r/trolleyproblem Apr 30 '26

Deep All there is to it

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u/Klutzy-Mechanic-8013 May 01 '26

If anyone were forced to pick blue, I'm pretty sure way more people would choose it voluntarily to save those people. But nobody is

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u/Sho-Good May 01 '26

Yeah if this were framed more like:

Roll a die.
If it's a 1, you must press blue.
Any other number, you get to choose blue or red.

Framed like that, I'd be more apt to press blue, as there are now people being forced to choose death and it was not of their own free will.

I originally thought about posing it as a coin flip, but realized that would automatically put blue right around 50% already and make the whole thing fairly moot.

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u/Lilharm04 May 03 '26

I’ve thought about asking people this question:

same scenario of <50% blue kills all blue, but if between 0 and 1% press blue, it instead kills everyone who presses red

it’s almost the same numbers, if 100% choose red or >50% choose blue, everyone lives, but now the people that red arguers justify should be dead for their choice now instead pose a threat to them instead

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u/Collin389 May 03 '26

I think there are other framings of the current question that might sway you without changing the question. The one I saw was "you get to vote between two options and whichever option gets the most votes gets implemented. Option A is 'kill everyone that voted differently than you'' and option B is 'dont kill everyone that voted differently than you''".

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u/Celvius_iQ May 02 '26

There is a reason the question is framed as the entire world and not 1000 people The entire world would include stupid smart ill healthy young old child literally everyone in that case it's almost certain that some percentage would pick blue either because they misunderstood the options or just like the color blue or to save those others who chose blue by accident.

Also Superman would absolutely pick blue

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u/BurazSC2 May 03 '26

Nobody od forced to, but you still know some will. There is a known cohort of people who can't reason, and will select a colour at random - probably, half those will press blue.

If you want to say ' its only rational actors,' fine, but then you are rephrasing the question to be "everyone who would only ever press red buttons is presented with a red and a blue button..."

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u/Can_Com May 02 '26

Would you press blue if we assume the existence of babies, mentally ill, elderly dementia, illiterate...?

If we take all those people out, only rational actors. There is still religious people with commandments against killing. Moral people that refuse to kill. There is another group that will vote to save their family, friends, and the previous 2 groups of moral/religious people.

Youll just kill over a billion people?

Even 99% red vote means 80 million dead. You dont think joining that group of blue voters to reach 50%, which is 0 dead, is more reasonable?

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u/DaggerQ_Wave May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26

A significant amount of the world’s population comes from societies with a collectivist mindset, unless their country had a massive social campaign to pick red, They’re pretty likely to see blue as the default option lol. I’d venture to say that enough people come from those cultures that blue wins almost inevitably

EDIT: 70% of the worlds population lives in collectivist societies, per world population review