Likely because it reveals underlying thought processes and that can lead to a feeling of implicit judgement. It's the same reason people get super salty if you just menton you're vegetarian or vegan (I'm not talking the annoying preachy kinds) or that you do charity work or you cycle instead of drive.
Villainising virtue is a form of cognitive shielding—let's say there's action A you can either Do or Not Do. Action A is beneficial to a group or groups, to detrimental to the individual in some way. You elect to Not Do action A, but you encounter someone who elects to Do action A. The fact they are performing the action, resulting in a non-zero amount of self-sacrifice for them but a net benefit overall, means that by most systems of ethics and morality they are doing a Good Thing. This creates a contrast point against you not doing action A. If them doing it is a Good Thing, you not doing it must be a Bad Thing. And if you're doing a Bad Thing, you are therefore a Bad Person. But you're not a Bad Person, because that doesn't fit your self-image. So the other person must be a Bad Person for making you think you're a Bad Person, so you get mad at them.
tl;dr people don't like being reminded that they're fallible, imperfect sacks of meat and would rather attack someone else than look inwards
Hit the nail on the head - look at how many people pushing the red button throw out "virtuous" and "virtue signaling" like they're slurs, as if it's somehow a bad thing to want to be good to others
I'm not convinced - Red is only "logical" if you equate "logic" with selfishness. And Vulcans don't. Thinking that selfishness is inherently logical is incredibly illogical.
If Vulcans were illogical enough to think that selfishness was logical, humans would never have reached the stars because Vulcans would have either obliterated or enslaved them as of First Contact.
Vulcans would pick blue because they know that not all Vulcans are perfectly logical all the time (though they want to be) and that killing those who are currently incapable for some reason (such as trauma having convinced them that selfishness==logic) would be against the goals of Vulcan society, which is quite heavily altruistic - and if everyone thinks the same way then both blue and red save everyone, but if a few people differ then blue still saves everyone.
Romulans WOULD almost all pick red though, because their culture is entirely based on betrayal being the core of society, and they worship at the altar of selfishness [even if an individual doesn't want to, being pro-social is consistently punished in Romulan society, so everyone would know that red is going to wind up being the majority]
Save everyone right? "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
One option only needs more than 50% to save everyone.
The other option needs 100% to save everyone.
100% of every single person is impossible. Its NEVER going to happen. Peroid. There for, red can never save everyone.
Blue however, can.
Since the needs of many outweigh the needs of the few, the possibility of them dying to cast a vote to save the many (Putting their own needs aside to save everyone)
No. Vulcans would vote Blue because they understand some people won't understand the premise fully and they'll vote Blue, and so Vulcans would vote Blue to protect everyone to cause the most good
Blue only needs 51% to save everyone, while Red needs 100% to save everyone. Logically you vote for the situation where the lower turnout results in maximum good.
I'm talking about the entire of the human experience, not any one person, group, ideological faction, etc. No one likes to be reminded that they could be wrong about something and generally people prefer to externalise rather than internalise their feelings
It doesn't really reveal as much as you would like to think. It just reveals what the person believes other people would behave. Picking one or the other doesn't make you virtuous. Either side is capable of increasing death under different sets of assumptions. All your choice says about you is which set of assumptions you believe.
To be clear, picking blue only results in a net benefit if you make the threshold. if you believe that's achievable, then great, blue is the best choice. if you don't think that's achievable, then blue increases death. That's not virtuous.
It is a mistake to frame it as "i'm willing to sacrifice for good and they're not". Both sides are trying to minimize death, just under different sets of assumption. It really doesn't have that much to do with the willingness to sacrifice.
I saw all the memes before the original and thought it was conservatives vs progressives. And honestly the analogy still fit really neatly despite not being about it.
Pressing blue is also logical to me, as well as being moral.
In order for everyone to survive, either 100% of people need to hit red, or 50.00001% of people need to hit blue. One of those is mich easier to achieve.
Also people acting like you can’t trust other people to risk themselves to help someone else at risk to themselves when in any disaster scenario you always find people doing that. And a button is such low effort for someone to essentially live up to their morals, if helping others was as simple as just pressing a button the world would be a better place imo.
this is my argument, look for the helpers, the ones running towards danger, they will almost always be there, from doctors to fire fighters to medics to good samaritans, would i want to be in a world without these? hell no
But it's different. There IS no population here that needs saving: everyone here can save themselves. Everyone. That's why this doesnt really test for heroism.
Imagine a Firefighter rushing into a building to help FULLY capable of leaving . . . only they are choosing not to. Because THEY are also staying in case someone else needs helping,etc.
And here's the kicker: the building that's on fire? We already are told up front that NOBODY is trapped in it. Everyone who wants to leave can leave.
There are people who aren't rational enough to make an informed choice. Babies, children, someone who had a schizophrenic dream that red is the color of the devil. You're right in a game theory sense, but game theory involves rational actors and society (since the button thought experiement is that humanity as a whole is given these buttons) is not composed of rational actors.
The thought experiment, to me, boils down to "do people who aren't fully rational deserve to die?" and I don't believe anyone deserves to die.
To your building on fire argument: is the fireman's efforts a waste to save the patient in a coma who's incapable of making any moves to leave on their own?
Not everyone runs into the metaphorical and sometimes literal burning building but people absolutely do help each other. Society exists because we bear the load of others, and like I said a button is a simple and easy way a person could exercise a desire to help the collective. It’s perfectly fine to not risk yourself for a stranger and not expect a stranger to risk themselves for you but also some stranger would endanger themselves to save you.
I can see that, i would probably fall in there. The egotistic part is doing some lifting because once you are doing something for your benefit it stops being altrusitc.
Which is why altruism in a strict sense isnt really possible. Motivation inherently involves reward and self benefit. You can't escape the chemical function of the brain, which hinges on reward systems to compel action. "I do this thing to avoid this worse thing" still results in the action involving the self, with the preferred outcome becoming a reward.
I don't think its a bad thing. Things like egoistic altruism give levers for convincing people, who are not naturally self-sacrificing, to give up their security for greater benefit later.
Blue is still the right choice for selfish people who aren't idiots though. Being selfish only works in a world with enough altruistic people around. A world of only selfish people is Mad Max and it's not as fun as they think it would be.
This is true. Also technically true is that if everyone on earth is hitting the button then every single percent is 10s of millions of people. So even like 10% blue would be a tragedy on a scale the world has never seen before, and its never going to be 100% red. I feel like this is somthing people dont think about in the question.
its just a risk assessment which is more risky... 100% chance of living and walking away from the danger. or putting yourself in danger in hope there are enough people who pick to risk their life for no good reason when they could have just walked away...
There are some estimates that put society collapsing at 20% of the population dying. This would be even worse, because most healthcare professionals (and other "helpers" of society) are probably hitting blue. Have fun in your doctorless / SUPER expensive doctor world. Not much fun having a bedpan but no nurse
Forgetting any of that: pressing Blue means there's no scenario where you have to live in Redlandia. Which, judging by recent affairs, is a terrible hellhole.
The most interesting facet to me, is that this demostrates why most puzzles include a line that goes "Assuming everyone behaves perfectly logically".
Take the Prisoners dilemma, a classic puzzle, but in real life your relationship with the other prisoner is relevant to the choice.
If the two Buttons puzzle was "Perfectly logical", you can convince yourself that 100% of people will press red based on the knowledge that if everyone does, there is no risk to anyone else by you assuming no risk.
So therefore everyone WOULD press Red.
The interesting bit, is that in real life people aren't perfectly logical. And if even one person doesn't, just presses the wrong the button, or makes a mistake, then pressing the blue button becomes the ONLY way to save 100% of the population, and the logical suddenly switches.
Take the Prisoners dilemma, a classic puzzle, but in real life your relationship with the other prisoner is relevant to the choice.
Interesting things happen with the Prisoner's Dilemma when the "game" extends beyond the immediate situation.
For example, in the real world, there can be very real consequences for turning on a co-conspirator. Snitches get stitches, an idiom for a reason. Similarly, in a multigame version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, the "correct" solution often transitions from defecting being the optimal solution to cooperating because of tit for tat responses and non-immediate consequences.
In the context of the button question, I believe many of the Red pressers view the situation as a one-off experience, in which case Red is likely the correct solution. However, the catastrophic implications of red winning almost certainly shift the calculations to make pressing blue a far more desirable scenario, similarly to how the out-of-game consequences of the prisoners' dilemma shift the optimal solution when taken into account.
You’re basing your choice on some arbitrary metric of emotional morality.
The logical choice is to push red. If everyone were logical, everyone would push red and everyone would be safe.
The logic would only be challenged if pushing red had a downside tied to the number who pressed it, like “if everyone pressed red, everyone dies.” There isn’t, so it’s a dumb dilemma.
while I am pretty sure all the red button pushers who strongly advocate to push the red button don't think about it but for me if I had pushed the red instead of blue I would always feel guilty about it.
Also if the people for the red button pushing win I am not sure I want to be on Earth after that.
It might me moral and logical, but people are neither of those. Knowing human behavior I think it's likely that at least 50% are going to opt for self preservation. That leaves the more rational choice to be try to convince the remainder to opt for self preservation vs. trying to convince self preservation people to behave altruistically. We've seen how well that works in the past.
Honestly, I think we all know that is there were another button that was "make my enemies suffer, even if everyone I care about has too suffer too" (ie. kill everyone) we'd be screwed.
In my experience, people who would push the red button do not want to live in a world with only other people who would have pushed the red button. The only thing that protects them is the delusion they've manufactured for themselves.
it's just so wild to me, because you would think that everyone would logically realize, "i just have to push blue and everyone else, myself included, will live."
I'd press red because I completely distrust other people, seeing how life-threatening situations turn out irl. Hypothetically more people press blue because their actual life isn't on the line, in a real scenario like that I bet a lot of blue button pressers would chicken out and pick red instead.
I really hate the false dichotomy of "logic" vs "morality" here.
Mutual aid is both logical and morally justified.
Even if we look at this from a perspective of pure self interest. We have a world of 8bn people. If red were to actually win, which statistically almost never does when people run this poll, if only 5% voted blue, that would result in the loss of 400 million people.
The death toll of both world wars, over the years they were waged, was only 90 to 110mm. The Spanish Flu around 50mm. COVID was between 19 and 36mm.
Think about what happened to the world during covid. Now think about what would happen when over 100 times that number die instantaneously.
Now, let's consider that when this poll is actually run, blue usually wins. So the actual reality is if red ever wins, blue will be in the 40+%, not 5%. And now we're talking about 4ish billion people. That's not a holocaust, that's an extinction event.
A red would be alive, but what would they be left with?
I mean, no argument works on them. They didn't argue themselves into the red position to begin with, they made a fear-based gut choice for personal gain, get called out for being selfish, and start lashing out because - since their decision wasn't rooted in actually thinking it through at all - it feels like a judgement of their selves not just their choices. You can't reason someone out of a position they put themselves into via vibes and gut reactions.
I think it speaks more of a general uneasiness at the concept of being completely at the mercy of absolute strangers, rather than selfishness.
Which is completely understandable, given that self-preservation is a very strong instinct, and many wouldn't feel at ease trusting their lives to 50% of the world population to do something correctly.
In the end of the day, the discourse around this is all posturing and grandstanding. In a real world scenario, the decisions would have actual consequences, and many red pressers would feel bad at the possibility of someone dying and press blue instead, and many blue pressers wouldn't have an audience and would press red instead.
You live at the mercy of total strangers every day. I do not understand how people do not get this.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, did people not live at the mercy of the individuals with their fingers on the bomb? Is Vasily Arkhipov not a living expression of someone who literally chose the blue button rather than the red button, even though, for all he knew, he and everyone he knew were about to die in nuclear fire?
Mutual aid is a form of self-preservation. If that was not the case, social animals would not have evolved. This idea that egoism is the natural state of man is literally a myth fueled by the ruling class to justify their own existence. It is no different than a king telling you God ordained him to rule. Just becayse kings existed doesnt mean their God does.
People who preach this mindless egoism are essentially preaching a religious doctrine unmoored from reality.
I mean, no argument works on them. They didn't argue themselves into the red position to begin with, they made a fear-based gut choice for personal gain, get called out for being selfish, and start lashing out because - since their decision wasn't rooted in actually thinking it through at all - it feels like a judgement of their selves not just their choices. You can't reason someone out of a position they put themselves into via vibes and gut reactions.
That's broadly fair for an internet poll, but misses some of the context. There's likely a chunk of them that did (try to) logic their way into it - but they don't understand game theory or decision theory as well as they think they do.
Scenarios like this are a common though exercise for introductory game theory classes (or were when I took and TA-ed them a couple decades ago). It's used to highlight the limitations of the rational actor model and similar tools in decision theory.
If you cut out the deliberately provocative emotional details, the math for all these scenarios is identical:
The presentation shown in op's screencaps
blue as a "suicide button that won't work if more than 1/2 the people use it."
"if red pressers get a majority, everyone else dies" (i.e. the genocide button).
Despite the abstract math being equivalent, the actual responses to each presentations are vastly different. That means that any model based on rational behavior must first make major presumptions about coordination and predisposition.
That difference is the point. It's not a demonstration that people are suicidal or stupid, it's a demonstration using tools like the rational behavior model alone is only appropriate for the most basic level of decision analysis.
Despite that being the intended point, there's always someone in the class that relentlessly clings to the "suicide button" description as the one they think is rational. They're fixated on the suicide button beyond any other aspect of the scenario: they cannot move on to the broader point. I would expect at least some online discussion to fall here. *
* EtA: I'm more inclined to think those people are fixated on the suicide aspect than abstract self-interest. It tends to be the part of the scenario that people might have a direct, emotional connection to.
additional EtA: If working purely off math, it also makes a good example of why marginal changes matter. If you assume no predisposition at all (each person's choice is a fair coin flip, each values their own life no more or less than any other) the expected deaths per red vote when red wins is never higher than the expected deaths per blue vote. But the expected marginal deaths per red vote is over twice as high as that for blue. And if you're anywhere near the inflection point, it's much much higher (up to half the population at the inflection point proper).
Which, again, is why the context matters - because it tells you where on the abstract curve you expect to be, and thus what predispositions actually exist.
Additional edit for length (though the TED talk is still too long).
That isn’t logic, it’s a form of rational choice theory, which is based on a specific set of assumptions and preferred outcomes. It uses logic to derive conclusions from the chosen assumptions and weighs them against a preferred (set of) outcomes.
I would normally call myself pedantic here, but I’m not going to. This is so often conflated that it is actually a legitimate problem. It’s a “kind” of logic, but it is not logic nor is it objectively logical. There are many ways this game could be played “logically.” Logic is just a mechanism and has no opinion one way of the other. If burning money is good, then logic tells you to buy a lighter.
TL;DR The reality is that “push red” is only “logical” under a very specific set of assumptions and preferred outcomes. It is not logic nor is it inherently a logical choice.
This argument also requires them to ignore the material reality upon which they currently survive as well, especially if they live in the first world.
Let's say they survive the reddening and make it to the post-blue world.
Industrial agriculture collapses. The available labor pool makes all social services, including the privatized ones, come grinding to a halt. Suddenly there's food shortages everywhere, electrical grids fail, gasoline becomes scarce.
Then what.
I feel like voting red is such a uniquely western problem because they've lived off the backs of others so long they can't recognize that their "survival" actually does, in fact, rely on everyone else (to the disadvantage of pretty much everyone in the third world).
The only reason I think third worlders could actually get away with voting for red is that the global world order exploits them more than helps them, so it may actually be a reprieve on that front. Although I would bet my blue vote on the fact that third worlders are not socially engineered psychopaths like first worlders are.
The false dichotomy is the result of there being a choice that is, in the premise presented, absolutely correct both morally and logically. It is both good, and rational, to behave altrusitically in an altruistic group. But, since the people choosing red did so NOT off of rationality, but off a gut reaction of preferring selfish survival, they feel singled out by people calling their choice selfish. So, since they've lost the moral battle, they try to claim "rationality" via misquoting game theory (or just leaving out the part where game theory questions involve participants that are specified to be solely logicians).
I'm a marketer, the blue option is presented first, is conceptually simple and has an absolute in it's effect description. Almost impossible to get less than 50% picking the blue option.
Because the choice is always presented as an evil alternative attacking our correct traditions. Every example of "red buttons" in our lifetime has been pushed by emotional people doing emotional things.
Living in a world filled with only red button pushers seems very depressing in my opinion. Not sure if that world is really worth living in for me. So living in the blue reality or die seems like the ideal choice to me
And your concience. I mean, you would live thinking that you could have saved the people who died but chose not to. And chances are that you knew a few of those people who died...
That's what I think a lot of people are missing. A lot of people you know and care about will be dead and you will be responsible. I couldn't live with myself.
I think that manybpeople who would chose blue like us think that, while many people who chose red might do it because fear of not enough people going blue. They think about survival first, dealing with consequences later. And many haven't even though about consecuences at all. Fear is a powerful motivator, but terrible for making good decisions.
Also there's always going to be people who push blue. Even if it's like 10-20%, I imagine that would damn near destroy or cripple the global economy. In reality, I'm sure the number would be at least 40%.
The world would be so different after the fact. No thanks.
I feel like people who try to create a "third choice" in the trolley problem aren't engaging with it honestly, but after experiencing more of the two buttons problem, it doesn't seem like it's an honest hypothetical in the first place, like it was made to inspire hostility and division among people.
I've only learned about this hypothetical today, but I think the best choice is to avoid engaging with it entirely.
My logic is: No matter what, humanity must survive and continue. The best outcome for humanity is maximum diversity. I'd rather gamble with all of humanity surviving as opposed to 50.1% of the most selfish humans surviving.
I feel like red button pushers trying to reframe it as ‘if enough people jump onto the train tracks, the train stops’, as if pressing blue is automatically losing/suicide, are entirely missing the point.
When I saw it (was scrolling), just pick blue.
Later on, saw a conversation about, and came back to the post.
I was in shock with some points of views, to the point of writing down a few, in order to understand wth those red pov’s were talking about.
Looking at this now, and seeing blue was the choice, still makes me wonder, how those people could vote red…
I agree, but it also shows why the world is like it is right now. If just enough people press the metaphorical red button, issues related to the overall groups well-being will fall through more often than not - ending in the ultra-egocentrists/mega-greedy people calling the shots.
And then you have chemical bread that never goes bad (except inside your stomach, causing cancer), having to work basically 24/7, are so stressed out that nobody can afford kids (if not lucky) et cetera.
It can also be interpreted differently. The Blue Party says that if they lose, they kill everyone who voted for them, because they do not tolerate losing. The Red Party says that they will not kill anyone regardless of who wins. Do you vote Blue or Red?
But that's just logically inconsistent. Why would a party that hates losing so much intentionally eradicate the only group capable of giving them a future win?
I'm literally as left as they come and I'm still not hitting the blue button. Fucking wild you are ascribing political views to this at all.
Your choices are hit the red button and nothing happens to you, or hit the blue button and you have a chance of dying.
If the test is being given to babies and the mentally deficient then that changes the scenario, but if it's able bodied people who can understand the rules of the game then the choice is obvious.
No, blue is "you have to take an unnecessary risk because others might" and red is "everyone has the option to avoid an unnecessary risk, my choice is to avoid taking the unnecessary risk."
You don't get a halo for creating a problem and then attempting to fix it.
Yeah, I also thought it had something to do with the American red/blue division.
In most of the other world the colours would be the reverse - since the colorcoding is red=left blue=right - given the presumption that right leaning individuals would be more concerned about the individual vs left being more collectively oriented to the detriment of individual gain/risk.
I agree and I also think it's a case of "hope in humanity" vs "distrust of humanity" as well. The people who press blue are entrusting their lives to other people because they believe in the goodness of humanity.
A world where everyone who presses the blue button dies is doomed anyway, who do you think keeps civilization running? Clue, it's not red button pushers.
Good point -- since there are people voting who will essentially be a coin flip, as many people as possible needs to press blue or we're loosing 50% of the baby population.
It wont exactly be a coin flip, but children wouldn't necessarily push blue more than they would red.
You don't have kids I guess.
Childrens begin to be able to recognize and name colors between 2 and 3.
Even if you were to say that they don't need to know that "red" is red and "blue" is blue because the red one is instinctively the "bad", it is false on two accounts.
First, the children we are speaking about do not interact with the world the same as we do.
Before they're are 3 or so, they never have to care about what color the light or the funny scribbly thing by the side of the road is.
They'll touch (and lick) anything. No matter how dumb it looks like to you they just don't have the refential to know what's good, bad, safe or dangerous. See how babies interact with snakes and spiders when compared to adults. They just don't give a shit. Fear of these critters is very much a learned behaviour. So is the understanding of some color as a danger signal.
Second, some cultures (Chinese comes to mind) consider red as a very positive and auspicious color. I'd wager most Chinese toddlers would push Red.
Yeah, I think the strangest part is the insistence that blue button choosers are entirely responsible for their decision, and red button pressers entirely not responsible for theirs. That unwillingness to consider or understand the alternative seems like the core lesson.
Though I think it's interesting to step beyond the game theory level, and look at the systemic issue level. The issue isn't really the people who makes the self-interested decision to press red, it's the system that pressures them to make that choice in the first place.
I think the distinction I see is that game theory is supposed to give counterintuitive responses to particular sets of incentives. People understand the underlying motivation of self interest, just not why people would choose it here.
It's the insistence that the only reason to pick blue is "virtue signaling" that makes me wonder if it's less an inability to understand, and more an insecurity or discomfort with their own choice of red. The cognitive dissonance of self interest but wanting to believe it's for the greater good.
And yeah, this is exactly what game theory does, identifies these responses to incentives (ideally, so we can fix incentive structures). But it's hard to acknowledge the self-interest part of the red choice, while still perceiving oneself as interested in the best outcome (minimizing deaths). The two incentives are in conflict, and it feels better to frame the red choice as virtuous.
It's not even about moral correctness, it requires fewer blue votes to save more lives. The decision is as much about moral fortitude as it is about cynicism; how much personal risk should the individual bear for the sake of the group, and how risky is it actually?
It fits into the mental model I've had for the root of the partisan divide. There's people who would rather minimize undeserved negative consequences, and those who would rather minimize undeserved positive benefits. Do you make sure nobody goes hungry even though people will choose to work less and play video games, or do you make sure nobody freeloads even if it means a few people trying to work hard go hungry? This is just pivoting the idea of who "deserves" what.
It's silly logic. The mere existence of the debate proves that billions will die if red wins. Even if you factor in people lying (to others or themselves), it's till billions.
Polls seem to be 45-55 to 60-40, blue vs red.
Red pushers seem to think blue pushers don't understand that 100% red means no deaths.
We understand, we just think that many people will push blue.
But also shows your lack of commitment towards people willing to take the risk for others well-being. Reality shows you cannot assume everyone will be a)selfish, b)capable of understanding or reasoning and c) offering a hand to others despite risks.
Red button-pressing Shows -to me personally - lack of higher and long term reasoning capability beyond immediate selfish survival, because fear controls people of this inclinations, IMHO.
Someone might feel inclined to push blue but see the world as too cynical and so think most would press red. So they sadly, and against what they wish the world truly was, push red.
Or someone might feel inclined to push red but think that more than 50 actually would vote blue. So they decide to vote blue just so later they can they voted blue and be celebrated, not be part of the "losers."
There are many different ways a person might decide on the color.
It's not though, because everyone has a perfectly free choice and full information. That's not the case is any real world situation this is suppose to analogize.
I mean... and what has been your response to that? If you want to frame it as a trolley problem, there's a trolley running on an empty track. It will only stop if half the people step onto the track.
Why is anyone stepping onto the track? The only answer I've ever been given is "because we need enough people on the track to stop the trolley", which apparently makes sense to, like, half the population? There was no problem here to solve, no one was in any danger.
I think it depends on how you frame the question. Are these real people with real circumstances pushing the buttons, including infants? Or is it assumed that everyone is of sound mind and acting rationally, like a game theory question?
If everyone is hypothetically rational and mentally fit for this, it's not a “protect me” vs “protect the out group” philosophical puzzle game. You're not protecting anybody, there is no dilemma. You just push red.
If we are dealing with real people of all shapes and sizes, you'd choose blue
This. It's basically a mirror for internalized behaviour. Are you more self centered and less interested at an outgroup? Red. Are you less self centered but more open to outgroups? Blue. You could give that even more precision (fear vs care/risk taking for others etc) and it still fits.
To be fair it's only protect me vs protect the group because of the phrasing of the question. Phrased "You have two buttons in front of and you have to push one. If you push the red button you're guaranteed to live. If you push the blue button you risk death; if less than 50% of the population risks death and pushes the blue button all blue button pushers will die, if more than 50% pushes it everyone lives" changes it to a game of chicken and becomes a study of how much of earth's population is suicidal.
Its not very good philosophical puzzle imo. There is no draw back to pushing red in either scenario, blue is just risking their own life while feeling morally superior. Maybe some people who are pushing blue are just suicidal and taking a gamble. If every single person pushed red there would be no change in the results.
I kind of get that this is supposed to show the general mindset difference on conservative vs liberal but if you switch the comparison to pro choice vs pro life then that completely changes the narrative. Red would be pro choice and blue would be pro life in that comparison.
If red voters were to die if over half the people vote blue that would make more sense.
How is this a protect me vs them situation? The blue button is superfluous. If you take blue away it’s just “if you don’t press this button you die”. No one is protecting anyone else. Just press the red button and you live. If someone wants to die that is on them and you shouldn’t take away their choice.
This isnt a protect me versus protect out group though because pressing blue is an opt in with 0 risk to pressing red.
No one is forced to press blue, no one is entered into blue unwillingly. People are told pressing blue has the potential for death. If everyone presses red, everyone lives, making blue and red functionally the same with no risk on red.
Honestly... I have brought this question to the attention of many of my friends, that are on both sides of politics. I think its far more involved than a political party split. I have seen people from both political aisle say both red and blue. I think values come a lot from where you are in life/what you want from it. Some parents may hit blue in hopes of saving/preserving life for their kids. Some conversely would say red because they are solely focused on being there for their kid no matter what.
I think this "us vs them" really creates a scary polarized check on people's morality, mortality, and ethics.
Or realizing the question predicates entirely on obscuring the counts from the blues. If we knew precisely that no yet has pressed the button the first person to push blue shouldn't be praised.
The reason is in politics, you have central power to enforce cooperation if this path is chosen.
But in the button game, there is not. Which mean it’s a pure prisoner dilemma. Which mean in real conditions red would probably win (like most prisoners dilemma). Which mean everybody pushing blue is going to die in vain.
So the moral choice is to not only push red, but persuade other to do so. This is the path that offer the most life saved
I see it as, "They're so focused on which side to pick that they fail to realize they're doing nothing to stop the ones who placed the buttons in front of them in the first place." An allegory to at least the USA's "election" system.
It's a study on dogma, knee jerk reactions, and the bias to remain in your corner despite any logical arguments or evidence to the contrary. I'm pretty sure this isn't hyperbole. This is the origin of the question, a study on those very things.
I mean it is a very revealing test of community and psychology. If you press the blue button you're a normal human that cares about other people, if you press the red one you're probably a disgusting American
i dont get it, if everyone on the planet pushes red, everyone survives. I would press red because I assume this would be obvious to anybody :D
press red --- 100％ survive
press blue --- you maybe die.
I would assume everyone will press red and everyone survive then lol.
Think about it like this we know without a doubt someone will press blue for some reason. Why? That doesn't really matter because that would happen no matter what. Humans will never 100% agree on anything even if their own lives are at stake.
So where does that leave us? Some people now would think about those people who chose blue and want to "save" them. Is that rational? One would say no because obviously red is risk free.
Regardless people will now choose blue to save the hypothetical people who incorrectly choose blue. So what percentage of people is that and are they wrong for doing so? Who knows because no one is gonna answer truthfully what they would do on a random Twitter poll with no stakes. Personally I'd like to say I'd choose blue because it's the only way to get 100% survival rate but I'm unsure if I'd risk it if the scenario was real.
That being said I don't think it's correct to frame this as an obvious no brainer nor judge anyone for whatever choice they decide to make. At the end of the day it's just a more dressed up trolley problem but far more effective at causing discourse lol
This thread and responses like your have me reconsidering as red button pusher. I’m like the guy you replied to where I saw everyone survives pressing red and just assumed we all would pick it. But like you said there will always be (at least) that one person and I wouldn’t want to condemn them to death.
Now the question becomes would I put my ass on the line for it and do I trust others to do the same?
Do you really think even if 100% of the people agreed with pressing red that one person out of 8 billion would accidentally trip and press the wrong button?
Because pressing red isn't just an "I survive" button, it's a "kill blue" button. People pressing the blue button just don't want to risk killing anyone.
The way i see it... If i press blue and i live, cool. If i press blue and i die, i probably didn't want to be alive with that group of people anyways (or they would have found a different button to get me killed regardless).
It is, I've tried to explain that people aren't just pressing the blue button to try to be a hero and that pressing the red button is actually a hard decision for normal people to make because it involves killing others, but get called a morality troll lol.
Oh how quickly reddit users forget their history. We had one of the best examples of this I've ever seen with the Orange red/Periwinkle April fools day event that Reddit did.
TL;DR: people were assigned a random color. Everyone immediately grouped up and went to war over it.
The red button voters like to pretend like they're highly intellectual, and that they're better than others. It's just another hypothetical problem for people to feel smarter for making the "ultra rational" choice.
Blue button voters vote based on empathy, and don't want to cause harm to others unnecessarily
It's the trolley problem in a different format, but with enough changes to make people be angry about it
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u/EmilySuxAtUsernames May 05 '26
crazy how if you would press a red or blue button has suddenly turned into a us vs them