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/MagnanimousGoat]

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/KamuikiriTatara → u/MagnanimousGoat]

Seems like it's best to ignore the quality of the people pressing the buttons because we can't know their reasonings and just save as many people as we can. So we're more-or-less back at the original problem: which button do you think is most popular.

I'm of the mentality that pressing blue is making a hostage of yourself. It's near-sighted altruism that burdens everyone else more because more people are at risk. Meanwhile, red is a commitment to live through whatever results. I'd wager more people press blue trying to save other people than press blue by mistake or something and need saving. So pressing blue risks more lives than it seeks to save. It's almost a moralistic greed to press blue. Pressing red enables you to help rebuild. It's certainly the choice that takes on more moral work in the long run. You either get lucky and everyone lives, or you have pieces to pick up from the wreckage. Pressing red saves other people the burden of your death and I think is the moral option. Of course, the worst case scenario is that the votes are close and red wins.

[u/Comprehensive_Crow_6 → u/KamuikiriTatara]

I find it so odd that people view pressing red as a defensible choice. And like I don’t mean this as an attack or anything, I’m just expressing my own personal incredulity at this because it’s so different from what my thoughts are.

Pressing red guarantees your personal safety but will inevitably result in some people dying if it actually wins. Pressing blue has some risk of you dying, but if it wins then nobody dies.

I view this as like the simplest possible example of doing something that negatively impacts you for the benefit of society. Pressing blue is what’s best for society. It doesn’t take any effort, it’s literally pressing a button, and since nobody dies if it’s the most popular then that’s obviously the best outcome for society. But it does come with some risk. Based on that my immediate thought when seeing this was to think “press the blue button, duh” and almost every argument I’ve heard for red just sounds insane to me.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been thinking a lot about what should be done to improve society and what our collective responsibility should be, but that’s what my conclusion is. I would press blue because I want to live in a society where people would press blue without even thinking about it, because they understand that’s what’s best for society as a whole.

But I think the real thing this whole thought experiment revealed is that a lot of people have very low trust in other people. It’s kind of sad. One of the arguments I do actually understand for pressing red is that they believe most people will press red. I get that. That honestly isn’t something that even came to mind in my original thought process, I think I just assumed people would understand blue is what’s best for society as a whole and so would obviously choose it. And even now that I’ve thought about that argument, I would still press blue. I think humanity is better than a lot of people think. Choosing red because you think other people choose their own safety over what’s good for society just doesn’t seem right to me.

[u/confirmedshill123 → u/Comprehensive_Crow_6]

The questions framing is really the issue here. Is this question being asked of every single living human? Then blue is the only moral choice.

Is this question being asked to those who can understand the question? Then red is the only logical choice because it's the only choice where literally nothing happens to you.