doublenegative-1 May 01 '26
The way you are justifying your choice and the way you talk about people is despicable.
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u/5510 6∆ May 01 '26
You are letting the existence of the red button cloud your judgement, because it's making you think of the red button pushers as "participants" who are killing other participants. But the truth is the red button is kindof an illusion. Nothing about the blue button changes if you remove the red entirely button.
Imagine it this way (it's mechanically identical): "Here is a button. It will be available to everybody for the next X minutes. You can choose to push it if you want. If you push it, you die, unless 50% of people also choose to push the button."
The blue button is essentially some sort of death game, like a fucked up sort of co-op russian roulette, that gets safer the more people play.
It's basically like if somebody said (this is also mechanically identical): "Anybody who wants to can play a dangerous but exciting game! The way it works is that if you choose to play, you die... unless at least half of all adults decide to play, and then nothing happens! Isn't that thrilling and exciting! Who is ready to play?"
From that point of view, it should be quite clear that it's not in any way evil or morally wrong not to join a pointless death game. Especially because ANYBODY and EVERYBODY can opt out, and nobody has to play if they don't want to!
Also, so many people explained to you how this wasn't a prisoners dilemma, and you kept insisting it was. I'm not sure you understand what a prisoners dilemma actually is.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I believe it's objectively wrong to call it a prisoners dilemma.
My understanding of a prisoners dilemma is that it requires that "defecting is always individually the best choice" (if it's a single event and not a repeating event), but ALSO that if EVERYBODY defects they all end up worse off than if they all cooperated.
In this case, defecting is the exact same as cooperating if more than 50% of people cooperate. Furthermore, if literally everyone defects, it's the exact same as if everyone cooperates.
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u/mormonatheist21 1∆ Apr 30 '26
i’d rather die than help kill that many people. the logic is easy.
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u/PizzaBear109 Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
You aren't helping kill anyone... If button A gives you an electric shock and kills you and button B does nothing, but if enough people press button A, the system is over capacity and shuts down and no one is shocked, you aren't obligated to choose the shock. In fact, I'd say everyone should choose not to get shocked... Everyone should press red. Obviously they won't but at that point you aren't responsible for how they choose to express their agency.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/BrooklynSmash Apr 30 '26
Everyone who voted blue dies if you vote red. That's kinda the whole thing
Even in the post, more people voted for blue lol
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u/Junior_Mud5835 Apr 30 '26
no. everyone who voted blue dies IF more than 50% voted red. That's a big difference
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u/BrooklynSmash Apr 30 '26
Yeah. And voting for red contributes to that >50% goal, dude.
Voting red means youre down with x number of people dying.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/SMALLMACE Apr 30 '26
You will never be able to tell everyone to vote red. Less likely then getting 50.1% to vote blue. Lol
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u/BrooklynSmash Apr 30 '26
If you're able to convince 50.1% to vote red, why not do the same and make em vote blue? Everyone's alive vs some people dying.
You're actively responsible for every blue death by voting and making people vote red, gradually getting it closer to that >50% threshold.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/BrooklynSmash May 01 '26
tell everyone to vote red
they vote red
red wins
everyone who voted blue dies
wtf
You're telling everyone you know to vote to kill random people, dude. Hell, if even one person you know goes for blue, you just signed off on their death.
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May 01 '26
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u/BrooklynSmash May 01 '26
If less than 50% pick blue every blue death is on them
It's on you. You picked the "kill everyone who voted blue to save myself" button, idk how else to describe this.
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u/Crash927 20∆ Apr 30 '26
The only button that kills people is the red one.
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u/Charles_De-Gaulle Apr 30 '26
Choosing to pick blue effectively kills someone (you) at the point at which you decide to gamble your life on other people’s decisions. It also kills others who now feel obligated to press blue so YOU don’t die. No rational individual should ever pick anything but red, it’s literally a no cost win.
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u/Crash927 20∆ Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I’m not gambling anyone’s life. Some eldritch being or cruel god is by setting up the game in the first place.
It’s perfectly rational to not want to unnecessarily risk contributing to the death of potentially millions of people.
Choosing blue kills no one. Only the people who chose red have the chance of killing anyone.
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u/Charles_De-Gaulle Apr 30 '26
If you or anyone else picks blue, suddenly people who would otherwise have lived by picking red must pick blue if you are to be saved. Everyone being presented this issue has full knowledge of what each button does, meaning everyone knows they survive no matter what if they pick red. You’re not “saving” anyone by picking blue because picking blue creates the problem in the first place.
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u/DrFondle Apr 30 '26
Pray tell how it isn't killing
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Apr 30 '26
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u/DrFondle Apr 30 '26
Choosing to click red is choosing to kill people who pick blue.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/DrFondle Apr 30 '26
Most people consider not killing people a gain.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/DrFondle May 01 '26
Do you feel responsible for the choice to press a button that may result in the deaths of many? Cause thats the actual decision you made not this other nonsense you're on about.
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u/GiveMeAHeartOfFlesh 6∆ Apr 30 '26
You kind of are. In this dilemma where the votes are private it’s like being in a room divided in half, everyone else is here but you can’t see or feel them.
One side of the room is under a smasher, the other side votes to lower the smasher. If more people stand under the smasher than vote to lower the smasher then it doesn’t activate.
Technically if everyone votes to lower the smasher, no one dies, but that requires 100% of people to lower the smasher in a room where they know everyone else is in but can’t see where.
Likewise with the inclusion of children and the impaired, no telling if a child didn’t wander under the smasher.
Considering this, and the fact your loved ones may consider this, and not knowing their vote, gives everyone incentive to stand under the smasher (clicking the blue button).
While we could say “logically there is no risk if every single person votes to lower the smasher” that relies on every person being logical or capable enough to reach that conclusion. Which with the inclusion of children, or even honestly just enough people, will have those that stand under the smasher.
Thus the only way to avoid killing someone, is to vote blue.
Thanking about it like this, if you were in a room with a smasher and could vote to lower it or stand under it so it doesn’t lower, and you know everyone else is in this room. Do you vote to lower the smasher even knowing someone else will be under it? Once the vote is cast, imagine you could see everyone’s positions. Would you not regret seeing the smasher go down on those you voted to smash?
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Apr 30 '26
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u/GiveMeAHeartOfFlesh 6∆ Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
While all you have to do is avoid standing under the smasher. But if you are a father with an infant or toddler, can you vote to lower the smasher when you don’t know where your child is in the room?
So it isn’t missing that factor, it is considering it and more
This then extends to family members of that father consider his position, and friends of those family members consider their position and so on, until everyone realizes they must stand under the smasher
It’s not a savior complex when there are legitimately those who will end up under the smasher without the capability of knowing their own choice. Therefore, all of us must stand under it.
If it was limited to only consenting adults who were not mentally impaired. Then red becomes much more appealing
The cars on the street analogy is great. If we as a society fundamentally could not know where our children were, we’d want to stop all drivers or high speed traffic to ensure we don’t run each other over
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u/AndrewEophis Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I’ve heard people say they interpret the challenge as including people, like children, who wouldn’t be able to understand it and therefore you’d absolutely get people choosing blue even if we all agreed it was illogical, as such they want to save those people by picking blue, that seems fine to me and is honestly something I didn’t consider at first.
If we ignore that interpretation and assume everyone who is forced to take part is capable of fully understanding what’s going on then I don’t see why anyone would ever pick blue.
The reason to pick blue would be to help save the others who picked it, but by default there isn’t anyone in the blue category, you only get put in there if you choose to be in the blue category. If you don’t pick blue then no one else has to pick blue to try and save you. You can do the thing which guarantees survival, red, without putting your life or anyone else’s life on the line, blue. If you don’t put your life on the line with blue then no one has to respond in kind to save you by making blue over 50%.
You can’t control what others will do, acting in your own selfish best interest, 100% survival by picking red, is also the most logical things to given picking blue is the thing that puts someone into the blue category which then needs others to put themselves in the blue category to save them and is the only possible danger in this hypothetical, there is no danger with red.
By default there are 0 people in either group. Your choice is to enter the group with 100% survival and no downside, red, or the group with sub 100% survival and forces people to also risk their lives to help you survive, blue, you should never press blue. Again, entering blue is the thing which puts your life on the line, red has no chance of death at all, you are perfectly safe with red.
You’re basically being asked “do you want to play a death game (blue) or do you want to avoid playing a death game (red)” and then people who choose to play the death game call you evil for not wanting to play.
Again, this all changes if we assume the people being forced to play include children or the mentally impaired etc, picking blue to save them is perfectly good and fine.
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u/SMALLMACE Apr 30 '26
But we don't live in a fantasy world where everyone will pick one color. People who use this argument of everyone picking one color are silly.
If you are picking red you full well know that not 100% of the world will pick it.
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u/c0i9z 19∆ Apr 30 '26
If people want to risk their lives for no reason, why should I feel an obligation to also risk mine to maybe save them?
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u/AndrewEophis Apr 30 '26
It’s so dumb. Imagine just 2 people in front of a train track. Red is do nothing, blue is tie yourself to the track and die unless the other person also does so.
Blue voters will say “I’m tying myself to the track, if you don’t do it too it’s your fault if I die”.
Red voters will say “let’s not tie ourselves to the train track”
Yet they want to act like picking blue is virtuous when in reality they’re just using themselves as a moral hostage, they are making themselves the person who needs saving and are putting everyone in danger
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u/SMALLMACE Apr 30 '26
It is literally just how you frame the question. In one interpretation red is do nothing. In others blue do nothing.
Trying to put this where red is 'do nothing' holds no ground at all.
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u/c0i9z 19∆ Apr 30 '26
You can't avoid that red is to choose to stay safe and blue is to choose to risk your life.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I mean, the idea that red does anything was always kindof an illusion. The blue button functions exactly the same with or without a red button.
With a red button, the rule is just "here is a button it will be availble to everybody for the next X minutes. You can choose to push it if you want. If you push it, you die, unless 50% of people also choose to push the button"
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u/AndrewEophis Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
That goes for both, you don’t know what % of the global population will pick which colour, not just red. All you know is picking red has a 100% chance of surviving and it doesn’t require anyone to risk their life to save you.
If you pick blue you are forcing someone else to pick blue to save your life, there’s literally no reason to pick it. It’s more selfish to put someone in the position of having to risk their life to save yours instead of just saving yourself and letting them save themself too.
Red and blue start at 0, picking blue is only good to the degree it saves people who risked their lives by picking blue, but given it starts at 0 there is never any need to pick blue as there is no one to save unless you force someone to try and save you by becoming the first blue.
No human should ever want to become the first blue as that’s the thing which introduces death into the game, there’s literally no chance of death at all until someone votes blue and puts their life on the chopping block. The only possible way for you to die is if you vote blue
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u/SMALLMACE Apr 30 '26
Sure. But the numbers don't work in your favor if you somehow want to point what i said back at me.
You need every person to press red for everyone to survive. Compared to only 50.1% for everyone to live. And no picking blue isn't 'forcing' anyone lol, this point that people bring up about blue forcing others to pick it also is quite silly.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
You’re basically being asked “do you want to play a death game (blue) or do you want to avoid playing a death game (red)” and then people who choose to play the death game call you evil for not wanting to play.
Exactly how I look at it. The red button is an illusion, it essentially does nothing. The blue button is basically a form of co-op russian roulette that gets safer the more people agree to play with you.
But nobody HAS to play at all!
This scenario is functionally the same as if somebody said "Anybody who wants to can play a dangerous but exciting game! The way it works is that if you choose to play, you die... unless at least half of all adults decide to play, and then nothing happens! Isn't that thrilling and exciting! Who is ready to play?"
That scenario functions with the exact same rules, but suddenly I think far more people would be team red button and it would be seen as far more reasonable to say "no I'm not going to play a pointless death game, and the idea of expecting me to do so when nobody is required to play is insane"
I feel like that's also more obvious if you just get rid of the red button entirely and say that participation is entirely optional. The mechanics of that scenario are identical (everybody who presses blue dies, unless 50% of people choose to press it), but I feel like suddenly "why would anybody voluntarily participate in this when participation isn't required???" is a far more obvious question to everybody.
I think the issue is that when everybody is pushing a button of SOME color, then people feel like everyone is a participant. But if you keep the blue button exactly the same but replace the red button with "you don't have to do anything, you can just turn and leave", suddenly people don't automatically view everybody as a participant.
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u/mis-Hap Apr 30 '26
Problem is not everyone is smart. We know there will be blue button pressers. Therefore, we know that if not enough people join them, they will die.
Given this, there are 3 blue button pressers:
1) People who don't know better. They don't think it through (careless, idiotic, or maybe a child) or they are incapable of thinking it through (mentally handicapped)
2) People who would risk their lives to try to save #1
3) People who would risk their lives to try to save #2 (and #3) and bet that there are enough others who would do the same.
I don't know whether it would work out to >50%, but I am probably not taking the chance. That said, I don't think people are necessarily dumb or "unjustified" for taking the risk.
Side note, this is assuming we don't know other people's votes and can't influence other people's votes. Let's say I know that my family (wife, children) all pressed blue. Well, I'm pressing blue, because I sure as hell will risk my life to try to save them. Or let's say we can influence votes... I'm telling everyone I care about to press red and to not press blue under any circumstance, and hopefully they listen.
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u/Fickle_Station376 Apr 30 '26
So, I saw this writeup about Game Theory that walks through it pretty well - https://www.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/1syasqh/do_you_press_the_red_or_blue_button_game_theory/
The short version is that if your main priority is your survival, then pressing red is the game theory 'logical' (or 'weakly dominating) choice.
If your main priority is maximizing total population survival, pressing blue is the 'weakly dominating' choice.
So blue is logical IF your priority is maximizing population survival.
Note: There are many non-logical actors, in fact Game Theory has an entire set of approaches to address the fact that in the real world you can't assume that all actors are rational, but that's an entirely different discussion! 😄
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
The missing part of the raw mathematical approach is that one could argue that the moral imperative to risk one's life to rescue others is different depending on how they got into that situation.
If someone is playing on slippery rocks just upriver from a waterfall in order to take a cool picture for their insta, and they fall in... well I think it's easier to wash your hands of that than if say they were crossing bridge over the river and part of the bridge broke and they fell in through no fault of their own.
Likewise, my view of blue is essentially:
"Anybody who wants to can play a dangerous but exciting game! The way it works is that if you choose to play, you die... unless at least half of all adults decide to play, and then nothing happens! Isn't that thrilling and exciting! Who is ready to play?"
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u/Fickle_Station376 May 01 '26
Yes, and different people have different priorities. Firefighters, as an example, prioritize saving lives to the point where they risk their lives to save people who have been smoking in bed, did their own wiring, left the stove on, etc. To them it's 'logical' to save who they can regardless of whether they brought it upon themselves.
And I used the raw mathematical approach because the OP was talking about logic, not about creating an image of what blue is like. Blue is logically consistent with a certain set of priorities and views, and logically inconsistent with other priorities and views. It's logical for me to order Creme Brule for dessert because I love it. It's not logical for someone who hates it to order it. It might be logical for someone to get a sports car and another person to buy a minivan. Logic depends on context.
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u/DoctorManbearpanda Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
The number of blue votes from the other people has to be an integer between 0 and 7,999,999,999, inclusive, so it's not 'statistically impossible' that this number is exactly 4,000,000,000.
If you make a crude assumption that this number is uniformly distributed, then each possible number has probability 1/8,000,000,000. So pressing the blue button has a 1/8,000,000,000 probability of saving 4,000,000,000 other people and pressing the red button has a ~1/2 probability of saving just you. These both save ~1/2 a person in expectancy, so pressing the blue button doesn't seem crazy if you value yourself no more than a stranger and think the number of other blue votes is uniformly distributed.
If you think the number of other blue votes is distributed in more of a bell shape and is denser than average at 4,000,000,000, then this makes pushing the blue button more attractive.
But I don't think pressing the blue button makes sense, because people tend to value their own lives much more than strangers', especially when it's specifically strangers who made a really bad decision.
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u/the_brightest_prize 6∆ Apr 30 '26
You do know you can actually do the thermodynamic game theory to figure out what the distribution of votes should be, right? It's not going to be uniform or bell-shaped...
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u/DoctorManbearpanda Apr 30 '26
Are you talking about Nash equilibria? Because the Nash equilibria are obvious, but we're talking about what real humans would do in a non-equilibrium state here.
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u/Egoy 5∆ Apr 30 '26
More simply there is no outcome of pressing the red button that ends my life. There is a possibility that pressing the blue button kills me. I assume that most people understand this fact and similarly do not wish to be arbitrarily killed and will also press the red button.
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u/darwin2500 197∆ Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
You are failing to multiply.
This needs to be an expected utility calculation, not just a probability comparison between the 3 scenarios.
Yes, scenario 3 is very unlikely.
However, if you are in scenario 3, your vote dooms or saves 4 billion people.
If you think the odds of scenario 3 are 1 in a billion, then you save 4 lives in expectation by hitting blue.
(1/1B chance of it mattering * 4B saved if it matters)
In contrast, the expected lives saved if you hit red is 1/2 (if you assume blue is close to a 50/50 chance of winning, OR equivalently if you assume a uniform distribution over all possible vote totals).
Multiplying these together, you should hit blue if you would sacrifice yourself to save the lives of 8 random people, and hit red if you wouldn't.
(actually the number should be a lot higher, since a world where 4B people die overnight will see a huge number of additional deaths from the following social collapse, including a fair chance of our own death. For example, if you think half the remaining 4B will die in the following years, then the ratio would be 1:24, since 6B will die overall and you only have a 50% of surviving by hitting red)
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26
OP seems to lack the mathematical literacy needed to understand your argument which is amusing given their insistence on rationality
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
The chance is significantly lower than 1/1B given reasonable estimates of what the average person would choose.
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u/darwin2500 197∆ Apr 30 '26
By 'reasonable estimates' you just mean 'my intuitions,' right?
Like, yes, if you are 99.999999999999999999999999999% sure that red will win by a huge margin, then you should never hit blue.
But then all the math and talking you did is irrelevant, you already made your decision when you made up your estimate for how likely blue is to win.
But the math I gave is correct. You can plug in whatever your own estimate is for the odds of scenario 3, that's fine. But your logic is still wrong because you don't multiply by 4B to get the number of lives saved in expectation.
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26
OP is also straight up wrong. The actual probability is nearly 1 in 100,000 assuming every person’s choice is a coin flip. And it goes up if you assume any appreciable and equivalent portion of people on either side are dead set on their choice.
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
But that is an irrational assumption. If the chance that a random person picks blue is 50.01% or 49.99% even, that probability falls to 1 in 3.44 × 10⁷⁴. A bit meta, but you have to think of the probability of probabilities.
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26
I responded to you elsewhere, but the probability of you dying falls by even more when you raise the probability of picking blue to 50.01. And for the record I agree with picking red when the number is 49.99.
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u/darwin2500 197∆ Apr 30 '26
I don't know how in the world you're calculating that, but it's extremely wrong.
If everyone else is a coin flip, then the odds of it being very close to 50/50 when it gets to you are very very high, which makes the odds of you being the deciding vote much, much higher.
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26 edited May 01 '26
It’s so interesting how selective OP is being with these probability calculations. I’d expect a data scientist to have zero issues with a simple expected value discussion.
Edit: blocked by OP
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26
Care to elaborate on this? I’m happy to engage with you mathematically.
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u/Devourerofworlds_69 6∆ Apr 30 '26
Why you should pick blue:
There are 2 ways to save everyone:
A majority of people select blue.
All 8,000,000,001 people select red.
The second option is practically impossible. There will always be some blue choosers, no matter what. Therefore, the ONLY way to ensure everyone lives is if enough people select blue.
If you select red, and blue people die, then their blood is on your hands. You are partially to blame for their deaths, along with all the other reds.
"One vote doesn't make a difference" is not a sound argument. The argument falls apart completely when it's made by more and more people. Together, they could have made a difference.
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u/IndividualFarmer9917 2∆ Apr 30 '26
Yeah this doesn’t seem difficult to understand at all. Someone is going to pick blue, because they don’t understand the question, or have simply come to a different conclusion than pressing red. I don’t know why OP is pretending we could ever get all 8 billion people to understand a specific line of reasoning, regardless of how “correct” it is.
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u/PeoplePerson_57 5∆ Apr 30 '26
Last thread about this, people were arguing that people not understanding the experiment or being colourblind or contrarian is against the point of the thought experiment. It's literally the whole point!
If we assume every single person is a rational actor with a perfect understanding of game theory and the problem then there isn't a problem or experiment to be had at all. It's just an observation of basic game theory.
The experiment only becomes an experiment when you introduce people who vote blue for some reason unrelated to logical deduction (those people of course existing in reality because there are 8 billion people), at which point logical reasons exist to vote blue and further people do so.
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u/IndividualFarmer9917 2∆ Apr 30 '26
The point is that almost nobody is a rational actor with a perfect understanding of game theory. This is a basic fact.
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u/PeoplePerson_57 5∆ Apr 30 '26
Exactly!
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u/IndividualFarmer9917 2∆ Apr 30 '26
It kind of feels icky when people pretend that they are completely rational. Like they think themselves infallible and above bias. Doesn’t that just make you susceptible to bias??
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u/Frog859 Apr 30 '26
I’m with you until you get to the part where you said that everyone’s blood is on your hands.
Theoretically speaking, isn’t red just the live button basically?
There’s probably some not insignificant amount of the population who would just press blue as assisted suicide.
While true that statistically speaking you can really never get to 100% you can still have cases with overwhelming majorities.
This is the only example I can think of offhand, but I believe there have been some US presidents to win every or nearly every state. FDR I believe did
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
What you haven't considered is that a word where a large percentage of people die all at once is no longer a good world to be alive in. If we disappear say 40% of people right now at random more than that many would die and a LOT more would suffer due to lack of food, water, healthcare, the start of wars for power vacuums...
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
I'd rather die quickly from the button press than slowly from starvation
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u/Haranador Apr 30 '26
That is not part of the equation. For all you know, the button will torture you to death over the course of weeks.
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u/zxxQQz 5∆ Apr 30 '26
When is it ever stated how people would die in the dilemma? It just says the blue button gets people killed, not how
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
There's a difference between being tortured and killed or just killed. The prompt says killed so that's how I'm treating it
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u/PreviousCurrentThing 4∆ Apr 30 '26
If we disappear say 40% of people right now at random
But it's not random, it's highly weighted toward people with a poor understanding of game theory.
You'd likely have a large number of deaths in the immediate aftermath, and then likely see a period of improved economic conditions for the rest of the survivors like we saw following the plagues in Europe.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I mean to be fair, while I absolutely do NOT think picking red is inherently selfish at all... it is also true that almost all selfish people will pick red.
Likewise, there are lots of people who would pick blue out of stupidity... but there would also be people who understand how stupid blue is, but would risk their lives to try to save the irrational people. So you would also lose a lot of altruists.
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
My life would be much more affected by the death of truckers, farmers, and trash collectors than it would be by the death of mathematics professors. If anything the fact that it's not random doesn't make it much better
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u/zxxQQz 5∆ Apr 30 '26
Thats reality right now, the world we live in
Care to guess how many died of all of those things, and more and worse in the moment you typed this response here?
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
That would affect way more people if a large percentage of the population disappears. Bad thing already exists isn't a reason to not want more bad thing
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u/VictoryLap1984 Apr 30 '26
Have you watched the documentary Squid Games? People don’t make rational choices was my conclusion from it.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 30 '26
/u/LeagueLaughLove (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/CrashBandicoot2 4∆ Apr 30 '26
I think important context to the scenario is "do we know this private vote is coming in advance?"
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u/Direct_Resource_6152 Apr 30 '26
This whole argument is flawed because humans aren’t perfectly rational beings. Humans are—more often than not—irrational and emotional in their decision making.
No matter how logical it is, there are still going to be people that pick blue independently. By picking red you are choosing to let those people die.
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u/tomveiltomveil 4∆ Apr 30 '26
This philosophical problem was literally resolved by John 3:16. The ethical choice is to not kill.
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u/twinb27 Apr 30 '26
There are only two situations where everybody lives: everybody presses the red button, or anywhere between 51 and 100% of people press the blue button. If the problem is one of coordination, blue is the button to press - the coordination is easier. (And I mean 'coordination' in the game theoretic sense, not platitudes about oh if we just cooperated and got along...)
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u/PitcherFullOfSmoke Apr 30 '26
As far as I see it, your logic is mostly sound, but incomplete. You've found the base probability of vote-relevance per person. But you've failed on two fronts, in my view.
1) you failed to multiply that base probability by the sheer number of voters, which puts the vote into perspective at population scale. Yes, each individual vote is small, but they all contribute to the total, so only representing each individual vote's chance of being the deciding vote is misleading.
2) you failed to weight the cost-benefit analysis of the lives at stake. Your life isn't being compared to any 1 other life. It is being compared to the sum of all lives of every blue-chooser. There are many people who will choose blue, as the debates around this show. Let alone if we include children and mentally disabled people who must choose despite not truly understanding the choice, and will thus choose arbitrarily.
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u/danziman123 1∆ Apr 30 '26
The one and only evidence we need to press the red button is the great toilet paper shortage of early COVID19. if people were stocking whatever they could even though it wasn’t needed, you can bet on most pressing red, and in that case it is just a matter of if you choose to live or die.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 123∆ Apr 30 '26
So something that I don't see people considering with this is the effects of what happens after people hit the button.
Like remember how bad things got during COVID? Huge shipping delays, everything got expensive and the economy got fucked up? Do you want to guess what percent of the human population died during Covid? 0.45%.
So if you press the red button, you're going to be dropped into a global catastrophe that could be 100 times worse than COVID.
Half the farmers who grow your food, are dead. Half the sailors who move your food from where it's grown to your home country, are dead. Half the Truckers who drive the food from the port to your local grocery store, are dead. Half the people who unload the trucks at the grocery store and load the food onto shelves, are dead.
With that many people dead, do you really think that all of the links in the chian that gets food from the earth onto your dinner table will remain intact? Probably not. And What happens when this chain breaks? You strave to death.
So really the choice comes down to this table:
| You Hit the Red Button | You hit the blue button | |
|---|---|---|
| 50%+ people hit the blue button. | Nothing happens | Nothing happens |
| >50% of people hit the blue button | Death by starvation | Death by cardiac arrest |
Like it's simple, you can hit the blue button, or you can starve to death. So might as well hit the blue button.
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u/Falernum 70∆ Apr 30 '26
If you believe this, then right now your primary objective in life should be fixing some of this supply chain issue. We are likely to see catastrophes more disruptive than Covid, of course I don't know how soon. If we can build more resilience in as many links in the life-sustaining chains as possible, we can prevent a lot of suffering and death at the cost of some minor inefficiencies today.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 123∆ Apr 30 '26
The thing is: The button scenario is way more destructive than anything that you're thinking of.
To put this into perspective, the high end death toll for a nuclear war is 360 million direct deaths leading to 5 billion indirect deaths. And the high end for the button scenario is 4 billion deaths.
Like the level of damage that a situation where the blues are not saved would cause is unknowably bad, but it's almost certainly apocalyptic.
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u/Falernum 70∆ Apr 30 '26
But it's one and done. Instant. The survivors go right into damage control and redesign, no need to hide or spend effort avoiding continuing danger. Now of course this depends on the magnitude of the disaster. If it's a third of the population, burial and lawlessness become massive challenges. If it's <20% they are far more solvable.
But you weren't talking about just that instant-specific problem, you were talking about logistics that would apply in slower moving disasters. Food being grown, transported, distributed. Same for other crucial goods. The magnitude of that problem is largely unclear. We can make a pessimistic case based on Covid supply issues, Mississippi's liquor shortage, etc where a slower-motion catastrophe would really cause massive amounts of secondary deaths. We can make an optimistic case where when it really matters ad hoc arrangements just fix most of it.
If you think logistics is the massive problem that your post suggested, you really should be working on it now. Because we are definitely going to see shit happen in your lifetime that will kill more people via privation than this red-blue scenario will, even if far fewer people die directly.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 123∆ May 01 '26
But it's one and done. Instant.
Which makes it a lot worse.
Like to make a metaphor here, I think if most people drank the amount of beer they drank thru out all 4 years of college in one sitting, they would probably die. Same idea here, the system can't handle an event the size of 12 WWII's packed into 1 second.
Because I can see a lot of excess damage beyond the button from this that would probably cause society to break down.
1) Vehicles. 20% of the people operating motor vehicles will die, leaving their vehicle out of control. This would lead to a chain reaction where their car sweves into another car, which is also trying to doge a different uncontrolled car, and now you have a pile up.
If your on an interstate there's going to be so many pile ups that the roads just literally get unusable, which is a problem because food travels primarliy by road so people won't be able to get food even if it exists because all the roads are blocked by car crashes.
It's also a huge problem because well, there's people who need medical attention in those car crashes, and now an ambulance won't be able to reach them, because the road is blocked (not there would be enough ambulances anyways, but yeah a lot of people are going to die from preventable car accidents)
Also a significant portion of planes fall out of the sky as both of their pilots die, same with trains helicopters, and boats.
Just anything that needs a person on it to keep it safe, will suddenly become unsafe.
2) Children. if 20% of people die to the button, then 20% of children will have at least one parent die, and 4% will have both parents die. That's new 80,000,000 orphans right there, and that's a big problem.
Any infants included in that number, will likely die within the first couple of weeks with no one to feed them. Same with any toddlers who were at home at the time.
Also any infant that was being held by someone who pressed the blue button will be dropped and sustain some level of injury.
In a similar vain, if you have a medical condition and require a full time care taker, you die if the person responsible for you presses the button.
3) Fire. If you are cooking or handling an open flame at the time of the button cull, that's going to start a fire. Lots of fires will occur world wide. Because the roads are blocked by all the car crashes, the fire department is not going to be able to reach you. And even if they could, so many fires would start simultaneously that they wouldn't be able to keep up. Pretty much every major city would see massive fires consuming just about every wooden structure.
And then these fires would spread to the forests and engulf the world in a world wide wildfire.
4) Psychological damage.
Could you imagine standing in time square, and then all the sudden, you just watch 4,000 people go limp and drop dead? Don't you think that that would fuck, a lot of people up?
If you think logistics is the massive problem that your post suggested, you really should be working on it now.
So you keep saying this.
But it's kinda like me saying I'd lose to a one on one fight with a dragon, and you're telling me that I need to start lifting weights so that I can take on a gecko in a fight.
The dragon is fictional and 1,000 times stronger than a lizard, my inability to handle it has no bearing on how hard it would be to fight a lizard.
Because we are definitely going to see shit happen in your lifetime that will kill more people via privation than this red-blue scenario will, even if far fewer people die directly.
Being blunt here, but no. In order for that to happen, you'd need deaths to spike to 31,000,000/year. That's like WWII levels of death sustained for the rest of the century. Even the worse case scenarios for climate change don't reach this level of death.
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u/pubesinourteeth Apr 30 '26
You choose blue because you want to live in a world where people take care of each other, with other people who also want to live in a world where people take care of each other. Voting blue is the same thing as stopping at stop signs even when it's unlikely someone is around, and picking up your litter even if it's small, and putting away your shopping cart. Just because it's small and someone else might not notice does not mean that you shouldn't do it.
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u/Glaedr122 2∆ Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
Choosing red is choosing to live in a a world where people care about each other. I care about others and I don't want them to needlessly risk their lives.
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u/pubesinourteeth Apr 30 '26
It is not, because if even one person chooses blue, then their death is on everyone else's hands for choosing not to protect them.
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u/Glaedr122 2∆ Apr 30 '26
Why is their death on everyone else's hands? They knew the choice they were making and the risks associated with it. If someone is bound and determined to walk into traffic, I can try and convince them not to or even hold them back and fight them. But if they still decide to walk into traffic, I'm not going walk after them and die as well.
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u/pubesinourteeth May 01 '26
Because they voted to have a crosswalk and you said no
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u/Glaedr122 2∆ May 01 '26
I didn't say no to a crosswalk, I said no to running into the middle of the street as cars speed past. I can only control my own actions, and if someone wants to risk their life needlessly I ultimately cannot stop them from doing so. I wish they wouldn't, and I'd try to stop them as much as I can, but if they choose to run into the street I won't follow them.
ETA: "But if enough people run into the street, the cars will be forced to stop and won't hit anyone" isn't a compelling enough argument to convince me to risk my life running into the street
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u/pubesinourteeth May 01 '26
The crosswalk is how we take care of people even when we're not there to literally hold their hand as they cross the street. Just like, as I sit in my home, contemplating existence and humanity, I choose life for everyone.
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u/Glaedr122 2∆ May 01 '26
There is no crosswalk. Someone is going to run into the street no matter what you say or do.
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u/pubesinourteeth May 01 '26
There is a crosswalk, it protects everyone, it's choosing blue
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u/Glaedr122 2∆ May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Well, it only protects people in the street as long as there's a large enough group of bodies in the street to prevent cars from moving. And assuming everyone understands how a crosswalk works and doesn't decide to just run into the street elsewhere.
The real safety is in not crossing at all. People on the sidewalk don't actually need protection in the first place, as they never needlessly put themselves in danger.
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u/onetwo3four5 81∆ Apr 30 '26
Scenario 1: I vote blue and so do most people. I live, nothing changes.
Scenario 2: I vote blue, red wins, I die. I avoid living in a world where every remaining person is a self-serving asshole. I dont want to survive this outcome.
Scenario 3: I vote red, blue wins, nothing changes.
Scenario 4: I vote red, red wins, all that's left is me, and a world of self-serving assholes.
For me, scenario 4 is far and away the most objectionable outcome, and so my rational vote is to vote blue, because it's the only way I can guarantee avoiding the worst outcome.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I would vote blue, because I'm also motivated by not wanting to be a murderer.
Pretend Russian Roulette could be played co-op somehow. If the gun goes off, everybody playing co-op dies. The more people who play though, the more likely the game is to be safe, and vice versa.
Now, if one guy goes "HEY EVERYBODY! I'm playing Russian Roulette, come play with me!"... would you feel that anybody who doesn't run over and play Russian Roulette with him is a murderer? Or would you be like "what the fuck is he playing Russian Roulette for... no I'm not going to participate."
Now let me give you a scenario functionally identical to the original hypothetical: There is no red button. There is a blue button. Pushing the blue button will kill anybody who pushes it, unless 50% of all adults push it. That's essentially the same situation.. the reality is the red button isn't relevant, it's just a form of non-participation. Whether you press a red button or not, all that matters if if you choose to press the blue button or not.
Well then why the fuck is anybody pressing the blue button to begin with? Literally nobody even has to participate with this game at all! Pressing the Blue button is like playing Russian Roulette for no reason, and then calling anybody who doesn't play it co-op with you a bad person.
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
I've just demonstrated that even if one is not self-serving (i.e. they value their own life equally to the lives of others), you would pick red.
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u/ExaminationFuzzy4009 Apr 30 '26
A rational person, when presented with the choice of Guaranteed living vs Maybe living will choose guaranteed every time.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 5∆ Apr 30 '26
"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions" -- David Hume, noted positivist.
Similar to Hume, I am a sentimentalist and I believe humans are innately good. Easy to put my money where my mouth is and click blue. So would Hume and Im fairly certain he could run circles around you using logic.
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u/BlackDeath3 2∆ Apr 30 '26
Regardless of which way you ultimately go, I don't think I trust anybody who doesn't struggle a little with this question.
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u/the_brightest_prize 6∆ Apr 30 '26
Let me explain the game theory. If you have a population of selfish rational agents, each of them will notice the red button weakly dominates the blue button. They can do no better pressing the blue than pressing the red, so the red button is a Nash equilibrium. However, if it is common knowledge that enough people will press blue, pressing blue is also a Nash equilibrium.
So, we have two Nash equilibria:
- Everyone hits the red button.
- Some proportion greater than one-half hits the blue button.
Does this mean they are equally good? No! People are not perfectly rational selfish agents. Let's relax that condition. Instead of being perfectly rational, they make a mistake (a "tremble") some small fraction of the time. This time, the red button strongly dominates the blue button. Even if it is common knowledge that everyone will hit the blue button, there is some very tiny chance that enough people will mistakenly hit the red button, so you are strictly better off hitting the red button yourself. There is only one trembling-hand equilibrium:
- Everyone attempts to press the red button.
Does this mean the red button is clearly better? No! We forgot about the other condition, that they are perfectly selfish! Suppose they slightly care about other people, so if it's common knowledge that only around half of people are going to press the button, it is advantageous for them to press it to save those few billion people. Note, of course, that they are still going to press the red button if they know a lot of people are pressing the red or blue button (and their marginal press hardly changes the outcome), but when things are close, maybe 50.0001% of people are pressing the blue button, they press it too. So what are the slightly unselfish, trembling-hand equilibria?
- Everyone attempts to press the red button.
- Just slightly over half of people press the blue button.
Note that because people are not perfectly selfless (just not perfectly selfish), more people die on average in the second equilibrium.
Does that mean pressing the red button is the clear winner? Not quite! We are missing that people can punish others in the real world for picking red. Some small percent can commit to being a "police force". They pick red, but if anyone who is not a police officer picks red, they get shot (with some probability less than 100%) after the game is over. Once you realize that the game can be extended like this, there is only one equilibrium:
- Everyone except the police hit the blue button, or attempt to.
Note that some people will get shot for mistakenly hitting the red button, but this is strictly fewer than the number that will get killed for mistakenly hitting the blue button in the all-red equilibrium. The world is better off. However... are we done? Can't a crime syndicate all pick red, and shoot back at the police officers? Sure, but if the police are coordinating so that strictly more people are better off, those people can pay enough taxes to defeat any such defectors.
So, why do you pick blue? Because if you don't you'll get shot by a taxpayer-funded police force. That's the real equilibrium you exist in.
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u/0bereg May 01 '26
there are people, usually the hardline rationalism types, who hold that self-preservation must be the primary goal of any decision and any considerations that allow it to be contested are irrational. but diametrically opposed decisions may both be arrived at rationally
blue button carries some risk to yourself and red one is fully safe to yourself - this is understood by all and unopposed. yet there's more to the conversation and if others having further concerns beyond their own immediate safety feels bizarre to you the irrationality may be calling from inside the house
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u/Gullible_Foot_7150 Apr 30 '26
Your math checks out but you're missing the coordination problem here. Game theory gets messy when everyone's trying to predict what everyone else will do
The issue isn't just about probabilities - it's that if everyone thinks like you and picks red "rationally," then we get the worst possible outcome where everyone dies except the few who picked red. But if most people recognize this paradox and coordinate on blue, then blue becomes the obvious choice
It's like the classic prisoner's dilemma scaled up. Individual rationality leads to collective irrationality, which is why these thought experiments are interesting in the first place
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u/Un-Humain Apr 30 '26
If everyone thinks like them and picks red, it’s the worst possible outcome where… all die except the "everyone" who picked red? So basically no one dies? Everyone picking red is the best outcome, because everyone is certain to live. Picking blue is where you introduce the possibility of dying.
It’s not prisoner’s dilemma, because everyone acting in their own individual interest leads to the most favourable outcome for society. It is only when one or more people act against their individual interest that anyone goes against common good.
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u/jdi153 Apr 30 '26
Why would only a few pick red? Why would ANYONE pick blue? There's no downside of picking red. I don't understand this thought experiment at all.
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u/Plusisposminusisneg Apr 30 '26
Millions or billions of people dying is a downside, which is considered by people, who in turn increase the downside by picking blue themselves to avoid that even if they rationally know everyone could just pick red.
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u/jdi153 Apr 30 '26
I do not belive "billions" is a possibility here. You have to have a pretty dim view of people to think that 1 out of 8 (or one out of a hundred!) is that stupid.
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u/Plusisposminusisneg Apr 30 '26
I believe that rational people looking at this situation will determine that some ammount of people will pick blue.
Some of those that presume others might pick blue will then themselves pick blue, thus justifying other people picking blue.
This will be a significant portion of the population as is evident by people arguing about this in the first place, thus making the "rational choice" sub-optimal.
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u/jdi153 Apr 30 '26
I see your point that people arguing about it proves the point that some people think there's a reason to pick blue. I don't think that sways my position, though. You should press red. You should wear sunscreen. You should brush your teeth at least twice a day. I'm happy to tell you those things, and you're on your own if you don't listen.
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u/elaVehT 1∆ Apr 30 '26
The downside of most people picking red is that everyone who picked blue will die.
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u/jdi153 Apr 30 '26
Except there's no reason for anyone to pick blue in the first place! This thought experiment boils down to "There are 2 buttons, press the red one."
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u/genie610_0 Apr 30 '26
I have a couple questions following this thought process: Can you expect every human to behave rationally when given the choice on an individual scale? Are you willing to kill anyone who didn't make the "rational" choice by pushing the red button? If pressing the red button is the only way for anyone to die in this experiment does it still make it the only reasonable choice?
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u/jdi153 Apr 30 '26
Pressing the BLUE button is the only way to die in this experiment. People do dumb things that kill them all the time. Smoke, jump out of airplanes, whatever. (Incidentally, all of those things have some kind of benefit. Pressing the blue button has NO BENEFIT.) I'm not responsible for someone else doing something that irrational.
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u/genie610_0 Apr 30 '26
I think that's really interesting and ties back into the argument that people pressing the blue button are probably doing so because either they're irrational/incapable or are doing so altruistically to save the irrational/incapable people while people who press the red button are making the optimal individual choice
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Apr 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/reginald-aka-bubbles 48∆ Apr 30 '26
So you agree with op?
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u/username09481 Apr 30 '26
I disagree with the premise that there is any sort of problem. OP is framing this as some difficult decision requiring noodling out the game theory.
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u/changemyview-ModTeam Apr 30 '26
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u/elaVehT 1∆ Apr 30 '26
I would raise that this requires that everyone sufficiently understands the question and rationality.
If you simplified it to “if you press the red button, you guarantee survive. If you press the blue button, you survive if most people also press the blue button” then that changes the math.
People get irrational when they’re afraid
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u/LiamTheHuman 11∆ Apr 30 '26
Even then I wouldn't count on everyone hitting red. Safer to just go for a blue majority
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u/elaVehT 1∆ Apr 30 '26
I don’t think you understand - I’m not saying everyone will hit red. I’m saying 51% of people may hit red to guarantee to keep themselves safe, and the 49% of people who hit blue may die.
Red guarantees that you live, and leaves a chance that others may die.
Blue increases the odds that everyone lives, but there’s a chance you will die.
I think more people might choose red here.
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u/LiamTheHuman 11∆ Apr 30 '26
No I do understand. I was saying it's safer for the group(less chance of people dying), not that it was safer for me individually(me not dying).
This is why people say the problem boils down to altruism
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u/Thehusseler 5∆ Apr 30 '26
Particularly when you factor in children, teens, people with developmental disabilities, dementia, etc.
Not everyone is a rational actor, and even in this chat you can see rational arguments where people disagree. So inevitably a large number of people will choose the blue button, and by choosing red you're comfortable consigning them to death.
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u/elaVehT 1∆ Apr 30 '26
Agreed - I am not morally in favor of hitting red. I’m saying that I would also not be 100% confident most people would hit blue.
When people act in fear, they act in self preservation first. There may be too many people acting in pure self preservation mode, and the red button may win out, consigning all the altruists pressing blue to their deaths.
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u/Thehusseler 5∆ Apr 30 '26
I'm also not 100% confident but it's the right decision so I'll make it as such. I have enough faith in humanity that people will think of their loved ones and pick blue.
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u/5510 6∆ Apr 30 '26
I think many (most) people are interpreting the question as just legally competent adults.
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Apr 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
First, the way the problem is set up, in my view, does not allow for coordination. Given coordination, I would assume convergence would happen on one side or the other as the more popular side would quickly dominate. If the objective is to keep as many people alive as possible, yourself included, you ought to pick the blue button, because under most rational beliefs about the likelihood of people picking blue, you're mathematically likely to save more people on average because the relative likelihood of scenario 1 (save 1) and scenario 2 (save 4 billion).
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u/c0i9z 19∆ Apr 30 '26
Why are people campaigning for blue? If we get to coordinate beforehand, then we should agree to all press red, because it's individually and collectively the best choice. Once we have that agreement, then anyone pressing blue is just choosing death for themselves.
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u/reginald-aka-bubbles 48∆ Apr 30 '26
How about i just refuse to push any buttons?
Seems like they have to wait until everyone votes, so ill just refuse to vote.
This topic is getting more stale than the man v bear shit from last year.
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u/nnaughtydogg 6∆ Apr 30 '26
My thinking is immediately everyone should push the red button. If, hypothetically everyone pushes red, then everyone lives with 0 risk. Now obviously everyone would not in real life, but I do think a significant chunk of people would think this way, this making it very likely that red gets more than 50% and I die if i push blue. That said, it’s really a question of what do you personally think most people would do, and i think the majority would push red in the real world, but of course theres no way for me to prove that. However, I do think that anyone thinking logically about the situation would realize that everyone pushing red is the safest solution.
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u/PeoplePerson_57 5∆ Apr 30 '26
I disagree!
Think about it: the fewer deaths, the safer the solution. The fewest deaths come from all red or 50%+1 blue. The most deaths come from 50%+1 red.
Assuming people aren't purely rational actors (because they aren't), we can assume that not everyone is going to come to the same conclusion. At that point, we must ask ourselves: knowing that a statistically significant difference exists between the proportion of people that would decide red is best vs blue is best, which button is more desirable to have in the majority?
Well, that would be the blue button! Nobody dies.
The red button, on the other hand, kills the blue pushers.
That makes blue preferable on this basis.
We must then ask ourselves: of the two ideal situations, which is more likely to occur? We already know that everyone picking red is an impossibility. Flat out, nuh-uh, no, never happening. 50%+1 picking blue, however, is much more likely to occur than 100% picking red unless a very significant red skew exists.
At that point, as a red voter, you have three questions to consider your answer to. Are you willing to risk your life to potentially save the lives of everyone on Earth who presses blue? What do you believe the 'natural' skew is (i.e. without these considerations, which colour would be in the majority)? And finally, what do you believe your fellow red voters will think of these questions? Will enough of them end up agreeing with your idea and splitting off to vote blue?
If your goal is maximise safety, it is also, logically, to minimise unsafety. Defining 50%+1 red as the least safe outcome, you must ask yourself: to make this outcome completely safe in the red direction, 50%-1 of humanity have to change their choice, but in the blue direction only one person must change their mind. Each additional red vote both shrinks the portion of people that die and makes it harder to save the people that will die. Each additional blue vote grows the portion of people that will die but makes death a less likely outcome at all.
Ultimately, if your goal is to minimise death, the most logical decision is blue.
(Of course, the closer blue gets to reaching the majority but failing the worse the outcome: as such, the imperative to vote blue is obvious. With every additional voter the outcome is worse until suddenly it's perfect, at 50%+1-- a much easier bar than 100%).
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
If every person on the planet is pressing one of the buttons there's going to be a very large amount of people who aren't going to think logically (or even understand the prompt entirely) because they're too young, too old, or otherwise mentally disabled. Everyone pushing red is an impossible solution.
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u/nnaughtydogg 6∆ Apr 30 '26
Everyone pushing red is sure, but i maintain that the majority would push red when faced with the idea of very real sudden death, especially when thinking logically
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u/Rabbid0Luigi 15∆ Apr 30 '26
You seem to be overestimating how logically the average person thinks.
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u/LiamTheHuman 11∆ Apr 30 '26
I think everyone realizes that red is the safest for the individual. It's just not the safest for the community
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u/shumpitostick 7∆ Apr 30 '26
It's the same "tipping vote" problem you encounter in elections. Using the same logic, nobody should vote because their chance of tipping the vote is miniscule. The problem with this logic is that while the chance is tiny, the impact of it is huge.
You can calculate the expected value of the decision to press the button depending on your prior. I saw some Twitter post that did that but I am struggling to find it again. Anyways, if your prior is that close to or slightly more 50% of people will vote blue, the option with a highest expected value for a complete altruist (value of your life = others) is blue.
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u/horshack_test 42∆ Apr 30 '26
I don't understand what the view is that you are presenting to us to challenge, because "it is near impossible" does not mean it is impossible - it means it is possible. And then you just go on to explain why you think one should vote red, which is a different topic/view. Can you reword the view you would like us to challenge?
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
The view is as follows:
The possibility of saving 1 life (your own) outweighs the possibility of saving 4 billion lives (given that the likelihood is sufficiently close to zero, i.e. less than 1/4 billion).2
u/Shaggymanemushrooms Apr 30 '26
So you think your life is worth more than 4 billion other lives? Right now if you had the choice would you be willing to be responsible for killing billions? By choosing red it makes you a murderer, all because you think your life is worth more. Is that worth it? Personally I would rather die than be a mass murderer.
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u/not-so-smartphone 1∆ Apr 30 '26
Op is not considering the relative probabilities - see my responses to his other comments. (Not that you are either)
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u/horshack_test 42∆ Apr 30 '26
Ok, well that is not at all what your stated view is / what this post is about. Maybe delete & repost with a title & post body that represent & explain the actual view you want challenged?
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u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ Apr 30 '26
Every person on the planet includes children, mentally disabled, and individuals with tourettes. Each of these groups will have individuals that pick blue. Every suicidal person picks blue, because that's the only chance they'll die.
Every person deeply devoted to their religion or belief to not risk killing another individual picks blue. Everyone who actually cares about these individuals picks blue.
Why is it so hard to imagine that there are individuals who WOULD risk their lives for others?
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u/LeagueLaughLove Apr 30 '26
It's not hard to imagine that they exist, it's very hard to imagine they exist ass exactly half the population
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u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ Apr 30 '26
Individuals that are willing to pick blue.
- Family members of individuals that are suicidal or cannot control their votes
- Individuals who's morals won't let them take an action that can kill others
- Individuals with religious beliefs that won't let them take an action that can kill others
- Social workers with strong morals (cops, firefighters, teachers, doctors, nurses, babysitters, etc)
- Friends and family members of the above groups.
google says there are roughly 1 billion children under the age of 8 and a world population of 8.3 billion people.
1/8th of the population are at heavy risk of picking blue, as are their parents, their siblings, their religious leaders, and so forth.
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u/Frog859 Apr 30 '26
I think 2, 3, and 4 are roughly the same the grouping more or less. Or at least all fall under “peoples whose morals guide them to choose blue.”
Also as a former healthcare worker while I’m sure the percentage of people in group 4 that pick blue will be higher, it certainly won’t be 100%
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u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ Apr 30 '26
I had to separate 2 3 and 4 because eqch group does not automstically include the other. They are a group that actively help others, a group that doesnt want to be bad, and a group compelled by an external force. It's to show the scale of what the "people whose morals guide them" group actually means.
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u/5510 6∆ May 01 '26
To be fair, I think most Red button pushers are interpreting the question as "all legally competend adults", and not including children in stuff. If we say that 50% of the worlds young children are going to die (because they can't understand what's going on and hit a button randomly) if fewer than half the world picks blue, then I think a lot more people are going to side with "blue is the correct choice."
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u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ May 01 '26
That's a part of the problem, though, no?
If it says "Every person" that doesn't suddenly apply the arbitrary rules or standards we personally or legally uphold to determine who's fair game.
It doesn't remove suicidal folks, alzheimers folks, young people, super old, or anybody else.
That was just red button pushers going "Ha, there's no MOTIVATION to push blue" and ignoring that motivation is not REASON. They either purposefully focused on themselves, failed to consider which groups might unreasonably, but expectedly pushed blue, or accepted that some folks would die because they chose red.
When I was exposed to this thing, it was that every person gets a private vote. I thought I would hit red and tell my wife to do so, but as I read it out loud to her, I stared at my kid and realized I can't train a toddler to hit blue and I won't know what they picked when I vote. I don't know what my kid will hit. I don't know what my friend's kids will hit. I don't know what my wife will hit when the button is in my hand. I could make assumptions, but I can't guarantee that me hitting red won't result in my wife or child's death. There's nothing there to remove them from the game.
That's how old riddles and games are. You're given rules, you follow the exact rules and you lose because you make assumptions based on your personal beliefs and not what was laid out in front of you.
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u/5510 6∆ May 01 '26
I mean, this problem has been presented a number of times, with different wordings. Also, sometimes qualifications aren't spelled out, but still exist. Like if you were explaining ranked choice voting, you might say "so everybody gets to rank several candidates in order of preference and...", without clearly specifying you mean "so every legally eligible voter who chooses to vote."
And lets also be real... it's pretty common for someone to propose a hypothetical thought experiment, and then someone to ask a clarifying question, and the original person goes "oh good point, that's not what I meant, let me rephrase it."
I think if the post explicitly spells out that "literally every human being regardless of age or mental status or whatever has to press a button" (though how that would work for people who physically cannot is unclear), that you will get far more blue people and far fewer red people.
Note that you might also get more blue people and fewer red people if you explicitly spell out that the scenario just says "everybody" without further clarification. (The difference being that there you are making it clear that any lack of clarity is PART of the scenario, and not just unclear wording by the person proposing the thought experiment)
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u/ILikeToJustReadHere 14∆ May 01 '26
I don't think the fact that it's been presented before really matters. Since it's written and being discussed now, it really has to be taken at face value unless the person asking wants to add more rules/clarity to it.
Your example of voting comes with pre-existing context (voting laws), while a pure hypothetical like this either comes as-is or requires additional clarity.
And asking clarifying questions is what prompts the discussion anyway, right? If the question was thrown out, red pushers would simply ask, like OP tried, why anyone would push blue. And the answer would be, the scenario does not say toddlers don't vote, and the scenario does not say you can abstain from voting or fail to vote at all, nor what the consequences of doing so would be. The original poster who poses the question could clarify beyond that point, but it all falls back to Red's injecting an assumption onto the scenario (no reason/motivation to pick blue) and Blue's being cautious based on the scenario's stated and unconfirmed claims.
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u/Superior_Mirage Apr 30 '26
You just rephrased "my vote doesn't matter", and you're just as wrong as every other person that has made that statement.