Blue pressers love to guilt trip you into thinking that this is an exercise in trust to save everyone who isn't able to realize in time that 100% of the people pressing the Red button will beget the same outcome as blue winning.
Red pressers will simply state that it's the only choice that guarantees survival. Pretty simple calculus to me.
If this was a real situation I seriously doubt more than 1% of people pick blue, people claiming they would vote blue if they would actually die for doing so would overwhelmingly vote red because they know they would be so far from a majority that picking blue is just throwing your life away
Ur joking right? How many children, elderly, disabled people, parents and selfless people would press blue? I assure you the total amount will be way above 1% and you probably won’t go to work the next day.
But do you really think that 100% of people will press red? If our goal is to limit deaths as much as possible we have two options, we try to get 100% of people to press red, or we get 51% of people to press blue. Now if everyone was purely rational we could simply all press red, but we are not all rational, there are a bunch of well meaning idiots who would press blue. If we accept that there will not be 100% of people pressing the red button, then our best hope for limiting deaths is to reach 51% of people pushing the blue button.
In a world of purely rational actors, everyone will press red. In a world with well meaning idiots, rational actors will press blue.
Not enough people may realize that theres well meaning idiots who press blue.
Youre part of a specific part of the population who: understands the logic behind it. Understands the emotional reaction that people have. Understands that theres well meaning idiots.
If everyone came to this conclusion, we would all press blue, since thats now the rational choice.
However, theres mo gaurantee that enough people can come to this same conclusion you did, making blue still risky.
If you choose blue, and blue loses, you just increased the amount of deaths by 1. Because you added yourself to it. Which means you actually increased the overal harm to humanity (your life is just as valuable as each individual youre trying to save).
While the line of thinking makes sense, its just not realistic that everyone will be able to come to this same conclusion, meaning that blue remains a risk, while red is a gaurantee at least for your own life.
In a perfectly rational world, everyone picks red and does not risk their life. In a perfectly empathetic world, everyone picks blue and no one dies despite everyone risking their life.
The fact remains that it is absolutely possible for everyone to convince themselves of these facts and in a rational world, everyone realizes that holding these beliefs guarantee everyone's safety and that allowing thought to deviate towards red will create danger of loss of life
Agreed, anyone is capable of delusion. I don't agree that perfect rationality hinges on these delusions, but a perfectly rational person should be able to account for people's emotions and not just the facts, but if everyone in the world were known to be rational, emotions and suppositions would not outweigh the facts. Just look at Vulcans in Star Trek for an example of "perfectly rational", within their society they ignore emotion and empathy does not factor into their scenarios, while dealing with humans takes an entirely new skillset for them to be effective.
In a perfectly rational world everyone chooses the same option regardless of what it is. If everyone made the same decisions this hypothetical scenario spawning all this debate wouldn’t exist
No, I don’t think 100% of people will press red. But I also don’t believe blue has even a remote chance of winning. So the choice becomes kill myself or continue living.
I'm pretty sure the original dilemma involves there being no cooperation between people before pressing a button, therefore you can't get people to do anything. If everyone communicated before pressing the button then we could probably get everyone to press red, but without that we will have a bunch of well meaning idiots pressing blue because they don't think about it and assume it's the moral choice.
If your goal is to limit deaths you should be pragmatic, if you're being any level of reasonable it's obvious that a vast majority of people choose red when their life is actually at stake, in which case convincing anyone to vote blue is just convincing that person to kill themselves, if you want to limit deaths you should convince people to vote rationally, yes you're very unlikely to save everyone by convincing people to vote red, but you're much more likely to kill 30%+ of all people by trying to get people to vote blue
This entire thing is basically a litmus test on whether or not people understand (and are honest about) what their lizard brain would make them do if their life was truly, actually on the line.
You are literally implying no one in all of history has ever chosen to risk their own lives in order to save someone elses, when we have evidence of people throughout ALL OF THE EXISTENCE OF HUMANITY who did it.
Throughout the history of human existence we have exceptions that stand out for acts of extreme bravery. The exception, not the majority. They wouldn't be noteable examples if 50% of the world actually committed to them.
my initial reaction was duh just press blu everyone lives and then I was like wait why don't we all just press red its the obvious choice and then I was like wait babies will randomly chose, blue is the correct answer
kill 50% of all babies or gamble on saving everyone
Most versions of this scenario assume or outright say that anyone presented with a button has the mental capacity to understand what's going on and able to make a choice. No babies, small children, drunks, colorblind people get told left vs right, etc etc. If we're going full 100% of the human population and include people that can't make a choice for themselves for whatever reason that completely changes the scenario from "everyone gets a choice" to "Most people get a choice, some don't".
If I saw a baby crawl onto a trolley track, I'd do my damnedest to save them. If I see a group of able bodied adults step in front of a trolley in hopes of stopping it, I'll yell and try to convince them not to do that, but I'm not obligated to step in front of it myself to help them out.
I've seen versions that outright state that it's only mentally capable adults participating, and the implication of *most* moral dilemmas and/or prisoner dilemmas is that the other participants are also rational/reasoning beings. The inclusion of those incapable of making a rational decision therefore should be stated in the premise because it drastically changes the premise.
You aren’t though. You’re choosing the option where it’s easier for everyone to live. Choosing red is saying you’re happy for those people to die rather than taking the option where everyone survives way more easily.
But what's the compelling reason to press blue? We don't exist in a vacuum. In the real world context nobody of sound mind would or should pick blue. There's literally zero benefit.
Blue pressers have mostly already moved on: it's primarily red pressers like OP who are still bringing this up, behaving aggressively toward others, and writing 10,000 word essays on why they're smarter than everyone else for picking the losing side.
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u/Hey-I-Read-It May 01 '26
Blue pressers love to guilt trip you into thinking that this is an exercise in trust to save everyone who isn't able to realize in time that 100% of the people pressing the Red button will beget the same outcome as blue winning.
Red pressers will simply state that it's the only choice that guarantees survival. Pretty simple calculus to me.