From what I've seen on the discourse surrounding this hypothetical, it actually comes down to the assumptions people make initially. I've observed that most people who say red change their answer to blue if children are explicitly involved.
Choose red to guarantee survival without consequences but with knowledge that you contributed to blue death. Choose purple to guarantee survival without contributing to blue death at specified personal cost. Choose blue to either die or allow everyone to survive while you avoid personal consequences.
EDIT: Anyone who does not decide within an arbitrary timeframe will be randomly assigned to red or blue.
like i get yall wanna feel morally superior and that but we don’t live in an ideal world people do get your argument but 50.1% of people won’t bet their lives on blue because no matter how much you uphold your morals you don’t ever know what you’d do in a life or death situation can you really believe that 4.1 billion people will choose blue? Personally i wont choose blue because im not stupid it’s a dumb argument that 1 person will be stupid enough to choose blue and choose blue anticipating that because then you join that 1 person and become stupid
Disclaimer: I myself am a red button pusher, although I initially picked blue.
At the end of the hour everyone must still make an individual choice. No threats or bribes are allowed to preserve individual autonomy.
If given the mentioned conditions however, I would switch sides. I'm not sure if blue is considered an "obvious" choice in this scenario, so I figured I would probe and get an idea of people think.
Okay hear me out. Every simplification of this problem removes one or more factors, and it’s USUALLY the fact that pushing the red button measurably increases the risk that blue dies. If you were to be one of 2 people to lift a table, of course it matters if you lift it. But when it’s billions, suddenly our brains shut off. So try this one.
Would you drive drunk if you were in an indestructible car and couldn’t be hurt by any accidents during the drive?
You can drunk drive in this hypothetical without increasing the risk to yourself.
You cannot drunk drive in this hypothetical without increasing the risk to others.
Just like you cannot press the red button without increasing risk to those that pressed blue.
Removing the risk to others fundamentally changes the question, which is why most logic is flawed.
So would you drive drunk in an indestructible car if it meant you couldn’t be hurt at all? Try to answer without giving random passerby immunity for no reason or the ability to matrix dodge.
If you think getting arrested is a problem, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THE BLUE VOTERS ARE GONNA DO TO THE RED VOTERS IF THEY WIN? You just got sorted into the most logically justifiable group to hate/punish, and helped create an organized majority that you don’t belong to. That’s a lil worse than jail time. People do awful things to people for much less justifiable reasons.
Or they all die, and you’re left with everyone who doesn’t believe that they have responsibility for their actions. Sweet, you’re alive. Do you think a lot of doctors don’t give a shit about that kind of stuff? The ones that take an oath starting “first, do no harm?” Hope you don’t get sick!
Logically how can red make sense?
“But the blue voters could have just not voted blue”
Yeah but they did so using sound logic, and not expecting to die. And then you made a separate decision to increase the risk of them dying to save yourself.
It’s no different to “they shouldn’t have been on the road near me”. They knew going outside was a risk, but they still did it expecting to be safe, which was not an unreasonable expectation, and you made that less likely.
Generally we call those people criminals.
I'm pushing Red even if all the toddlers of the world were forced to vote and the Blue button had a plush toy on top of it
You are in a room with non chronically online people. There are no buttons here, no moral dilemmas or buttons to push. You get to the kitchen and are presented with a choice: a blue or red cup for your drink?
How do you explain your hesitation and anxiety to just grabbing a cup?
Ok, so I think it is clear by now that the real difference between red and blue pressers is faith in what the majority of people will do. Red pressers believe that blue will lose, blue pressers believe that blue will win. Any other argument mostly exists to convince other people to switch because that helps convince us that yes, our button would win and our original idea was the correct one.
That being said, when trying to gauge which button is most likely to be pressed to help with our decision making, we have to consider a variety of different reasons why someone might press one button or the other. Essentially, I think it boils down to this:
One group of people will pick randomly, no matter what
One group of people will pick blue, no matter what
One group of people will pick red, no matter what
The remaining people will try to gauge how big the previous three groups will be relatove to eachother as well as how many people in their own group will come to the same conclusion as themselves to help them choose
Now my question is this: if you are part of that 4th group and you think red buttons will win, why exactly is that? What I mean is, do you believe that red button pressers will mostly be people who would press red no matter what, such as out of selfishness or self-preservation, or do you think they will mostly be people who don't have faith that other people will press blue?
As an extension, if you are part of that 4th group and you think blue buttons will win, why exactly is that? Do you believe that blue button pressers will mostly be people who would press blue no matter what, such as out of blind trust or duty for their fellow humans , or do you think they will mostly be people who have faith that other people will press red?
Essentially, my question is, to which extent do the choices of that 4th group actually affect the outcome? Are we a minority or a majority of the population? If we are a majority, do the other groups even need to be taken into consideration? If we are a minority, does our vote even matter?
What do you think?
What stands out to me about this problem is how easy it is to make the other side look like an absurd choice depending on how you present it:
- Blue pressers view pressing the red button as needlessly killing everyone who pressed the blue button.
- Red pressers view pressing the blue button as needlessly putting yourself in a proverbial blender that will kill everyone inside unless at least half the rest of the people jump in too.
Both interpretations can be seen as rational and contain no lies.
It‘s a nice reminder that even rational arguments presented in the news, social media, in conversations with others, etc can be complete bullshit if they rely on a specific framing, cherrypick details, or don’t account for the full picture.
Assuming 8b people exactly on earth and all must push one of the buttons.
Coincidently you are the 4b +1 person to press.
You(and just you)are shown the percentages for the previous button presses before making your choice.
Where do you draw the lines? At what % do you think it would take for you to switch your choice.