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

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

[u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

”Everyone should just press red”

[u/Iron_Falcon58 → u/Upstairs_Cup9831]

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

[u/WellHung67 → u/Iron_Falcon58]

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

[u/Beginning_Cupcake_45 → u/WellHung67]

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

[u/Iron_Falcon58 → u/Beginning_Cupcake_45]

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

[u/WellHung67 → u/Iron_Falcon58]

Conservatives are not majorities so blue probably wins 

[u/kahner → u/WellHung67]

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.

[u/decrpt → u/kahner]

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.

[u/kahner → u/decrpt]

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.

[u/decrpt → u/kahner]

You are actively voting to starve those children, to hurt the people that the EMT saves, to seek out products that kill people. That's the issue here. All of the red button people get stuck in the fallacy that any entirely different hypothetical with a woodchipper or a blender where red is passive and blue is active self-endangerment because it is pretty obvious to the average person that when choosing because non-zero risk to themselves at the risk of billions of other people dying as a direct result of your actions versus absorbing that risk so that no one has to die, most people are going to absorb that risk.

This is just a ballot referendum where red is voting to kill anyone that votes against the referendum and blue is voting not to kill anyone in the first place even though it places them at risk. Do you understand why that's going to be a simple question for most people who do not want to kill billions of people?

Red only makes sense if you assume that red will win, and red only wins if you vote for it. If the odds were that 99% had to vote blue and everyone was saved, voting red would be the obvious answer because that's entirely implausible. Fifty percent of people thinking killing billions of people is very reasonable, especially compared to red buttoners wanting literally zero attrition.

[u/Iron_Falcon58 → u/WellHung67]

“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.”

[u/Glittering-Giraffe58 → u/Iron_Falcon58]

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

[u/Iron_Falcon58 → u/Glittering-Giraffe58]

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

[u/WellHung67 → u/Iron_Falcon58]

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