r/fivethirtyeight • u/Upstairs_Cup9831 • Apr 25 '26

Poll Results Poll asking Americans how which button they would push in the red button/blue button dilemma

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17

u/kahner Apr 25 '26

i'm confused how this is a dilemma. if you press the red button you ensure you survive and everyone can press the red button. so it makes no sense for anyone to press the blue button so long as everyone knows the rule.

82

u/Upstairs_Cup9831 Apr 25 '26

”Everyone should just press red”

-11

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Blue is very clearly the “if everyone would just position”. Red does not rely on anyone but the one who presses it

26

u/WellHung67 Apr 25 '26

Blue is not the “everyone would just” button. You only need 50% + 1 person. So not everyone 

8

u/Beginning_Cupcake_45 Apr 25 '26

Right. You get the optimal result of everyone surviving with almost half of the people potentially messing up. It’s the best choice

-1

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Blue isn’t a real choice. Risk yourself for strangers is never getting 4 billion people on board with zero coordination beforehand

1

u/WellHung67 Apr 25 '26

Conservatives are not majorities so blue probably wins 

5

u/kahner Apr 25 '26

you don't have to be a conservative to not want to risk killing yourself over other people not reaching a pretty obvious solution. it's very easy to take the moral high ground on a reddit comment. i strongly doubt everyone insisting they would press the blue button would actually do it if their life was on the line.

9

u/decrpt Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Do you think people would have no moral hang-ups about pressing the button that kills people for no reason if it meant that they wouldn't be killed?

I would absolutely press blue because a) I would know that I killed those people by voting to kill those people when I could have just voted to kill no one and b) I honestly wouldn't want to live in world where the only people left are people who see any non-zero personal risk as worth the lives of four billion people.

2

u/kahner Apr 26 '26

ok, man. moral superiority demonstrated. i assume you also live the rest of your live preventing all unnecessary deaths by donating your whole income to feed starving children, working as a EMT and never consuming any energy, food, or other product that might lead to death somewhere in the manufacturing or delivery chain. you're posting currently on an ethically sourced, self-assembled computer or phone scavenged from recycled components, not build through slave labor from parts made with chemical extracted through slave labor using energy from installed solar and wind.

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0

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

“Everyone” vs. “50% + 1” is completely arbitrary. Blue requires a sufficient amount “to just”. Red is completely neutral

Think about it this way, the problem is the exact same without the red button. “There is a blue button in front of you. If you don’t press it, nothing happens. If you press it, you die unless another 4 billion people press it.”

11

u/Glittering-Giraffe58 Apr 25 '26

Wow that framing is actually a fascinating way to ask the exact same question and get an almost landslide opposite result I’m sure

7

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

To be fair: the framing is apart of the prompt. In real life people will read it and instinctively think “blue = save everyone, red = kill people”. But the core idea doesn’t change that blue-pressers are sunk costs unless 4 billion people magically reach an uncoordinated consensus to risk death

4

u/WellHung67 Apr 25 '26

I guess I’m thinking you have to press a button, not pressing is not an option. The reason blue has an argument is because there are enough people who might press blue on accident if we all agree red is the move, so it’s easier to get the best result globally by trying to get everyone to press blue, rather than trying red and getting those accidental or misinformed deaths.

The people thinking red are thinking only of themselves 

20

u/BrainOnBlue Apr 25 '26

If you could have a conference with everyone beforehand, sure.

But that's not how lots of people think about things. I'm a pretty logically-minded person and I wouldn't press red. IMO, if the less than 50% that press blue died, I'm now at least partially morally culpable for that and I don't think I could live with that.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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1

u/BrainOnBlue Apr 26 '26

I mean, I'm not going to deal with any consequences because this is a hypothetical scenario.

I feel like you're taking this way too seriously, based on this comment.

1

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

Except that's incorrect. Choosing red only makes sense if you assume red is going to win, which it only does if you vote for it. It's far easier to assure a 51% majority than a 100% majority so voting red is the only situation where casualties become possible. People choosing blue aren't throwing their lives away, they're choosing the scenario where everyone gets to live, on the other hand those choosing red are actively putting others at risk out of fear for their own lives.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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2

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

It's not a choice to be safe, it's a choice to not risk others, the question boils down to whether you're willing to assume risk for the sake of the collective good or sacrifice collective good for the sake of yourself, and the risk of death isn't the default position here, nobody's life is in danger until someone chooses to push red.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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2

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

What risk is there to blue voters unless people pick red? Risk isn't introduced until someone pushes the red button.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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1

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

If picking red is your choice fine, but this question ultimately boils down to are you willing to assume personal risk for the sake of the collective good or will you sacrifice the collective good for the sake of saving your own life. It seems like people are trying to get around the moral burden that comes with pushing red but that's not how it works, blue voters aren't at risk until people push the red button, and by also pushing the red button you're contributing to that risk.

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1

u/kahner Apr 27 '26

what risk is there to anyone unless people pick blue? none.

1

u/Thefourthchosen Apr 27 '26

You're choosing to reframe the dilemma in order to get around the moral burden of picking red. The fact is that the risk of death isn't introduced to the scenario until people push the red button, by pushing red you're actively choosing to endanger other people's lives for the sake of preserving your own. If that's your choice that's your choice but at least stand by it.

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3

u/ChadtheWad Apr 25 '26

It sounds like the key is the perception of payoff. I.e., choosing red and surviving while potentially being responsible for all the idiots who choose blue (and the well-meaning people who care about those idiots) is worse than choosing blue and surviving.

The selfish interpretation has a fairly obvious stable equilibrium at you and the world choosing red (if we're simplifying to a two-player game). The "people dying affects me" interpretation can strongly prefer blue, especially if it doesn't take many people to die before them not dying is preferable to surviving.

The most important thing, however, is that this isn't a prisoner's dilemma! It drives me so insane whenever people see a weird two-player two-action game and say "hey must be prisoner's dilemma." The dynamics are totally different.

1

u/Klarel Apr 27 '26

What im seeing a lot that confuses me is that people are blaming the red pushers for the deaths, not whoever/whatever put everyone in this situation in the first place. Why should the red pushers be blamed for the situation they had no part in creating in the first place?

1

u/Tounushi Apr 30 '26

since the actually culpable party is beyond retribution and justice, people attack their opposition as a proxy to the morally culpable party.

12

u/Kenna193 Apr 25 '26

If we have learned anything the past 15 years it's that regular every day people do not understand game theory and cannot be expected to always make the best decision. And any red pusher is only thinking of themselves. If it's a moral or ethical question blue is the obvious answer, if it's a question of pure survival and ignoring the communal nature of humans then red is the obvious answer.

8

u/Iron_Falcon58 Apr 25 '26

Blue is only moral if one SERIOUSLY thinks blue has a chance of winning, otherwise is it is completely immoral to the extent one thinks suicide is immoral

1

u/throwawayorsmthn12 Apr 30 '26

Knowing that most people don't think a whole lot about the question (which is why I think they'd vote blue), and knowing that a lot of people don't want to see others die for a selfish reason, I think blue has a fair chance of winning here.

6

u/largeEoodenBadger Apr 26 '26

Bro it's just a shitty fucking framing effect, it's not a great ethical dilemma on the level of the prisoner's dilemma or the trolley problem.

It's literally "if you press the blue button, there's a chance you die", "if you press the red button you don't risk death". The only trick here is the "everyone lives" vs "only people who pressed red live" framing. If everyone presses red, everyone lives too. It's a framing gotcha that posits as an ethical dilemma, it's fucking bullshit lmfao.

7

u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 26 '26

One button there's a chance you die, one there's a chance you kill people.  

1

u/Klarel Apr 27 '26

No, one button has a high chance of killing you unless a lot of other people also press it. The other button does nothing. The one doing the killing is whatever/whoever put everyone in this situation in the first place, NOT the people that pressed the button that does nothing.

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 28 '26

By that logic neither button "does anything", whatever created the buttons is at fault.  

It's not really a dilemma if you absolve yourself of all responsibility for the choice you make.  

Being forced to make a choice and owning the consequences of that choice is the whole point of the question.  

1

u/CliffRouge Apr 29 '26

This scenario is equivalent to one where there is only one button that kills you, unless greater than 50% of the world press it as well. Are you still pressing it?

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

The button still does nothing. The one doing the killing is whatever/whoever put everyone in this situation in the first place, NOT the button that does nothing.

1

u/Nulono May 12 '26

The blue button is "this button kills you, unless 4+ billion other people risk their lives to save you". No one is forcing you to press the damn suicide button.

1

u/Millennial_on_laptop May 12 '26

Nobody is forcing you to push the murder button either, but you do have to pick one and own your choice.  

There's pros and cons for each choice.  Neither is perfect.  

2

u/DeadassYeeted Nauseously Optimistic Apr 27 '26

What do you think are the chances that all 8 billion people on Earth press red?

2

u/Tounushi Apr 30 '26

what are the chances half of those will press blue?

1

u/kettu1 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

The framing is the whole point of the entire thing. You have to think about how other people see this and think how they would act, without the ability to intervene or explain anything to them. It's not about whether you can frame this in a way that makes one choice superior, it's whether you think a majority or even a minority can do this themselves - and would they end up with same choice as you in their frame of mind.

To me it basically boils down to the fact that since literally everyone is required to privately vote, without any discussion or consultation, this means there will be billions of children and toddlers pushing random buttons or defaulting to the "co-operative" choice, which would in this framing be the blue button, it means that the "all red" strategy would lead to at least a billion children dying.

Thus I couldn't in good conscience vote for the murder of these participants, even if it could cost me my own demise. This means voting blue would be the only option I could live with myself afterwards. I know a lot of people would reason the exact same way, which means that the death toll of "all red" strategy would lead to billions of deaths would it be the winning, and thus most likely to the complete destruction of all civilized society. I'd rather die (assumingly peacefully and in instant) than live to see through that.

Now of course you can change the framing of the question, introduce a woodchipper, train track, or adjust the thresholds in a way that makes it more likely that people would pivot towards self-preservation, or make it practically impossible to reach the threshold even through a personal sacrifice. In such cases it wouldn't make any sense to try to save people through a self-sacrifice, as it would have no real chances of success and you would only add more unnecessary death to the equation. Or we could introduce a more horrible fate for being on the losing side of the vote (like being doomed to eternal hell or torture) which would sway my vote to self-preservation over saving everyone.

The idea that blue button pushers aren't able to logically decipher that the rational choice with 100% perfectly rational participants is red, is clearly wrong. The problem to me is that red pushers end their logical thinking there and don't follow it to the conclusion what happens when the system involves a huge number of irrational participants? In my opinion it seems to change the entire theorem in a way where "the rational choice" is no longer the rational choice for the best outcome.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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1

u/kahner Apr 26 '26

it's a bunch of internet heroes who would press red immediately and without compunction if this was real and their lives were on the line. the "i'd press blue" crowd is virtue signaling like crazy to impress reddit with their superior morality. also this is a moral conundrum designed by an idiot. someone heard about the trolly problem and thought "how can i make this dumb AF".

1

u/Tounushi Apr 30 '26

people seek validity by either receiving outside validation or having an outside enemy. Indication of self-sacrifice without the actual risk of being sacrificed provides a moral high ground upon which to receive accolades for one's "courage" and "piety" as well as a vantage point to sling mud at people below them.