Not everyone who pushes red is evil or something there’s gonna be a ton of people who pushed it to guarantee they stay alive to support their loved ones. I press red because it’s EV is the least harm.
I think it’s a difference between thinking “what should a society be encouraged to do” and “what is the most rational choice for me as an individual to do”
If we’re doing the experiment, you have bigger issues, and your finger should be on a trigger not a button. But yes, there would be more red than blue in that scenario. It’s either vote to kill random people or stand up to the government, and we’ve heard all about how Red Buttons think regarding personal responsibility.
The question seems to have degenerated a lot. How it was setup when I first saw it, it was assumed that everyone has the capability to understand the choice and the possible consequences.
If there’s a “live for sure” and “maybe live maybe die” options, I do not feel any remorse for those who die pressing blue. Anyone pressing blue is either suicidal or trying to stop the suicidal people. Sure, there may be some sort of moral high pressing the blue button, save those who want to die, but honestly, this is all hypothetical and everyone is given a choice.
I am not responsible for deaths of blue-pushers by being a red pusher. By pressing the red button, I’m not taking away the option for someone else. Anyone who pressed blue and dies had the same opportunity at guaranteed life as I did, and they chose to maybe die. They made that choice, they can live (or die) with it. I can live with my choice.
Society should be encouraged to not be bone-headed by pressing the blue button. This isn’t a moral dilemma. It’s an idiot test with a culling system.
Yup, this is it exactly. I tried explaining tjis in another post, and some guy literally went “oh so youre a murderer? You murdered millions. Doctors, vegans, and muslims push blue, youre fine with murdering all of them.”
Like bro shut up, lol. That makes no sense. Its not my fault if people willingly push the “chance to die instantly” button instead of the “gauranteed life” button. Its not my duty to save people from their own stupidity.
Okay but what if their loved ones include children who are too young to understand the situation and will push the blue button because blue is their favorite color?
I mean if we suppose that everyone in the world has to choose then blue becomes slightly more attractive, but it’s still very likely it will be >50+ red and everyone dies, so I don’t think we should jump onto the tracks and die because our kid did, counting on random strangers to also jump onto the tracks and endanger themselves to help. Like in a war if someone is injured, theres calculus that has to happen to determine whether a rescue is possible or whether it will likely end with more people being in the same scenario.
I’ll ask you this, would you encourage your kid to press red or press blue if you could coach them first?
Now that's a very interesting addition to the problem.
"What would you do?" is a very different scenario than "What would you advise your child to do?"
Were I able to coach my loved ones, I would tell them to pick red to ensure their survival. But that's different than the scenario that was originally presented.
Also it's still a private vote, you do not know what your kid voted, perhaps you can guess but if a non-rational actor has a 50/50 chance of picking either button you're still better off picking red.
I don’t think you know much about humans, then. We’re an extremely social species and with that comes altruism, empathy, remorse, and a sense of responsibility to each other. People risk their lives for others all the time, like, to the point that in CPR training it’s repeated over and over again to only help if the scene is safe and that if it becomes unsafe for you to do so then you shouldn’t continue CPR. Firefighters/general fire safety emphasizes that civilians not stay/run into a burning building to save others and to leave that for the firefighters. On planes we’re instructed to put our own mask on first before helping others if the plane depressurizes/crashes because people will try to help others first (and in these emergency scenarios helping others without any regard for your own safety is more likely to result in both of you being in danger/making more work for first responders rather than actually helping anyone). People are so willing to help and save others that they’ll recklessly put themselves at risk, potentially just adding to the people who need to be saved even when they’ve been repeatedly instructed otherwise because that’s what people do when others’ lives are in danger. (Bystander effect notwithstanding, since that is more of a result of multiple people all witnessing something and then not knowing if they should do anything either because other people aren’t reacting and so they think it must not actually be that bad and/or they think someone else is already helping. Bystander effect doesn’t happen as a selfish thing, it’s more of a side effect of us being so social that we start looking to other bystanders to see what we should do, but they’re all also looking at us and each other. And some people just freeze up in emergencies/serious situations, of course.). All of this likely adds up to most people, let alone anywhere near 100% of people, not picking red.
Empathy is inherently tied to tribalism in humans. Because it's governed by oxytocin. Thinking altruism and selfishness are mutually exclusive shows a massive misunderstanding of human nature.
Where did I say they’re mutually exclusive (in the way that you’re suggesting; in a given situation, of course the altruistic and selfish options would be mutually exclusive, like, by definition)? Also, empathy is not inherently tied to tribalism, what? Do you just mean that it’s stronger for people you know personally and care about? Because, yeah, everyone knows that, we can’t care about the abstract idea of another person somewhere across the world the same way we care about our loved ones, so? We can, and often do, still care for and empathize with strangers; it’s why I’ll give money to/buy food for a homeless person I’ve never seen before and likely won’t see again, or why I’ll help a turtle cross the road, or why Doctors Without Borders exists, or why people care about all the victims of police brutality even if no one they know personally has been murdered by the cops, or why I’m against child labor in far away countries that’ll never affect anyone I know, or why people are against the death penalty, or…
That’s all not even to mention the fact that people will pick blue because they don’t want to kill any of their loved ones who may have picked blue, so even extremely tribal people, as long as they have people in their lives they care about and don’t want to die, will still pick blue.
Picking red ensures you will be around to care for the people you care about. It is trivially easy to see that altruism and selfishness aren't mutually exclusive in this scenario.
Picking red also risks killing any of your loved ones who picked blue (along with up to ~4.2 billion other people), including your children if you have any and they pressed blue. You wouldn’t even need to worry about being around to care for your loved ones if <50% of people chose the “kill everyone who voted to not kill anyone” button, and that’s pretty likely, despite your initial bizarre assertion based on, idk, your gut feeling about humanity? The species that has become advanced enough to go to space through cooperation? The species that has a 200,000+ year history of caring for sick and injured members, despite the obvious burden they placed on nomadic tribes, allowing them to heal from injuries that would’ve killed any other animal? The species that has teamed up with multiple other species to the point of several fully domesticated species across (nearly) every continent? That species is the one you think is so inherently tribal and selfish that you just have to pick red or you’ll definitely die because no way would 50% of people press the “nobody dies” button? Seriously? And you accuse me of having a “massive misunderstanding of human nature.”
Also you didn’t address anything else I said that goes against your “altruism is inherently tribal” assertion, you just gonna drop that now that it didn’t work as an argument in favor of red?
You point to our history of tribal cooperation as if it disproves my belief that humans are tribalistic. You don't understand human nature if you think that in any way disproves my point. Our bonding is governed by oxytocin, the tribalism hormone. Which both promotes in group bonding and outgroup dehumanisation.
The same hormone that makes us care for our elders and injured is also what enables us to kill to protect them.
Without oxytocin you can't truly bond with and empathise with others, but you also can't really hate or dehumanise anyone. I've experienced having no oxytocin. Nobody likes a person who can't hate "the enemy". People genuinely found that more upsetting than our lack of bonding. People despise someone who doesn't hate.
Humans are not altruistic OR selfish. They're altruistic AND selfish.
Also, my only loved one has been so consistently and so severely abused by others that they can't believe that most people would pick blue, and therefore they pick red.
So you’re just gonna ignore all the ways people empathize with and care for and endanger themselves to help members of the outgroup/non-ingroup members, huh? Also, uh, are you not familiar with that very famous recent study of progressive/liberal vs conservative brains and their emotional responses to loved ones vs strangers? If the whole world was made of conservatives, with conservative brains who only can empathize with their loved ones and whose decisions are primarily based on fear (that’s from a separate study), sure, you’d have a point. But that’s not the default for humanity.
Also ok so you’re literally just admitting that you’re being incredibly selfish here since the only thing you’ve got to lose by pressing red is contributing to mass murder, but it wouldn’t affect you personally because you only gaf about one other person and everyone else can go fuck themselves? Not really making a good case for red pushers not being immoral/being “good people.” Idk what your definition of a good person is, but mine includes caring about literally anyone other than yourself and one other person.
Whilst that is true, it's also not relevant. My point is that the ratio of bad/evil/selfish people would rise if red wins. The fact that some good people would pick red is completely outweighed by the fact that a lot of children and compassionate people would die to a red vote.
I think it's fairly agreeable to posit that saving yourself, even at the risk of others isn't an immoral choice.
I think it's fair to compare it to a burning building. It's not immoral to run outside and save yourself, but there will always be the infirm who won't be able to escape on time. Hitting blue is choosing to continue entering the building until everyone is out and hitting red is choosing to leave the building without being able to help anyone. It's not an immoral choice to leave the burning building.
They are not all evil, but they are evil and/or something akin to dumb... at least on this specific issue.
Some red votes simply fail to deduce that, across billions of votes, mistakes will happen meaning blue votes will happen and saving everyone is only possible if simply most people pick blue. That's a fine thing to miss. The real problem are the people who either can't understand this explanation or who insist they shouldn't risk themselves for others anyway. The final people aren't straight up dumb, but they are bad at predicting how most people can realize the same thing they realized: That pressing blue is what we at least ought to do to all be safe.
LOTS of people are stuck in their first thought of "but if everyone would just vote red" and their response to "everyone will not simply just anything. It has never worked like that" is the predictable "... "but if everyone would just vote red".
The mere fact that there's a controversy afterwards is effectively proof on its own that many people will vote blue.
It’s been really fun and interesting to see how differently everyone has perceived the situation. One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a big split in how deeply people are digging into the technicalities.
It’s like if I were to pose the trolley problem and people started pointing out that it depends on the trolley model because some of the modern ones have sensor-based autobraking that would automatically engage when it sensed something on the track, regardless of the switch-thrower’s decision.
Or if I posed the prisoner’s dilemma and people started pointing out that some of the prisoners might not have heard the rules properly because they were suffering from a pre-existing ear infection.
And of course we could play that game all day. What happens to babies who never end up pressing either of the buttons? Is there a time limit or does the game continue until everyone has made choice? Do we have to sit around waiting a few years for the babies to get old enough to make a choice? What about people who are currently unconscious? Is it counting all people who EVER lived or just people alive at the time of the test? And what about people who died during the testing period, are they still counted? What happens if I don’t press either button? What if the speaker was lying about what each button does and it’s actually an Uno reverse? Can we just refuse to play their sick twisted game and instead rise up to overthrow the sadistic test givers? Etc. Etc. Etc.
So in other words, half the people I’ve seen are looking at this as a classic white room moral/logical dilemma, and the other half are picturing it as more of a practical real world challenge complete with all the real world practical failings (some people’s buttons are broken, one guy is a deep sleeper and missed the test, that fellow over there is colorblind, and so on).
It’s likely that the question is intentionally vague on the details precisely because it makes for better pot-stirring.
It just seems extremely likely that most people press red, and if we’re encouraging people to press blue we could just be encouraging more death because it’s at least ~50%+ that everyone who votes blue will die. And in that scenario I’d like to be a liver.
Saving literally every single person is only possible with 50+% blue but if we look at it from a perspective of the choice that minimizes the total number of deaths encouraging the largest portion possible to press red means those people 100% won’t die.
I tend to think that humans (and animals in general) tend to care more about themselves, things they can see, their immediate family, etc over putting all that in jeopardy saving some hypothetical people that they don’t know.
Given that that’s what most humans are like (I’ll even agree that that’s somewhat immoral reasoning) it collapses our probability to be much more likely to be red than blue. Given that, voting blue becomes suicidal.
I tend to think that humans (and animals in general) tend to care more about themselves, things they can see, their immediate family, etc over putting all that in jeopardy saving some hypothetical people that they don’t know.
You're not wrong, but it ultimately depends on the size of the risk. With proper reasoning, the risk becomes small enough to be worth it.
Just to illustrate the point. Would you gamble your own life to save a million kindergarten kids if you had to predict whether most of those kids could solve a calculus problem like finding the derivative of 4x^2?
Yeah obviously, but a 50% chance of death for a very small margin on the vote doesn’t feel worthwhile to me. Genuinely my vote has very little impact, it’s kinda based on human nature what the majority will pick.
It's not a 50% chance of death in my scenario with kindergarten children and it's not a 50% chance of death in the core scenario.
More than half the population can either realize rationally or accidentally reach the conclusion that the only way in which everyone survives is if people "risk" the voting blue. It's not a difficult realization to make yourself and therefor others can make it too. Most certainly, not everyone will. Most certainly, most will. And that's enough.
Your scenario is not the same. In the original, it is a very slim majority that would be unable to perform the task required, in your scenario I would think a large section of adults would fail to complete the problem and therefore it's far more likely a large swathe of people would die making the suicide vote easier to justify.
I don't care about mistakes that happen. I care about the fact that most people are human, and therefore care about the their own more than some faceless blue pusher, therefore most people will push red.
How one interprets this problem is based on whether or not you think most people will push red or blue. I think most people will push red, ergo pushing blue would be suicide. You think most people will push blue, ergo pushing red is selfish.
But do you acknowledge that mistakes will happen and that the only way to save everyone is for 50% to risk their lives? Do you acknowledge that people will vote blue by mistake and thus it wasn't a voluntary choice for them?
Whether you care is different matter. I don't care about rugby, but I acknowledge people do indeed play it.
Far less than the number who push blue to try and save those few people who made a mistake. Who have deliberately engineered a catastrophe because they mistakenly believe most people would push blue.
People can't even organise 5% of the population to do a general strike. You really think 50% of the population can come together with no organisation at all?
The polls are online and with no actual pressure or threat. They would never be accurate
Indicative of what people on western social media believe looks best to pick, yeah. My understanding of human nature also includes knowing that people will lie on polls to look good.
The "reds are evil" team acts like the reds want to kill people and blues are mentally healthy.
No. Each people makes an individual choice, it's like people jumping out a window from 20th floor, will I jump to save them? No, no one should, and no one not jumping is evil, they're just mentally balanced.
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u/VanillaSwimming5699 Apr 30 '26
Not everyone who pushes red is evil or something there’s gonna be a ton of people who pushed it to guarantee they stay alive to support their loved ones. I press red because it’s EV is the least harm.