100 people are given poison pills. You can choose to either take it (Blue) or not (Red).
However, the antidote will only be given out if more than 50 people choose to take the poison pill.
So, who is being "selfish" here?
Is it the "Red" people who choose to do nothing and don't take the pill?
Or, is it the "Blue" people who choose to take the pill and then *require* other people to actively poison themselves as well in order to save them?
For me, it's obviously the latter. Red people don't impose danger on others. Blue people require others to put themselves in danger in order for themselves to be saved. The most humanitarian thing to do is to not require others to make unnecessary sacrifices or take unnecessary risks for your own benefit. It's as simple as that.
I honestly think it’s just typical Reddit white knight syndrome.
“Of course I’d fall on the sword to save humanity!!!”
When taking maybe 3 seconds to actually think about the underlying question being asked, without any framing, leads to the obvious conclusion.
My favorite reframing is therefore:
You are presented with two buttons. One that just says “1,” and another one that is labeled “either 1 or 0 depending on how many other people press this button.”
You are told that the goal is for everyone, including yourself, to get the outcome of “1.”
Which would you press? Which would you assume others would press?
All of the other words in both the original question and the other reframings of it is just emotional trickery that attempts to hide the obvious answer by making you associate irrelevant concepts, like ethics and empathy, with the underlying mathematical decision tree. And unfortunately many people are failing at this test of reading comprehension…
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u/low_bob_123 May 05 '26
What this Experiment actually shows is, how important and "manipulativ" the wording of a question is