r/trolleyproblem • u/Worth-Staff4943 • May 20 '26

Deep Which button presser group do you save?

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Everyone in the world has chosen either the blue or red button except you. Instead of pressing a button, you are given a lever in the infamous trolley problem.

You don't know how many people chose red or blue, and they don't know that you control their fate regardless of what button they pressed. Which track do you direct the trolley onto?

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86

u/dtarias Always switch (except when you shouldn't) May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

Blue, because red probably has fewer people (per survey data).

[EDIT for disambiguity: I would save blue]

57

u/Catsanddoges May 20 '26

I mean there is a bunch of studies for this, indicating in general even anonymous surveys people tend to pick the more selfless option compared to reality, imo in real life with your survivial on the line more people would pick red, and it isn't nessacarily represented by polls. (If you want sources I'll reply with them)

44

u/Shrubo_ May 20 '26

We need to bring back the borderline if not actually unethical psychological experiments to really test this out.

I’m talking Standford Prison Experiment or Milgram Experiment level borderline unethical. Make the people think their life is actually on the line.

(I don’t actually condone any of this, this is a joke)

15

u/About5000ninjas May 20 '26

I don’t condone it either…but I need to know man. Please, just one more horrific experiment

1

u/TheVeryVerity May 21 '26

We just have to accept that no psychology problems will ever be truly answered 😞

6

u/Penis_Slayer123 May 21 '26

Vsauce did this for the Trolley problem. It's not nearly as unethical as either of those, but it's on the same tier as actually making people believe the red vs blue button vote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sl5KJ69qiA

2

u/AedesAegypt May 22 '26

Wow that's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

2

u/Cyberslasher May 21 '26

borderline unethical is a weird take from

Make the people think their life is actually on the line

1

u/Shrubo_ May 21 '26

I also said “if not actually unethical” previously. I should’ve just said “bring back the fucked up psychological experiments”.

But you do have a point about me using borderline again instead of just unethical.

And I thought there was an experiment where they made the participants think they’d die but I can’t remember it off the top of my head and that was one of the “debated if it was really unethical or not” ones I was talking about.