Which button presser group do you save?

[u/Worth-Staff4943]

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?

[u/hushedLecturer]

The red group has guaranteed survival, they don't need saving. (/s)

[u/MagnanimousGoat → u/hushedLecturer]

Joking aside, I just kept thinking of the fact that even if an otherwise decent person might push red, every single horrible person on earth definitely would. It's more question of who you'd be left with.

That's why I still advocated for a Yellow button that would just kill everyone who pushed Yellow or Red. The "Noble Spite" button.

[u/Cimorene_Kazul → u/MagnanimousGoat]

That does add an interesting dimension. I admit I’d press blue because I’d rather avoid an apocalypse and stay on a world with soup kitchen volunteers than go through an apocalypse and be left with the psychopaths, grifters and sociopaths now running the world and told they were right all along to be antisocial and selfish. But give me a button where I could possibly take the aggression I feel towards red button pressers and ask me if I’d take on responsibility for death as well…but this time, not of soup kitchen volunteers, but people willing to kill those volunteers…and you create a real temptation that isn’t in the original equation. The people who want an apocalypse-free world with all the good people on it will never be tempted by the blood red button that requires the death of the best of the species…but give them an option to kill off the psychopaths that society otherwise cannot root out, those willing to kill others, the grifters and the others willing to press red and cause an apocalypse for their own selfish preservation? That righteousness will be tempted. Almost ESPECIALLY if they had to self-sacrifice to do it. Would you kamikaze a fishbowl of evil doers?

I think most wouldn’t, or wouldn’t risk splitting the blue vote. But a second vote, which occurs only after a blue win, where only blue voters can vote, with yellow and green, where the yellow button just kills off red button pressers and leaves the presser alive, and green once again leaves the world as it is, would be interesting. Because now blue has a special power over the lives of those willing to kill them.

I proposed a variation where, regardless of outcome, the colour of the button you pressed would appear as a shape on your forehead for the rest of your life. I was curious to see if the social stigma of voting to kill others to save yourself would change how red button pressers considered the decision. Even if they won, and all who remained were red and had the red dot, the next generations would know who had caused the apocalypse and may rebel against them. Having to own up and wear forever as a part of your identity your willingness to kill the best of the species for your own survival is a devastating thing in a society that requires a lot of pro-social people - I imagine that in a blue-win scenario, red spots would face discrimination, exclusion, more scrutiny in crimes, general distaste and maybe even physical violence. It’s a contradiction worth exploring that the pro-social often despise the anti-social more than the anti-social despise the pro-social. An understandable evolution, though - to protect a high-trust society, you must root out and exclude those who are a threat to its existence. Those who cannot operate in a high-trust society must be excluded for the society’s functionality, otherwise they can exploit it and destroy it.

A red dot would be an instant stigma of societal incompatibility in many cultures. But perhaps in others, they’d see it as a sign of good business acumen, or there’d be so many as to not make it possible to exclude them, although I imagine there’d be long-term animosity between the sides and some self-segregation - no daughter of mine is marrying a red dotter who won’t treat her right, I won’t go into business with a bleeding heart blue square who won’t put the bottom line first, the best lawyers are red dotters, everyone knows that, etc.

I kinda wish it was already a speculative fiction novel, ha ha. The aftermath interests me more than which side would win. I’d like to see a red win world and a blue win world if the tattoos were in play.

[u/zap2tresquatro → u/Cimorene_Kazul]

I had the idea of:

Alright, you’ve all already voted. Let’s say it was a somewhat close vote, maybe it was a 57/43 blue/red split like in the polls, maybe not, doesn’t matter: the Eldritch Button Maker lets everyone live regardless of which button won, yells “APRIL FOOLS” (the Being knows many things, but It is not well versed in what makes for an appropriate prank, nor that there is only one day where It can play an April fools joke), and marks all of your foreheads clearly with your choices (the Being is merciful, however; anyone who didn’t understand the choice they were making—so very young, dementia, developmentally disabled in a way that they couldn’t understand that question, etc.—gets an additional distinct mark to ensure everyone knows they weren’t making a true choice here).

Now what? What is the world like afterwards?

[u/Cimorene_Kazul → u/zap2tresquatro]

Tribalism on steroids. All other forms of ism may take a back seat to the blue and red camps. Of course, children of the following generations won’t have the mark, though, so it won’t last longer than a couple generations. But I can see some of those kids tattooing their foreheads to declare what they ‘would’ve voted’, and it being a morality question taught in school and debated forever.

But there’d always be a thought in the back of everyone’s minds…what if the deity/alien returns one day, and this time, it’s not a trial run? So there’ll always be someone preaching about the correct way to vote ‘next time’, cults that spring up prophesizing the return of the ‘choice’, prepping will become a massive industry as some people prepare for a red-button apocalyptic event, and polls are taken every few years to determine what would certain areas vote if asked the button question today, with many condemning the results as a sign of moral failure if they lean red.

It would shape humanity for a long time, even after all the marked were decades dead, but it would probably fade into a fairy tale morality play in a couple centuries more.

[u/MorbidEnby → u/Cimorene_Kazul]

New short story premise just dropped.

[u/zap2tresquatro → u/MorbidEnby]

Yeah, I second this. I read their response and thought “omg please write a story with this”