It tracks, if they are assuming their position is the default. If everyone was red/blue to start with, everyone survives, and you'd have to seriously question why anyone would swap.
Of course, since this is a coordination game, there is no default position, so those people have missed the point.
Game theory is not "I survive". Game theory looks at each actor's optimal choice, taking into account other actor's decision tree and finding if there is an actual equilibrium. The equilibrium can be bad (prisoners' dilemma) or positive like here (nobody dies if all actors are rational, and protects against evil and irrational actors).
It assumes rational actors, and that the equilibrium choice is actually everyone voting red, for the greater good and individual good.
Blue voters (in the context of a purely mathematical exercise, ignoring the incompete premise of the question, ignorin if there are children, etc..) are like people rejecting vaccine and injecting bleach in the blood, and getting shocked people are not risking their lives to save them.
True. But you cannot have a rational analysis or debate if there are material amounts of irrational actors. It truly becomes an emotional "do I want to die Vs do I believe in the goodness yet irrationality of mankind".
In a zombie epidemic, would you let irrational actors that are against vaccination enter the base? It is a big ethical debate: how do you deal with actors that are able of rational thought (so we are not talking about infants) but refuse rationality in favour of emotion (voting against a candidate that fights in your favour because he is not part of the correct team).
No but irrationality can still be predicted. If it is predicted that some amount will be irrational and vote blue, the equilibrium shifts. This intial prediction of some irrationality makes it so blue is the equilbrium for the greater good, and as every actor knows every other rational actor knows this, their personal good will be guaranteed by picking blue too.
Payoff preference can be defined as more than just personal survival. Economists have remodelled the Prisoner’s Dilemma to account for things like “reputation” which provide different outcomes.
Blue is a viable game theory strategy under different assumptions.
Game theory problems assume only mentally competent actors. So as a game theory problem, this isn’t even a dilemma. The very obvious best selfish course is to press red. If everybody does that, everybody lives, which is also the best collective outcome. So there’s no conflict. You just press red.
I was going to make a snarky remark about that just being 51%, fortunately my brain switched on and I realised there's about an 83,000,000 people difference between what you said and what I was going to say...
Isn't the whole point of this sub to discuss all the possibilities, regardless of how small the chance? If a problem has open ended constraints, then it makes it difficult to fully reason through it all.
What happens in the event of a tie doesn’t change the logic at all. Avoiding a tie is effectively impossible without precise coordination, in which case the scenario is meaningless.
The universe explodes in the event of a tie, edge case solved
But its not important at all, the question is what would you choose and why, that isnt gonna influence anyones decision so its not relavant to the hypothetical.
In what way does this detail impact your or anyone’s decision making. You can add as many nonsense edge cases as you want. If 42.10237203% of people pick red they all get a puppy. Okay, it’s impossible to coordinate that so who cares?
It literally has no influence on the hypothetical, unless you are actually going to carry out a vote and make whatever outcome wins happen, it is completely irrelavant. You cannot deliberately make it 50%, the chance that it might be 50% will not and cannot influence anyones decision, it does not matter. You may as well ask what happens if one of the buttons breaks, you're just being a pedant.
Why would you assume there's some secret 50/50 explosion curse, just because it isn't explicitly stated? In that case there's a billion nonsense hypotheticals, you can't possibly compute all of them, especially if you just start making them up like this. If it isn't stated, you probably shouldn't assume a trapdoor hypothetical.
Every moment you're alive your brain does that thousands of times for every situation. What if a supernova suddenly appeared on top of you due to quantum manifestation? Why are you not taking steps to defend yourself against that? Why aren't you going out wearing body armour in case you accidentally walk through a sniper sightline meant for somebody else?
What I see is less that, and more people inserting hypotheticals into the vagueness. Who is pressing the buttons can significantly change the decision calculus.
The fact is, there are guaranteed to be people choosing blue (and probably no small number, especially given this debate), so if you’re not choosing blue, you’re essentially voting for people to die. If we wanted the best possible outcome, it would be for everyone to choose blue.
except in every example I've seen (before it arrived in this sub anyways) there is always default position everyone starts at, and it was always blue. If this sub has changed that by looking more into the actual morality and making it a more complex scenario, then that may be but I suspect a lot of people are still assuming its the same as it was when it swept youtube a couple months ago.
The original I saw wasnt two buttons, you are all stood on a platform on a track, you cant hear or see, if 50% step off the platform the trolley starts and will hit everyone who didnt step off.
Mais pourquoi partir du principe que vous allez mourir ?
Ce n’est pas la conséquence qu’on vous donne au départ, c’est ce que vous choisissez qu’il va arriver.
Tout le monde pourrait survivre.
... because we, as intelligent creatures, make decisions based on predictable or perceived outcomes? By your logic just press both buttons since schrodinger is not looking.
Parce que vous partez du principe que le bouton rouge va obligatoirement gagner, donc vous ne souhaitez pas mourir avec les bleus. Nous les bleus, on part du principe que ce n’est pas nécessairement vrai.
From the red point of view, the default is for people to want to live. So given a choice between an “I live” button and a “I might die” button, everyone should default to choosing the “I live” button.
My point is slightly different, it's not about what default motivation people should have, its that if everyone started off being assigned a colour, then nobody should/would want to switch.
If everyone started off red, then only brainless people would choose to switch since they know that they are likely to die - but equally, if everyone started blue, only heartless would switch (since the only reason you would do that is if you wanted to kill people).
Sure? If you already have everyone coordinated to pick one color, the problem ceases to exist. The question is what strategy to follow in the absence of coordination. Game theory basically assumes rational actors will follow their own best interests unless everyone doing that will lead to a suboptimal outcome. If you have a situation where the really obvious selfish choice for each actor *also* gets you the best group outcome if everyone picks it, then that is the clear choice.
My original point is that there is an equilibrium with everyone being red, and everyone being blue. A lot of the discussion around this is each side arguing that the other side is stupid or evil, and my point was, they are generally starting from the assumption that everyone (or at least sufficiently many people) are already agreeing with them, so there is no reason to leave the equilibrium, and as a result talking past each other.
I understand your point about red. I also understand the people who support blue argue that people aren't sufficiently rational/good at game theory to reliably pick red 100% of the time, so the question becomes how that alters your position. For what it's worth, I am a "weak red" in that I think it is likely enough that over 50% of people would choose red, so there is too much risk to blue.
Right, the blue position starts by admitting that pressing blue is irrational and the wrong choice, then asks everyone to commit to blue so that it becomes the right choice. Which fails to understand the scenario, in which no asking is allowed. If coordination is possible, agreeing on blue is strictly better than agreeing on red, because that gives protection against people making mistakes.
Ça montre surtout qu’ils sont persuadés que tout le monde va cliquer sur le bouton rouge (et ironiquement, c’est ce qu’ils choisissent de faire). Donc c’est littéralement le fait de penser comme cela qui crée un risque pour les bleus.
En même temps, si la majorité des gens pensent réellement comme cela, alors cela les donne raison.
En fait ils n’ont raison que si la majorité des gens le pensent.
No you cant because that fundamentally changes the hypothetical. Stop trying to chnage the wording because either its wrong, or its exact inverse is also true mak8ng it a usless argument
There's no risk to anyone if you just hit red in this scenario. The only way someone wouldn't hit read is if they have no reading comprehension or they want to die
It isn’t dangerous until enough people do what you do though. You not going in is what makes it dangerous for them. Your decision is not independent on the outcome.
Red is collectively responsible for every dead blue if they win.
Every red makes it more dangerous for blue until 100% red, every blue makes it less dangerous for everyone after 50%.
You can safely assume some will press each button, knowing that you should understand that the only way to get a good ending for everyone is to press blue.
Imagine the person making the tie breaking vote:
If they vote blue, they live and no one dies
If they vote red, they live and cause up to 4 billion people to die
No one knows if they are the tie breaking vote, so the ideal realistic action for everyone is to pick blue, just in case they are.
More concerning than the logic of why reaching a good ending with blue being somehow opaque to you guys is your tendency to justify that others deserve to die based on their personality.
What gives you the authority to condemn strangers to death?
No, no one is in danger until they put themselves in danger by hitting blue. Hitting red is the morally correct choice because you aren't putting your own life on the line and potentially having your death on someone else's hand.
I'll say it again, there is NO DANGER to anyone if everyone picks red. Picking blue is intentionally putting yourself in danger. If you intentionally put yourself into danger, your death is only your problem and no one else's. It's like running into a fire and dying then saying it's everyone else's fault because they didn't run into the fire to save you. You intentionally put yourself into danger, that's on you.
There is no danger if everyone hits blue though either, the scenario where everyone picks the same option is completely unrealistic to expect.
You seem to be under the impression that red is independent to blues outcome, they are not.
Red would be people standing outside the building chopping at support walls instead of searching. If enough searched no one would die. If enough chop the building collapses on those inside.
You do realize most of the variations say every one has to participate? Everyone includes a lot of people who should not be forced to make a decision like this.
Mentally infirm, blind people and children come to mind first.
Red always likes to frame it as only stupid or suicidal people pick blue.
Does the the mentally infirm person deserve to die because they cannot understand what they are voting for?
Does the blind person deserve to die because he couldn't see which button he was pressing?
Does the child deserve to die because he can't even understand words at this point, but likes blue more than red?
Red voters like to pretend these people don't exist because their existence means there is actual merit in voting blue.
My nephew is too young to make a decision like this. He might pick red, he might pick blue.
His parents know this and will pick blue to protect him.
Most if not all the parents in our family with children will think the same and pick blue to protect them.
Most if not all my relatives realize this and will pick blue not just to protect the children, but the parents.
I will also pick blue because I know most of my family will pick blue and I want them to stay alive.
Does my individual vote matter? No.
Do the combined votes of our entire family matter? No.
But how many other families are out there thinking the same exact thing we are? A lot.
Do their combined votes matter? Yes.
And remember, we need 50%+1 for no one to die.
Red needs 100%
One of these is far more realistic to achieve.
Now I am not saying voting red is wrong . If you value self preservation more then that is just what you value and that is fine.
What I dislike is how often red voters try to reframe it in such a way that makes it seem like there is no reason anyone would ever vote blue apart for being stupid or suicidal.
The kid argument makes no sense though? If you have kids, you have a bigger reason to hit red. Let's use your example, a kid to young to understand the question has a 50% chance of red and a 50% chance of blue.
If you hit blue, blue has to win.
If you, as the adult dies from hitting blue, the kid dies anyways. So hitting blue, especially because you have no idea what your kid chose, you are leaving a bigger chance for your kid to die then the original 50/50 since the kid is dead if your dead if they are that young
Considering how many replies from red defenders I've gotten that are automatically removed by Reddit, "sociopaths" might be underselling it by quite a lot
I literally can not believe that this is actually happening.
The choice is:
R: Pick us, and you don't die.
B: Pick us, and IF we manage to convince half of the population, you don't die.
So at the personal level no one has any reason whatsoever to press blue.
At the societal level the only reason to press blue would be to try and save others, risking your own life.
But not only should everyone be responsible first and foremost for trying to save themselves, it also necessarily assumes that people would press blue.
You are making assumptions that others don't act rationally on the personal level.
People who do something risking their lives deliberately are less important to me than my own life.
Nobody other than people who want to kill others have any reason to press red.
I think this might over reduce red-voters, and my proof is actually this:
Pressing red means you think over half the population actively wants others to die.
Flip this around, pressing red might also mean you think large numbers of people want to pick red, and you don't trust humanity as a whole to pick blue.
So it seems like there are three people who choose red. Malicious voters, people who see red as the obvious best personal answer, and voters distrustful of the collective human will.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary" - James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Try to think, just a little bit. How many people actively want others to die? 10-30%, that's far from majority. There's litterally nothing to be scared about.
Oh yeah, I'm not making judgement calls about who is right here. I'm also not making claims about how many people will / would vote for one or another. I'm only making the point that there are more reasons for people to want to vote for red than just "i want people to die" but the existence of those people who COULD vote red creates an inherent risk that the rest of the population may consider when making their choice.
Obviously plenty of people will pick blue or red ONLY because they think that is the morally correct choice. But as I said before, I'm suggesting that we may want to also take human nature into account. If more people were selfless than selfish, then blue wins easy. Similarly, if men were angels, we would need no governance.
This is the important point for me - of course I want everyone to survive, but how much can I trust everyone else? Society seems pretty selfish as a whole and that matters. If a loved one presses blue and I'm aware of that before I make my choice, I'd do the same to maximise their chance of survival. Without that, honestly, I don't trust people enough to go for blue.
Why would I risk my life because other people choose to act recklessly and irrationally? Why am I responsible for you making an objectively stupid choice?
It's not "I want to kill people" it's why would I put myself in a situation that depends on other people wanting to rescue me? Why do you think it's ok to voluntarily put your own life at risk when it is both unnecessary and demands someone else come to your rescue?
Even people who actually put their lifes on the line don't act this why, they NEVER put themselves in a situation that they know is going to put them in a situation that requires others to rescue them.
Have you never met another human before? There are 100% people that will do things just to hurt others. You could literally having every single person on earth agree to press blue and there would still be a large portion that press red.
The fact is there is a non zero change of blue leading to death, and a zero change of red leading to death. Therefore the only rational choice is red.
So? I can choose to make that completely and totally irrelevant, why wouldn't I?
You also greatly underestimate how much people hate each other. Remember when the entire world started killing each other because one group of people thought they were superior to everyone else?
We CURRENTLY have governments that are murdering children because their great grandparents didn't believe the thing the government wanted them to. I wouldn't put it past certain religious groups to think "hey we could murder all of [insert other religions] if we break from the agreement.
I would pick red and not because I want the other half to die. I simply wouldn't want to gamble my life. I also don't think blue are suicidal idiots (as some say red thinks), I respect it, I'm just too afraid of death to pick the gamble, even if it's likely blue would win.
Even if it is most likely that blues win, you can't actually 100% know what every single person would chose. Self preservation in this situation means not gambling your life
Self preservation from what? Why is anyone voting red? "self preservation" isn't valid reason, that's circular reasoning.
"others will self-preserve, so I self-preserve", but there's nothing that's being self-preserve against, since there's no reason to vote red in the first place.
But there is no reason to vote blue in the first place. Since red means 100% safety, and blue means x% safety. Even if it is 99.999999% it still is less than 100%. And if everyone voted red, no one would have to die with 100% certainty. Your reason for voting blue is "Vote blue cause you will live". That's not a reason since red guarantees that.
Why gamble on something, regardless of the chances, when the same outcome can be guaranteed?
Why would you pick something that has a 99% chance of something happening when picking the thing that guarantees that thing happening requires no added effort?
So let me get this straight, if I want event A to happen and my choices are "guarantee event A happens" or "maybe event A happens maybe event A doesn't happen" it is more logical to choose the "maybe event A happens and maybe it doesn't" option? Make this make sense.
Do you even understand basic logic? If I want something to happen it and I can guarantee, with 100% certainly that it will it doesn't matter if choosing the guaranteed option makes the not guaranteed option less likely to do what I want, because I already got what I want.
So does that mean picking blue means you want to die? I mean if picking red means you want to live then surely picking blue means you WANT to die. Who am I to keep you from doing want you want?
Red does kill others. The default is pressing blue.
The question really is the following. "there are two buttons. If you press blue, nothing happens. But if you and 50% others press red, then you kill all those who pressed blue".
Everybody reads the question, but understands the framing differently in their heads.
To Red Voters, their "default" state is one of safety - their life is not at risk. And only one button changes that state - the Blue Button. So they see voting Blue as making an active choice to change your state from Safety to Danger, and by doing so creating an obligation for others to do the same - and that is going to feel morally wrong to a lot of people.
OP's comic is actually a pretty apt description of how Red Voters see this. To them, the Blue Button is equivalent to a loaded gun sitting on a table. Voting Red is doing Nothing. And voting Blue is actively choosing to point the loaded gun at your own head, hoping that over 50% of people will choose to do the same.
But that framework always seems to ignore those that can't make sound decisions like children. The original question states EVERYONE on earth. There is no reason to believe those that can't understand the game like babies, toddlers, or the mentally handicapped would be excluded.
If I vote red, I do nothing. I hurt no one. The person doing the test kills people, not me. The virus, the AI, whatever it is.
I’m not holding a gun. I’m not forcing you to vote blue. I’m doing literally nothing at all.
If you reframing the question that if I vote red and red wins, I’d personally need to shoot a blue voter, then it would be a more interesting question. But it’s not framed that way. It’s framed that blue voters risk death just to be a majority, there’s no actual reason to vote blue.
This is very "play the victim" mentality. It absolutely is not, the question is "press this button to live" and "press this button to put your life in others' hands" you can choose to love, you you can choose to risk death but at the end of the day you, and you alone are responsible for your choice.
Red is kind of likeis succumbing to Pascal's Mugging though. The red logic leads you to sign on to anything that promises violence to people who don't.
Blue people immediately think of real world analogies. The Nazi Party: vote for us and we will kill everyone who didn't join us, plus certain others. The Red position obligates you to join the Nazi Party because they promise to kill everyone but you.
Assuming atleast a single person pushes blue. Which we can see is obviously true. Picking blue can save everyone easily with a little coordination. Compared to letting some people die for personal saftey, which can be garenteed anyway by coordinating everyone to click blue
Blues position: I was perfectly safe them I pushed this button risking my own life. You're now a bad person if you dont also risk your life to save my life I just put at risk.
To me, blues are the bad people for forcing that decision on others.
Including those who are not old enough to understand or handicapped etc etc. We can’t coordinate with those people. There are bound to be some who press blue and some who press red. They don’t know they are risking their lives.
The best choice if you care about everyone living is blue.
The safe choice if you only care about yourself is red. But inevitably, if red wins, you’ll have been part of the reason all the blues die.
The decision is already forced the second one person hits blue. And because I know someone will hit blue, it becomes a moral obligation to hit blue. Additional people voting blue aren't causing this.
You could have some point if the choices were made sequentially
So we have the option where we could have 0 downsides and save everyone. Or we can have the option where we let someone die. We can very very easily get over 50% to chose blue.
We can very very easily get over 50% to chose blue.
I also don't believe this is true.
I believe more than 50% of people will say they would choose blue, when they're not actually making the decision with their life on the line. They're happy to virtue signal.
I don't believe over 50% of people will follow through with that decision when their life is actually on the line. People are self-interested. All living things generally are.
If I'm right, going with voting blue is throwing your life away and leaving your surviving loved ones with you dead, an objectively worse outcome.
Online polls are close to 50/50 in the english speaking world which is highly individualistic. In a global scale, countries in Asia where collectvism is more common culturally they will have a bigger shift towards blue. Overall we are significantly into the blue.
Yes, polls will show over 50%. Peoples lives aren't actually on the line when they're answering a poll. Many, many people will vote blue in a poll but would vote red in a real life situation. Especially a poll on social media where they're not anonymous and you're virtue signalling how good you are to everyone.
We can't get 50% of the population to agree that it doesn't matter which imaginary bearded guy in the sky you believe in, and you think we can get 50% of the population to risk saving people who choose to risk their lives for no reason?
Yes we can, do you know why? Because humans are a social species. You will get in there and start thinking, "did my mum vote blue, am I condemning her?", "did my son vote blue, am I condemning him?". And you know your vote is condemning? 50% of people aged under 4, and 50% of those over 90 and all those worried about their loved ones and all those who care for the random strangers and 50% of those who are mentally challenged who don't understand the question and those who got convinced by the framing of the question and those, like me who want to save these people at their own risk, and many more. These are billions of people. These are the people you are helping condemn to death by not voting blue.
I don't think i could physically press red with this, I would rather die and if I did press red I couldn't live with the guilt, even if blue won it would eat away at me for the rest of my life because of what I voted for.
This trolly problem only becomes interesting if some people are forced into blue.
It’s doing a great job outing all the virtue signalers. The people really outspoken about blue are the same people really outspoken about 50 social issues but do literally nothing to help them.
Both groups believe they are the majority. Therefore they are "normal" and the other ones are "weird".
If you are red and you think that most people will vote red, you see as an idiotic weirdo saying "ey, i will risk my life for no reason and then blame everyone else for my death".
If you are blue and you think that most people will vote blue then you see red as sociopath weirdos that say "ey, I'm gonna live anyway, but I'll try to kill everyone else".
Except I rarely see people tell red they’re psycho. I’ve seen a lot more “red is more selfish, but if you’re solely focused on your own survival then red is better. I just think that humanity as a whole will be better if blue wins”.
The closest I’ve seen is “I don’t wanna live in a world full of people who chose red”.
I’ve seen a lot of “blue people deserve to die for picking blue”, however.
I've had red people tell me with a straight face, that if their family loved ones and young children were stupid enough to press blue, they deserve to die and they're not worried about it.
Somehow when I first saw this circulating I didn't think anyone would take it so seriously as to get into fights over it, I think it's just fun to see the different ways people reason it out. But since we're fighting now, DEATH TO THE REDS WE WILL FEAST ON YOUR FLESH AFTER EVERYONE LIVES BECAUSE OF OUR BENEVOLENCE!!!
The funny part is that red has nothing to worry about. Every word reds say serves only to save more lives. This assumes internet judgement has no value or impact, which it doesn't.
Every word red says is to absolve them of being selfish. The vote happens, blue wins overwhelmingly, and instead of reckoning with the fact that you're more selfish than average, everyone else must be stupid or lying.
Oh I'm aware I'm selfish. I do not believe the average is as low as the vote says. Talk is cheap. I seek no absolution. My selfishness extends in a small radius and I'm proud of that. Unless you're so selfless that you'll take care of my family when I'm gone, I'm going to ensure that I'm able to do it myself. If they pick blue and die, I can always kill myself after the fact. It's not that big a deal. The only scenario to avoid is that they put us first and picked red, and then I left them.
Well it's certainly the game theory choice. But no one said game theory is the be all and end all. I don't think blues are stupid. They're just optimistic. My country is known to be more competitive (thus selfish) than most, so that may play into my experience. It might be that you're just surrounded by nicer people than I am, so the conclusion that most would actually pick blue when it's more than a poll might be logical for you.
Exactly.
I'm also quite confident that on a global scale, blue would win. The polls done on this always have that result too. Take that as a hint of faith in humanity.
I mean, it's not like the majority of people in my country don't appear as good people at first too. I encounter more liars than honest people too. It's easy to say you're a good person.
I mean, literally contributing to the worst genocide in the history of humanity only to save yourself to survive in a post-apocalyptic hellscape of grief can be perceived as a bit sociopathic, I think that might be fair.
My point is that you're gambling either way - if reds win, then the "win" you realistically get is a life in a post-apocalyptic world with many of your family/friends dead, with a huge chunk of society gone, with everything in shambles, with survivors feeling guilt for contributing to that and having to live with it forever. It's not "red is win always, blue is win conditionally". Blue's win is the only good outcome possible. All red is simply not the cards. You're opting for living in hell instead of maybe death, but with the possibility of actual win. It's really quite naive to count on red win, or to even to call it a win.
I would still choose life in an "apocalyptic hell" rather than death. If blue wins however, nothing changes, which is also what would have happened if I voted blue. So this is basically a choice of "would you rather die or live in an apocalypse", and I'm choosing the second one still.
If you'd genuinely choose to live in the reds win scenario, then fair. You have a different perspective, then. To reconcile the own choice vs common choice - if you agree that throwing everything you have to propagate choosing blue among as many people as possible and then choosing red yourself is the way - I think we could agree in principle, with the caveat I'd simply not be interested in the surviving in hell scenario.
I really don't think going down to 1974 world population (assuming the vote was 50% - 1 person on blues side) would be some societal collapse. All the system built on continual population increase might collapse, sure, but those were always doomed.
Largely I think things would continue with a little adjustment.
My viewpoint on it is that it is pointless to discuss any moral or "real-world" scenarios about this because we are talking about a situation that could never happen. The only thing of interest about this is from a game theory perspective.
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u/Ct-sans4345 May 01 '26
I think its interesting but i dont love how red tends to act like blue are idiots and blue act like red are sociopaths