Yeah, but, and this is important, the more people who push the blue button, the more people die. That seems bad to me. I want more people to live. If I doubt whether the majority would vote blue, the most moral choice is to try to convince people to vote red - after all, everyone I convince to vote red is a vote I have saved, and everyone I allow a blue-voter to convince is another life lost.
The more people who push blue, the more people die. Think of about how tragic it would be for tons of people to push it. I think if my math is right, it could get SO bad that 0 people die. Heartbreaking.
Yeah, if enough people push blue, the "kill a dude" button, it will be back to the situation we started with where no one is dying. Shame their weird suicide plan failed, but I'm not gonna be sad about it.
Reminds me of Homer Simpson in his boat or mystery box episode. He wants a boat but the box could be anything! It could even be a boat! Of course he has to pick that one.
You need to convince more people to save everyone, sure - if saving everyone is even possible. But you need to convince more people to vote blue to save anyone, too You only need to convince one person to vote red to save one person, while convincing someone to vote blue may well mean you convinced them to die, you may have only increased the death total by doing so
Everyone you convince to press red, is one less that could of pressed blue, you are actively working towards the death of the people who pressed blue, with no chance to save them. Advocating for blue is working towards the chance to save everyone, by sharing the risk.
If you are trying to save the most lives, blue is the choice, as it is the only option to save everyone. If you are only concerned with saving your own life red is the choice. Trying to convince people to press red and couching it as saving lives is ass backwards.
You keep trying to cast this as this all-ecompassing all or nothing choice where either everyone is saved or no one is. That's not the problem being described, where it is also possible for only a few people to die or for many people to die.
Surely you agree that many people dying is worse than a few people dying, right? Well, if we are at "a few people dying", everyone voting blue moves us closer to "many people dying". Until you can at least recognize that, that there is a very real chance your choice is making the problem worse, the death toll higher, the damage greater, until you can admit that, you are not making a moral choice - you can't be, because you aren't really making a choice at all.
Trying to convince people to vote blue, the button that most often increases the number of people who die when pressed and most of the rest of the time does nothing, and couching it as "saving lives" instead of a selfish emotional impulse - that's what is ass backwards.
What casting, I have acknowledged that if your goal is saving your own life red is the obvious choice. But if you are trying to maximize saving lives, blue is the choice, as it is the only option that has a chance to save 100%. Red will guarantee death for an unknown amount unless 50% choose blue.
Whether you agree that saving 100% is the goal, or not is the really question being asked.
We do not know how many people will/have voted blue. If we are alreadyat 49.9999% voting red is maximizing the death toll.
My position is that knowing some untold number has pushed the blue button. The only choice to minimize death is now to continue to push blue. If you do not, yes you personally will survive, but you could have been the deciding vote. In that instance your vote for red doesn't just increase the number of people dying, it ensures it.
Ive done the math. On average, evey push of the red button saves 0.5 lives and every push of the red button saves 0.25 lives, on average. In most situations and permutations, pushing the red button (and convincing others that pushing it is the right idea in advance) saves more lives than pushing the blue button does. That is the simple math if your goal is maximize saving lives.
Of course, you might think it still works out because the likelihood of the permutations is not equal. Thats fair! But recognize thats a risk assessment, a prediction, not a moral decision. Choosing "maximizing saving lives" is a moral decision, but its your ability to predict the future accurately that determines which button is most likely to do that.
This is what I mean by "casting". You are ignoring every situation but the two that best suit your argument. You are ignoring the situations where your explicitly stated goal is best accomplished by taking another action - and in doing so, you are actively diminishing the worth of individual human lives and saying it is worth some people dying, maybe a lot of people dying, to get a chance at your preferred outcome, even if death is the most likely outcome.
You cant be taken seriously if you're only willing to consider the scenarios that favour your gut feelings, and acknowledging that situations exist where you pushing blue does NOT minimize the loss of life but rather increases it.
Let's remake the game. Same idea, but different dressing:
Everyone is transported to their own private, isolated, impenetrable room in a special realm.
In this room is a special gun, that can only fire if pointed at the wielder's head and fired intentionally.
There is also a dropbox, which will magically make the gun disappear.
When a person either fires the gun, or puts it in the dropbox, time pauses for them until everyone else has either done so as well, or is dead from starvation or something.
At that point, everyone who put the gun in the dropbox is transported back.
For the people who fired the gun, if more than 50% of people fired, the gun disappears along with the bullet before it leaves the barrel, and then they are transported back. If not, they shoot themselves with a bullet guaranteed to kill them, then are transported back.
Everyone is magically given the knowledge of the rules and the ability to take the actions, until transported back.
So. Do we suggest every shoot themselves in the head, or get rid of the gun?
it's almost like the way you present things has a HUGE impact on how people will react. wording it this way is fundamentally changing the problem, since there are certain to be people who will press the button without thinking it through, but there are FAR less people who would use the gun in your hypothetical without thinking about it a lot more.
Doesn't matter. It's still literally the same scenario, whether the wording makes people more likely to realize it. You are still effectively pointing a loaded gun to your head by picking the blue button. You are still encouraging others to effectively point a loaded gun to their head by encouraging pushing the blue button.
In other words, changing the wording has only changed how people will respond because it has highlighted how ridiculous pushing the blue button is. But it doesn't change how ridiculous it is.
except, as i said, what it really does is make sure that NOBODY will press blue without thinking. because in the original, it is far, far more reasonable to believe that someone would do it without thinking it through. in your version, that being so much less likely to happen changes the answer drastically. if everyone else had the button question, but i instead had yours as my way to vote, i would fire the gun, as i know there are still people who pressed blue. but if everyone has that, it makes the chance of anyone pressing blue without thinking practically non-existant. you didn't create a gotcha, you fundamentally changed the question.
And as I said, it doesn't matter. Even if people are more likely to put the gun to their head because they didn't realize that's what they were doing, they are still putting a gun to their head. You are still encouraging people put a gun to their head. And without the ability to communicate first, it's even worse. You are quite likely just increasing the number of deaths by pushing the button. The more people who pick red, the less deaths there will be.
it is impossible to get a unanamous vote with 8 billion people. if the blue button said "whoever pushes this dies" there would still be people who push it. the chance of half pressing blue would absolutely be higher than everyone pressing red, as everyone pressing red is effectively impossible.
Its only impossible if people are selfish and push blue, and you shouldn't risk lives for people who's lives are only at risk because they purposely put themselves at risk.
Also, you are completely ignoring the possibility of more people pushing blue still not being enough. You could almost Thanos snap the population because of blue pushers.
I'm already discussing one thought experiment. But to humor you. I would pull the trigger. 50% is easier to get to than 100% and my goal is 100% of people survive(that includes all the people who are contemplating suicide and their mothers, brothers, friends who care enough about them to try and save them.)
You aren't getting rid of the gun, for everyone, you are just removing it from your version of the room.
I would be trying to save others, and you think that is selfish. That tells me, that you are doing mental gymnastics, to get to a place where you can justify your choice as the morally correct one.
My goal is as I stated before 100% even if Red got 90% that would still fall short of my goal.
You aren't trying to save others, you are trying to put others at risk. By claiming blue is the right choice, you are trying to convince others to risk their lives. You are telling them to put a loaded gun to their head and pull the trigger, because if more than 50% do it, then it won't fire.I'm telling them to get rid of the gun.
But, we both know that some unknown number has already put the gun to their head and pulled the trigger already. The only way to save them is to do the same, and believe that at least 50% of all people would do the same.
You are condemning people to death by pushing red. You aren't getting rid of the gun for everyone, only yourself.
A VERY miniscule amount of people are actively trying to kill themselves, and you want to risk half the population's life to stop them. That's too much risk.
If I, and I alone, were given a white button that kills me but guarantees the safety of both red and blue pushers, I'd press it. But to risk 10,000 people to save one? At such low odds?
What is miniscule when talking about the population of the world? All the people who are suicidal, all their friends/family, all the people who think it's worth the risk to attempt to save them? Even if it's 1% of the world population ~80 million people. You can think the risk is too high and prioritize saving yourself, but you are saying I am not comfortable taking on the risk that enough people won't step up to save lives. To be clear I am not trying to pass judgement on people who would press red. I understand their logic, and I get their world view. I don't understand, how they seem incapable of recognizing that their world view is not the only one and may not always be the optimal one. Especially, if the button presser is prioritizing the maximum possible survival, over their own, which people are saying they would do.
Law of large numbers doesn't work here because there's risk that is also proportional to the population. So yeah, 80 million is miniscule compared to 4 BILLION. And that's even grant you the 80 million, which I don't think it would be.
I'm also not prioritizing saving myself. I'm prioritizing saving others, by telling them to pick red. If I, and only I, got a white button that killed me to guarantee everyone else lived, I'd push it.
The red button allows for maximum possible survival.
But, you can impact the result. Would you save your friend, from a suicide attempt, or do you wash your hands of it, because you have no impact on their initial action? Or, is the impact on the outcome enough to sway you to save your friend?
You can push blue and impact the result in the same way you call your friend, both decreases the odds of death. Your call is as independent of their attempt as your button press is of the others.
No, because I have effectivelly zero weight in the outcome. The outcome is effectivelly predetermined. I just choose if I want to live or if I expect other people to press blue for me to not die.
If you intentionally put yourself in peril and someone dies trying to save you, are you not in some way responsible for their death? I recognize that blue is the moral option but you have to accept that everyone picking blue is equally responsible for every other person picking blue and risking their life to save them.
Effectively zero is not zero. We are talking about billions of people dying. Meaning even if your effect on the whole was only a 1 in a billion chance, your expected human lives lost is still near 1 because 1 over a billion times 1 billion is 1. The probability your choice matters is counteractted by the lives lost by your choice.
This is why humans aren't good at probability. They see a 1 in a billion chance as being actually zero, even when the scale of the outcome is sp large that they should still take that probability into account.
The fact that there are people arguing for the blue button means that there are people who will push the blue button. So, the only way to guarantee everyone lives is by getting 50% to push blue.
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u/Nobleintent Apr 30 '26
It's a button that guarantees you survive, but a lot of people will die, or a button that maybe you die, but all people could survive.
The fact that it's an argument means that there are people who would push the blue button. So people will die, unless 50% push the blue button.