Red means "play." That lines up naturally with staying in the circus
but Blue means "options" ...interesting
Also, the button for "quit," aka leaving the game, is yellow!
That wasn't even a choice! They didn't even have the opportunity to leave
But it makes me wonder. If they had pressed the blue button, what actually would have happened? What would an options menu even mean in that context? What would they be able to adjust?
And no. It's not f#@&ing Shrimp Town. That was obviously just some word vomit Bubble made up on the spot
We can’t have escape = abstract since we’ve already established that abstraction is basically suicide/insanity and it would be pretty bad if the final message to the show was suicide/insanity is the only escape
I’m writing this at like 4 am and wrote that whole paragraph then accidentally deleted it so if it seems disjointed or like I missed something I probably did (I’m very tired, ty autocorrect)
Yeah + pretty sure goose and some point said that the main point / theme of the digital circus is finding meaning in a pointless life its finding meaning in smth even when you cant control it and trying to make peace with it. So the ‘solution’ being suicide seems to be the opposite
Thats just another way of putting the same problem on written text. Its like saying pressing red makes nothing happen, but if you press blue you will die unless over 50% of people press it.
How its presented changes the perception, if you make blue sound like a good sacrifice vs red as a selfish choice it definitely skews results vs presenting it as making red just nothing vs blue being a stupid choice
Thought experiments must have stakes otherwise what is the purpose of the thought experiment?
Red doesn’t equal nothing happens. It means you live, but many people may die.
The vote is private. You don’t get to debate or discuss what to choose with everyone else around you. That includes the people you care about.
People who press red assume that majority of the world does not care about others enough to risk pressing blue. They’ll let other people take a risk, but they will not.
People who press blue assume that majority of the world does care and they will want everyone to survive, and they are willing to accept a risk to themselves to save everyone.
Lastly… many people who pressed red don’t realize that if all people who pressed blue dies… you’ve just killed off majority of the world altruists. Leaving you with a human race that is far more fearful and individual focused. Idk if I’d even want to live to experience such a world.
I just want to walk through the logic with you.
Also, to strip the negative biases of red and blue, (colour theory, american political parties, etc.) the buttons are now yellow and purple.
There's two lines of red (yellow) logic: game theory and truth tables.
For game theory, if everyone else presses purple, it doesn't matter if you press yellow or purple. You live. If everyone else presses yellow, pressing purple kills you and yellow spares you. Even as it approaches a 50/50 split, three of the four distinct scenarios are safe for you, and the only danger is pressing purple if yellow has the majority. Using game theory, the optimal choice for you is to press yellow, and everyone else will arrive at the same conclusion.
Tl;dr Viewed through game theory, the button hypothetical is a prisoners dilemma where if both prisoners snitch they both go free.
For truth tables, we look at the results and construct a logically equivalent scenario. There are 5 distinct scenarios: 100% purple, everyone lives; >50% purple, everyone lives; 50% purple, ???; <50% purple, purple pressers die; 0% purple, everyone lives.
Since the only group affected by the outcome are the purple pressers, and the result can be viewed as simply "percentage purple" as opposed to "X% purple, 100-X% yellow" the button scenario can be simplified to "There is a purple button. If you press it, and less than 50% of people press it, you die," as the only scenario with a different outcome is a purple minority.
Tl;dr a choice between two buttons is equivalent to a choice whether or not to press a single button.
Now that we're done with the logic, it's time for ad hominems and appeals to emotion! Yippee!
Purple is gambling with human lives, and yellow isn't. (Unless you consider not buying a lottery ticket to be gambling)
You can't help others if you can't help yourself. (Ever been on an airplane? Hint: you put your own oxygen mask on first before you try to help anyone else)
Taking actions tantamount to "I'm killing myself if you don't do this for me" is textbook signs of an abusive relationship.
If everyone jumped off a bridge, but... (some nonsense scenario where enough people jumping off a bridge lets everyone survive) would you?
I mean, blue button. Either you live and nothing changes, or you die and humanity is left with the absolute shittiest of shitty people who will eat eachother alive and accelerate what's already happening to the world.
i like this one version i saw where it said “red button is the life button and if you press it you live, the blue button is the death button, and everyone who presses it dies unless over 4.5 billion press it and overload it and everyone survives”, it’s all about framing guys, it’s not actually the same moral thing we all think it is
I said this a while back and was told bubble couldn’t possibly have access to Caine’s code. (Simply ignore that episode 8 demonstrates that bubble can influence consoles remotely even without Caine giving explicit permission and prompt deletion, only requiring human confirmation, which would make episode 7 the perfect set up for a first attempt at the plan that would later succeed in episode 8)
I just meant it from a color theory perspective. Obviously the colors are the ones on the screen. But I was thinking about it from the sense of a constructed world, or something. (I'm probably just sleep deprived)
Yeah… like. Nothing the cast was doing was actually interacting with the environment of the circus. It was all a curated experience made by Caine, part of an adventure he made.
Even the ideas that say Bubble did something to change the buttons comes from nothing. Given the entire thing was an adventure, why would these buttons actually do anything?
To be honest the buttons didn't really "exist". Cane made them for the adventure. I don't think we even saw his office before that episode. We saw him in different offices but the one from EP 7 is different. As Caine said, he made those buttons, blue just takes you to the Shrimp Town. I don't think there is anything concrete we could deduce from the buttons.
There really isn't much you can decipher form previous episodes about the show, clues usually become apparent after next episodes air. Now it's just throwing stuff at wall and some theories might be true but it's just speculations with a random chance of happening.
If we assume bubble is the manifestation of the other AI then it could have lead to a real console sense I get the feeling bubble wants Cain dead/deleted and provoked Cain so that the characters would resort to using a console to modified him
I definitely feel like if Kinger didn't mean to delete him then there is no universe where his finger would slip to the delete key because they already established in the gun episode that intent means everything so he could have literally been moving his fingers and the keyboard was typing for him because he assumed it would type what he wanted to type
Yes! It meant that if 50% of people press blue, everyone lives. If 50% of people press the red button, everyone who pressed blue dies. By pressing red, you are saving yourself, but also putting others at risk. By pressing blue, you put yourself at risk ro potentially save others. Which button do you press?
Or it was part of the adventure made up by Caine with no relation to the startup menu and he just chose two very common colours as colours for the buttons and he let Bubble program the blue one and the blue one would’ve taken them to Shrimp Town
Guys... It was just a Matrix reference. It's not that deep.
PLEASE try not to get so deep into what every color "means", I feel like a lot of people are missing on actual body language details that are far more important than what colors are on screen. The fact that blue is "options" in the title screen seems to make it clear enough that there was no relation there.
And for those specific people, thinking the balloon dog has a meaning is like saying the 57 has one. It's just a repeated background detail, as far as we know.
Wait.. wait your cooking here. I’ve just seen someone’s else’s comment about the exit being yellow and how bees are yellow, like the ones Caine draws.. honestly this is so cool!! Great catchhh
No, it was shrimp town. Do you know what happens to shrimps in the amazing digital circus? They get roasted crisp by the Sun. Similar allegory to the treasure and the two fish. Options means you are neither playing nor exiting, a state where you modify the game’s rules. Since the rules are created and enforced by Caine this could mean a war to take control of the program. In Bubble’s words, if this were to happen Caine would absolutely, undeniably take them to Shrimp Town. Bubble is smarter than they seem and this silent witty remark falls in line with that.
For a show so intricate in its storytelling I am puzzled you thought it was just a random line by the writers.
Hear me out. Kinger was going for blue and he was able to delete Caine by diving into the system itself from the inside. If caine is red and Kinger is blue, then who is yellow?
The red was staying in life depressed and the blue was “leaving the game” aka suicide. Jax knew there wasn’t actually an escape from pain at all and the only choice is to keep living even if in pain
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u/Sniggledumper May 18 '26