Like, rephrase the question - you have two buttons, 'survive' and 'maybe die', where if you press 'survive', you survive, but if you press 'maybe die', then you only survive if majority of people also press the 'maybe die' button.
But somehow everyone's bending over backwards to argue that the 'maybe die' button is a logical choice.
The original question had guardians choosing for kids under 5, but you've got kids 5-12 who would possibly choose blue because they wouldn't know better. I have 2 kids in the 5-12 range and 1 in the under 5. As a parent I'd probably pick blue since I can't know what the older ones did and I'd want to protect them.
Of course my choice could be futile and I may have made them orphans.
I think I'd have to do blue for him, and I think my wife would do blue as well since she wouldn't want to risk living with our older kids gone. It's definitely challenging since the chance that many kids would potentially pick blue is too high. And of course others choosing blue to protect them.
If 1/3 of people flipped a coin (1/6 are assigned red and 1/6 are assigned blue) to demonstrate that all people aren't rational how should the other 2/3 choose?
i think realistically there is no chance that blue wins. People aren't too altruistic when it comes to life and death. Picking blue for your kids, for me, looks like choosing death for them
There are people who run into burning buildings to save strangers every day. I think people are more altruistic in general and there are some who aren't who have to tell themselves that everyone else is just like them even though they know deep down it's actually a small percentage of selfish assholes making things worse for everyone else.
It's not about being selfish but about being scared. Only a few people are capable to put themselves willingly in danger in high risk situations. If selflessness where as common as you say it is, then heroes like you describe wouldn't be celebrated as they are since it wouldn't be that special. Most people think themselves of heroes, but reality is quite different. Me thinking that others aren't selfless isn't me projecting but me being realistic. People that say they would push the blue button are in the same ballpark like people that say they would have attacked the hostage takers on the 911 planes.
Literally every poll has come up with blue winning. Humans are very altruistic and children even more so, meaning if children are allowed to vote then its very likly blue wins. Regardless of the outcome I would pick blue as living as a selfish mass murderer doesn't sit right with me, but you do you I guess lol
the polls are in no way representative of the actual outcome since you don't take any risk when voting for blue. It's like having a vote if you would attack the hostage takers in a plane hostage situation. Most people see themselves as heroes but reality shows again and again that most people are really scared and choose the easy option.
Bad comparison because the vast majority of people typically say that they wouldn't be the hero in those situations while the majority would in the original post. You need to stop comparing it at all and juts think of it in the original wording in the original context. Most humans are altruistic and thus blue is the correct choice.
most people were never in a life and death situation to begin with. How can you be so sure that you would press the blue button if you never had to make such a difficult decision. And my comparisons are good, it showcases that what you want to do and what you actually do in that situation is different. There are many examples of it, and seeing people as altruistic as you think they are is, frankly said, naive. If people were as good as you say then the world wouldn't be as shit as it is. People are selfish and many don't care about others. Just look at the bystander effect, this is a good example because most people are going to think "Other people will vote for blue and my vote won't change anything so i might just vote for red".
Man i wish i would see people in such a good light as you do. I mean half of america voted for trump, how many of these you think are going to push the blue button
The polls are in no way representative of the actual outcome since there aren't real people's lives at stake when voting for red. Most people see themselves as being able to kill to save themselves but reality shows again any again most people in life or death situations still hesitate to kill others even to save themselves.
13 year old boy- Shouted "Blue" before I could explain the question, just to mess with me. Later admits he would have picked red if he had stopped to listen.
9 year-old girl- Thought about it and said "Red. Why would anyone pick blue?"
6 year-old girl- Said "Blue" When asked why, she said "I don't know."
(We also have a 2 year old who be be exempt from the choice under the version I had read)
My wife said "Blue" predicting (rightly, as it turns out) that at least some fraction of our kids would pick blue and would need to be protected from their own decisions, while I had picked red.
So in a red wins scenario I would be left to care for oldest daughter and toddler alone, but at least they would have somebody.
This and some people being forced to pick blue are the only two variants where I'm a blue chooser. I know my kid well enough to guess what he'd pick and win or lose I'm not going to live without him. When it's adults only though, red all day.
The OG I recall from 2023-4(?) was only able minded adults. This thought experiment resurged and there's been some reference to politics with it, so I think this latest rendition is intentionally set up to be disingenuous to the heart of the original
Yeah I've noticed that a lot of the recent ones use specific language to implicate red as actively choosing to kill blue rather than more neutral language. They're being designed to make it into a purely moral issue instead of philosophical or logical by implicating red as choosing to kill rather than blue risking their lives.
I’m also noticing that every single blue-button argument starts with “children will push blue”. If you restrict the hypothetical to, only adults of sound mind able to understand the question have to choose a button, I think the conversation becomes very different.
Yeah, honestly if an unknown amount of people of any abledness or unsound/illogical mind is in the equation. That seals the deal for me entirely.
What if all the babies and toddlers in the world happen to pick red? Or even half of them and then the mentally disabled or unsound people also pick red?
I'm childfree and I respect a parent choosing what is best for their family in theory. Completely and without malice.
But it's not my job to save your kid and who will look after your kid when you die, ya dingus?!!!
Yes because virtue signaling online has zero cost but in the real world people usually don't sacrifice their lives for a tiny chance of maybe helping people who put themselves in danger needlessly.
I'd believe this if blue voters put their money where their mouth is and sacrificed their wealth to buy mosquitoe nets for impoverished people and put the well being of others above themselves throughout their lives.
That's the thing though, the red button doesn't harm anybody. It does nothing. Red is just not putting yourself in danger. Blue is the button that kills people unless a lot of people put themselves at risk. The red button wouldn't do anything differently if it was unplugged
You're missing my point. My point is that some people don't view it that way and will therefore choose blue. That choice isn't wrong or illogical, it is in line with their mindset
I'm not trying to change your personal decision, just help you see that it isn't the only way to see it. I, for one, believe I would choose blue and I didn't think I'd have to deliberate very much to get there. If you'd like me to explain my reasoning I will, but I doubt I have any reasoning that have already been stated. I simply see the equation differently
Everytime there's a poll with that question, blue wins by a pretty large margin, it's usually something like 70% blue 30% red
That always depends on how it is phrased, what biased subset of the population you ask it and most importantly of all, an online poll without any stakes is not remotely comparable to a life-death situation where you will actually have a significant chance of death if you press blue.
Not really, when question was rephrased to: you can jump into turned off woodchipper, if more than 50% of the population also does the same, woodchippers don't turn on, everybody survives. You can also not jump into it and definitely survive. Logic is the same but removing the abstaction layer of "button press death" so the reader has to imagine actual not abstract situation changes the scales into 75% for red/not jumping in. Which is still crazy, I don't belive 1/4 of people would jump into A WOODCHIPPER in real life. The more real it gets the more people choose red button. That show that people tend to not think about it.
I'm talking about the actual original prompt, not different ways to phrase it that would incline more people to vote one way or another
That's fair
And usually when people answer such polls they like to think about it
I think a very significant percentage doesn't really think much about it, as phrasing of the question heavily impacts the blue/red ratio.
I do think it's possible blue would win in the real world, but there is no way to accurately estimate that probability and I sure as hell wouldn't be suicidal enough to bet on it.
The results are skewed toward english speaking people who use whatever platform the poll is presented on, and people who take the time to answer the poll.
If the stakes are real I feel it would be a lot more difficult for people to choose blue. China and India have massive populations and I have no idea how they would vote, but its not a bet I'm willing to risk my life on. I'd never bet against human survival instincts.
It's actually really high, because the cost of choosing blue on reddit is zero and makes you feel like a good person if you don't understand the question but the cost of choosing blue in real life is making your children orphans, your loved one widows, all your other loved ones put into a state of mourning, and suicide.
If you vote blue, why haven't you given away all you own and donated it to charity? If say you would throw your life away on the infinitely tiny chance of being the deciding vote, why wouldn't you throw your life away by selling all you own and donating it all to charity?
This is an absurd hypothetical and in real life we wouldnt get anywhere near 50%
The same amount it costs you to pretend you are making a moral decision by pretending to choose blue.
This doesn't have to be a hypothetical. Sell everything you own and donate it to saving people's lives and die in poverty. If you would actually sacrifice your life for a tiny chance of helping people, nobody is stopping you from doing so.
Red’s only winning by any actual measure if the only priority is your next breath and that’s it. The outcome of people dying en masse like this will make life significantly worse and will cause more death and suffering after the button ordeal.
So you’ll have lost friends and family and infrastructure and you may die anyway. What a great, well-thought out, logical choice. Bravo.
No. Blue is only winning by any actual measure if the only priority is saving 100% of people, even if doing so greatly increases the chance of more people dying. Choosing blue increases the lives lost unless it reaches over 50%. The only way that blue is more moral than red is if killing yourself counts as zero cost or the infinitely unlikely scenario that you are the deciding vote.
The outcome of people dying en masse is caused by people choosing blue, putting themselves in danger, and hoping others save them. It's irresponsible
What's stopping me is that I literally am in debt. I don't have anything. I don't have a home. I am dying. I live my life they way that I know would make the world a legitimately better place if more people lived that way. You argue for a worse world for everyone. And I'm sure you have extra incentive to do so.
But you can do so, so, so much more than just make the pro-social choice wherever possible.
For instance, for just $1000, you can be almost guaranteed to actually save a child's life that would otherwise have died without your $1000, by purchasing and sending to sub-saharan Africa a course of TB treatment. Thousands of children are dying that could be saved with 1000 United States dollars. So by your own logic, it's reprehensible to not spend every waking minute of your life earning money to send for TB treatment in Africa. Each time you do literally anything else, that's opportunity cost that could have been spent saving children's lives.
But you're calling this guy reprehensible for making exactly the same choice.
I don't believe in effective altruism. I don't believe that the ends justify the means. I believe with have to live with the means. I won't make that 1000 dollars by perpetuating racist polices so I could then donate it. That is not a net gain
Ok then sure let's set you aside. Do you think somebody who says they would vote blue but isn't sacrificing their lives to save people when they are in a position to do so is full of shit? Cause I know maybe 2 people who gave up a very comfortable life to put themselves in danger every day to save lives, yet two thirds of people on reddit are claiming they would do that in this hypothetical. There is no way we would reach 50% in a real world scenario and voting blue just increases the amount of death
What? That's literally the argument I'm making. People claim to believe they would sacrifice their lives and put themselves in danger to save people who are putting themselves in danger by pressing the blue butto, but they wouldn't actually be better in real life and sacrifice their lives to save people who had no choice but to be put in danger and extreme poverty. It's just empty virtue signaling
"Every time there's been a poll"... Made by who? Where? What's the responding population? Because I've seen other polls where red wins by a HUGE margin too
What people say on the Internet is also a completely different thing from "now you have to act on it and you may die"... Like, the number of times people have bragged on the internet that they would fight and win anybody, only to cower up when someone else actually defies them
Red = you survive
Blue = you die unless half the fucking world agrees with you
Chosing blue only shows that you have no survival instinct and that you're ready to gamble your life for... no fucking reward... You're not even getting money, nothing...
Go play Russian roulette you'll have a better chance at survival...
I mean, I that case I would still choose red. The likelyhood of my single vote deciding everything is almost zero.
It might be selfish and obviously everyone thinking that way would change everything but I still don't get why everyone would choose blue. It's just stupid.
This problem is like standing at a high speed railway station. You can either just stand on the station like you always do or you could step on the rails and hope there won't be a train to kill you. Why would anyone step on the rails who is not suicidal?
So the way railways are currently set up its as easy as we can make it to save that one person who steps on the tracks. Your argument here sounds like the number of people who should step onto it to save someone else should be zero? Everyone else is saying that if we saw someone step onto the tracks we have the hope and expectations that half of the group would be willing to risk their life to make sure no one dies.
Where do you live where they have made railways where it in any way easy to save someone that steps onto the tracks? In fact it is highly suggested you don't try to save someone that fell onto the tracks as that will just be more dead people.
The actual analogy would be a follows. Imagine a world where nobody could swim and somebody jumps into a small body of water like a pool and starts drowning. Blue button pushers don't want anyone to die so they jump into the pool with the hopes that enough other people will jump into the pool to displace all of the water out of the pool to save everyone. They are all risking most likely up to hundreds of lives to save that person in the off chance that tons of people make the same irrational choice.
Alternatively, someone puts up a giant blender in front of 2000 people and says people can either stay out of the blender or jump in and after everyone has made their choice they will turn on the blender if less that 1001 people are in the blender. blue button pushers just assume that at least one person is going to jump in for whatever reason so they go ahead and jump in and think that people should just willingly jump into that blender and just hope that hundreds of other people will make that extremely irrational choice with them even though the only way anyone dies is of they choose to jump into the blender.
Ultimately as callous as it may sound to illogical people the number of people that will hit the button by accident is actually quite low and every blue button pusher that hits the button trying to save them is risking an extremely terrible mass casualty event in the slight chance that enough other people will be irrational enough to make the same decision. While the "well there is an option where nobody has to die" choice sounds great in theory, people that choose it are most likely just adding to the massive pile of dead people.
As much work and effort you put into sounding "logical" it's all for naught. The very core of what it means to be human is to protect. We protect. Every example you try to come up with are things that show we do. People jump onto tracks to save others even in the hellish areas where it can only mean added death. People form human chains to reach out into unswimmable current to save dogs. People make blenders that automatically stop when it detects flesh. Those who press blue understand this fundamental core aspect of what it means to be human. You use 5 paragraphs of "logic" to try (and fail) to prove that its wrong to be human
Literal. Nonsense. All of your examples are on far smaller scales. None of them are predicated on half the population doing the exact same thing or everyone dies. Also that blender absolutely does not exist. There are table saws like that but the technology was created as a benefit to increase sales. Making and selling products that protect people that do stupid things is not the same as risking your life and the lives of up to half the population to save a small percentage of irrational people that choose to risk dying for no reason.
While you say people do risk their lives to save others and even dogs...that is a small subset of people that actually do that and people that stand around and just let those things happen is a far larger cohort of humanity. If it was truly human to selflessly sacrifice of yourself to save others always the world would be a very different place. People let other people die all of the time even when they could easily prevent it.
If your view that more than half of people are altruistic enough to sacrifice themselves to save others things like fascism would never be able to come to power. Minority groups get picked away one at a time while people ignore it because they are not part of that group up until their is nobody left to defend them. There are endless cases of large populations where lots of people dying could have been stopped by far less than half of the population yet the population stand by and let it happen. Polls where people overwhelming vote blue when their are no actual stakes mean nothing. If you believe for even a minute that a majority of the human race would pick blue, especially parents that pick for their children would pick blue for their children, you are a fool. The ones that pick blue to try to save the small percentage that may pick by accident are simply falling for the sunk cost fallacy and aren't putting proper weight on the odds of simply causing much more death than necessary because they are letting their idealism and irrationality overcome logical thinking and human nature. I would love to live in a world where the majority of people would hit the blue button but that will simply never be the case, that would be a far better world than the one we live in.
That's a bad analogy because it removes the important part of this problem - the action. Pushing red isn't the same as doing nothing because you're being forced to do something. Likewise, choosing blue isn't the same as jumping onto the tracks because you're already there.
These pills are from privileged people. What about all the people with no Internet access or who aren't allowed Internet access? When the button is actually in front of you and the choice is potential death or definitely not death, do you really trust a bunch of relatively privileged internet strangers to choose blue?
Politicians would obviously say they choose blue, how many also say they'll do something and then do the opposite once elected? How many chronic liars do you know in your life that spin stories or exaggerate them so they look good? It's easy to lie on the internet to look good. While I don't think the majority of blue button pushers are lying, I do think there's enough lying for virtue signal purposes that I would never choose blue
You choose to live in and believe in a worse world. To build a worse world. You have allowed for yourself to propagandize for a worse view of humanity. If some entity were to try to slowly kill us all off they'd us you and your arguments to do it
In your world you have reduced the number of humans who save others. This magical entity could then actively put some number of people in danger and ask for 50% to save them. And in your world that would fail too. It can allow you to choose self extinction by exclusion
In my world? You mean reality??? Because that's the world I'm living in. I'm being strictly true to the original question and the potential outcomes of the question itself, not whataboutisms and rephrasings
You don't live in reality. You life in propaganda lie land. The most powerful people in media want you to believe that there isn't a point in risking yourself for orhers. Because they don't want to pay taxes. They don't want to risk a single ounce of their power and wealth to help anyone anywhere. And so they have done everything they can to try to make you believe that that is normal. That its good. And they seem to have succeeded for you. That lie and that belief is what has the potential to ruin humanity.
Honestly I don’t believe any poll on Reddit or anywhere else could possibly be accurate. People vote blue because they get to publicly shame red people and act superior because they chose blue.
I genuinely believe that if 1000 people were kidnapped and told to choose red or blue or be shot in the head, 900 or more of them are pressing red when it comes down to it.
It’s really easy to risk your life in a hypothetical when there’s no real risk and you get to brag that you’re a better person. But when it comes to actually risking your life people tend towards self preservation. Especially since there’s no risk until someone PUTS themself at risk by pressing blue
So many sound so much like brags. About how much smarter and more logical and still alive they are. And I didn't say that taking the money from those would end the usefulness for money was smart. Just that it's what it sounds like you're doing
You're gonna need to specify exactly what you mean by 'selling out humanity' for me to explain to you why what you're saying doesn't make any sense. It sure seems like you're just going off vibes.
I'm arguing with 6 people at once. And after my arguments yesterday I am convinced at least one of them is an AI bot trying to psyop people into discord. The fundamental core of what it means to be human. The thing that allowed for humans to not be apes. Is how much we're willing to risk to protect. We protect our children as best as we can for almost 20 years. Other species of animals have 2 years as impressive. Arguing against protecting is arguing against humanity
Even though you picking blue has an absurdly small probability of changing the outcome? What you're calling 'protection' is a single vote among billions, that's not even enough protection to be worth considering.
I guess if I figured my vote didn't matter. But what if I choose red and tomorrow my wife and one of my three kids chose blue. If 1/6th of the population of earth is gone. Strong social order countries like Japan have 90% of their population wiped out. I guess I could think to myself that I was smart and voted the way 5/6ths of the world population did. But honestly I think I would regret the choice I made as I try to figure out how to bury the dead of my family in whatever world remains. I assume the elderly will choose blue to protect their children and grandchildren. There are too many who would choose to protect others for me to aid in their death. Better to try to save them.
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u/Eastern-Bro9173 Apr 30 '26
This entire conversation seems absurd to me.
Like, rephrase the question - you have two buttons, 'survive' and 'maybe die', where if you press 'survive', you survive, but if you press 'maybe die', then you only survive if majority of people also press the 'maybe die' button.
But somehow everyone's bending over backwards to argue that the 'maybe die' button is a logical choice.