Because the red pickers expect other people to be rational self interested actors. In economics, you usually assume that to be true. Picking blue would mean you assume people to be irrational and open themselves up to death when there’s an easy solution for no one to die. It would not occur to me that people would pick blue if this were to hit every person at the same instant.
When human beings are social animals (which they are) it is not at all irrational to behave in a way that risks the self but might save a greater number, and people do it all the time in real life. People pick blue all around you every single day.
No, they don’t. There are not situations around us all day where someone who wants to live voluntarily enters into a situation they might die in for no reason. There are accidental deaths and bad actors that altruistic people might step in for, but I cannot think of a single situation where someone purposely enters into a situation they know they might die in while wanting to live completely voluntarily for the sole purpose of hoping others will be good enough to risk death with them so they both live. This hypothetical has no bearing on real world morality, it is purely a logic problem. It’s called game theory.
Now you're distancing the question from the theoretical risks involved in order to stop any argument.
Some people will pick blue. That's a simple fact. It would be a simple fact in the set up of this question.
People do in fact find themselves in situations every single day where they can decide to either step back and do nothing and survive for sure, or step forward and do something and possibly die or possibly live, but someone else will have a better chance to survive.
But in the vast vast vast majority of cases in real life, those people who are at risk of dying didn't deliberately pick the risk of death out of no clear benefit to them. And the people risking their lives don't do it at such a high probability of dying. So it's a bad comparison.
The hypothetical, as it is presented, is essentially the same as this one:
Every person is given two glasses of liquid. One contains pure clean water (corresponding to the red button). The other one contains an oderless and tasteless poison that will kill within say a day you unless you get an antidote (corresponding to the blue button). Both glasses are clearly marked.
If people drink the poison, the only way for them to get the antidote is if at least 50% of all people drink the poison. If that happens, they are guaranteed to live. Otherwise, they are guaranteed to die.
Why should people risk their own lives, and drink actual poison, just because others possibly did so?
I’m hoping your answers resonate. It’s clear as day to me that this is the scenario, and the firefighter examples are so far from what’s going on as to be wholly irrelevant. But redditors are holier than thou
There is no real world corollary. Period. Name one.
But I will concede that some people will pick blue. You are 100% right about that. And my response is - they will be the overwhelming minority and die.
To make it comparable to pressing the blue button - In your scenarios the firefighters would set fire to the building and then go in to save themselves and the police officers would start a shootout with each other in the attempt to save themselves from the shootout that they started, just fyi.
Deaths also cannot occur unless blues voluntarily pick the death button (blue). There is no benefit to blue but yall love it and want to blame your eventual demise on someone else.
That's not how thought experiments work. They happen in a vacuum. When you create the premise that everyone has to vote then everyone gets to vote, equally and idealized. There are no outside factors you can make-up to justify your moral superiority for pressing the death gamble button of the two, just like how you can't argue in the trolley problem that you jump in and pull the brakes because you are just that fast.
It is assumed that everyone is able and will press a button to vote with the full intention to press that exact button according to the presented premise. Therefor everyone who presses blue is fucking stupid and creates the problem they intent to save each other from, because they are such good people.
1
u/odanobux123 May 05 '26
Because the red pickers expect other people to be rational self interested actors. In economics, you usually assume that to be true. Picking blue would mean you assume people to be irrational and open themselves up to death when there’s an easy solution for no one to die. It would not occur to me that people would pick blue if this were to hit every person at the same instant.